Temple Of Dawn (20 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
The concrete foundations of houses were clearly limned under the crumbled walls. High and low, each was lit by the afternoon sun. For this reason, the entire ruin had the appearance of a type mold for a sheet of newsprint. But the predominant shade was the light reddish brown of a flowerpot, not the gloomy gray unevenness of a newspaper mold.
There was little greenery, for the area had been mostly commercial. Some half-burned trees were still standing along the streets.
Many shattered office buildings had paneless windows on this side, through which one could see the light reflecting in the glass on the far side, and the window frames were blackened, probably by the soot that had been deposited by the shooting flames.
It was a sloping area with a complex mesh of back streets on different levels. The concrete stairs and steps that remained led expectantly to nothing. Nothing remained either above or below them. In the field of rubble too there was no starting point, no destination; only the stairways adhered to direction.
All was quiet, but there were faint stirrings and things would rise softly. When he looked, it seemed like some hallucination, in which blackened corpses ravaged by countless vermin began to stir. They were ashes caught in the breeze, rising everywhere. There were white ashes and black ashes. Some floating ash adhered to a crumbling wall and rested there. Ashes of straw, ashes of books, ashes from a second-hand bookstall, ashes from a quilt maker’s shop, floating about individually, commingling indiscriminately, moving, shifting over the face of the devastation.
An area of asphalt road gleamed blackly with water spurting from a ruptured main.
The sky was strangely spacious and the summer clouds immaculately white.
This was the world presented to Honda’s five senses at this very moment. His plentiful savings had enabled him to accept only those legal cases that suited him during the war, and the study of samsara and reincarnation which entirely filled his leisure time seemed designed for the purpose of making this devastation manifest. The destroyer was Honda himself.
The vast panorama of devastation before his eyes, resembling the end of the world, was not the end itself, nor was it the beginning. It was a world that imperturbably regenerated itself from instant to instant.
Alaya
consciousness, perturbed by nothing, accepted this expanse of reddish ruin as one world, relinquishing it the next moment, accepting in the same way other worlds in which the color of destruction deepened with every day, with every month.
Alaya
consciousness, perturbed by nothing, accepted this expanse of reddish ruin as one world, relinquishing it the next moment, accepting in the same way other worlds in which the color of destruction deepened with every day, with every month.
Honda felt no emotion as he compared this sight with the city as it had been. Only when his eyes caught the bright reflections of the fragments of broken glass in the ruins and he was momentarily blinded did he understand, with the sureness of his senses that the glass, the whole ruin would disappear the next instant to make way for another. He would resist catastrophe with catastrophe, and he would deal with the infinite disintegration and desolation with ever more gigantic and all-inclusive instantaneously repeated devastation. Yes, he must grasp with his mind the instant-by-instant, inevitable total destruction and prepare for the carnage of an uncertain future. He was elated to the point of trembling with these refreshing ideas that he had gleaned from Yuishiki doctrine.
21
WHEN HIS TALK
with the client was over, Honda took his gifts and started out for Shibuya Station. There had been reports of a large-scale bombing of Osaka by B-29s. Of late, rumors were frequently heard that western Japan was now the main target. Tokyo seemed to be having a momentary respite.
Honda thought of walking a little further as long as it was light. At the top of Dogen Hill was located the former estate of Marquis Matsugae.
As far as Honda knew, the Matsugae family had sold eighty acres of its total land-holding of one hundred and ten to Hakoné Real Estate, Ltd., in the early twenties. But half of the money obtained at that time was lost in short order when the fifteen banks it had been placed in collapsed. The adopted heir of the family, a profligate, quickly disposed of the remaining thirty acres, and the present Matsugae house was reputed to be an ordinary place built on something less than an acre. He had driven by the gate, but had not entered now that he had completely lost touch with the family. Honda was vaguely curious to know whether the house had disappeared in the air raid last week.
The road running along the burned-out buildings of Dogen Hill had already been cleared, and climbing the slope presented no difficulty. Here and there he could see where people had begun to live in their simple air-raid trenches which they had covered with half-burned lumber and pieces of zinc sheeting. It was close to dinner time, and smoke from the cooking fires was rising. Someone was replenishing a pot with water spouting from an exposed conduit. The sky was filled with the beautiful glow of evening.
From the top of the slope to the upper boulevard, the entire area of Minami Daira-dai had once been a part of the hundred-and-ten-acre Matsugae property. The former estate had recently been divided into small lots, but now it had again been transformed into a vast, unbroken ruin, reacquiring under the spacious evening sky the grand scale of bygone days.
The single remaining building belonged to a detachment of military police, and soldiers with arm bands were constantly going in and out. Honda vaguely remembered that the edifice had once stood next to the Matsugae estate. And sure enough, the next moment he recognized the stone pillars of the Matsugae gate beyond.
From it, the remaining acre appeared extremely small, for the property had been divided among many tenant houses. The pond and the artificial hill in the garden appeared as poor miniature replicas of the once magnificent lake and the maple-covered mountain of the old estate. There was no stone wall in the back, and as the wooden fence had burned down, the expanse of devastated neighboring lots lay in view all the way to Minami Daira-dai. He realized that the plot had been reclaimed by filling in the former extensive pond.
An island had once occupied the center of the lake, while a waterfall poured into it from the maple-covered mountain. Honda had once crossed over to it by boat with Kiyoaki and from there had recognized the figure of Satoko clad in a light-blue kimono. Kiyoaki had been in the flower of his youth, and Honda too had still been young, much more so indeed than he remembered. There something had commenced and something had ended. But no traces remained.
The Matsugae estate had been restored by the ruthless, impartially destructive bombing. The contours of the land had changed, but across the desolate expanse Honda could still single out the location of the pond, the shrine, the main house, the Western-style wing, and the driveway in front of the porch. The outlines of the Matsugae house that he had frequented were clearly etched in his memory.
But under the billowing evening clouds the innumerable shriveled zinc fragments, broken slates, shredded trees, melted glass, burned clapboard, or the exposed chimneys of fireplaces standing lonely like skeletons, doors squashed into lozenge shapes—all were dyed a deep, rusty red. Collapsed and prostrate on the ground, their wild shapes that defied norms seemed like strange nettles sprouting from the land. The eeriness was further heightened by the evening sun which added to everything a distinctive shadow.
The sky was the vermilion of silk kimono lining with tufts of cloud scattered about. The color had penetrated to their very core, and their raveled edges radiated like golden threads. He had never seen such a sinister sky.
Suddenly he discerned in the vast ruin the figure of a woman sitting on a garden stone which had survived. The back of her somewhat shiny trousers made from lavender silk kimono material was transformed to
lie-de-vin
by the evening sun. Her black gleaming hair done in a Western style was wet, and her huddled figure appeared tormented. She seemed to be crying, but her shoulders were not shaken by sobs; she seemed to be suffering too, but her back gave no indication of anguish. She sat hunched up as though petrified. Her motionlessness lasted too long for someone merely lost in thought. Honda judged from the luster of her hair that she was probably middle-aged, perhaps the owner of one of the houses that had stood there, or possibly a relative.
lie-de-vin
by the evening sun. Her black gleaming hair done in a Western style was wet, and her huddled figure appeared tormented. She seemed to be crying, but her shoulders were not shaken by sobs; she seemed to be suffering too, but her back gave no indication of anguish. She sat hunched up as though petrified. Her motionlessness lasted too long for someone merely lost in thought. Honda judged from the luster of her hair that she was probably middle-aged, perhaps the owner of one of the houses that had stood there, or possibly a relative.
He realized he should have to offer assistance if she had been overcome by some indisposition. As he drew closer, he saw a black handbag and cane which she had placed beside the stone on which she was sitting.
Honda put his hand on her shoulder and shook it discreetly. He half feared that if he used any strength the form would collapse into ashes.
The woman looked obliquely up at him. The face frightened Honda. From the gap that showed at the unnatural hairline he realized that the black hair was a wig. The harsh vermilion of her lipstick stood out against the powder which had been thickly applied to cover the wrinkles and the hollows of her eyes; it was drawn on in the old-fashioned court style, a peaked upper lip and a tiny lower one. He recognized the face of Tadeshina beneath this indescribably aged mask.
“You’re Mrs. Tadeshina, aren’t you?” said Honda without thinking.
“Who could you be?” said Tadeshina. “A moment, please,” she added, hurriedly taking her glasses from her breast. He could see the Tadeshina of former days in her sly attempt to gain time by opening the sides and putting them over her ears. Under the pretext that she needed her glasses to see, she hurriedly tried to place him.
But the ruse was not successful. Even with the glasses, the old woman saw only a stranger standing before her. For the first time uneasiness and an old aristocratic prejudice—a mild chilliness she had learned to simulate so skillfully over the years—appeared on her face. This time she spoke with stiff formality.
“You must excuse me. I have quite lost my memory of late. I really have no idea . . .”
“I’m Honda. Thirty years ago I was a classmate of Kiyoaki Matsugae’s at the Peers School, and I used to come to the house all the time.”
“Oh, Mr. Honda! How good it is to see you! I don’t know how to apologize . . . I’m sorry not to have recognized you. Yes, Mr. Honda, indeed. You look just as you did in your younger days. Oh, what a . . .”
Tadeshina hurriedly put a sleeve to her eyes. Her tears in former days had always been suspicious, but now the makeup under her eyes immediately soaked them up like a whitewashed wall in the rain, and a generous supply overflowed almost mechanically from her bleary eyes. Such tears, as abundant as an overturned tub of water, totally unrelated to either joy or sorrow, were much more believable than those of thirty years ago.
Nevertheless, her senility was preposterous. On her skin, hidden under the thick white powder, Honda could see the moss of decrepitude that covered her entire body, and yet he sensed her extraordinary mind still working diligently like a watch ticking away in the pocket of a dead man.
“It’s good you’re looking so well. How old are you now?” asked Honda.
“I’m ninety-four this year. I’m a little hard of hearing, but other than that I have my health and no ailments; my legs are strong, and I manage to get around alone with a cane. My nephew’s family are looking after me, and they don’t like to let me go out alone. But I don’t really care when or where I die, so I like to get out as much as possible while I still can. I’m not at all afraid of the air raids. If I’m hit by a bomb or incinerated I’ll die without any pain and without causing anybody any trouble. You may not believe it, but I feel envious of the bodies lying by the roadside these days. When I heard that the Shibuya area had been burned in the bombardment the other day, I simply had to see the site of the Matsugae estate. I slipped out of my nephew’s house. What would the Marquis and the Marchioness say if they were alive to see this state of affairs! They were fortunate enough to die before experiencing any of this misery.”
“Fortunately my house hasn’t been burned yet, but I feel the same way about my mother. I’m glad she died while Japan was still winning.”
“Oh dear! Your mother’s gone too . . . I am terribly sorry to hear that, I had no idea . . .”
Tadeshina had not forgotten the emotionless, gracious civilities of her former days.
“What’s become of the Ayakuras?”
After putting the question, Honda immediately regretted it. As he had expected, the old woman hesitated noticeably. However, whenever she showed any visible sign of emotion, it was usually lacking in sincerity and simply for exhibition.
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