Still, whenever he visited her and only then, he felt that he was escaping from himself and from the artificial environment that suffocated him. He enjoyed the contact with a person who was so close to him but who still retained the earthy vigor of his ancestors. It was a pleasure of a rather ironic sort.
Everything about his grandmother was in physical harmony with his image of her character: her hands were large and her fingers blunt; the lines of her face seemed to have been laid there with the firm, sure strokes of a writing brush, and her lips were set with firm resolution. Once in a while, however, she was willing to allow a lighter note to creep into her conversations with him. Now, for example, she tapped her grandson’s knee under the low table that covered the foot-warmer and teased him: “Whenever you come here, you know, my women get flustered and I don’t know what to do with them. To me, I’m afraid, you’re still a little boy with a wet nose, but I suppose that these girls see things differently.”
Kiyoaki looked up at the faded photograph of his two uncles in uniform on the wall. Their military dress seemed to him to preclude any possible bond between them and himself. The war had ended a mere eight years before, yet the gap between them seemed immeasurable.
“I’ll never shed real blood. I’ll never wound anything but hearts,” he boasted to himself, although not without a slight sense of misgiving.
Outside, the sun shone on the shoji screen. The small room bathed him in cozy warmth, making him feel as if he were wrapped in a huge, opaque cocoon of glowing white. He felt as if he were basking luxuriously in the direct sunlight. His grandmother began to doze. In the silence of the room, he became aware of the ticking of the huge old-fashioned clock. His grandmother’s head tipped forward slightly. Her forehead jutted out sharply under the line of her short hair which she wore bound and sprinkled with a black powder dye. He noticed the healthy sheen of her skin. More than half a century ago, he thought, the hot Kagoshima sun must have burned her brown each summer of her youth, and even now she seemed to have retained its mark.
He was daydreaming, and his thoughts, moving like the sea, gradually turned from the rhythm of the waves to that of the long, slow passage of time, and hence to the inevitability of growing old—and he suddenly caught his breath. He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.
The thought of dying suddenly spurred him with a desire to see Satoko, if only for a moment.
He telephoned Tadeshina and then hurriedly left the house. There was no doubt that Satoko was full of life and beauty, as he himself was—these two facts seemed to be a strange twist of fortune, something to seize and cling to in time of danger.
Following Tadeshina’s scheme, Satoko pretended to go out for a stroll and met Kiyoaki at a small Shinto shrine not far from her home. The first thing she did was to thank him for the invitation to the cherry blossom festival. She obviously thought that he had persuaded the Marquis to issue it. This was, in fact, the first he had heard of the matter, but with his usual deviousness, he did not disabuse her of the idea, and accepted her thanks in a vague, noncommittal way.
17
AFTER A PROLONGED STRUGGLE, Marquis Matsugae succeeded in compiling a severely curtailed guest list for the blossom festival. His criterion was to invite the number of suitable guests most appropriate to the occasion, as the banquet that concluded it would be graced by the august presence of the Imperial Prince and his wife. Besides Satoko and her parents, Count and Countess Ayakura, he therefore included only the two Siamese princes and Baron Shinkawa and his wife, who were frequent visitors and great friends of the Matsugaes. The Baron was the head of the Shinkawa zaibatsu. His whole way of life was modeled on that of the complete English gentleman, whom he copied with scrupulous attention to detail. The Baroness, for her part, was on intimate terms with such people as the noted feminist Raicho Hiratsuka and her circle, and was also a patron of the Women of Tomorow. She could thus be relied upon to add a touch of color to the gathering.
Prince Toin and his wife were to arrive at three in the afternoon and be shown around the garden after a short rest in one of the reception rooms of the main house. They would then be entertained until five o’clock at a garden party by some geishas, who would go on to perform a selection of cherry blossom dances from the Genroku era.
Just before sunset, the imperial couple were to retire to the Western-style house for aperitifs. After the banquet itself, there would be a final entertainment: a projectionist had been hired to show a new foreign film. Such was the program devised by the Marquis with the help of Yamada, his steward, after pondering the varied tastes of his guests.
Trying to settle the choice of films gave the Marquis some agonizing moments. There was the one from Pathé featuring Gabrielle Robin, the famous star of the Comédie Française, that was indisputably a masterpiece. The Marquis rejected it, however, fearing that it might destroy the mood of the blossom viewing, created with such care. At the beginning of March the Electric Theater in Asakusa had begun to show films made in the West, the first of which, Paradise Lost, had already become wildly popular. But it would hardly do to present a film that was readily available in a place like that. Then there was another film, a German melodrama filled with violent action, but that could hardly be expected to score a success with the Princess and the other ladies in waiting. The Marquis finally decided that the choice most likely to please his guests was an English five-reeler based on a Dickens novel. The film might be rather gloomy, but it did have a certain refinement, its appeal was fairly wide, and the English captions would help all his guests.
But what if it rained? In that case, the large reception room in the main house would not offer a sufficiently varied array of blossoms, and the only suitable alternative would be to hold the viewing on the second floor of the Western-style house. Afterwards, the geishas could also perform their dances there, and the aperitifs and the formal banquet would follow as planned.
The preparations got underway with the construction of a temporary stage at a spot near the pond, just at the foot of the grassy hill. If the weather turned out to be fine, the Prince and his party would undoubtedly make a full tour of the estate in order not to miss any of the blossoms. The traditional red and white curtains that must be extended along his route were far larger than those required by more ordinary events. The work of decking the interior of the Western-style house with cherry blossoms and decorating its banqueting table to suggest a rural spring scene demanded all the attentions of a large group of helpers. Finally, on the day before the party, the hairdressers and their assistants were driven into a frenzy of activity.
Happily, April 6 was clear, even if the sunshine left something to be desired. It came and went, and there was even a chill in the morning air.
An unused room in the main house was set aside as a changing room for the geishas and was filled with all the available mirrors. His curiosity aroused, Kiyoaki went there to take a look for himself, but the maid in charge quickly chased him away. His imagination, however, was caught by the room, scoured and swept in preparation for the women who were soon to come. Screens were set up, pillows scattered everywhere, and mirrors glinted through their brightly colored covers of printed Yuzen muslin. At the moment there wasn’t the faintest hint of the scent of cosmetics in the air. But within no more than half an hour, there would be a transformation; the place would be filled with lovely voices as the women gathered about the mirrors, donning and shedding their costumes with unflurried self-possession. Kiyoaki found the prospect fascinating. He was caught up by the seductive magic of the occasion, which did not emanate from the rough stage that had just been built in the garden, but rather was concentrated here in this room with its promise of intoxicating fragrance soon to come.
As the Siamese princes had very little concept of time, Kiyoaki had asked them to come as soon as lunch was over. They arrived at about one thirty. He invited them up to his study for the moment, startled to see that they were wearing their school uniforms.
“Is that beautiful girl of yours coming?” Prince Kridsada asked loudly in English before they were through the door.
Prince Pattanadid, always gently reserved, was affronted; he scolded his cousin for his unthinking rudeness and apologized to Kiyoaki in halting Japanese.
Kiyoaki assured them that she would come, but he caused surprised glances by asking that they refrain from speaking about him and Satoko in front of either the imperial guests or the Matsugaes and Ayakuras. The princes had apparently assumed that the relationship was common knowledge.
By now the two princes were showing no sign of their former homesickness, and they seemed to have settled into the rhythm of life in Japan. In their school uniforms, they struck Kiyoaki as being almost indistinguishable from his other classmates. Prince Kridsada, who was a gifted mimic, did an imitation of the dean that was good enough to make Chao P. and Kiyoaki laugh out loud.
Chao P. walked over to the window and looked out over the grounds of the estate at a scene quite different from what one saw on ordinary days. The red and white curtain that wound through it was waving in the wind.
“From now on it must surely get warmer,” he said forlornly, his voice filled with longing for the hot summer sun.
Kiyoaki was quite taken with this touch of melancholy. He stood up and was about to walk over to the window himself, but as he rose, Chao P. gave a sudden, boyish cry that aroused his cousin and brought him out of his chair.
“There she is!” he exclaimed, slipping into English. “There’s the beautiful lady we mustn’t mention today.”
And indeed it was Satoko, unmistakable in her long-sleeved kimono as she came along the path beside the pond toward the main house with her parents beside her. Even at a distance, Kiyoaki could see that the kimono was a beautiful cherry-blossom pink, its pattern reminiscent of the fresh green profusion of a spring meadow. As she turned her head momentarily, pointing out the island, he caught a glimpse of her profile, the delicate pallor of her cheek set off by her shining black hair.
No red and white curtains had been hung on the island. It was still too early to see the first tinges of spring green, but the curtains that marked the twisting path up the maple hill beyond cast wavering reflections on the surface of the water, their colors putting Kiyoaki in mind of striped cookies. Although the window was shut, he felt that he could hear Satoko’s warm, bright voice.
Two young Siamese and a Japanese . . . they stood in a trio at the window, each catching his breath. How strange, thought Kiyoaki. When he was with the two young princes, was it that he found their passionate natures so infectious that he could believe himself to be the same, and feel able to show it openly? At this moment he could tell himself without a qualm: “I love her. I’m madly in love with her.”
Six years before, he had had all too brief a glimpse of the Imperial Princess Kasuga’s beautiful profile as she turned to glance back at him; it had filled his heart with a hopeless and lingering yearning, but now as Satoko left the pond, she turned her face toward the main house with a graceful movement of the head, and although she was not looking directly at his window, Kiyoaki suddenly felt liberated from that former obsession. In one moment, he had experienced something that surpassed it. Six years later, he now felt that he had recaptured a fragment of time, sparkling and crystalline, from a different perspective. As he watched Satoko walking in the pale watery spring sunshine, she suddenly laughed, and as she did so, he saw her raise her arm in a fluid movement, hiding her mouth behind the graceful curve of her white hand. Her slim body seemed to vibrate like a superb stringed instrument.
18
BARON SHINKAWA and his wife were uniquely matched as a couple: absentminded detachment was here quite literally wedded to frenzy. The Baron took not the slightest notice of anything his wife said or did, while the Baroness, oblivious to her effect on others, kept up a ceaseless outpouring of words. This was their customary behavior, whether at home or in public. Despite his abstracted manner, the Baron was perfectly capable on occasion of mercilessly nailing a person’s character with a single, incisive, pithy observation, on which, however, he never deigned to elaborate. His wife, on the other hand, no matter what torrent of words she might expend on that same individual, never succeeded in bringing him to life.
They owned a Rolls Royce, the second ever purchased in Japan; it was a distinction they treasured as evidence of their social position. It was the Baron’s custom to don a silk smoking jacket after dinner and, thus attired, to spend the rest of the evening ignoring his wife’s inexhaustible flood of chatter.
At the Baroness’s invitation, Raicho Hiratsuka’s circle met at the Shinkawa residence once a month, calling themselves the Heavenly Fire Group after a famous poem by Lady Sanunochigami. However, since it invariably rained on the appointed day, the newspapers amused themselves by referring to them as the Rainy Day Club. Any sort of serious thought was beyond the Baroness, who was amazed at the intellectual awakening among Japanese women. She observed it with the same excited curiosity that might have been aroused in her by hens laying eggs of some novel shape—pyramids, for instance.
The Shinkawas were both irritated and flattered by the Matsugaes’ invitation to the blossom viewing. Irritated because they realized how bored they would be. Flattered because it would give them an opportunity to display their authentically European manners in public. The Shinkawas were an old and wealthy merchant family, and while it was, of course, essential to maintain the mutually profitable relationship established with the men from Satsuma and Choshu who had risen to such power within the government, the Baron and his wife held them in secret contempt because of their peasant origins. This was an attitude inherited from their parents, and one that was at the very heart of their newly acquired but unshakable elegance.
“Well, now that the Marquis has invited Prince Toin to his house,” the Baron remarked, “perhaps he’ll organize a brass band to greet him. That family views the visit of an imperial prince as a sort of theatrical event.”
“We just have to keep our enlightened views to ourselves, I’m afraid,” was his wife’s reply. “I think that it’s rather chic to remain au courant as we do without seeming to, don’t you think so? In fact it’s rather amusing, don’t you agree, to mix unobtrusively with old-fashioned people like them. For example, I think it’s frightfully amusing the way Marquis Matsugae is so obsequious in front of Prince Toin at one moment and then tries to behave as though they were old friends the next. But I wonder what I should wear? We’ll be leaving early in the afternoon, so I imagine it wouldn’t quite do to go in formal evening dress. When all is said and done, I suppose a kimono would be the wisest. Perhaps I should hurry and put in an order at Kitaide in Kyoto and have something made up, perhaps in that lovely blossoms-by-firelight pattern? But for some reason I never look well in a Suso pattern. I’m never sure if it’s just me who thinks that the Suso pattern looks frightful on me and that it’s really just the thing, or whether other people also think it looks frightful. So I just don’t know what to do—but what do you think I should do?”
On the day itself, the Shinkawas received a note from the Matsugaes. They were respectfully requested to arrive some time before the time set for the imperial couple’s arrival, and although they chose with cool deliberation to make their appearance five or six minutes after the time the Toinnomiyas were expected, they were chagrined to discover that they were still early. The Marquis had apparently allowed for such maneuvers. This display of country manners ruffled the Baron.
“Perhaps His Imperial Highness’s horses had a stroke on the way,” he observed by way of a greeting. But no matter how biting the Baron’s sarcasm, his speech was mumbled and his expression blank in true English fashion, so that no one heard him. r />
A dispatch from the distant main gate announced the appearance of the imperial carriage, and the host and his party immediately took up their positions at the entrance of the main house to welcome the Prince.
His carriage was splattered here and there with spring mud as the horses, the gravel spurting under their hooves, trotted up under the pine tree that stood in the drive in front of the house. They snorted irritably and tossed their heads, and for a moment their flying gray manes made Kiyoaki think of the seething crest of a huge wave about to break on the shore. At the same instant, the imperial chrysanthemum on the door blurred in a whirlpool of gold and then was still as the carriage came to a halt.
Prince Toin’s fine gray moustache was well set off by a black derby. The Princess, following her husband, walked into the entranceway, crossing the threshold onto the white carpeting that had been spread over the floors of the main house that morning to obviate the necessity of changing into slippers. The imperial couple naturally gave a brief nod before entering the house, but the formal ritual of welcome was to be enacted in the reception room.
As the Princess passed him, Kiyoaki’s eye was caught by the black tips of her shoes flashing beneath the frilly white material of her skirt. They were like pods of seaweed, he thought, bobbing in a rippling eddy. The elegance of it so fascinated him that he was even more reluctant to look up at her face, which was beginning to show signs of age.
In the reception room, Marquis Matsugae presented the other guests to the Toinnomiyas. The only person who was new to them was Satoko.
“What have you been up to, Ayakura,” the Prince chided her father, “hiding such a beautiful young lady from me?”