He sat there without seeming to pay any attention to me. I also pretended not to recognize him, and went on joking with the other customers. The lady seated opposite my husband called me to their table. My husband stared at me from beneath his mask, as if surprised in spite of himself. I lightly patted his shoulder and asked, “Aren’t you going to wish me a merry Christmas? What do you say? You look as if you’ve already put away a quart or two.”

The lady ignored this. She said, “I have something to discuss with the proprietor. Would you mind calling him here for a moment?”

I went to the kitchen, where the boss was frying fish. “Otani has come back. Please go and see him, but don’t tell the woman he’s with anything about me. I don’t want to embarrass him.”

“So he really has come after all?” The proprietor had half doubted my lies, and yet he seemed nevertheless to have placed quite a bit of trust in them. Now he simply had concluded that my husband had returned as the result of some instigation on my part.

“Please don’t say anything about me,” I repeated.

“If that’s the way you want it, it’s all right with me,” he consented easily, and went out front. After a quick look around the restaurant, the boss walked straight to the table where my husband was. The beautiful lady exchanged two or three words with him, and the three of them left the shop.

It was all over. Everything had been settled. Somehow I had believed all along that it would be, and I felt exhilarated. I seized the wrist of a young customer in a dark-blue suit, a boy not more than twenty, and I cried, “Drink up! Drink up! It’s Christmas!”

In just thirty minutes—no, it was even sooner than that, so soon it startled me, the boss returned alone. “Mrs. Otani, I want to thank you. I’ve got the money back.”

“I’m so glad. All of it?”

He answered with a funny smile, “All he took yesterday.”

“And how much does the rest of what he owes you come to altogether? Roughly—an absolute minimum.”

“Twenty thousand yen.”

“Does that cover it?”

“It’s a minimum.”

“I’ll make it good. Will you employ me starting tomorrow? I’ll pay it back by working.”

“What! You’re joking!” And we laughed together.

Tonight I left the restaurant after ten and returned to the house with the boy. As I expected, my husband was not at home, but that didn’t bother me. Tomorrow when I go to the restaurant I may see him again, for all I know. Why has such a good plan never occurred to me before? All the suffering I have gone through has been because of my own stupidity. I was always quite a success at entertaining the customers at my father’s stall, and I’ll certainly get to be pretty skillful at the restaurant. As a matter of fact, I received about 500 yen in tips tonight.