Spring Snow (21 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
Left to himself, Kiyoaki looked up at the tree above him and for the first time that day gave some thought to the cherry blossoms. They hung in huge clusters from the black austerity of the branches like a mass of white seashells spread over a reef. The evening wind made the curtains billow along the path, and when it caught the tips of the branches, they bent gracefully in a rustle of blossoms. Then the great, widespread branches themselves began to sway with an easy grandeur under their weight of white. The pallor of the flowers was tinged here and there by pink clusters of buds. And with almost invisible subtlety, the star-shaped center of each blossom was marked with pink in tiny, sharp strokes, like the stitches holding a button in place.
The sky had darkened, and the outline of the clouds began to blur as they merged into it, and the blossoms themselves, already turned into a single mass, began to lose their distinctive coloring for a shade that was almost indistinguishable from that of the evening sky. As he watched, the black of the tree trunk and branches seemed to grow steadily heavier and more somber.
With every minute, every second that passed, the cherry blossoms sank into deeper, darker intimacy with the evening sky. Kiyoaki was plunged into feelings of foreboding.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the curtain swell once more in the wind, but it was Satoko brushing against it as she slipped through the opening. He took her hand, cold to his touch from the chill of the night breeze.
She resisted him and glanced anxiously about when he tried to kiss her, but since she was also trying to protect her kimono from the dust-streaked moss on the tree trunk, he was able to embrace her with ease.
“This is breaking my heart. Please let me go, Kiyo.”
Satoko kept her voice low, afraid that others might hear. Kiyoaki was angered by her self-control, for he had set his heart on nothing less than an ecstatic, supreme consummation at that moment, there beneath the blossoms. The rising moan of the night wind had made him more and more uneasy, and now he was driven in desperation to seize one sure moment of happiness for them both, to the exclusion of all else. Hence his frustration when he discovered that her thoughts were obviously turned elsewhere. He was like a husband so jealous that he insists his wife have the very dreams he has.
Satoko had never looked more beautiful than now as she closed her eyes, still struggling in his arms. But although there was no feature, no contour that marred the delicacy of her face, it was nonetheless imprinted with a subtle, fleeting cast of willfulness. The corners of her lips were slightly up-turned. He anxiously tried to make out whether she was smiling or crying, but her face was already deep in shadow, an omen of the darkness almost upon them. He looked down at her ear, half-hidden by her hair. With its tinge of pink and its fine curve, the wonder of it made him think of a delicate coral recess that might appear in a dream, containing a tiny, beautifully carved Buddha. There was something mysterious about the hollow of her ear, now fading in the darkness. Was it there that her heart was hidden, he wondered, or was it concealed behind her slightly thin lips and sparkling teeth.
With a sense of nagging frustration, he wondered how he could ever penetrate Satoko’s defenses. Then suddenly, as though she could no longer bear his look, she thrust her face forward and kissed him. One of his arms was around her waist. He felt a warmth that insinuated itself through his fingertips resting on her hip and that reminded him somehow of the sweet, sultry atmosphere of a greenhouse whose flowers were dying.
There was a scent to it that struck his nostrils and gave him a delightful sensation of being smothered in it. Although she had not said a word, he was in the grip of his own images, and was quite convinced that he was on the verge of a moment of peerless beauty.
She pulled her mouth away, but this left the huge mass of her hair pressed against the front of his uniform jacket. Gazing over her head at the cherry trees some distance beyond the curtain as they became edged with silver, his head reeled from the perfume of her hair oil, which became indistinguishable from the scent of the blossoms themselves; they stood out against the last light of the sun like thick, shaggy white wool, but their powdery color, shading almost to silver-gray, could not altogether blot out a faint, and to Kiyoaki ill-omened, pink. It made him think of an undertaker’s cosmetics.
In the midst of this, he suddenly realized that tears were pouring down her cheeks. Afflicted by the spirit of pure research, he was prompted to try to identify these as tears either of joy or of grief, but she was too quick for him.
She shook herself free, and then without even pausing to wipe her eyes, she glared at him, her manner completely changed, and lashed out with stinging words that held no trace of compassion: “You’re just a child, Kiyo! A mere child! You don’t understand a thing. You don’t even try to understand. Why did I hold back so much? How I wish I had taught you what you know about love. You’ve got such a high opinion of yourself, don’t you? But the truth is, Kiyo, you’re no more than a baby. Oh, if only I had realized it! If only I had tried harder to help you! Now it’s too late.”
After this outburst, she vanished back through the curtain, leaving the young man, utterly shattered, to his own devices.
What had happened? With unerring accuracy, she had marshaled just those words that were calculated to wound him most deeply, like arrows aimed at his weakest points. She had tipped them with a poison distilled from the misgivings that preyed on him most. He should have stopped to reflect on the extraordinary efficacy of this poison. He should have tried to decide just why such a crystallization of pure malice had occurred.
But his heart was thumping in his chest, and his hands shook. Bitter anger so overwhelmed him that he was close to tears. He could not be objective and coolly analyze the emotion that wracked him. Worse yet, he had to rejoin the guests. And later in the evening there would be no escape; he would have to make pleasant conversation as though nothing were troubling him. He could imagine no task that he felt less fit to perform.
20
AS FOR THE BANQUET
, everything went off as planned and was brought to a successful conclusion without any slips being apparent to the guests. The Marquis’s rude optimism was proof against all subtleties of misgiving. He himself was well satisfied, and he never dreamed that any of his guests might possibly feel otherwise. It was at such moments that his wife’s dazzling worth was brought home to him, as their subsequent conversation revealed.
“The Prince and Princess seem to have had a good time from beginning to end, wouldn’t you say?” the Marquis began. “I think they went home quite happy, don’t you?”
“That goes without saying,” replied the Marquise. “Didn’t His Highness the Prince deign to remark that he had not spent so delightful a day since the Emperor died?”
“That’s not the best way he could have phrased it, but I know what he meant. But still—to go from mid-afternoon until late at night—don’t you think it might have been too tiring for some of them?”
“No, no, not at all. You arranged things so cleverly, with a variety of diversions following one after the other, that it all flowed wonderfully well. I don’t believe that our guests had a moment to spare in which they could have become weary.”
“There wasn’t anybody asleep during the film?”
“Oh, no. They were all watching wide-eyed from beginning to end and following with the keenest interest.”
“But, you know, that Satoko is a tenderhearted girl. I did think the pictures were quite emotional, but she was the only one sufficiently moved to cry.”
Satoko had, in fact, been crying uncontrollably throughout the show. The Marquis had noticed her tears when the lights were lit.
Kiyoaki made his way up to his room, worn out. He was wide awake, and sleep became impossible. He opened the window and imagined that the snapping turtles were gathering together just at that moment, lifting their metallic green heads above the dark surface of the pond to peer in his direction. Finally he rang the bell that summoned Iinuma, who since graduating from night school was always home in the evening.
On stepping into the room, Iinuma needed no more than a single glance to realize that anger and frustration were contorting the face of the young master. In recent weeks he had gradually developed a certain skill in reading facial expressions, a talent that until recently had been totally beyond him. He had become especially adept with Kiyoaki, with whom he had daily contact and whose expressions reminded him of the whirling fragments of colored glass that settled into continually changing patterns within a kaleidoscope.
As a result, his disposition and outlook began to alter. Not so long ago, the sight of his young master’s face drawn in this way by anxiety and grief would have filled him with loathing for what he would have judged to be Kiyoaki’s sluggish indolence. But now he was able to see it as a refinement.
Joy and exuberance did not, in fact, suit Kiyoaki. His beauty had a melancholy cast and so appeared most attractive when he was under the stress of anger or grief, and together with these there was always a forlorn suggestion of the spoiled child as a kind of shadow image. At times like this his pale cheeks became still whiter, his beautiful eyes bloodshot, his finely arched eyebrows were twisted into a frown, and his whole spirit seemed to waver as though his inner world were shattered. He seemed desperately to need something to cling to. And so the hint of sweetness lingered in the midst of his desolation, like the echo of a song over a barren waste.
Since Kiyoaki said nothing, Iinuma sat down on the chair he had made a habit of using recently even when Kiyoaki did not offer it to him. Then he reached out and began to read the banquet menu, which Kiyoaki had thrown down on the table. The dishes listed constituted a feast such as Iinuma knew he would never taste, no matter how many decades he might serve the Matsugaes.
The Evening Banquet of the Cherry Blossom Festival
April 6, 1913
The Second Year of the Taisho Era
SOUP
Turtle Soup
Finely chopped turtle meat floating in broth
Finely chopped turtle meat floating in broth
Chicken Soup
Broth with thin slices of chicken
Broth with thin slices of chicken
ENTREES
Poached Trout
Prepared in white wine and milk
Prepared in white wine and milk
Roast Fillet of Beef
Prepared with steamed mushrooms
Prepared with steamed mushrooms
Roast Quail
Stuffed with mushrooms
Stuffed with mushrooms
Broiled Fillet of Mutton
Garnished with celery
Garnished with celery
Pâté de Foie Gras
Served with assortment of cold fowl
and sliced pineapple in iced wine
Served with assortment of cold fowl
and sliced pineapple in iced wine
Roast Gamecock
Stuffed with mushrooms
Stuffed with mushrooms
INDIVIDUAL SALADS
VEGETABLES
Asparagus Green Beans
Prepared with Cheese
DESSERTS
French Custard Petits Fours
Ice Cream
A choice of flavors
A choice of flavors
While Iinuma read the menu, Kiyoaki kept staring at him, one expression succeeding another on his face. One moment his eyes seemed full of contempt, the next brimming with pathetic appeal. He was irritated that Iinuma should sit there with insensitive deference just waiting for him to break the silence. If only Iinuma had been capable of forgetting the master-retainer relationship at that moment, and had put his hand on Kiyoaki’s shoulder like an elder brother, how easily he could have started to talk.
He had no idea that the young man who sat in front of him was different from the Iinuma to whom he was accustomed. What he did not realize was that the Iinuma who had once been obsessed with the rough suppression of his own passions had now developed a gentle forbearance toward him, and, inexperienced as he was, had taken his first tentative steps into the world of subtle emotions.
“I can hardly imagine that you have the least idea what’s on my mind,” Kiyoaki said at last. “Miss Satoko insulted me terribly. She spoke to me as if I were a mere child. And she as much as said that in everything up to now I’ve behaved like a foolish little boy. No, in fact she said it in so many words. She came at me with everything that would hurt me most, as though she had had it all carefully planned. I just don’t understand how she could have brought herself to do it. Now I realize that the ride that snowy morning—which was her idea—now I know that I was nothing more than a toy she felt like playing with.” Kiyoaki paused for a moment. “But you had no inkling at all of how things really stood? Tadeshina, for example, didn’t say anything at all that sounded suspicious?”
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