Confessions of a Mask (6 page)

The number of day students was small. In the final term of our second year a newcomer joined our little group. This was Omi. He had been expelled from the dormitory because of some outrageous behavior. Until then I had paid no particular attention to him, but when his expulsion placed this unmistakable brand of what is called "delinquency" upon him, I suddenly found it difficult to keep my eyes off him.

One day a good-natured, fat friend came running up to me, giggling and showing his dimples. By these familiar signs I knew he had come into possession of some secret information.

"But do I have something to tell you!" he said.

I left the side of the radiator and went out into the corridor with my good-natured friend. We leaned on a window overlooking the wind-swept archery court. That window was our usual spot for telling secrets.

"Well, Omi—" my friend began. Then he stopped, blushing as though he was too embarrassed to continue. (Once, in about the fifth year of lower school, when we had all been talking about "that," this boy had flatly contradicted us with a capital remark: "It's all a complete lie—I absolutely know people do no such thing." Another time, upon hearing that a friend's father had palsy, he warned me that palsy was contagious and that I had better not get too near that friend.)

"Hey! what gives with Omi?" Though I was still using the polite, feminine forms of speech at home, when at school I had begun speaking crudely like the other boys.

"This is the truth. That guy Omi—well, they say he's already had lots of girls, that's what!"

It was easy to believe. Omi must have been several years older than the rest of us, having failed to be promoted two or three times. He surpassed us all in physique, and in the contours of his face could be seen signs of some privileged youthfulness excelling ours by far. He had an innate and lofty manner of gratuitous scorn. There was not one single thing that he found undeserving of contempt. For us there was no changing the fact that an honor student was an honor student, a teacher a teacher; that policemen or university students or office workers were precisely policemen, university students, and office workers. In the same way Omi was simply Omi, and it was impossible to escape his contemptuous eyes and scornful laughter.

"Really?" I said. And for some unknown reason I thought instantly of Omi's deft hands cleaning the rifles we used for military training. I remembered his smart appearance as a squad leader, the special favorite only of the drillmaster and the gymnastics instructor.

"That's why—that's the reason why—" My friend gave the lewd snicker that only middle-school boys can understand. "Well, they say his you-know-what is awful big. Next time there's a game of Dirty just you feel and see. That'll prove it."

"Dirty" was a traditional sport at our school, always widespread among the boys during their first and second years, and as is the case with any craze for a pastime, it was more like a morbid disease than an amusement. We played it in broad daylight, in full public view. Some boy—call him A—would be standing around not keeping his wits about him. Noticing this, another boy—B—would dart up from the side and make a well-aimed grab. If his grab was successful, B would then retreat victoriously to a distance and begin hooting:

"Oh, it's big! Oh, what a big one A has!"

Whatever the impetus behind the game may have been, its sole objective seemed to be the sight of the comical figure cut by the victim as he dropped his schoolbooks, or anything else he might be carrying, and used both hands to protect the spot under attack. Actually, the boys discovered in the sport their own shame, brought into the open by their laughter; and then, from a secure foothold of still louder laughter, they had the satisfaction of ridiculing their common shame, as personified in this victim's blushing cheeks.

As though by prearrangement, the victim would shout :"Oh, that B—he's dirty!"

Then the bystanders would chime in with a chorus of assent:

"Oh, that B—he's dirty!"

Omi was in his element in this game. His attacks almost always ended swiftly in success, so much so as to give cause for wondering if the boys did not secretly look forward to being attacked by Omi. And, in return, his victims were constantly seeking revenge. But none of their attempts on him were ever successful. He always walked around with one hand in his pocket, and the moment he was ambushed he would instantly fashion twofold armor out of the hand in his pocket and his free hand.

Those words of my friend were like fertilizer poured over the poisonous weed of an idea deeply planted in me. Until then I had joined in the games of Dirty with feelings as completely naive as those of the other boys. But my friend's words seemed to bring my "bad habit" —that solitary life which I had been unconsciously keeping strictly segregated—into an inseparable relationship with this game, with this my communal life. That such a connection had been established in my mind was made certain by the fact that suddenly, whether I would or no, his words "feel and see" had become charged with a special significance for me, a significance that none of my innocent friends would ever have understood.From that time on I no longer participated in games of Dirty. I was fearful of the moment when I might have to attack Omi, and even more of the moment when Omi might attack me. I was always on the lookout, and when there were indications that the game might break out—like a riot or rebellion, it could arise from the most casual event—I would get out of the way and keep my eyes glued on Omi from a safe distance. . . .

As a matter of fact, Omi's influence had already begun to seduce us even before we were aware of it. For example, there were the socks. By those days the corrosion of an educational system that aimed at producing soldiers had already reached even our school; General Enoki's deathbed precept—"Be Simple and Manly" —had been reheated and served up ; and such things as gaudy mufflers or socks were taboo. In fact, any muffler at all was frowned upon, and the rule was that shirts be white and socks black, or at least of a solid color. It was Omi alone who never failed to wear a white-silk muffler and bold-patterned socks.

This first defier of the taboo possessed an uncanny skill for clothing his wickedness in the fair name of revolt. Through his own experience he had discovered what a weakness boys have for the charms of revolt. In front of the drillmaster—this country bumpkin of a noncommissioned officer was a bosom friend of Omi's or, rather, it seemed, his henchman—he would deliberately take his time in wrapping his muffler about his neck and ostentatiously turning back the lapels of his gold-buttoned overcoat in the Napoleonic manner.

As is ever the case, however, the revolt of the blind masses did not go beyond a niggardly imitation. Hoping to escape the dangers entailed and taste only the joys of revolt, we pirated nothing from Omi's daring example except his socks. And, in this instance, I too was one of the crowd.

Arriving at school in the morning, we would chatter boisterously in the classroom before lessons began, not sitting in the seats, but on the tops of the desks. Anyone who came wearing gaudy socks with a novel pattern would make a great show of plucking up the creases of his trousers as he sat down on a desk. At once he would be rewarded with keen-eyed cries of admiration:

"Oh! flashy socks!"

Our vocabulary did not contain any tribute of praise surpassing the word flashy. Omi never put in an appearance until the last moment, just before class formation ; but the instant we said flashy, a mental picture of his haughty glance would rise before us all, speaker and hearer alike.

One morning just after a snowfall I went to school very early. The evening before, a friend had telephoned saying there was going to be a snowfight the next morning. Being by nature given to wakefulness the night before any greatly anticipated event, I had no sooner opened my eyes too early the next morning than I set out for school, heedless of the time.

The snow scarcely reached my shoetops. And later, as I looked down at the city from a window of the elevated train, the snow scene, not yet having caught the rays of the rising sun, looked more gloomy than beautiful. The snow seemed like a dirty bandage hiding the open wounds of the city, hiding those irregular gashes of haphazard streets and tortuous alleys, courtyards and occasional plots of bare ground, that form the only beauty to be found in the panorama of our cities.

When the train, still almost empty, was nearing the station for my school, I saw the sun rise beyond the factory district. The scene suddenly became one of joy and light. Now the columns of ominously towering smokestacks and the somber rise and fall of the monotonous slate-colored roofs cowered behind the noisy laughter of the brightly shining snow mask. It is just such a snow-covered landscape that often becomes the tragic setting for riot or revolution. And even the faces of the passers-by, suspiciously wan in the reflection of the snow, reminded me somehow of conspirators.

When I got off at the station in front of the school, the snow was already melting, and I could hear the water running off the roof of the forwarding company next door. I could not shake the illusion that it was the radiance which was splashing down. Bright and shining slivers of it were suicidally hurling themselves at the sham quagmire of the pavement, all smeared with the slush of passing shoes. As I walked under the eaves, one sliver hurled itself by mistake at the nape of my neck. . . .

Inside the school gates there was not yet a single footprint in the snow. The locker room was still closed fast, but the other rooms were open.

I opened a window of the second-year classroom, which was on the ground floor, and looked out at the snow in the grove behind the school. There in the path that came from the rear gate, up the slope of the grove, and led to the building I was in, I could see large footprints; they came up along the path and continued to a spot directly below the window from which I was looking. Then the footprints turned back and disappeared behind the science building, which could be seen on a diagonal to the left.

Someone had already come. It was plain that he had ascended the path from the rear gate, looked into the classroom through the window, and seeing that no one was there, walked on by himself to the rear of the science building. Only a few of the day students came to school by way of the rear gate. It was rumored that Omi, who was one of those few, came each morning from some woman's house. But he would never put in an appearance until the last moment before class formation. Nevertheless, I could not imagine who else might have made the footprints, and judging by their large size, I was convinced they were his.

Leaning out the window and straining my eyes, I saw the color of fresh black soil in the shoe tracks, making them seem somehow determined and powerful. An indescribable force drew me toward those shoe prints. I felt that I should like to throw myself head-first out of the window to bury my face in them. But, as usual, my sluggish motor nerves protected me from my sudden whim. Instead of diving out the window, I put my satchel on a desk and then scrambled slowly up onto the window sill. The hooks and eyes on the front of my uniform jacket had scarcely pressed against the stone window sill before they were at daggers' point with my frail ribs, producing a pain mixed with a sort of sorrowful sweetness. After I had jumped from the window onto the snow, the slight pain remained as a pleasant stimulus, filling me with a trembling emotion of adventure. I fitted my overshoes carefully into the footprints.

The prints had looked quite large, but now I found they were almost the same size as mine. I had failed to take into account the fact that the person who had made them was probably wearing overshoes too, as was the vogue among us in those days. Now that the thought occurred to me, I decided the footprints were not large enough to be Omi's.

And yet, despite my uneasy feeling that I would be disappointed in my immediate hope of finding Omi behind the science building, I was still somehow compelled by the idea of following after the black shoe-prints. Probably at this point I was no longer motivated solely by the hope of finding Omi, but instead, at the sight of the violated mystery, was seized with a mixed feeling of yearning and revenge toward the person who had come before me and left his footprints in the snow.

Breathing hard, I began following the tracks.

As though walking on steppingstones, I went moving my feet from footprint to footprint. The outlines of the prints revealed now glassy, coal-black earth, now dead turf, now soiled, packed snow, now paving stones. Suddenly I discovered that, without being aware of it, I had fallen into walking with long strides, exactly like Omi's.

Following the tracks to the rear of the science building, I passed through the long shadow the building threw over the snow, and then continued on to the high ground overlooking the wide athletic field. Because of the mantle of glittering snow that covered everything, the three-hundred-meter ellipse of the track could not be distinguished from the undulating field it enclosed. In a corner of the field two great zelkova trees stood close together, and their shadows, greatly elongated in the morning sun, fell across the snow, lending meaning to the scene, providing the happy imperfection with which Nature always accents grandeur. The great elm-like trees towered up with a plastic delicacy in the blue winter sky, in the reflection of the snow from below, in the lateral rays of the morning sun; and occasionally some snow slipped down like gold dust from the crotches formed against the tree trunks by the stark, leafless branches. The roof ridges of the boys' dormitories, standing in a row beyond the athletic field, and the copse beyond them seemed to be motionless in sleep. Everything was so silent that even the soundless slipping of the snow seemed to echo loud and wide.