"And right now?" I said at last.
"Now?" She lowered her eyes.
"Yes, who is it you're thinking about right now?"
". . . My husband.""Then it's not necessary to be baptized, is it?"
"Oh, it is! . . . I'm afraid. I still feel as though I am shaking violently."
"So then, right now?"
"Now?"
Sonoko lifted her grave eyes as though unconsciously asking someone for help. In the pupils of her eyes I discovered a beauty I had never seen before. They were deep, unblinking, fatalistic pupils, like fountains constantly singing with an outpouring of emotions. I was at a loss for words, as was always the case when she turned those eyes upon me. Suddenly I reached to the ashtray across the table and ground out my half-smoked cigarette. As I did so the slender vase in the center of the table upset, soaking the table with water.
A waiter came and cleaned up the mess. The sight of the water-wrinkled tablecloth being wiped gave us a wretched feeling, providing us with an excuse for leaving a little earlier.
The summer streets were annoyingly crowded. Healthy looking lovers were passing by, their chests thrown out, their arms bare. I felt that every one of them was scorning me. The scorn was like the strong summer sunlight burning into me.
Thirty minutes remained before time for us to part. I cannot say whether it was precisely because of the pain of parting, but a gloomy, nervous irritation resembling a sort of passion had given rise to a feeling of wanting to daub that half-hour over with thick colors like oil paints. I halted in front of a dance hall where a loud-speaker was hurling the wild strains of a rhumba into the street. I had suddenly been reminded of a line from a poem I had read long before:
. . . But always it was a dance without an end. . . .
I had forgotten the rest. It must be from a poem by Andre Salmon. . . .
Although such a place was outside her experience, Sonoko nodded assent and accompanied me into the dance hall for thirty minutes of dancing.
The hall was crowded with office workers who came every day for an hour or two of dancing, extending their lunch hours to suit their own pleasure. A sultry heat struck us full in the face. Abetted by a defective ventilation system and heavy drapes that shut out the open air, the stifling fever-heat that stagnated within the place was raising a milky fog of dust-motes against the reflecting lights. One did not need to be told what kind of people these were who were dancing there, not noticing the heat, effusing smells of sweat and bad perfume and cheap pomade. I was sorry I had brought Sonoko.
But it was too late to turn back now. Without any heart for it, we pushed through the dancing crowd. Even the infrequent electric fans did not deliver the slightest breeze. Young fellows were dancing with the hostesses, cheek pressed against sweaty cheek. The sides of the girls' noses had become murky, and their sweat-caked face powder looked like acne upon their skin. The backs of their dresses looked even more soiled and sodden than the tablecloth had looked a little while before.
Whether one danced or not, sweat spread over the body. Sonoko was taking short breaths as though suffocating.
Looking for a breath of fresh air, we passed through an archway entwined with artificial, out-of-season flowers, went out into the courtyard, and seated ourselves on two of the crude chairs. Here there was fresh air, true enough, but the concrete floor was reflecting heat intense enough to reach even to the chairs in the shade.
Our mouths were sticky with the syrupy sweetness of Coca-Cola. It seemed that Sonoko too had been silenced by the same agony of disdain I was feeling about everything. After a time I could no longer endure this silence and began looking around us.
There was a fat girl leaning lazily against the wall, fanning her bosom with her handkerchief. The swing band was playing a quickstep that seemed overpowering. There in the courtyard were some potted evergreens that rose askew from the parched earth in which they were confined. All the chairs in the shade of the awning were taken, no one wishing to brave the sunlight.
There was a single group, however, sitting there full in the sunshine, chatting together as though they were completely alone. It was made up of two girls and two young men. One of the girls was smoking a cigarette in an affected way that showed she was unaccustomed to smoking, giving a little choking cough after each puff. Both of the girls were wearing peculiar dresses that seemed to have been made from summer-kimono material. The dresses were sleeveless, revealing arms as red as those of fishwives, marked here and there with insect bites. Every time the boys made a coarse joke the girls would look at each other and laugh simperingly. The fierce summer sun that beat down on their heads did not seem to bother them particularly.
One of the boys was wearing an aloha shirt, a garment then much in vogue among the gangs of young toughs in the city. His face was pale and crafty looking, but he had powerful arms. A lewd smile was forever flickering about his lips, appearing and disappearing. He would make the girls laugh by poking their breasts with a finger.
Then my attention was drawn to the other boy. He was a youth of twenty-one or -two, with coarse but regular and swarthy features. He had taken off his shirt and stood there half naked, rewinding a belly-band about his middle. The coarse cotton material was soaked with sweat and had become a light-gray color. He seemed to be intentionally dawdling over his task of winding and was constantly joining in the talk and laughter of his companions. His naked chest showed bulging muscles, fully developed and tensely knit; a deep cleft ran down between the solid muscles of his chest toward his abdomen. The thick, fetter-like sinews of his flesh narrowed down from different directions to the sides of his chest, where they interlocked in tight coils. The hot mass of his smooth torso was being severely and tightly imprisoned by each succeeding turn of the soiled cotton belly-band. His bare, sun-tanned shoulders gleamed as 'though covered with oil. And black tufts stuck out from the cracks of his armpits, catching the sunlight, curling and glittering with glints of gold.
At this sight, above all at the sight of the peony tattooed on his hard chest, I was beset by sexual desire. My fervent gaze was fixed upon that rough and savage, but incomparably beautiful, body. Its owner was laughing there under the sun. When he threw back his head I could see his thick, muscular neck. A strange shudder ran through my innermost heart. I could no longer take my eyes off him.
I had forgotten Sonoko's existence. I was thinking of but one thing: Of his going out onto the streets of high summer just as he was, half-naked, and getting into a fight with a rival gang. Of a sharp dagger cutting through that belly-band, piercing that torso. Of that soiled belly-band beautifully dyed with blood. Of his gory corpse being put on an improvised stretcher, made of a window shutter, and brought back here. . . .
"There's just five minutes left." Sonoko's high, sad voice reached my ears. I turned to her wonderingly.
At this instant something inside of me was torn in two with brutal force. It was as though a thunderbolt had fallen and cleaved asunder a living tree. I heard the structure, which I had been building piece by piece with all my might up to now, collapse miserably to the ground. I felt as though I had witnessed the instant in which my existence had been turned into some sort of fearful non-being. I closed my eyes and after an instant regained a hold on my icy-cold sense of duty.
"Only five minutes? It was wrong to bring you to such a place. Are you angry? A person like you oughtn't see the vulgarity of such low people. I've heard that this dance hall doesn't have the knack of buying off these gangs of hoodlums and that they've started forcing their way in to dance free no matter how much they're refused."
But I was the only one who had been looking at them. Sonoko had not noticed them. She had been trained not to see things that should not be seen. She had simply kept her eyes fixed absent-mindedly on the sweaty row of backs that stood watching the dancing. But even so, it seemed that the atmosphere of the place had worked some sort of chemical change in Sonoko's heart as well, without her being aware of it. Presently something l
ike a token of a smile appeared on her bashful lips, as though she were enjoying in advance what she was about to say:
"It's a funny thing to ask, but you already have, haven't you? Of course you've already done that, haven't you?"
I was completely exhausted. And yet some hair trigger was still set in my mind, making me give a plausible answer quicker than thought.
"Umm . . . I already have, I'm sorry to say."
"When?"
"Last spring."
"With whom?"
I was amazed at the mixture of naiveté and sophistication in her question. She was incapable of imagining me in connection with a girl whose name she would not know.
"I can't tell you her name."
"Come, who was she?"
"Please don't ask me."
Perhaps because she heard the too-naked tone of entreaty behind my words, she instantly fell silent, as though frightened. I was making every possible effort to keep her from noticing how the blood was draining from my face. The moment for parting stood waiting eagerly. A vulgar blues was being kneaded into time.
We were caught up motionless within the sound of the sentimental voice issuing from the loud-speaker.
Sonoko and I looked at our wrist watches almost at the same instant. . . .
It was time. As I got up, I stole one more glance toward those chairs in the sun. The group had apparently gone to dance, and the chairs stood empty in the blazing sunshine. Some sort of beverage had been spilled on the table top and was throwing back glittering, threatening reflections.
Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends