the restaurant. Really I was more interested in escaping from the dismal hotel room than in food and drink.
The One Stone Lodge was still there, the dark and narrow shop front and the old worn signs were the same, but no one in the restaurant, from the manager to the waiter, was familiar to me. I had become a stranger at the One Stone Lodge. Nevertheless, I ended by climbing the familiar steps at a corner of the shop and went into the small second-story room. Little had been changed. There were still just five tables as before; the paper in the latticed window at the back, however, had been replaced with glass.
"One pot of Shao-hsing. Relishes? Ten pieces of fried bean curd with plenty of hot pepper sauce," I said to the waiter who followed me up the stairs, as I walked toward the back window and sat down at a table. As the room was empty, I selected the best seat so that I could command a view of the deserted garden, which did not, I think, belong to the restaurant. I had looked upon it many times before, sometimes also when snow was falling. But, now, as I looked at it with eyes that had become accustomed to the climate of the North, the garden presented a very remarkable sight: the old plum trees were covered with blossoms in spite of the snow, as if unmindful of the winter; near the ruined pavilion a camellia displayed among its thick, dark-green foliage some red flowers bright and startling as flames in the snow, angry and proud as if disdainful of the wanderer that had chosen to travel in distant parts. I suddenly realized how moist and soft was the snow here, how the flakes clung to things, how brilliant and crystalline they were, and how unlike the snow in the North, which was dry as powder, filling the air like mist when driven by the wind.
