Part 22 (1/2)

”In this country,” thought Geoffrey, ”one gets the speechmaking over before the dinner. Not a bad idea. It saves that nervous feeling which spoils the appet.i.te.”

An old gentleman, with a restless jaw, tottered to his feet and approached Geoffrey's table. He bowed twice before him, and held out a claw-like hand.

”Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke, the father of Mr. Fujinami Gentaro,”

announced Ito. ”He has retired from life. He wishes to drink wine with you. Please wash your cup and give it to him.”

There was a kind of finger-bowl standing in front of Geoffrey, which he had imagined might be a spittoon. He was directed to rinse his cup in this vessel, and to hand it to the old gentleman. Mr. Fujinami Gennosuke received it in both hands as if it had been a sacrament. The attendant _geisha_ poured out a little of the greenish liquid, which was drunk with much hissing and sucking. Then followed another obeisance; the cup was returned, and the old gentleman retired.

He was succeeded by Mr. Fujinami Gentaro himself, with whom the same ceremony of the _sake_ drinking was repeated; and then all the family pa.s.sed by, one after another, each taking the cup and drinking. It was like a visiting figure in the lancers' quadrille.

As each relative bent and bowed, Ito announced his name and quality.

These names seemed all alike, alike as their faces and as their garments were. Geoffrey could only remember vaguely that he had been introduced to a Member of Parliament, a gross man with a terrible wen like an apple under his ear, and to two army officers, tall clean-looking men, who pleased him more than the others. There were several Government functionaries; but the majority were business men.

Geoffrey could only distinguish for certain his host and his host's father.

”They look just like two old vultures,” he thought.

Then there was Mr. Fujinami Takes.h.i.+, the son of the host and the hope of the family, a livid youth with a thin moustache and unhealthy marks on his face like raspberries under the skin.

Still the _geisha_ kept bringing more and more food in a desultory way quite unlike our system of fixed and regular courses. Still Ito kept pressing Geoffrey to eat, while at the same time apologizing for the quality of the food with exasperating repet.i.tion. Geoffrey had fallen into the error of thinking that the fish and its accompanying dishes which had been laid before him at first comprised the whole of the repast. He had polished them off with gusto; and had then discovered to his alarm that they were merely _hors d'oeuvres_. Nor did he observe until too late how little the other guests were eating. There was no discourtesy apparently in leaving the whole of a dish untasted, or in merely picking at it from time to time. Rudeness consisted in refusing any dish.

Plates of broiled meat and sandwiches arrived, bowls of soup, grilled eels on skewers--that most famous of Tokyo delicacies; finally, the inevitable rice with whose adhesive substance the j.a.panese epicure fills up the final crannies in his well-lined stomach. It made its appearance in a round drum-like tub of clean white wood, as big as a bandbox, and bound round with s.h.i.+ning bra.s.s. The girls served the sticky grains into the china rice-bowl with a flat wooden ladle.

”j.a.panese people always take two bowls of rice at least,” observed Ito. ”One bowl very unlucky; at the funeral we only eat one bowl.”

This to Geoffrey was the _coup de grace_. He had only managed to stuff down his bowl through a desperate sense of duty.

”If I do have a second,” he gasped, ”it will be my own funeral.”

But this joke did not run in the well-worn lines of j.a.panese humour.

Mr. Ito merely thought that the big Englishman, having drunk much _sake_, was talking nonsense.

All the guests were beginning to circulate now; the quadrille was becoming more and more elaborate. They were each calling on each other and taking wine. The talk was becoming more animated. A few bold spirits began to laugh and joke with the _geisha_. Some had laid aside their cloaks; and some even had loosened their kimonos at the neck, displaying hairy chests. The stiff symmetry of the dinner party was quite broken up. The guests were scattered like rooks, bobbing, scratching and pecking about on the yellow mats. The bright plumage of the _geisha_ stood out against their sombre monotony.

Presently the _geisha_ began to dance at the far end of the room. Ten of the little girls did their steps, a slow dance full of posturing with coloured handkerchiefs. Three of the elder _geisha_ in plain grey kimonos squatted behind the dancers, strumming on their _samisens_.

But there was very little music either in the instrument or in the melody. The sound of the string's tw.a.n.g and the rattle of the bone plectrum drowned the sweetness of the note. The result was a kind of dry clatter or cackle which is ingenious, but not pleasing.

Reggie Forsyth used to say that there is no melody in j.a.panese music; but that the rhythm is marvelous. It is a kind of elaborate ragtime without any tune to it.

The guests did not pay any attention to the performance, nor did they applaud when it was over.

Mr. Ito was consulting his _agenda_ paper and his gold watch.

”You will now drink with these gentlemen,” he said. Geoffrey must have demurred.

”It is j.a.panese custom,” he continued; ”please step this way; I will guide you.”

Poor Geoffrey! it was his turn now to do the visiting figure, but his head was buzzing with some thirty cups of _sake_ which he had swallowed out of politeness, and with the unreality of the whole scene.