Authors: Yukio Mishima
Spring Snow (54 page)
He left the house and all its bustle behind him and walked alone toward the pond, in the mood to go rowing. Yamada came hurrying after him with an offer of company that was harshly rebuffed.
As the prow of the boat pushed through dry reeds and broken remains of lotus leaves, a small flock of wild ducks took to the air. In the midst of their frantic flapping, he saw their small, flat bellies flash for a second in the clear winter air with not a drop of water to mar the silken sheen of their feathers. A reflected gleam raced crookedly across the tangled reeds.
He looked down at the cold image of clouds and blue sky reflected in the surface of the water, and wondered at the sluggish ripples stirred by his oars. As the reflection broke up, the dark, muddy water seemed to be telling him something quite alien to the crystalline clouds and winter sky.
He rested his oars and looked toward the main reception room of the house, watching the servants busy at work as if they were actors scurrying about on a distant stage. The waterfall had not frozen, but its sound was muffled and discordant. His view of its lower reaches was blocked by the island, but farther up, on the north side of the maple hill, the bare tree branches revealed the dirty remnants of snow on the banks of the stream.
He finally steered his boat into the tiny island inlet, fastened it to a stake, and made his way up to the faded green pines that crowned the knoll. As he looked at the three metal cranes, the beaks of the two that had outstretched necks seemed like a pair of blunt arrowheads aimed at the December sky.
He threw himself down at once on the dry brown grass warmed by the heat of the sun, and lay there, face up, knowing that he was completely alone, secure from every eye. Then as he sensed the numb chill that came from rowing in the fingers that cradled his head, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a wild rush of misery that he had been able to fend off while he was in the presence of other people.
“This year was mine—and now it’s gone,” he cried out to himself. “It’s gone! Just like a cloud dissolving.” The words poured out of him, cruel and unrestrained, lashing him, intensifying his agony. Never before had he given way to such wildness. “Everything has turned sour, I’ll never be carried away with joy again. There’s a terrible clarity dominating everything. As though the world were made of crystal so that you only have to flick part of it with your fingernail for a tiny shudder to run through it all. . . . And then the loneliness—it’s something that burns. Like hot thick soup you can’t bear inside your mouth unless you blow on it again and again. And there it is, always in front of me. In its heavy white bowl of thick china, dirty and dull as an old pillow. Who is it that keeps forcing it on me?
“I’ve been left all alone. I’m burning with desire. I hate what’s happened to me. I’m lost and I don’t know where I’m going. What my heart wants it can’t have . . . my little private joys, rationalizations, self-deceptions—all gone! All I have left is a flame of longing for times gone by, for what I’ve lost. Growing old for nothing. I’m left with a terrible emptiness. What can life offer me but bitterness? Alone in my room . . . alone all through the nights . . . cut off from the world and from everyone in it by my own despair. And if I cry out, who is there to hear me? And all the while my public self is as graceful as ever. A hollow nobility—that’s what’s left of me.”
A huge flock of crows was perched in the bare branches of the maples on the hill. He listened to their discordant shrieks and to the beating of wings as they flew overhead toward the low hill where Omiyasama was enshrined.
50
EARLY IN THE NEW YEAR
it was customary for the Imperial Poetry Recitation to be held at the palace. Ever since Kiyoaki was fifteen, Count Ayakura had sent him an invitation each year without fail, a kind of abiding token of the training in elegance he had once received from the Count. And this year too, though one would hardly have been surprised if it had been otherwise, an invitation came as usual through the Imperial Household Ministry. The Count was going to assume his role as an imperial lector once again, unhindered by any shameful scruples, and it was clearly he who had arranged Kiyoaki’s invitation.
When he showed his father the invitation, the Marquis frowned at the sight of the Count’s signature among those of the four lectors. He was seeing elegance in a new light: it confronted him with tenacity and impudence.
“Since it’s a regular event, you’d better go,” he said at last. “If you didn’t this year, it might start people talking about some rift between the Ayakuras and us. In essence, we are not supposed to have any connection with them where that affair is concerned.”
Year by year the poetry ceremony had grown on Kiyoaki, and he had come to appreciate it greatly. At no other time did the dignity of Count Ayakura’s bearing show to such advantage as it did on these occasions, nor could Kiyoaki imagine any role more suited to him. Now of course, the sight of the Count would be a painful one, but even so he felt that he wanted to see him. He felt the desire to take a steady look at the shattered fragments of a poem that had once been alive inside him too, until he had grown weary of looking. He thought that if he attended, the image of Satoko would fill his mind.
He no longer believed himself to be a thorn of elegance jabbed into the sturdy fingers of the Matsugaes. But he had not changed to the point of thinking that he actually was one of those fingers either. Only the elegance that had been so conscious a part of him had withered. His heart had become desolate. Nowhere in himself could he find the kind of graceful sorrow that inspires poems. He was empty now, his soul a desert swept by parching winds. He had never felt more estranged from elegance and from beauty as well.
Yet perhaps all this was essential to his attaining true beauty—this inner emptiness, this loss of all joy, even this utter inability to believe that the oppressive weight of each moment was something real, that his pain, at least, was something that was his. The symptoms of a man afflicted by true beauty are much like those of leprosy.
Since he no longer looked in the mirror, he had no way of knowing that the sad and haggard cast of his features had evolved into the classical expression of youth pining away for love.
One evening when he was eating dinner at a table laid for him alone, the maid set down a small wineglass beside his plate, with cut-glass sides that were darkened by the crimson liquid they contained. Without bothering to ask the girl, he presumed it to be wine and drained the glass without hesitation. But then a strange sensation, a thick, slippery aftertaste lingered on his tongue.
“What was this?”
“The blood of a snapping turtle, sir,” the maid answered. “I was ordered not to tell you unless you asked what it was. It was the cook, sir. He said that he wanted to make the young master fit and healthy again. So he caught a turtle from the pond and prepared it for you.”
As he felt the unpleasantly smooth liquid sliding down his throat, he remembered the story the servants had so often used to frighten him when he was a child. Once again he saw the disturbing picture he had formed at that time of a snapping turtle raising its head like a sinister ghost from the dark waters of the pond, its eyes fixed on him, a creature that usually lay buried in the warm mud on the bottom, but never failed to force its way up to the surface time and again, pushing through the hostile weeds of dreams that conquered time, to fix its eyes on him at every stage of his life. But now, suddenly, the spell was broken. Death had overtaken the turtle, and he had just drunk its blood without knowing it. And with that, a whole era seemed suddenly at an end. Inside him, the terror was being docilely transformed into this unfamiliar energy that was coursing through him with a force whose intensity he could only guess.
∗
The order of procedure each year at the Imperial Poetry Recitation was to read the selections according to the status of the writer, beginning with poems written by those of lower rank. With these first poems, the lector began by reading the poet’s brief words of introduction, and then gave his office and rank. With the later poems, however, the lector first gave office and rank and then immediately began to recite the poem itself.
Among those who functioned as imperial lectors, Count Ayakura held the honored position of chief. Once more today both their Imperial Majesties and His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince graced him with their attention as the clear tones and beautifully modulated voice sounded through the chamber.
No tremor of guilt blurred its clarity. On the contrary, it was so brilliant as to stir sadness in the hearts of his audience. As he read each poem, the languid cadence of his words kept the pace of a Shinto priest’s gleaming black-shod feet climbing, one by one, the stone steps of a shrine bathed in the strange warmth of the winter sun. It was a voice whose tone was neither masculine nor feminine.
Not a single cough marred the silence of the audience. But although his voice was supreme in the palace chamber, it was never sensual, nor called attention to itself at the expense of the poem itself. What poured smoothly from his throat was the very essence of elegance, impervious to shame, and its paradoxical blend of joy and pathos flowed through the room like the rolling mist in a picture scroll.
Up to now, each of the poems had been repeated only once, but when the Count concluded the Crown Prince’s poem with the formula, “Such being the most eminent composition of His Majesty the Heir to the Imperial Throne,” he went on to recite it twice more.
The Empress’s poem was recited three times. The Count read the first verse, and then from the second verse on, all four lectors recited it in unison. With the exception of the Emperor himself, the rest of the Imperial Family, including the Crown Prince, and of course everyone else in the audience, stood up to listen.
This year, Her Imperial Majesty had composed a poem of exceptional grace and nobility. As he stood listening to it, Kiyoaki stole a glance at Count Ayakura, who was standing some distance from him. He noticed how the paper bearing the poem rested folded in the Count’s small, white hand, so like a woman’s. The fine tissue was a light plum color.
Although an affair that involved the Count and that had shaken the whole country was barely concluded, Kiyoaki was not surprised to hear no trace of a nervous quiver in his voice, much less the deep sorrow of a father whose only daughter has been lost to the world. The voice went on, clear, beautiful, never strident, performing exactly what had been entrusted to it. Let a thousand years go by, the Count would still be serving his Emperor as he served him now, like the rarest of songbirds.
The Imperial Poetry Recitation came to its climax at last. It was the moment for the reading of the poem of His Imperial Majesty himself.
Count Ayakura made his way reverently into the immediate vicinity of the Emperor and gravely took the imperial composition, which had been placed on the cover of an inkstone case in the traditional manner, and raised it to the level of his forehead. He then recited it five times.
As he read, the purity of his voice became, if anything, more pronounced, until he came at last to the end of the fifth recitation and concluded with the words “Such being the most august composition of His Sacred Majesty.”
Kiyoaki, meantime, glanced up fearfully at the Emperor’s face, his imagination quickened by the memory of the late Emperor’s having patted him on the head when he was a boy. His Majesty seemed to be rather more frail than his imperial father had been, and although he was listening to the reading of his own composition, his face showed no sign of complacency, but retained an icy composure. Kiyoaki suddenly shook in fear at the totally improbable notion that His Imperial Majesty was in fact suppressing an anger that was directed at him.
“I’ve dared to betray His Majesty. There’s nothing to do but to die.”
He held fast to that one thought as he stood there, the atmosphere around him heavy with the rich fragrance of incense, feeling as though he might collapse at any moment. A thrill ran through him, but whether of joy or dread he could not tell.
51
IT WAS
F
EBRUARY
. With the pre-graduation exams looming over them, all Kiyoaki’s classmates were now wholly caught up in their work. And he, who was indifferent to anything of the sort, stood more aloof than ever. Honda was certainly willing to help him with the preparation for his tests, but he held back, feeling that Kiyoaki would have none of it. He knew only too well how Kiyoaki reserved his keenest displeasure for any excessive show of friendship.
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