Spring Snow (16 page)

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Authors: Yukio Mishima

BOOK: Spring Snow
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“I am fully aware of all this. Although I understand it, I cannot be like you and stop being a man of determination. I suppose it’s probably a compulsion in my character. No one can say for certain, but I will say this much: any will has as its essence the desire to influence history. I’m not saying that human desires affect history, only that they try to. Then, too, some forms of will are bound up with destiny, even though this concept is anathema to the will.
“But in the long run, all human will is doomed to frustration. It’s a matter of course that things turn out contrary to your intentions. And what conclusion does a Westerner draw from this? He says: ‘My will was the sole rational force involved. Failure came about by chance.’
“To speak of chance is to negate the possibility of any law of cause and effect. Chance is the one final irrationality acceptable to the free will.
“Without the concept of chance, you see, the Western philosophy of free will could never have arisen. Chance is the crucial refuge of the will. And without it the very thought of gambling would be inconceivable, just as the Westerner has no other way of rationalizing the repeated setbacks and frustrations that he must endure. I think that this concept of chance, of a gamble, is the very substance of the God of Europeans, and so they have a deity whose characteristics are derived from that refuge so vital to free will, namely chance—the only sort of God who would inspire the freedom of human will.
“But what would happen if we were to deny the existence of chance completely? What would happen if—no matter what the victory or the defeat—you had to exclude utterly all possible role of chance in it? In that case, you’d be destroying all refuge of free will. Do away with chance and you undermine the props under the concept of the will.
“Picture a scene like this: it’s a square at midday. The will is standing there all alone. He pretends that he is remaining upright by virtue of his own strength, and hence he goes on deceiving himself. The sun beats down. No trees, no grass. Nothing whatever in the huge square to keep him company but his own shadow. At that moment, a thundering voice comes down from the cloudless sky above: ‘Chance is dead. There’s no such thing as chance. Hear me, Will: you have lost your advocate forever.’ And with that, the Will feels his substance begin to crumble and dissolve. His flesh rots and falls away. In an instant his skeleton is laid bare, a thin liquid spurts from it, and the bones themselves lose their solidity and begin to disintegrate. The Will still stands with his feet planted firmly on the ground, but this final effort is futile. For at that very moment, the bright, glaring sky is rent apart with a terrible roar, and the God of Inevitability stares down through the chasm.
“But I cannot help trying to conjure up an odious face for this dreadful God, and this weakness is doubtless due to my own bent toward voluntarism. For if Chance ceases to exist, then Will becomes meaningless—no more significant than a speck of rust on the huge chain of cause and effect that we only glimpse from time to time. Then there’s only one way to participate in history, and that’s to have no will at all—to function solely as a shining, beautiful atom, eternal and unchanging. No one should look for any other meaning in human existence.
“You are not likely to see things this way. I wouldn’t expect you to subscribe to such a philosophy. The only things you do put any faith in—and that without much thought—are your own good looks, your changing moods, your individuality and—not your fixed character, but on the contrary, your very lack of it. Am I right?”
Kiyoaki could not manage an answer. For want of anything better, he smiled, knowing that Honda was not trying to insult him.
“And that for me is the greatest riddle,” said Honda, sighing so earnestly that it seemed almost comical. His breath became a frosty cloud that hovered for a second in the clear morning air, and seemed to Kiyoaki to be a secret manifestation of Honda’s concern for him. Deep down inside him, his sense of happiness intensified.
The bell rang to announce the beginning of classes, and the two young men stood up. Just then, someone scooped up some of the snow piled on the second floor window ledges and threw down a snowball. It struck the path at their feet, in a burst of sparkling fragments.
14
 
K
IYOAKI’S FATHER
had entrusted him with the key to the library. This was in a corner of the north side of the main house, and it was one room of the Matsugaes that received scant attention. The Marquis was not the man to devote much time to books. But here were gathered the Chinese classics that had belonged to Kiyoaki’s grandfather, the Western books that the Marquis had ordered from Maruzen out of the desire to appear intellectual, and many others received as gifts. When Kiyoaki started high school, his father had handed over the key with the pomposity of one conferring the guardianship of a treasure trove of wisdom. Thus he alone was privileged to go there whenever he liked. Among the books in the library least likely to excite the Marquis’s interest were many collections of Japanese classics and children’s books. Prior to publication, each of their publishers had requested a brief recommendation from the Marquis together with a photograph of him in formal dress, and then in exchange for this privilege to print “Recommended by His Excellency Marquis Matsugae” in gilt letters on the binding of each book, they presented him with the collections.
Kiyoaki himself was not inclined to make frequent use of the library. He preferred his own reveries to books. For Iinuma, however, who was given the key once a month by Kiyoaki so that he could clean the room, the library was the most hallowed place in the house, sanctified as it was by the Chinese classics dear to Kiyoaki’s grandfather. When he spoke of it, he never referred to it merely as the library. It was always “His Late Excellency’s Library,” and when he pronounced those words, his voice was choked with emotion.
On the evening after Kiyoaki had become reconciled with Honda, he called his tutor to his room just as Iinuma was about to leave for his night classes, and dropped the library key into his hand without a word. There was a set day for the monthly cleaning. Furthermore, this was a job that Iinuma never did at night. What, he wondered, was the reason for giving him the key now, on the wrong day and in the evening at that? It lay on the palm of his thick, blunt hand, blue and metallic like a dragonfly with its wings torn off.
Afterwards Iinuma would recall this moment time and again. How torn and naked the key seemed, like a ravaged body as it lay in his palm. He stood for some time trying to decide what it meant, but he could not. When Kiyoaki finally did explain, he seethed with anger directed not so much at his master as at himself for being at his mercy.
“Yesterday morning I didn’t go to school and you stood by me. Tonight it’s my turn to help you. Go out just as if you were leaving for school. Then go round to the back and come in by the door opposite the library. That key will open the room and you can wait inside. But don’t turn on the light. And the safest course would be to lock the door from the inside.
“Tadeshina has given Miné full instructions. She’ll telephone here with a message for her, asking when Miss Satoko’s sachet will be finished. That will be the signal. Miné is skilled at such delicate work and people are always asking her to do something like this. Miss Satoko herself asked her to make a gold brocade sachet. So such a phone call won’t arouse the least suspicion.
“Once Miné receives the message, she’ll wait for the time when you’re supposed to leave for school and then she’ll go to the library and knock lightly on the door, hoping that you’ll open it for her. And since it’ll be just after dinner, when everyone is bustling around, no one will miss her for thirty or forty minutes.
“Tadeshina believes that for you two to meet outside instead would be too dangerous and hard to arrange. There would have to be all sorts of pretexts for a maid to go out alone without everyone having something to say about it.
“At any rate, I took the liberty of deciding the matter without consulting you. Tadeshina is going to call Miné tonight. And so you must go to the library. If you don’t, Miné will be terribly upset.”
As he stood listening, a bear at bay, Iinuma’s hand shook so violently that he almost dropped the key.
∗
The library was very cold. The heavy curtains of gold thread let in a little light from the lanterns burning in the garden behind the house, but not enough to allow one to decipher the titles of the books. The room was filled with the smell of mildew, like the odor hanging over the banks of a clogged canal in winter.
The darkness was no obstacle to Iinuma. He had memorized the place of almost every book in the library. Works such as the writings of Han Fei-tzu,
The Testimony of Seiken
, and
The Eighteen Histories
lined the shelves, including a Japanese-bound edition of the
Commentaries on the Four Classics
which had lost its protective cover. This was a book that Kiyoaki’s grandfather had thumbed so often that its binding was worn out.
One day when Iinuma was turning over the pages of one of the books he was dusting, a poem by Kayo Honen had caught his eye. It was in a collection of famous Japanese and Chinese works, and Iinuma had carefully memorized the place. The title was “Song of a Noble Heart.” One verse of it was particularly consoling as he performed his duties of cleaning the library:
Though now I sweep a little room
I will not do so forever
Can Kyushu hold my ambition?
Can flocks of chattering sparrows
Share the eagle’s solitary path?
Iinuma now understood. Knowing his deep reverence for “His Late Excellency’s Library,” Kiyoaki had deliberately chosen it for this tryst. There could be no doubt about it. When he had been explaining the plan that he had so considerately arranged, the cold satisfaction in his manner was proof enough that he grasped all its implications. He wanted events to take their course so that Iinuma himself would commit sacrilege in the place he worshipped.
When he thought about it, there had been a silent menace in Kiyoaki ever since he had been a beautiful child. A delight in sacrilege. And when Iinuma had thus defiled what was so precious to him, Kiyoaki would be as delighted as if he had taken a piece of raw meat and rolled it up in a sacred Shinto pendant. In legendary times, the savage god Susano, the brother of the Sun Goddess, had found satisfaction in the same way.
Ever since Iinuma had lost himself to a woman, Kiyoaki’s power over him had grown immensely. Furthermore—and to Iinuma the injustice of it was baffling—the world would always accept Kiyoaki’s pleasures as charming and natural, whereas it would condemn his own with unflagging severity as sordid, not to say sinful. As he brooded over this, Iinuma’s self-loathing steadily deepened.
From the ceiling of the library came the rustle of scurrying rats, and an occasional muffled squeal. When he had done the cleaning the previous month, he had spread plenty of poisoned chestnuts up there, but apparently to no avail. Suddenly he shuddered, remembering what he most wanted to forget.
Every time he saw Mine’s face, no matter how he tried to suppress it, the same evil thought stirred in his mind. Even now, as her warm body was coming to meet him in the evening darkness, this thought stood between them. It concerned something that Kiyoaki probably knew already, but since he had never mentioned it to him, Iinuma himself, without forgetting about it for a moment, had kept quiet about it. Actually, it was a rather open secret, which made Iinuma’s distress increasingly hard to bear. He was tormented by it, as if a pack of rats were swarming over him in all their filth. The Marquis had slept with Miné and still occasionally did. His imagination was triggered by the rats above—their bloodshot eyes, their loathsome bodies. . . .
The cold was biting. No matter how brave a figure Iinuma cut when he went out to perform his daily devotions, he shook now as the cold struck his back and crept through him until it covered his skin like an icy compress. Miné had probably been delayed until there was an opportunity to leave the table without attracting attention.
As he waited, his desire grew, sharp and insistent. Then a mass of disagreeable feelings combined with the piercing chill and the smell of decay to assault his already taut nerves. He had a sinking sensation as though the foul waters of a drainage ditch were rising against his legs, soiling his fine silk
hakama.
“Is this my way of finding pleasure?” he thought—a man of twenty-four, capable of great bravery and ripe for the highest honors.

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