Tora paused to study the women, but Genba had no eyes for them. Smiling happily, he seized Tora’s elbow and made for a table close to the steaming cauldrons, where he slid onto a bench already occupied by an elderly man who was staring morosely into his wine cup.
“May two thirsty fellows join you, brother?” Genba asked, using the local dialect. The man was in his fifties and wore a stained brown cotton robe. His thinning gray hair was stringy and unkempt, and a heavy stubble on his chin showed that he had not bothered to shave for several days. Tora took him for the neighborhood drunk.
The man looked up at them with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “Why not?” he asked, his voice cracked and the sounds slurring. “Drinking alone causes depression, and depression is unhealthy, as the ancients tell us.”
Tora and Genba looked at each other. The man’s speech was educated, incongruous in these surroundings and in someone of his appearance. The drunk seemed to read their thoughts, because he suddenly gave them a crooked grin and lifted his cup. Emptying it, he waved it toward the muscular cook and cried, “More of your elixir of happiness, Yashi! I feel the blue demons coming on again.”
Blue demons? It crossed Tora’s mind that the man might be one of those soothsayers who sell their spells in the marketplace. Some of them claimed to be wizards who could call up demons whenever it pleased them. He eyed the drunk warily.
The cook glanced over, took in the two newcomers, and shouted back, “You’ve had enough! I’m not putting you up again. And your master’ll have your hide if you spend another night in the gutter and get killed.”
This ridiculous threat reassured Tora. The man was only a servant after all.
The elderly man, however, glared at the cook and rose, swaying a little. “My good man,” he said with enormous dignity, “I resent your inference as much as your tone. I’ll have you know I am no servant. Indeed, my education makes me the equal of the gentleman lucky enough to enjoy my services at the moment.” He then spoiled the gesture by belching and tipping backward so suddenly that Genba had to jump up to catch him.
“Thank you, my humble friend,” the man muttered, feeling about in his sleeves. “A touch of dizziness. It is a warning I recognize.”
“A warning of what?” asked Tora.
“Ah,” said the man, glancing across at him from watery eyes, while still feeling about in his robe. “You and your friend here are both too young to understand the sorrows of an academician come down in the world. You have not lived long and painfully in a country inimical to intellectual pursuits. What I meant was this: I always get dizzy when the blue demons are imminent. And now I seem to have misplaced my money, too.”
Tora cast a glance around the room for the blue demons, but saw only ordinary people who were more interested in their food than the odd man at their table. “Where are these devils? I don’t see them.”
Genba chuckled. “He means his sad thoughts for which he drinks. Perhaps you would care to join us, sir,” he said to the elderly man, pulling out a string of coppers. The elderly man bowed his acceptance and Genba waved down a waiter. “Here, bring enough wine and food for the three of us!”
“Most kind of you to help a stranger in distress, sir,” said the man. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harada, doctor of mathematics, but at present estate manager for my colleague, Professor Yasaburo, in Kohata. May I know your honorable name and dwelling so that I may repay the debt?”
“I’m Genba and my friend is Tora. But what are a few coppers between fellow visitors to the capital? We hate to eat and drink alone.”
Harada bowed, expressed himself charmed to make their acquaintance, and offered himself as a guide to the local attractions, which he had just begun to describe when the waiter returned with a jug of wine, two more cups, and a large platter of pickled radish. Mr. Harada poured, spilling only a little, and Genba sampled the radish.
“So you’re really just an overseer of a farm?” Tora asked, still thinking about the blue devils. “I mean, you don’t tell fortunes and call up spirits on the side?”
The cook shouted across, “The only spirits he calls up are in his cup. He’s a hard drinker.”
Harada, far from taking offense, said, “On the contrary, my friend of the steaming pots. Drinking is the easiest thing I do. The world rests heavily on my shoulders and the worries of my days fray at my nerves.”
“And the wine makes the world go round till you’re too dizzy to see straight,” grunted the cook, ladling out a large platterful of steamed chunks of fish and vegetables. “See,” he said to Tora and Genba, passing the bowl to the waiter with a jerk of the head toward their table, “it’s like this: When he’s out of sorts, he drinks. After the first cup he feels more like himself. So he has another and now feels like a new man. But the new man wants to drink, too, and so he goes on drinking till, pretty soon, he feels like a babe … bawling and crawling all the way home!”
Laughter greeted these witticisms. When Harada protested, “I drink only to calm myself,” one of the guests shouted, “Yeah! Last night he got so calm he couldn’t move! Ho ho ho!”
“Fools!” muttered Harada. He pushed away disdainfully the bowl of fish and rice the waiter placed before him and instead refilled his cup from the pitcher. “The Chinese poets understood about wine!” he said, holding up the cup and squinting at it. “It frees a man’s genius from the shackles of physical existence.” He emptied the cup. “ ‘I will fill my cup and never let it go dry,’ said Po Chü-i. And Li Po said, ‘I can love wine without shame before the gods.’ Li Po knew there’s no point in explaining this to a sober man. Poets must nourish their souls, not their bellies.” He glanced around the table and saw that both Tora and Genba had their noses deep in their bowls of fish stew. His nose twitched, and he eyed his own bowl thoughtfully for a moment, then reached for it.
Genba was emptying and refilling his own bowl with such speed and complete enjoyment that his lip-smacking and belching attracted the pleased attention of the cook, who promptly sent along a heaping platter of steamed eel, compliments of the house.
“So you’re a poet?” Tora asked their companion. “I thought you just said that you manage a farm.”
“Not a farm. An estate.” Harada looked at him blearily. “You may not be aware of it, young man,” he said with a fruity belch, “but poets have never enjoyed a regular income without a generous p-patron. P-professor Yasaburo, my old friend and classmate, is the closest I could find to a p-p … magnanimous p-erson, and he makes use of my many other skills as he has need of them.” Taking another gulp from his cup, he belched again, and added, “At the present time, you behold in me an ambassador of good will, a bearer of happy tidings, a p-purveyor of the substance which makes even the dull p-pragmatists happy. In short, I have completed an errand of mercy.” With a great sigh, he folded his arms on the table, laid his head on them, and went to sleep.
Tora, who had listened with only half an ear, now turned to Genba. To his surprise, Genba had stopped eating. He sat, slack-jawed, staring past Tora’s shoulder, an expression of stunned amazement on his face. The platter of eels in front of him was barely touched, and he still held his chopsticks with a juicy morsel suspended halfway to his open mouth.
Tora looked to see what had shocked Genba into immobility. The restaurant was full of people. Behind them six men, of the ordinary riverfront variety, were exchanging stories over their wine. Near a pillar, several women were eating fish stew and chattering among themselves. Against the back wall, an old man presided over a table filled with members of his family. And near them a husband and wife were engaged in an argument. Tora could not see anything likely to cause that look in Genba’s eyes. He reached across to take the chopsticks from Genba’s rigid fingers. “What are you staring at?”