The Unconsoled

by Kazuo Ishiguro

‘No, no. Just right,’ Hoffman replied, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Then a few minutes later, I heard him mutter sharply once more: ‘An ox! An ox!’

  After a while we turned off the open road and found ourselves in a salubrious residential district. I could see in the darkness large houses in their own grounds, often surrounded by high walls or hedges. Hoffman drove carefully around the leafy avenues, and I could hear him once more rehearsing his lines under his breath.

  We passed through some tall iron gates into the courtyard of a substantial residence. There were already many vehicles parked around the grounds and it took the hotel manager a little while to find a space. He then got out and hurriedly went off towards the front entrance.

  I remained in my seat a moment longer, studying the large house for clues concerning the occasion we were about to attend. The front comprised a long row of huge windows coming almost to the ground. Most of these were lit behind their curtains, but I could see nothing of what was going on within.

  Hoffman rang the doorbell and gestured for me to join him. When I got out of the car, the rain had eased to a drizzle. I pulled my dressing gown close around me and walked towards the house, taking care to avoid the puddles.

  The door was opened by a maid who showed us into an expansive hallway decorated with grand portraits. The maid appeared to know Hoffman and there was a quick exchange as she took his raincoat. Hoffman paused a moment to straighten his tie in the mirror, before leading the way deeper into the building.

  We arrived at a vast room flooded with lights in which a reception was in full swing. There were at least a hundred people present, standing about in smart evening dress, holding glasses and exchanging conversation. As we stood at the threshold, Hoffman raised an arm in front of me as though to protect me and searched the room with his gaze.

  ‘He’s not here yet,’ he muttered eventually. Then, turning to me with a smile, he said: ‘Mr Brodsky isn’t here yet. But I’m confident, confident he’ll be here before long.’

  Hoffman turned back to the room and for a second seemed at a loss. Then he said: ‘If you’d just wait here a moment, Mr Ryder, I’ll go and fetch the Countess. Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind standing a little way back over here – ha ha! – just out of sight. As you’ll remember, you’re supposed to be our big surprise. Please, I won’t be long.’

  He went into the room and for a few moments I watched his figure moving about the guests, his worried demeanour in marked contrast to the merriment all around him. I saw a number of people try to speak to him, but each time Hoffman hurried on with a distracted smile. Eventually I lost sight of him and possibly drifted forward a little in my effort to locate him again. I must in any case have made myself conspicuous for I heard a voice next to me say: ‘Ah, Mr Ryder, you’ve arrived. How delightful you’re with us at last.’

  A large woman of around sixty had placed her hand on my arm. I smiled and muttered some pleasantry, to which she said: ‘Everyone here is so eager to meet you.’ With that she began to lead me firmly into the heart of the gathering.

  As I followed her, squeezing my way past the guests, the large woman began to ask me questions. At first these were the usual enquiries about my health and my journey. But then, as we continued to make our way around the room, she proceeded to quiz me with great thoroughness about the hotel. Indeed she went into such detail – did I approve of the soap? what did I make of the carpet in the lobby? – that I began to suspect she was some professional rival of Hoffman much peeved that I was staying at his establishment. However, her general attitude and the manner in which she regularly nodded and smiled at people as we passed left little doubt that she was the hostess of these proceedings, and I concluded that this was indeed the Countess herself.

  I had assumed she was leading me either to a particular spot in the room or to a particular person, but after a while I got the distinct impression we were walking around in slow circles. In fact several times I felt certain we had already been in a part of the room at least twice before. The other thing I noticed with curiosity was that although heads would turn and greet my hostess she made no effort to introduce me to anyone. Moreover, although some people smiled politely at me from time to time, no one seemed especially interested in me. Certainly no one broke off a conversation on account of my passing by. I was somewhat puzzled by this, having steeled myself for the usual smotherings of questions and compliments.

  Then after a while I noticed there was an odd quality to the whole atmosphere in the room – something forced, even theatrical about its conviviality – though I was unable immediately to put my finger on it. But then we finally came to a halt – the Countess falling into conversation with two women covered in jewellery – and I at last had the chance to look about me and gather some impressions. Only then did I realise that the occasion was not a cocktail party at all, but that in fact all these people were waiting to be called into dinner; that dinner should have been served at least two hours earlier, but that the Countess and her colleagues had been obliged to hold off its commencement due to the absences of both Brodsky – the official guest of honour – and myself – the evening’s great surprise. Then, as I continued to cast my gaze about me, I began steadily to realise just what had taken place before our arrival.

  The present occasion was the largest to date of the dinners given in Brodsky’s honour. Being also the last before the crucial event on Thursday evening, it was never likely to have been a relaxed affair, and Brodsky’s lateness had turned the tension up further. At first, though, the guests – all of them highly conscious of being the city’s elite – had remained calm, everyone scrupulously avoiding any comment likely to be construed as casting doubt on Brodsky’s dependability. Most, in fact, had managed not to mention Brodsky at all, relieving their anxiety simply by endless speculation over when dinner would be served.

  Then had come the news concerning Brodsky’s dog. How such news had come to be given out in so haphazard a manner was not clear. Possibly a phone call had come to the house and one of the civic leaders, in a misguided attempt to settle the atmosphere, had blurted it out to some guests. In any case, the consequences of allowing such a thing to spread mouth to mouth through a gathering already tense with worry and hunger were entirely predictable. Very soon, every sort of wild rumour had begun to circulate around the room. Brodsky had been discovered, utterly drunk, cradling his dog’s corpse. Brodsky had been found lying in a puddle in the street outside, talking gibberish. Brodsky, overcome with grief, had tried to kill himself by drinking paraffin. This last story had had its origins in an incident several years earlier when indeed, during a drunken binge, Brodsky had been rushed to hospital by a neighbouring farmer after imbibing a quantity of paraffin – though whether he had done so in a bid to kill himself or simply out of drunken confusion had never been established. Before long, in the wake of these rumours, despairing talk had started up everywhere.

  ‘That dog meant everything to him. The man will never get up from this. We have to face it, we’re right back at square one.’

  ‘We have to call off Thursday night. Call it off straight away. It can’t be anything but a disaster now. If we let it go ahead, the people of this city will never give us a second chance.’

  ‘That fellow was always too risky. We should never have let it get this far. But what do we do now? We’re lost, hopelessly lost.’

  Then, even as the Countess and her colleagues had sought to regain control of the evening, a burst of shouting had erupted from near the centre of the room.

  Many people were rushing towards the incident, a few retreating in panic. What had occurred was that one of the younger councillors had pinned to the floor a tubby, bald-headed figure who after a moment everyone had recognised to be Keller the vet. The young councillor had been pulled off but had held on to Keller’s lapel so tenaciously the vet had been pulled up with him.

  ‘I did my best!’ Keller was shouting, red in the face. ‘I did my best! What more could I have done?
Two days ago the animal was fine!’

  ‘Fraud!’ the young councillor had bellowed and attempted another assault. Again he had been pulled off, but by now a number of others, recognising a good scapegoat, had begun also to shout at Keller. For a moment accusations had rained down on the vet from all sides, charging him with negligence, and with jeopardising the future of the whole community. At this point a voice had shouted: ‘What about the Breuers’ kittens? You spend all your time playing bridge, you let those kittens die one by one …’

  ‘I only play bridge once a week and even then …’ the vet had started to protest hoarsely, but immediately more voices had shouted over him. Suddenly everyone in the room had seemed to have a long-borne grievance against the vet concerning some beloved animal or other. Then someone had shouted that Keller owed him money, another that Keller had never returned a gardening fork borrowed six years earlier. Soon the feelings against the vet had risen to such a pitch it had seemed quite natural that those restraining the young councillor should slacken their grip. And when the latter had made yet another lunge, he had seemed this time to do so on behalf of the great majority of those present. The situation had looked on the verge of turning quite unpleasant, when a voice booming across the room had at last brought everyone to their senses.

  That the room had fallen silent as quickly as it had perhaps owed more to the astonishment caused by the speaker’s identity than to any natural authority he commanded. For the figure everyone had turned to see glaring down at them from the platform had been that of Jakob Kanitz, a man noted in the town principally for his timidity. Now in his late forties, Jakob Kanitz had for as long as anyone could remember held the same dull clerical post at the town hall. He was rarely known to venture an opinion, still less contradict or argue. He had no close friends and several years earlier had moved out of the small house he had shared with his wife and three children to rent a tiny attic room further down the same street. Whenever anyone had broached the matter, he had intimated he would very soon rejoin his family, but the years had gone by and his arrangements had not changed. Meanwhile, largely on account of his willingness to volunteer for the many mundane tasks around the organising of a cultural event, he had become an accepted, if somewhat patronised member of the town’s artistic circles.

  The room had had little time to get over its surprise before Jakob Kanitz – perhaps aware that his nerve would hold out for only so long – had begun to speak.

  ‘Other cities! And I don’t just mean Paris! Or Stuttgart! I mean smaller cities, no more than us, other cities. Gather together their best citizens, put a crisis like this before them, how would they be? They’d be calm, assured. Such people would know what to do, how to behave. What I’m saying to you, all of us here, we’re the best of this town. It isn’t beyond us. Together we can come through this crisis. Would they be fighting in Stuttgart?! There’s no need for panic yet. No need to give up, to start quarrelling among ourselves. All right, the dog, it’s a problem, but it’s not the end, it doesn’t mean anything yet. Whatever condition Mr Brodsky may be in at this moment, we can put him back on course again. We can do it, provided we all play our part tonight. I’m sure we can, we have to. Have to put him back on course. Because if we don’t, if we don’t pull together and get this right tonight, I tell you this, there’s nothing left for us except misery! Yes, deep, lonely misery! There’s no one else for us to turn to, it has to be Mr Brodsky, there’s no one else now. He’s probably on his way at this moment. We’ve got to stay calm. What are we doing, fighting? Would they fight in Stuttgart? We’ve got to think clearly. In his shoes, how would we feel? We must show we’re all grieving with him, that the whole town shares his sorrow. Then again, friends, think about it, we must cheer him up. Oh yes! We can’t spend the whole evening in gloom, send him away believing there’s nothing left, he might as well go back to … No, no! The right balance! We’ve got to be cheerful too, make him see there’s so much more to life, that we’re all looking to him, depending on him. Yes, we have to get it right, these next few hours. He’s probably on his way now, God knows in what condition. These next few hours, they’re crucial, crucial. We’ve got to do it right. Otherwise there’s only misery. We must … we must …’

  At this point Jakob Kanitz had become covered in confusion. He had remained standing there on the platform for several more seconds, not speaking, a huge embarrassment steadily engulfing him. Some residue of his earlier emotion had caused him to give one last glare to those assembled, then he had turned sheepishly and stepped down.

  But this clumsy appeal had had an immediate impact. Even before Jakob Kanitz had finished speaking, a low assenting murmur had started up and more than one person had pushed reproachfully the shoulder of the young councillor – by this point shamefacedly shuffling his feet. Jakob Kanitz’s departure from the stage had been followed by a few seconds of awkward silence. Then, steadily, conversation had broken out around the room, with everywhere people discussing in serious but calm tones what should be done once Brodsky arrived. Before long a consensus had emerged to the effect that Jakob Kanitz had got it more or less right. The task was to strike the correct balance between the sorrowful and the jovial. The atmosphere would have to be carefully monitored at all times by each and every person present. A feeling of resolution had gone around the room, and then, in time, people had begun gradually to relax, until eventually they were smiling, chatting, greeting one another in gracious, urbane tones, all as though the unseemly episodes of the last half-hour had not taken place. It had been somewhere around this point – no more than twenty minutes after Jakob Kanitz had finished speaking – that Hoffman and I had arrived. No wonder then that I should have detected something odd beneath the layer of refined merriment.

  I was still turning over all that had happened prior to our arrival when I caught sight of Stephan on the other side of the room, talking to an elderly lady. Next to me, the Countess seemed still to be engrossed in her conversation with the two bejewelled women, and so, muttering an excuse under my breath, I drifted away from them. As I came towards him, Stephan saw me and smiled.

  ‘Ah, Mr Ryder. So you’ve arrived. I wonder if I might introduce you to Miss Collins.’

  I then recognised the thin old lady to whose apartment we had driven earlier in the night. She was dressed simply but elegantly in a long black dress. She smiled and held out her hand as we exchanged greetings. I was about to make further polite conversation with her when Stephan leaned forward and said quietly:

  ‘I’ve been such a fool, Mr Ryder. Frankly I don’t know what’s for the best. Miss Collins has been very kind as usual, but I’d like also your opinion on it all.’

  ‘You mean … about Mr Brodsky’s dog?’

  ‘Oh. No, no, that’s all awful, I realise that. But we were just discussing something else altogether. I really would appreciate your advice. In fact, Miss Collins was just now suggesting I seek you out, wasn’t that so, Miss Collins? You see, I hate to be a bore about this, but there’s been a complication. I mean, about my performance on Thursday night. God, I’ve been such a fool! As I told you, Mr Ryder, I’ve been preparing Jean-Louis La Roche’s Dahlia, but I never told Father about it. Not until tonight, that is. I’d been thinking I’d keep it a surprise for him, he so loves La Roche. What’s more, Father would never dream I was capable of mastering such a difficult piece, and so I thought it would be a tremendous surprise for him on both counts. But then just recently, with the big night so near now, I’d been thinking it wasn’t practical to keep it a secret any more. For one thing, it’s all got to be printed on the official programme, there’s going to be a copy next to each napkin, Father’s been agonising over the design, trying to decide about the embossments, the illustration on the back, everything. I realised a few days ago I’d have to tell him, but I still wanted it to be something of a surprise, so I was waiting for the right sort of moment to come along. Well, earlier on, just after I dropped you and Boris off, I went into his office to put bac
k the car keys, and there he was on the floor, going through a pile of papers. On his hands and knees, all the papers round him on the carpet, nothing unusual about it, Father often works like that. It’s quite a small office, and his desk takes up a lot of the space anyway, so I had to tiptoe around everything to put the keys back. He asked me how everything was, then before I’d said anything seemed to become engrossed in his papers again. Well, for some reason, just as I was leaving, I caught sight of him on the carpet like that and I suddenly felt it would be the right moment to tell him. It was just an impulse. So I said to him, quite casually: “By the way, Father, I’m going to play La Roche’s Dahlia on Thursday night. I thought you’d like to know.” I didn’t say it in any special way, I just told him and waited to see his reaction. Well, he put aside the document he was reading, but he kept gazing at the carpet in front of him. Then a smile came over his face and he said something like: “Ah yes, Dahlia” and for a few seconds he looked very happy. He didn’t look up, he was still on his hands and knees, but he looked very happy. Then he closed his eyes and started to hum the opening of the adagio, he started to hum it there on the floor, moving his head in time. He seemed so happy and tranquil, Mr Ryder, at that point I was congratulating myself. Then he opened his eyes and smiled dreamily up at me and said: “Yes, it’s beautiful. I’ve never understood why your mother despises it so.” As I was just telling Miss Collins, I thought at first I’d misheard him. But then he said it again. “Your mother despises it so much. Yes, as you know, she’s come to despise La Roche’s later work so intensely these days. She won’t let me play his recordings anywhere in the house, not even with the headphones on.” Then he must have noticed how flabbergasted and upset I was. Because – typical Father! – he started straight away trying to make me feel better. “I should have asked you a long time ago,” he kept saying. “It’s all my fault.” Then he suddenly slapped his forehead like he’d just remembered something else and said: “Really, Stephan, I’ve let you both down. I thought at the time I was doing the right thing, not interfering, but I see now I’ve let you both down.” And when I asked what he meant, he explained how Mother’s been looking forward all this time to hearing me play Kazan’s Glass Passions. Apparently she’d let Father know some time ago this was what she wanted, and well, Mother would assume Father would arrange it all. But you see, Father saw my side to it. He’s very sensitive about such things. He realised that a musician – even an amateur like me – would want to make his own decision about such an important performance. So he’d not said anything to me, fully intending to explain it all to Mother when a chance came along. But then of course – well, I suppose I’d better explain it a bit more, Mr Ryder. You see, when I say Mother let Father know about the Kazan, I don’t mean she actually told him. It’s a little hard to explain to an outsider. The way it works is that Mother would somehow, you know, somehow just let it be known to Father without ever directly mentioning it. She’ll do it through signals, which to him would be very clear. I’m not sure precisely what she did this time. Perhaps he’d come home and found her listening to Glass Passions on the stereo. Well, since she very rarely puts anything on the stereo, that would be a pretty obvious sign. Or perhaps Father had come to bed after his bath and found her reading a book in bed on Kazan, I don’t know, it’s just the way things have always been done between them. Well, as you can see, it’s not as though Father could have suddenly said: “No, Stephan’s got to make his own choice.” Father was waiting, trying to find a suitable way of conveying his reply. And of course he wasn’t to know that, of all pieces, I was preparing La Roche’s Dahlia. God, I’ve been so stupid! I had no idea Mother hated it so! Well, he told me how things stood, and when I asked him what he considered the best course, he thought about it and said I ought to carry on with what I’d prepared, it was too late to change it now. “Mother wouldn’t blame you,” he kept saying. “She wouldn’t blame you for a moment. She’ll blame me and quite rightly.” Poor Father, he was trying so hard to comfort me, but I could see how distressed he was getting about it all. After a while he was looking at a spot on the carpet – he was still on the floor but by this time all crouched up, like he was doing a press-up – he was looking at the carpet and I could hear him muttering things to himself. “I’ll be able to take it. I’ve lived through worse. I’ll be able to take it.” He seemed to have forgotten I was there, so in the end I just left, just quietly closed the door behind me. And since then – well, Mr Ryder, I’ve not been thinking about much else all evening. To be frank, I’m at a bit of a loss. So little time left. And Glass Passions is such a difficult piece, how can I possibly have it ready? In fact, if I had to be honest, I’d say that piece is still a little beyond my ability, even if I had the whole year to prepare it.’