Authors: Yukio Mishima
Spring Snow (37 page)
“Could I tell him for you?” Honda asked.
“Well . . .” Satoko hesitated. Then she seemed to make up her mind, and gave him the message: “Please tell him this: Tadeshina talked with Yamada, the Matsugaes’ steward, some time ago, and she’s found out that Kiyo was telling a lie. She discovered that he actually tore up the letter he was pretending still to have a long time ago in Yamada’s presence. But . . . tell him not to worry about it. Tadeshina has resigned herself to everything. She said she would keep her eyes shut. Would you please pass that on to Kiyo?”
Honda memorized it as she spoke, and didn’t ask any questions about its cryptic meaning. From then on, impressed perhaps by his good manners, she became very talkative.
“You’ve done all this for his sake, haven’t you, Mr. Honda? Kiyo should think himself the luckiest man in the world to have a friend like you. You see, we women have no real friends at all.”
Satoko’s eyes still burned with passion, but her coiffure was in perfect order, with not a hair out of place. When he did not reply, she bent her head, and after a time, spoke in a subdued voice.
“But Mr. Honda . . . I know what you must think of me . . . What else am I but a slut?”
“Don’t talk like that,” he replied with considerable force. He certainly had not been thinking of her with such contempt, but even so, her words had accidentally hit a nerve with uncanny accuracy.
He had gone without a night’s sleep to be loyal and fulfill the duty with which he had been entrusted, of bringing Satoko down from Tokyo, turning her over to Kiyoaki, and now taking charge of her again to get her back. But his real source of pride was in keeping himself emotionally uninvolved. Nothing good would come of that sort of thing. It was a gravely dangerous situation, for which he was sufficiently responsible already.
When he had stood watching Kiyoaki take Satoko by the hand and run down through the shadows of the moonlit garden to the beach, he had felt that he too was sinning by helping them. But if it was sin, it was also indescribably beautiful; a recurrent image of loveliness running away from him and disappearing.
“You’re right,” said Satoko. “I shouldn’t talk like that at all. I can’t think of what I’ve done as being something nasty. Why is that? Kiyo and I have committed a terrible sin, but I still don’t feel defiled in any way. In fact I feel as if I’d been purified. You know, when I saw those pines by the beach tonight, I knew that I’d never see them again no matter how long I lived. And when I heard the sound of the breeze that blew through them, I knew that I’d never hear that again as long as I lived. But every moment I was there felt so pure that now I have no regrets about anything at all.”
As she spoke, she tried to convey something to Honda, some essence of everything that happened between her and her lover during their meetings, each of which had felt like the final one—she longed to throw discretion aside and try to make Honda understand by telling him how on this last night, in the midst of such a tranquil, natural setting, she and Kiyoaki had soared to dazzling heights that were almost terrifying. But it was the kind of experience—like death, like the glow of a jewel, like the beauty of a sunset—that is almost impossible to convey to others.
∗
Kiyoaki and Satoko wandered over the beach, trying to avoid the uncomfortably dazzling brightness of the moon. Now, in the middle of the night, there was no trace of human life along the deserted shore, apart from a beached fishing boat, whose tall prow cast a black shadow on the sand. Because of the brilliant moonlight all around, it seemed to offer a reassuring darkness. The moon’s rays washed over the boat, making its planks glisten like bleached bones. When Kiyoaki rested his hand against the side for a moment, his skin seemed to become translucent in the moonlight.
They embraced immediately in the shadow of the boat as the sea breeze swirled around them. She hardly ever wore Western clothes, and now hated the glaring white of her dress. Forgetting the whiteness of her skin, she had only one thought: to tear the dress off as quickly as possible and hide herself in the darkness.
No one was likely to see them, but the rays of moonlight, infinitely fragmented over the surface of the sea, were like millions of eyes. She gazed up at the clouds suspended in the sky and the stars that seemed to graze their edges. She could feel Kiyoaki’s small, firm nipples touching hers, brushing against them playfully, then finally pressing against them, pushing down into the rich abundance of her breasts. It was a touch far more intimate than a kiss, something like the playful caress of a young animal. An intense sweetness hovered on the edge of her awareness. The unexpected familiarity when the very edges, the extremities of their bodies brushed together made her think of the stars sparkling among the clouds, even though her eyes were closed.
From there it was a direct path to a joy as profound as the sea. But even as she felt herself dissolving gradually into the darkness, she felt afraid that this was nothing more than a shadow that was dependent in turn on the fishing boat beside them. They were not lying in the protection of a solid structure or a rocky ridge, but of something fortuitous, that in a few brief hours might be far out to sea. Had the boat not happened to be beached there at that moment, its heavy shadow would have been no more real than a ghost. She was afraid that this huge old fishing boat might begin to slide noiselessly across the sand even now and plunge into the water and sail away. To follow its shadow, to remain forever within it, she herself would have to become the sea. And at that moment, in a single great surge, she did.
Everything that framed the two of them—the moonlit sky, the sparkling water, the breeze that blew across the sandy beach to rustle the pines at its edge—all these boded destruction. Just beyond the merest flicker of time there boomed a monstrous roar of negation. Its message was carried in the sound of the pines. She felt that she and Kiyoaki were hemmed in, observed, guarded by an unforgiving spirit, just as a single drop of balm that has fallen into a bowl of water has nothing to sustain it but the water itself. This water was black, vast, silent, and the single drop of balm floated in a world of total isolation.
That “No!” was all-embracing. Was it a creature of the night—or the approaching dawn? To them it seemed incomprehensible. But even though it hovered threateningly over them from moment to moment, it had not yet struck at them directly.
They both sat up. Their heads were just out of the shadow now and the sinking moon shone directly into their faces. She felt that it was somehow the emblem of their transgression, fixed there so bright and full and conspicuous in the sky.
The beach was still deserted. They stood up to fetch their clothes, which they had placed in the bottom of the boat. Each of them stared at the other, at the remnant of darkness that was the black area just below their white bellies so brilliantly lit by the moon. Although it lasted only for a moment, they gazed with intense concentration.
When they had dressed, Kiyoaki sat dangling his legs over the edge of the boat.
“You know,” he said, “if we had everyone’s blessing, we would probably never dare to do what we’ve done.”
“You are awful, Kiyo. So that’s what you really want!” she replied in mock affront. Their banter was affectionate enough, but it had an indefinably gritty taste. They sensed that the irrevocable end of their happiness was not far away. She was still sitting in the sand, hiding in the shadow of the boat. His foot, shining in the moonlight, hung in the air in front of her. She reached out, took it in her hand, and kissed his toes.
∗
“I suppose it’s un-called-for—my telling you all this. But you see, there’s no one else I could even think of telling. I know that I’m doing something terrible. But please don’t say anything against it, because I do realize that it will come to an end sometime. But until then, I want to live each day as it comes. Because there’s nothing else to be done.”
“Then you are quite prepared for whatever may happen?” Honda asked, his voice unable to conceal the deep pity he felt.
“Yes, I’m quite ready.”
“Matsugae is too, I think.”
“That’s why it’s not at all right for him to involve you so deeply in our problems.”
Honda suddenly felt an unaccountable desire to understand this woman. It was his subtle form of revenge. If she intended to assign him the role of truly understanding friend, rather than one of mere compassionate supporter, then he would have the right to know everything. But it was a formidable challenge to try to understand her—this graceful woman overflowing with love, who was sitting by his side with her heart elsewhere. Nevertheless, his bent for logical inquiry began to gain the upper hand.
The car jounced a great deal, and tended to throw the two of them together, but she protected herself so skillfully that their knees never so much as brushed, a display of agility that reminded him of a pet squirrel making its exercise wheel whir. He was slightly annoyed. If Kiyoaki were beside her, he thought, she would not be so nimble.
“You just said that you were prepared for anything, didn’t you?” he asked, not looking at her. “Well then, I wonder how that acceptance of the consequences squares with the realization that it will have to end some day. When it does end, won’t it be too late to make a decision about the consequences? Or alternatively, will your acceptance of the consequences somehow gradually bring about the end, of itself? I know I’m asking you a cruel question.”
“I’m glad you did,” she replied calmly.
Despite himself, he glanced at her earnestly. Her profile was beautifully composed, and showed no sign of distress. While he was looking at her, she suddenly shut her eyes, and the long lashes of her left eye cast a still longer shadow over her cheek in the dim light of the roof lamp. The trees and shrubbery glided past in the pre-dawn darkness like black clouds swirling about the car.
Mori, the driver, kept his reliable back to them, wholly intent on his driving. The thick sliding glass behind him was shut. Unless they went out of their way to put their mouths close to the speaking tube, there was no chance that he would overhear.
“You say that I’m the one who should be able to end it some day. And as you’re Kiyo’s best friend, you have the right to say it. If I can’t end it and stay alive, then dying . . .”
She might have wanted to startle Honda into interrupting with a command to stop saying such things, but he doggedly kept silence and waited for her to continue.
“. . . but the moment will come sometime—and that time is not too far off. And when it does—I can promise you right now—I shan’t shrink from it. I’ve known supreme happiness, and I’m not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn’t it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does? I’ve nothing in common with these ‘new women.’ But . . . if eternity existed, it would be this moment. And perhaps you, Mr. Honda, will come round to seeing it this way some day.”
Honda was at last beginning to understand why Kiyoaki had once been so terribly in awe of Satoko.
“You said that it wasn’t right of Matsugae to involve me in your problems. Why not?”
“You’re a young man who set himself worthwhile goals. It’s wrong to get you entangled with us. Kiyo has no right at all to do it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t think of me as such a saint. You’re unlikely to find a more grimly moral family than mine. But despite that, I have already done something that makes me an accomplice in sin.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not true,” she broke in angrily. “This is our sin, Kiyo’s and mine . . . and nobody else’s.”
Of course she only meant to convey that she wanted to protect him, but her words had a cold, proud glitter that could not tolerate the intrusion of a third party. In her own mind, she had fashioned their sin into a tiny, brilliant, crystal palace in which she and Kiyoaki could live free from the world around them. A crystal palace so tiny that it would balance on the palm of one’s hand, so tiny that no one else could fit in. Transformed for a fleetingly brief instant, she and Kiyoaki had been able to enter it and now they were spending their last few moments there, observed with extraordinary clarity in all their minute detail by someone standing just outside.
She suddenly leaned forward with bent head. He reached over to support her and his hand brushed against her hair.
“Excuse me,” she apologized, “but I think I just felt some sand in my shoe, even though I was so careful. Tadeshina doesn’t look after my shoes, and so if I took them off at home with sand left in them that I didn’t notice, I’d be afraid of what some startled maid might blurt out.”
He had no idea how to behave while a woman was inspecting her shoes, so he turned away and began to look out of the window with intense concentration.
They had already reached the outskirts of Tokyo. The night sky had turned to a vivid dark blue. The dawn showed the clouds spread low over the roofs of the houses. Though he wanted to get her home as soon as possible, he still felt regret that the morning light would put an end to what was probably the most extraordinary night of his life. Behind him he heard the sound—so faint that he thought he must be imagining it at first—of Satoko pouring the sand from the shoe she had taken off. To Honda, it sounded like the most enchanting hourglass in the world.
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