“The rumor about her insanity is too incredible even to bother discussing,” he thought. “I just don’t believe it. So why couldn’t it be true that her running away from the world and becoming a nun is only a trick? Maybe she staged this daring comedy just to gain time and get out of that marriage—for my sake, in other words. If it’s true, then we must unite to keep perfect silence, even though such a distance separates us. That accounts for her not even writing me so much as a note. It’s obvious! What else could her silence mean?”
If Kiyoaki had truly understood her character, he would have known immediately that his fiction was an impossibility. After all, wasn’t the image of a domineering Satoko no more than an illusion he had created out of his own timidity? If so, then she was perhaps no more substantial than a flake of snow that had melted in his arms. His eyes had been fixed on one single aspect of the truth. So much so, that now he almost believed in the eternal validity of the pretense in whose shadow this truth had found a precarious existence. Thus his hope made him a prey to self-deception.
It was a hope tinged with baseness. For if he had really surrendered to the vision of her beauty, he could not have left any room for hope. Without his noticing it, his coldly glittering heart had begun to melt with pity and tenderness, like ice under the rays of the setting sun. He felt the urge to be gentle with people. And he began to take a closer look at the world about him.
There was a student at Peers, the son of a marquis whose family lineage was extremely ancient, who had been nicknamed “the Monster.” Rumor had it that he was a leper, but since it was unthinkable that a leper would be allowed to attend classes, it could only be that he had some other disease, which was not contagious. Half his hair had fallen out. His complexion was ashen and his skin lackluster. His back was hunched. No one knew what his eyes were like because he kept them well covered with the peak of his school cap which he had special permission to wear even in the classroom. He sniveled constantly, and made a noise like water at a low boil. As he never talked to anyone, he would take a book during recess and walk to the far edge of the lawn in front of the school before he sat down to read it.
Kiyoaki too, of course, had never had anything at all to do with this student, who, besides everything else, was in a different course. Even though their fathers were nobles of the same rank, Kiyoaki seemed to embody beauty more than any other boy in the school, whereas the other was like the chosen emissary of ugliness and sinister shadow.
Although the dry grass in the corner of the lawn that was the Monster’s chosen spot caught more than its fair share of sun on this particular early winter day, everyone else avoided it. When Kiyoaki came up and sat down beside him, he shut his book and went tense as he prepared to flee, as he always did. Only the muffled sound of his sniveling, like the steady dragging of a light chain, broke the silence.
“What’s that you’re always reading?” asked the Marquis’s son who was beautiful.
“Nothing . . . ,” replied the Marquis’s son who was ugly. He thrust the book behind him, but not before Kiyoaki’s eye caught the name Leopardi printed on the spine. The gilt lettering cast a faint reflection that flashed over the dry grass and was gone.
Since the Monster was not disposed to talk, Kiyoaki edged away from him without getting up, then stretched out his legs and lay on his side, supporting himself on one elbow and ignoring the numerous blades of dry grass now clinging to his woolen uniform. Still directly opposite him, the Monster sat huddled in obvious distress, shutting the book that he had once more spread out in front of him. Kiyoaki felt that he was looking at a caricature of his own misery, and his gentleness began to give way to indignation. As the unseasonably warm sun continued its prodigality regardless, Kiyoaki saw the ugly figure of the Marquis’s son begin to undergo a gradual transformation. His crumpled legs cautiously stretched out as he lay down on the grass and propped himself on his elbow opposite Kiyoaki. His form became Kiyoaki’s own, down to the very angle of the head and the set of the shoulders. They had become as like as a pair of lion-dogs guarding a temple gate. Beneath the lowered brim of his cap, the other’s lips, though not exactly smiling, at least gave a hint that their owner was in a cheerful mood.
And so the two Marquis’s sons, one ugly, one beautiful, made a pair. The Monster had handled Kiyoaki’s whim of pity and solicitude by showing neither gratitude nor resentment but by calling on his profound self-awareness, the mirror-image of Kiyoaki’s own, and by so doing, he had acquired a form that was somehow a match for Kiyoaki’s. If one disregarded their faces, the two of them presented a remarkable symmetry there on the warm, dry grass, from the braid that trimmed their jackets to the cuffs of their trousers.
Kiyoaki’s attempt to penetrate the other’s reserve could hardly have been rebuffed more completely, yet with greater gentleness. He felt enveloped in the warmth and kindness that had accompanied it.
From the nearby archery range came the twang of a bowstring—a sound that made him think of the cold bite of the winter wind—followed by the dull thud of the arrow striking home as if the target were a slack-tuned drum.
His own heart seemed to him to be much like an arrow stripped of the flashing white feathers that gave it direction.
49
WHEN SCHOOL ENDED for the winter vacation, the studious among Kiyoaki’s classmates devoted themselves to studying for the pre-graduation exams, but the mere prospect of opening a book filled him with horror. No more than a third of his class, including Honda, intended to go on after the spring graduation to sit for the university entrance exams that were held in the summer. Most of them intended to use their privilege as graduates of Peers to receive dispensation from the entrance examinations and either apply to those departments of Tokyo Imperial University that were always under-subscribed, or perhaps enter one of the other imperial universities, such as Kyoto or Tohoku. Kiyoaki too, regardless of what his father might think, would probably follow the line of least resistance. If he entered Kyoto University, he would be that much closer to Satoko’s convent.
For the present, therefore, he was free to drift in privileged idleness. There were two heavy snowfalls in December, but he was in no mood to feel boyish glee at the sight of the snow-covered grounds that greeted him one morning. He pushed aside the curtain of the window beside his bed and looked out with indifference at the winter scene, the island now a patch of brilliant white in the middle of the pond. He did not stir from his bed for hours. At other times an idea would strike him and his eyes would flash at the prospect of getting back at Yamada, who supervised him even while he was walking around the estate. He chose a night when a particularly gusty north wind was raging, and went for a brisk climb up the maple hill. Yamada, flashlight in hand and neck buried in the collar of his overcoat, had to come striding after him despite his feebleness. The creaking of the branches, the crying of the owl, the treacherous footing underneath—everything filled him with delight as he felt himself moving onward and upward as irresistibly as a devouring flame. With each step he imagined himself crushing the darkness beneath his heel as if it were something soft and alive. At the crest of the hill, the brilliant, star-filled winter sky was spread wide.
∗
Just before the year’s end, a gentleman came to the Matsugae residence to call the Marquis’s attention to a newspaper article written by Iinuma. The Marquis was enraged at this evidence of his disloyalty to the family.
The paper had a small circulation and was the organ of a right-wing group. The Marquis protested that it was the kind of muckraking sheet whose practice was to extort money from those in high society under the threat of exposing some scandal or another. It would have been quite something else if Iinuma had degraded himself to the extent of coming to ask for money before publishing the article. But to go ahead and write such a thing without even attempting this was nothing less than an open and provocative breach of his obligations.
Under a heading with a decidedly patriotic flavor, “A Disloyal and Unfilial M
arquis,” the burden of the indictment was as follows: the man intimately involved behind the scenes in the present affair of the broken engagement was, in fact, Marquis Matsugae. Any marriage involving a member of the Imperial Family had to be subjected to close scrutiny in accordance with the provisions of the Imperial Household Code because such a marriage, no matter how remote the possibility, might affect the imperial succession. These then were the grave circumstances under which Marquis Matsugae had taken it upon himself to sponsor the daughter of an ancient family, a girl whose mental instability he claimed to have been unaware of at the time, going so far as to obtain an imperial sanction for her marriage, only to have his plans fall through, almost on the eve of the betrothal ceremony. Despite all this, however, simply by being lucky enough to have succeeded in keeping his name out of the affair, Marquis Matsugae today was going tranquilly about his business, thus displaying not only a brazen disloyalty to His Majesty the Emperor, but also a lack of reverence toward his own father, one of the pillars of the Meiji Restoration.
If the article provoked the Marquis to fury, it aroused misgivings in his son. He noticed at once that Iinuma had made a point of appending his name and address to it and also that, although he was fully aware of what had happened between Kiyoaki and Satoko, he had written as though he really believed Satoko had had a nervous breakdown. Up to then, Kiyoaki had had no idea where he was living. And now the thought struck him that Iinuma had written this in the knowledge that he would incur the stigma of someone dead to all sense of obligation, because he had wanted Kiyoaki to read it at all costs and know where he was, without seeming to inform him directly. At any rate, he was sure that the article contained a hidden message that was aimed at him alone: Don’t be like your father.
All at once, he felt a rush of nostalgia at the thought of Iinuma. To have his awkward devotion once more, to mock it playfully—he could think of nothing that would cheer him more in his present mood. However, to try to see him now while his father’s anger was at its peak, would be to court further reprisals, and his sense of nostalgia was not strong enough to make him want to run that risk.
On the other hand, he knew that arranging a meeting with Tadeshina would be far less dangerous. Ever since the old woman’s thwarted suicide, however, he could only think of her with indescribable disgust. To judge by her having betrayed him to his father in her farewell letter, he was convinced that some twist of character made her derive a peculiar pleasure from betraying all those without exception whom she had brought together. He had come to realize that she was like those people who would tend their gardens scrupulously just for the pleasure of tearing up their flowers once they had bloomed.
His father almost never spoke to him. And his mother, not wishing to cross her husband, tried her best to leave her son alone.
The reality at the heart of his father’s anger was worry and fear. He hired a private policeman to stand guard at the front gate, and had two more posted at the rear. The old year ended, however, with neither private threat nor the rise of public antagonism to confront the Matsugaes. Iinuma’s disclosure had apparently failed to set off any repercussions in official circles.
It was customary for the two foreign families who rented from the Matsugaes to send over invitations for Christmas Eve. But since to gratify one family would be to disappoint the other, the Marquis made it a practice to accept neither invitation, but rather to send over presents for each family’s children. This year, however, feeling that he might find something to divert him in the holiday mood of a foreign household, Kiyoaki asked his mother if she would intercede with his father to let him go. But the Marquis would not hear of it.
The reason he gave was not the usual one of being unwilling to disappoint one family or the other. Instead he said that it was beneath the dignity of the son of the nobility to accept an invitation from a tenant family. One of the implications in this was clear enough to Kiyoaki: his father still had little faith in his son’s ability to maintain his dignity.
The Matsugae household was in a flurry of activity during the last days of the year, as the traditional massive house-cleaning that preceded the New Year’s holidays could not be completed in a single day. Kiyoaki had nothing to do. The feeling that the year was ending was a knife in his heart—this year above all years—for it would never come again. In these last, waning days, he had come to realize that this year had seen the peak of his life.
He left the house and all its bustle behind him and walked alone toward the pond, in the mood to go rowing. Yamada came hurrying after him with an offer of company that was harshly rebuffed.
As the prow of the boat pushed through dry reeds and broken remains of lotus leaves, a small flock of wild ducks took to the air. In the midst of their frantic flapping, he saw their small, flat bellies flash for a second in the clear winter air with not a drop of water to mar the silken sheen of their feathers. A reflected gleam raced crookedly across the tangled reeds.
He looked down at the cold image of clouds and blue sky reflected in the surface of the water, and wondered at the sluggish ripples stirred by his oars. As the reflection broke up, the dark, muddy water seemed to be telling him something quite alien to the crystalline clouds and winter sky.
He rested his oars and looked toward the main reception room of the house, watching the servants busy at work as if they were actors scurrying about on a distant stage. The waterfall had not frozen, but its sound was muffled and discordant. His view of its lower reaches was blocked by the island, but farther up, on the north side of the maple hill, the bare tree branches revealed the dirty remnants of snow on the banks of the stream.
He finally steered his boat into the tiny island inlet, fastened it to a stake, and made his way up to the faded green pines that crowned the knoll. As he looked at the three metal cranes, the beaks of the two that had outstretched necks seemed like a pair of blunt arrowheads aimed at the December sky.
He threw himself down at once on the dry brown grass warmed by the heat of the sun, and lay there, face up, knowing that he was completely alone, secure from every eye. Then as he sensed the numb chill that came from rowing in the fingers that cradled his head, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a wild rush of misery that he had been able to fend off while he was in the presence of other people.
“This year was mine—and now it’s gone,” he cried out to himself. “It’s gone! Just like a cloud dissolving.” The words poured out of him, cruel and unrestrained, lashing him, intensifying his agony. Never before had he given way to such wildness. “Everything has turned sour, I’ll never be carried away with joy again. There’s a terrible clarity dominating everything. As though the world were made of crystal so that you only have to flick part of it with your fingernail for a tiny shudder to run through it all. . . . And then the loneliness—it’s something that burns. Like hot thick soup you can’t bear inside your mouth unless you blow on it again and again. And there it is, always in front of me. In its heavy white bowl of thick china, dirty and dull as an old pillow. Who is it that keeps forcing it on me?
“I’ve been left all alone. I’m burning with desire. I hate what’s happened to me. I’m lost and I don’t know where I’m going. What my heart wants it can’t have . . . my little private joys, rationalizations, self-deceptions—all gone! All I have left is a flame of longing for times gone by, for what I’ve lost. Growing old for nothing. I’m left with a terrible emptiness. What can life offer me but bitterness? Alone in my room . . . alone all through the nights . . . cut off from the world and from everyone in it by my own despair. And if I cry out, who is there to hear me? And all the while my public self is as graceful as ever. A hollow nobility—that’s what’s left of me.”
A huge flock of crows was perched in the bare branches of the maples on the hill. He listened to their discordant shrieks and to the beating of wings as they flew overhead toward the low hill where Omiyasama was enshrined.
50
EARLY IN THE NEW YEAR it was customary for the Imp
erial Poetry Recitation to be held at the palace. Ever since Kiyoaki was fifteen, Count Ayakura had sent him an invitation each year without fail, a kind of abiding token of the training in elegance he had once received from the Count. And this year too, though one would hardly have been surprised if it had been otherwise, an invitation came as usual through the Imperial Household Ministry. The Count was going to assume his role as an imperial lector once again, unhindered by any shameful scruples, and it was clearly he who had arranged Kiyoaki’s invitation.
When he showed his father the invitation, the Marquis frowned at the sight of the Count’s signature among those of the four lectors. He was seeing elegance in a new light: it confronted him with tenacity and impudence.
“Since it’s a regular event, you’d better go,” he said at last. “If you didn’t this year, it might start people talking about some rift between the Ayakuras and us. In essence, we are not supposed to have any connection with them where that affair is concerned.”
Year by year the poetry ceremony had grown on Kiyoaki, and he had come to appreciate it greatly. At no other time did the dignity of Count Ayakura’s bearing show to such advantage as it did on these occasions, nor could Kiyoaki imagine any role more suited to him. Now of course, the sight of the Count would be a painful one, but even so he felt that he wanted to see him. He felt the desire to take a steady look at the shattered fragments of a poem that had once been alive inside him too, until he had grown weary of looking. He thought that if he attended, the image of Satoko would fill his mind.
He no longer believed himself to be a thorn of elegance jabbed into the sturdy fingers of the Matsugaes. But he had not changed to the point of thinking that he actually was one of those fingers either. Only the elegance that had been so conscious a part of him had withered. His heart had become desolate. Nowhere in himself could he find the kind of graceful sorrow that inspires poems. He was empty now, his soul a desert swept by parching winds. He had never felt more estranged from elegance and from beauty as well.