Temple Of Dawn (23 page)

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Authors: Yukio Mishima

BOOK: Temple Of Dawn
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Just inside the entrance stood another door with a stained-glass center, and to either side were windows latticed with orange panes like those of Dutch mansions in the late Edo period. One could indistinctly see inside through them. Honda liked to stand here and look at the interior sinking in the wistful colors of the evening sun, an interior he himself had meticulously designed, with its thick beams purchased from a rural house and transferred intact, the chaste North German antique chandelier, the paneled doors with simple line drawings of Otsu folk painting, footman’s armor, and a bow and arrows—all bathed in the fading yellow light, exuding the feeling of some gloomy still life, as if some Dutch painter like Jan Treck had done a Japanese scene.
Honda invited Keiko to enter. He seated her in the chair by the fireplace and tried to light the kindling, but it would not catch. Only the fireplace had been planned by a specialist from Tokyo; it was well designed and never let the smoke reverse and flow back into the room. But whenever he tried to build a fire, Honda always realized that he had never in his life had the opportunity of mastering the simplest techniques or knowledge. Indeed, he had never even handled basic materials.
It was strange to learn this at his age. He had never once known leisure in his entire life. Thus he had obviously never made any contact with nature, with the waves of the ocean, with the hardness of trees, with the weight of rocks, and with the tools like ship’s fittings, nets, or hunting rifles that workers came to know through their work, and the aristocrats, conversely, were familiar with through the graciousness of their living. Kiyoaki had turned his leisure not toward nature but only toward his own emotions; if he had matured, he would have grown into nothing but idleness.
“Let me help,” said Keiko, bending down with dignity, after watching Honda’s ineptness for some time, the tip of her tongue protruding between her hard lips. Her hips appeared almost limitless to Honda’s upturned eyes. The blue celadon color of her tight skirt, filled like a gigantic vase of the Yi Dynasty, was enhanced by the cut of the suit that had a sharply narrowed waistline.
As Honda had nothing to do while Keiko occupied herself with the fire, he left the room to fetch the ring he had mentioned. When he returned, savage vermilion flames were already slithering up the logs, and pieces of kindling were gnashing their teeth in the coquettishly clinging smoke, while sap secreted from the freshly cut wood sizzled. The brick lining of the fireplace flickered in the firelight. Keiko calmly brushed her hands and observed the result of her efforts with obvious satisfaction.
“How is this?”
“I’m impressed,” said Honda, extending his hand into the firelight and handing the ring to Keiko. “This is the ring I mentioned a while ago. What do you think? I bought it as a present.”
Keiko withdrew her fingers with their red manicured tips from the area of the flames and scrutinized the ring in the fading light from the window.
“A man’s ring,” she said.
It was formed of a dark green, square emerald encircled by gold finely sculpted to depict a pair of protective
yaksha
with impressive half-bestial faces. Keiko moved the ring from her fingertips, probably to avoid the reflection of her red nails, and holding it between her fingers, slipped it on her index finger. Although a man’s ring, it was the size for some delicate, dark-skinned finger; it was not overly large even on her.
“It’s a good stone. But with old emeralds the inside fissures always effloresce in the long run. There’s danger of fragility when the cloudiness rises from underneath. This one shows that condition. But still it’s a good stone. And the carving is unusual. It’ll be valuable as an antique.”
“Where do you think I bought it?”
“Abroad?”
“No, in the ruins of Tokyo. At Prince Toin’s shop.”
“Oh yes, those days . . . But no matter what financial trouble the Prince might have had, for him to open an antique shop . . . ! I’ve been there two or three times myself. Everything interesting turned out to be something I had seen at relatives’ long ago. But the shop had to close. I heard that the Prince was never there; the former steward who was acting as head clerk was running the show and stealing all the profits. Not a single member of royalty has started a successful business after the war. No matter what the property tax, they should have safeguarded what possessions they had left. There was always some promoter who would talk them into something. Especially Prince Toin, who had always been a soldier. He reminds me of the poor samurai who all went bankrupt after the Restoration.”
Then Honda told her the history of the ring.
In 1947, Honda heard that Prince Toin had lost his title after the war and had bought up art objects cheaply from members of the former nobility overburdened with property taxes. He had opened an antique shop for foreigners. The Prince would not have remembered him even if Honda had gone to see him, but he had been moved to look in at the shop out of sheer curiosity without identifying himself. In a glass case, he discovered the ring of Princess Chantrapa, which the Siamese prince Chao P. had lost in the dormitory of the Peers School thirty-four long years before.
It was obvious that the ring, which had been believed mislaid at the time, had in reality been stolen. The sales clerk, of course, did not disclose the origin of the object, but it must have come from the house of some former noble. The man who had had to sell it must have been a student at the school when Honda was there. He was moved by an old sense of justice to purchase it, wanting to return it himself somehow to the original owner.
“Then are you going to Thailand to give it back? To clear the name of your alma mater?” teased Keiko.
“I intended to someday. But it’s not necessary, now. The Princess has come to Japan to study.”
“A dead girl here to study?”
“No, no, Chantrapa the second—Ying Chan, I mean,” said Honda. “I’ve invited her to the party tomorrow. I intend to put the ring on her finger then. She’s seventeen years old, with beautiful black hair and bright eyes. She speaks Japanese quite well; she must have studied hard before leaving her country.”
25
 
 T
HE NEXT MORNING
Honda awoke alone in the villa, and for protection against the cold, donned a woolen scarf, a cardigan, and a thick winter coat. He crossed the lawn and walked to the arbor at the west end of the garden. More than anything else he had been anticipating watching Fuji at dawn.
The mountain was tinted crimson in the sunrise. Its tip glowed the color of a brilliant rose stone, and to his eyes it was a dreamlike illusion, a classical cathedral roof, a Japanese Temple of Dawn.
Sometimes Honda was confused as to whether he sought solitude or frivolous pleasure. He lacked something essential to become a serious pleasure-seeker.
For the first time somewhere within—and at his age!—a desire for transformation had awakened. Having earnestly observed other men’s reincarnation without so much as turning an eye, he had never brooded over the impossibility of his own. And now that he was reaching an age when the last glow of life revealed the expanse of his past, the certainty of its impossibility heightened the illusion of the possibility of rebirth all the more.
He too might do something unexpected. To this day all his actions had been predictable, and his reason had always cast its light one step ahead, like a flashlight held by someone walking along a dark road at night. By schemes and predictions he had been able to avoid surprising himself. The most frightening thing was that all mysteries, including the miracle of transmigration, finished by being cut and dried.
He needed to be surprised. It had become almost a necessity of life. If there were a special right in scorning reason and trampling it, he had the rational self-conceit to think that it was permitted only to him! He had to involve his stable world in some amorphous turmoil again, in something with which he was not at all familiar!
Honda knew very well that he had lost all physical qualifications for that. His hair had grown thin, his sideburns were streaked with white, and his stomach had swollen like remorse itself. All the characteristics of early old age which he had considered so ugly as a youth now marked his body unsparingly. Of course, even when young, he had never regarded himself as handsome, like Kiyoaki, but he had not thought himself to be particularly ugly either. At least he had not found it necessary to place himself among the negative numbers in a world of beauty and to construct his equations in consequence. Why was it that now when his ugliness had become so obvious, the world about him was still beautiful? This was indeed far worse than death itself; the worst death!
It was twenty minutes past six. Two thirds covered by snow, Fuji had brushed off the colors of dawn and stood against the blue sky in sharply etched beauty. It was almost too clearly visible. The texture of the snow was delicate, full of the sensitive tension of its undulations. It called to mind the fine play of lean muscle. Except for the lower slopes, there were only two slightly reddish black patches near the top and near the Hoei summit. The blue sky was hard and cloudless; had he thrown a rock, the sharp sound of stone hitting it would have echoed back.
This Fuji influenced all dispositions, controlled all emotions. It was the pure white essence of questionability itself that rose before him.
Honda’s hunger sharpened in the tranquility. He looked forward to his breakfast of bread purchased in Tokyo and the soft-boiled egg and coffee he would make as he listened to the chirping of the birds. His wife was due to arrive with Princess Ying Chan at eleven o’clock to begin preparations for the party.
After breakfast he returned to the garden.
It was close to eight. Little by little small wisps of cloud had begun to rise like snow drifting on the other side of Mount Fuji. They spread stealthily, as if to spy on the near side, extending their tentacles as they progressed. Suddenly they were swallowed up by the ceramic blue sky. These seemingly insignificant ambushes were not to be ignored. Such clouds tended to regroup up to noon, repeating their surprise attacks and eventually covering the entire mountain.
Honda sat absentmindedly in the arbor until about ten o’clock. He had stored away the books that all his life had never been far from him and was dreaming of raw materials from which life and emotion had not been filtered out. He sat motionless, doing nothing. A cloud, which had appeared faintly to the left and which soon stopped at the Hoei summit, raised its tail like a leaping dolphin.
His wife, who he insisted be punctual, arrived at eleven o’clock in a clamorous taxi. Princess Ying Chan was not beside her. “Oh dear, you’re alone!” said Honda at once to this bloated, sour woman as she removed several packages from the car.
Rié did not answer for a minute, but raised her eyelids like heavy sunshades.
“I’ll explain later when I’ve more time. I’ve had so much trouble. Help me with these packages first.”
Rié had waited until the designated time, but Princess Ying Chan had not made her appearance. This was after two or three telephone calls. She had finally phoned the only available contact, the Foreign Student Center, and was told that the Princess had not returned to her dormitory the night before. She had been invited to dine at the home of some Japanese family where a new student from Thailand was staying.
Rié had been worried and had considered delaying the time of her own arrival at the villa. But she had no way of informing Honda, since they did not yet have a phone. Instead, she had hurried to the Foreign Student Center where she left a note written in English with the caretaker, carefully explaining with a map how to get to the villa. If things went well, the Princess should arrive by the time the party started in the evening.
“Well, if that was the trouble, you could have asked Makiko Kito to help find her.”
“But I couldn’t possibly impose on a guest. Even she would have a hard time locating a girl from a foreign country she doesn’t know at all and then bringing her all the way over here. And besides, you can’t expect a celebrity like Makiko to go out of her way. She probably thinks she’s doing us a favor just by coming.”
Honda fell silent. He would reserve judgment.
When a picture is removed from the wall where it has long hung, it leaves a fresh whiteness the exact size and shape of the frame. The resulting image is pure, to be sure, but it is quite out of step with its environment; it is too strong, too insistent. Now that Honda had retired from his professional activities on the bench he had left all matters concerning justice to his wife. The whiteness of the wall was always claiming: I am just, I am right, who could possibly blame me?

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