The room contained three billiard tables covered with layers of Italian marble. Though the three-ball game had been introduced at the time of the war with China, no one ever played it in the Matsugae billiard room; Kiyoaki and his father used four. The butler had already placed the red and white balls on the table in proper order and now he handed a cue to both the Marquis and his son. Kiyoaki looked down at the surface of the table as he rubbed the tip of his cue with the Italian chalk of compressed volcanic ash. The red and white ivory balls lay motionless on the green baize, each casting a round shadow like a shellfish making a hesitant foray into the open. They stirred not the slightest interest in him. He had the sensation of standing alone on an unknown street at the height of the day and suddenly finding himself face to face with these odd shapes devoid of all meaning.
The Marquis was always made uneasy by the boredom on his son’s handsome face. Happy as Kiyoaki felt tonight, his eyes remained dull. “Did you know,” said his father, hitting on a subject of conversation, “that two Siamese princes are coming to Japan to Peers School.”
“No.”
“Since they’ll be in your class, we might have them staying here with us for a few days. I’ve mentioned it at the Foreign Ministry. It’s a country that’s made great strides recently. They’ve abolished slavery and they’re building railroads and so on. Be sure to keep that in mind when you deal with them.”
His father lined up his shot. Kiyoaki stood behind him and watched him crouch like a fat leopard twisting his cue with a show of fierceness. Kiyoaki could not suppress a sudden smile. His sense of happiness and the image of a mysterious tropic land fused in his mind with a soft click as appealing to him as the contact of the red and white ivory balls on the table. And then his elation, which had been as abstract as pure crystal, suddenly took on the green extravagance of the tropical jungle.
The Marquis was an expert at billiards, and Kiyoaki was never a match for him. After each had taken the first five shots, his father turned abruptly from the table with the suggestion Kiyoaki had long been expecting. “I think I’ll take a little stroll. What would you say to that?”
Kiyoaki did not answer. His father then made a totally unexpected proposal: “You can come just as far as the gate, can’t you? The way you used to when you were a child.”
Startled, Kiyoaki turned dark, flashing eyes on his father. In any event, the Marquis had scored a point over his son for surprise.
His father’s mistress was installed in one of the houses just outside the gate. European families rented the other two. Each house had its own back gate in the fence that separated it from the Matsugae estate. The European children were free to make use of this opportunity and played every day in the grounds of the estate. The only gate with a lock on it—and this was covered with rust—was the gate behind his mistress’s house.
From the front door of the main house to the front gate was half a mile. When Kiyoaki was a child, his father would take him by the hand and walk with him as far as the gate en route to his mistress’s. There they would separate, and a servant would bring Kiyoaki back.
When his father went out on business, he invariably used the carriage. When he left the house on foot, therefore, his destination was obvious to everyone. Accompanying his father on these occasions had always been painful for Kiyoaki. While some naïve instinct of boyhood urged him to hold his father back for his mother’s sake, the realization of his own helplessness stirred bitter frustration in him. His mother of course was not at all pleased at Kiyoaki’s accompanying her husband on these evening strolls. But the more she resented it, the more her husband persisted in taking Kiyoaki by the hand. Kiyoaki had been quick to detect his father’s covert desire to make him an accomplice in his mother’s betrayal.
This walk, however, on a cold November night, was something quite new. As his father put on the overcoat proffered by the butler, Kiyoaki left the billiard room to fetch the uniform coat with metal buttons that he wore at school. As always, the butler was waiting at the door with the usual present wrapped in purple crepe; then he followed his master at the customary distance of ten paces.
The moon was bright, and the wind moaned through the branches of the trees. Although his father did not trouble to glance back at the wraithlike figure of Yamada the steward, Kiyoaki was concerned enough to look over his shoulder more than once. Without so much as a cape over his hakama, Yamada came along behind, swaying slightly on his unsteady legs, his hands, white-gloved as always, cradling the package in its purple wrapper. His glasses had a frosty sparkle in the moonlight. Kiyoaki wondered at this man, loyal beyond a doubt, allowing almost nothing to pass his lips. How many passions lay spent within his body like a tangle of rusted springs? Far more than the jovial, extrovert Marquis, his reserved and seemingly indifferent son was capable of detecting depth of feeling in others.
The hooting of the owls and the wind in the trees reminded Kiyoaki, still wine-flushed, of the branches blowing in the photograph of the memorial service. As they walked through the bleak, wintry night, his father was anticipating the moist warmth and intimacy of the rosy flesh that awaited him, while his son’s thoughts turned toward death.
As the Marquis went along elated by the wine and scattering pebbles with the tip of his walking stick, he suddenly turned to Kiyoaki: “You’re not much of one for having a good time, are you? I couldn’t tell you how many women I’d had at your age. Look here, suppose I take you with me next time? I’ll see that there are plenty of geishas there and for once you can kick up your heels. And bring along some friends of yours from school if you want.”
“No, thank you.”
Kiyoaki shuddered as he blurted this out. He felt his feet suddenly glued to the ground. At this one remark of his father’s, his elation shattered, like a vase striking the floor.
“What’s the matter?”
“Please will you excuse me? Good night.”
Kiyoaki turned on his heel and walked rapidly back past the dimly lit entrance of the Western house in the direction of the main residence whose distant lights, burning at the front door, gleamed faintly through the trees.
Kiyoaki was unable to sleep that night. But it was no thought of his mother or his father that troubled him. On the contrary, he was absorbed in revenging himself on Satoko. “She has been cruel enough to lure me into a petty trap. For ten days she let me suffer. She had just one thing in mind: to keep me in agony. I can’t let her get away with it. But then I’m no match for her when it comes to inventing ways of torturing people. What can I do? What would be best would be to convince her that I have no more respect for female dignity than my father has. If only I could say or write something absolutely outrageous to her that would strike home. But my trouble is that I’m always at a disadvantage since I’m not bold enough to let people know bluntly how I really feel. It wouldn’t be enough to tell her that she doesn’t interest me in the least. That would still leave her plenty of room to scheme. I have to insult her. I have to humiliate her so completely that she’ll never come back for more. That’s what I have to do. For the first time in her life, I’m going to make her sorry for what she’s done.”
Despite all this, Kiyoaki’s resolutions were feeble. No specific plan had yet occurred to him.
A pair of threefold screens stood on either side of his bed, each decorated with poems of Han Shan. At the foot of the bed, a carved jade parrot looked down from its perch on a sandalwood display shelf. Kiyoaki had little interest in anything as currently fashionable as a Rodin or a Cézanne. His tastes were rather conservative. Sleepless, he stared at the parrot. Every detail of its clouded green jade, even down to the fine carving of the wing feathers, seemed to glow more clearly. Thus the figure of the bird appeared to hover, disembodied, in the dark, a phantom image that made Kiyoaki uneasy. Realizing that the phenomenon was caused by a stray shaft of moonlight coming in through the window, he pulled the curtain all the way open in an abrupt movement. The moon was high in the sky, and its light sp
illed over the bed.
It was dazzling enough to suggest frivolity rather than solemnity. He thought of the cold gleaming silk of Satoko’s kimono. With unearthly clarity he saw her eyes there in the moon, those splendid large eyes which he had seen so disconcertingly close to his own. The wind had died.
The burning heat of Kiyoaki’s body could not be explained by the mere warmth of the room, and something like fever seemed to tingle in his earlobes. He threw off the blanket and opened the collar of his nightgown. The fire still burned and seethed under his skin, and he felt that he would find no relief until he took off his nightgown and bared his body to the cold moonlight. Finally, wearied by his thoughts, he rolled over on his stomach and lay with his face buried in his pillow, his naked back to the moon and the hot blood still throbbing in his temples.
And so he lay, the moonlight washing over the incomparable smooth white of his back, its brilliance highlighting the graceful lines of his body to reveal the subtle but pervasive hint of firm masculinity that made it clear that this was the flesh not of a woman but of a still immature young man.
The moon shone with dazzling brightness on Kiyoaki’s left side, where the pale flesh pulsed softly in rhythm with his heartbeat. Here there were three small, almost invisible moles. And much as the three stars in Orion’s belt fade in strong moonlight, so too these three small moles were almost blotted out by its rays.
6
IN 1910, His Highness King Rahma VI had succeeded his late father, Rahma V, to the throne of Siam. One of the princes now coming to study in Japan was his younger brother, Prince Pattanadid, whose titular name was Praong Chao. His companion, eighteen like himself and also his best friend, was his cousin Prince Kridsada, a grandson of King Rahma IV, whose titular name was Mon Chao. Prince Pattanadid nicknamed him “Kri.” But Prince Kridsada, in deference to Pattanadid’s place in the succession, addressed him more respectfully as “Chao P.”
Both princes were fervently devout Buddhists. But they not only dressed for the most part like young English gentlemen, they also spoke the language with perfect fluency. Indeed it was precisely because the new king had been concerned about their becoming too Westernized that he had decided upon Japan for their university studies. Neither of the princes had raised any objections, despite one unfortunate aspect to it. Leaving Siam entailed the separation of Chao P. and Kri’s younger sister.
The love of these two young people for each other was the delight of the court, since their engagement at the end of Chao P.’s studies was a foregone conclusion and their future was secure in every way. Yet when he sailed, Chao P.’s grief was so intense as to give rise to alarm in a country whose customs did not favor such direct expressions of feeling.
The sea voyage and his cousin’s sympathy had helped considerably to alleviate the young prince’s distress, and when they arrived for a stay at the Matsugaes’, Kiyoaki found their swarthy faces alight with happiness.
The princes were free to follow the school routine as they liked until the winter holidays began. Though they were to start attending classes in January, it was decided that they would not be officially enrolled until the new term began in the spring, by which time they would have had the chance to acclimatize and also to study the language intensively.
While they were at the Matsugaes’, the princes were to occupy two adjoining guest rooms on the second floor of the Western-style house, which had been equipped with a steam-heating system imported from Chicago. The period before dinner with the assembled Matsugae family was awkward for Kiyoaki and his guests, but when the three young men were left to themselves after the meal, stiff formality suddenly eased as the princes began to show Kiyoaki photographs of the golden temples and exotic scenery of Bangkok. Kiyoaki noticed that Prince Kridsada was no younger than his cousin and yet still retained a certain childish capriciousness, but he warmed to Prince Pattanadid in whom he sensed a dreamy nature like his own.
One of the photographs was a general view of the monastery of Wat-Po, famous for its huge sculpture of the reclining Buddha. Since a skilled artist had applied delicate tinting to the photo, it was almost like having the temple itself before one’s eyes. Palm trees were blowing gracefully, every detail of their clustered leaves carefully etched in color against a background of tropical sky whose vivid blue contrasted sharply with the sheer white of the clouds. The monastery buildings were incomparable; they overwhelmed the spectator with a brilliant sunburst of gold, scarlet, and white. Two golden warrior gods stood guard on either side of a scarlet gate outlined in gold. Delicately carved golden bas-relief climbed the temple’s white walls and columns to form a kind of frieze at the top. Then there was the roof with its array of pinnacles, each one also covered with intricate bas-relief of gold and scarlet; from the treasure house in their midst, the gleaming spires of the triple tower soared up into the bright blue of the sky.
The princes were delighted with Kiyoaki’s look of unfeigned admiration. Then Prince Pattanadid began to speak; there was a distant look in his fine, wide, sloping eyes, whose keen glance contrasted strongly with his soft, round face.
“This temple is special for me. On the voyage here to Japan, I often dreamed about it. Its golden roofs seemed to float up out of the night sea. The ship kept on moving, and even by the time the entire temple was visible, it was still a long way off from me. Having risen from the waves, it glistened under the stars the way the light of the new moon shines across the surface of the water. Standing on the deck of the ship, I put my hands together and bowed in reverence toward it. As happens in dreams, although it was night and the temple was so far away, I could make out the smallest details of the gold and scarlet decoration.
“I told Kri about this dream and said that the temple seemed to be following us to Japan. But he laughed at me and said that what was following me to Japan was not the temple but the memory of something else. He made me angry at the time, but now I’m inclined to agree with him. For everything sacred has the substance of dreams and memories, and so we experience the miracle of what is separated from us by time or distance suddenly being made tangible. Dreams, memories, the sacred—they are all alike in that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even marginally separated from what we can touch, the object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything, really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His touch defiles and yet he contains the source of miracles.”
“He certainly puts it in a difficult, roundabout way,” said Prince Kridsada, breaking in, “but what he’s really thinking about is the girl he loves back in Bangkok. Chao P., show Kiyoaki her picture.”
Prince Pattanadid flushed, but his dark skin hid the rush of blood to his cheeks. Seeing his guest’s discomfiture, Kiyoaki turned the conversation back to their previous topic.
“Do you often dream like that?” he asked. “I keep a diary record of my dreams.” Chao P.’s eyes flashed with interest as he replied: “I wish my Japanese were good enough to let me read it.”
Kiyoaki realized that even though he was having to speak in English, he had just succeeded in conveying to Chao P. his fascination with dreams, something he had never dared reveal even to Honda. He felt himself liking Chao P. more and more. From then on, however, the conversation lagged, and Kiyoaki, noticing the mischievous twinkle in Prince Kridsada’s eyes, suddenly realized the difficulty: he had not insisted on seeing the picture, which was what Chao P. had wanted him to do.
“Please show me the photo of the dream that followed you from Siam,” he hastened to ask.
“Do you mean the temple or the girl?” Kridsada interjected, as playful as ever. And although Chao P. scolded him for his frivolous bad manners, he was unrepentant. When his cousin finally took out the photograph, he thrust out his hand eagerly to point.
“Princess Chantrapa is my younger sister. Her name means ‘moonlight.’ But we usually call her Ying Chan.”
Looking at the p
icture, Kiyoaki was rather disappointed to see a much plainer young girl than he had imagined. She wore Western clothes, a dress of white lace. Her hair was tied with a white ribbon and she wore a pearl necklace. She looked modest and unsophisticated. Any student at Peers might well be carrying a picture of a girl like her. The beautiful, waving fall of her hair to her shoulders showed signs of care. But the rather strong brows over wide, timid eyes, the lips slightly parted like the petals of an exotic flower before the rains come—her features all gave the unmistakable impression of girlish innocence unconscious of its own beauty. Of course that had its charm, but much like a young nestling quite oblivious of its power to fly, she was too passively content.
“Compared with this girl,” Kiyoaki thought, “Satoko is a hundred, a thousand times more of a woman. And isn’t that why she is often so hateful to me—because she is so much a woman? Besides, she’s far more beautiful than this girl. And she knows how beautiful she is. There’s nothing she doesn’t know, unfortunately, including how immature I am.”
Chao P., seeing how Kiyoaki was staring at the picture of his sweetheart and perhaps feeling slightly alarmed that he might be too attracted to her, suddenly reached out his fineboned, amber-skinned hand and retrieved it. As he did so, Kiyoaki’s eye was caught by a flash of green, and for the first time he noticed Chao P.’s beautiful ring. Its stone was a rich, square-cut emerald. On either side of it, the fierce beasts’ heads of a pair of yaksha, the warrior gods, had been finely etched in gold. All in all, it was an immense ring of such quality that for Kiyoaki to have overlooked it until now was proof of how little he was inclined to take notice of others.