Temple Of Dawn (33 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
Honda circled around in the congested store, bumping into customers. As he could find nothing he liked, he went to the shelves on which popular magazines were displayed. There a young man in a sports shirt, apparently a student, was engrossed in a magazine. From a distance, Honda could see that he had been staring at a single page with extraordinary earnestness. Approaching on the right side of the youth, he casually glanced at the leaf.
He saw a poorly printed, opaque blue photogravure of a naked woman sitting tied with a rope and leaning to one side. The boy never took his eyes from the magazine which he held in his left hand.
Honda noticed that the youth was strangely rigid—the neck, profile, and eyes were somehow unnaturally strained like those of a figure in some Egyptian relief. Then he saw clearly that the youth’s right hand which was thrust into his trouser pocket was violently and mechanically móving.
Honda left the bookstore at once. His stroll had been spoiled.
—Why had he had to do such a thing in front of people? Didn’t he have the money to buy the magazine? If that were so, I would have paid for it myself and given it to him. Yes, why didn’t I do that right away? I really shouldn’t have hesitated to give him the money.
But Honda’s thoughts changed in the interval between two electric poles by the roadside.
—No, I don’t believe that that was the case. If he really wanted the magazine, it was cheap enough for him to buy just by pawning his fountain pen.
The magazine should not have been purchased and taken home. From this point on, Honda’s imagination ran riot. For some reason the youth did not quite seem to be a total stranger.
Not wishing to go home and face his wife with such thoughts on his mind, he chose a roundabout way and continued straight on instead of turning when he came to the corner of the Methodist Church.
Probably the reason the youth had not taken the magazine home was not at all because his family was strict or because he had no place to hide it. Honda arbitrarily came to the conclusion that the young man lived alone in a rooming house. It was obvious that as soon as the youth returned home the loneliness eagerly awaiting him would jump at him like a house pet; and he would have been afraid to open the picture of the trussed and naked woman, to share his pleasure with the loneliness. There, probably, waited the absolute freedom of the prison which the youth had himself constructed. In the tiny space, barren and square, in the dark nest filled with the smell of semen, he must have been afraid to face the naked blue woman writhing under the tightening rope that crushed her breasts, her nostrils spread like the wings of a dove. It was like committing murder to face a tightly bound woman in such perfect freedom. Thus he had chosen to expose himself to the public gaze. He had wanted to project himself into the role of a man tied by the ropes of people’s eyes and to face the woman bound in danger and humiliation. The odious conditions he had chosen represented the sine qua non as subtle and delicate as silk thread that is concealed in all sexual love.
The seductions of a very special, extraordinarily sweet vulgarity . . . The boy would not have been consumed with desire for the girl had she been a beautiful photographic model. Sexuality that storms day and night like a gale through the metropolis. A great dark overabundance. The streets across which shoot the flames of Molotov cocktails. The great underground canal of hidden sexual passion. When Honda saw the imposing stone pillars of his house, standing since his father’s days, he realized he would have to live in a fashion very different from the way his father had lived out his old age. When he pushed open the side gate and saw the great white magnolia flowers in full bloom on the tips of their tall branches, he suddenly felt the fatigue of his walk and wished he could devote the rest of his life to creating haiku.
35
HONDA SUGGESTED
a talk with Keiko and Katsumi, inasmuch as he had to pick up a box of cigars which he had asked her to get. Katsumi drove to meet him at his office building. It was an early summer afternoon and the sun was strong.
Genuine Havana cigars were unavailable, but tobacco products from Florida could be purchased at the PX. Since Keiko would be shopping for cigars at the former Matsuya department store, now the PX, Katsumi informed him they were to meet her there.
Honda could not himself enter the PX, of course. He had Katsumi stop in front, and they watched the exits from the car window. Outside the white-curtained PX windows numerous caricaturists loitered about, hounding the American soldiers who emerged. The young soldiers, apparently back from Korea, put up little resistance as they amiably stood to be sketched. Among them an American girl wearing blue jeans, probably on a shopping trip, was sitting on the brass rail of a window having her portrait done.
It was an interesting scene to watch while killing time in the car. The serious-faced American soldiers, looking quite professional, posed for the drawings with no feelings of shyness before the spectators. It was hard to tell which was the customer. Spectators surrounded them, and as soon as someone grew tired of watching and left, another immediately took his place. The rosy faces of the tall Americans stood out like the heads of statues above the mass of bystanders.
“She’s late,” Honda commented to Katsumi as he got out of the car to stretch his legs in the sunlight.
He joined the crowd to look at the American girl. Hardly pretty, she was swinging her blue-jeaned legs. She wore a short-sleeved plaid blouse that looked like a man’s shirt. A shaft of light falling through the buildings fell diagonally across half of her freckled cheek and was regularly deflected by the movements of her jaw as she chewed a wad of gum. She was not particularly cold or arrogant. The curious stares had not affected her natural poise in the slightest, and the deep-set brown eyes, as if propped open, gazed blankly into space almost without moving.
She looked at the people as though she were watching the air; such a girl might be someone Honda was looking for. When he realized it, he felt a sudden stir of interest like rapidly curling ends of hair that have been set on fire. It was then that a man standing next to him spoke. He had been glancing at Honda’s face for some time. “We’ve met somewhere before, haven’t we?” he said at length.
Honda saw a shortish, rodentlike man in a seedy suit. His hair was cut straight at the temples, and his restless eyes held the glint of an ominous obsequiousness. At once Honda felt uneasy.
“Who could you be? I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to . . .” he said coldly.
“Don’t you remember? We’re peeping chums under the trees in the park,” he said, stretching to whisper in Honda’s ear.
Despite his efforts not to, Honda paled.
“What do you mean?” he said coolly. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.” A bitter sneer instantly appeared on the little man’s face. Honda knew that this sneer was like cracks in underground strata that sometimes had the power of instantly toppling great buildings. But at the moment there was no real proof. And still better, Honda no longer had any prestige to guard. It was thanks to this sneer that he clearly realized his present lack of social position.
Honda shouldered the man aside and began to walk toward the entrance of the PX. Opportunely Keiko appeared.
She came out, breasts high, dressed in a purple suit and followed by an American soldier whose face was almost completely hidden behind a mountainous armful of paper bags. Honda thought it might be her lover, Jack, but it was not.
In the middle of the pavement, Keiko introduced Honda to the soldier, and referring to the latter, explained: “I don’t know his name, but he was kind enough to offer to help carry my packages to the car.”
Seeing Honda talking with an American soldier, the little man hastened away.
A huge, brilliant golden brooch, like the metal of the Great Order of the Chrysanthemum, shone on Keiko’s breast. She marched straight up to the car where Katsumi was respectfully waiting in the May sunshine. He held the door open and playfully bowed her in.
The soldier handed the paper bags one by one to Katsumi, who staggered, barely able to hold them.
It was a fine spectacle. The crowd in front of the PX stood watching with gaping mouths, quite forgetting the caricaturists.
When the car started to move, Keiko waved to the courteous soldier and he responded. So did two or three other men in the crowd.
“What popularity!” Honda commented rather flippantly to show himself how quickly he could recover from the traumatic episode.
Keiko laughed contentedly and said: “There is kindness to be found everywhere.” In great haste she took out a handkerchief heavily embroidered in the Chinese style and blew her nose loudly like a Westerner. The nose showed no signs of damage afterwards. It was as high and magnificent as usual.
“That’s because you sleep naked every night,” said Katsumi who was driving.
“What a rude thing to say! As though you’ve ever seen me . . . By the way, where shall we go?”
Honda was apprehensive about walking around the Ginza area lest they run into the small man again.
“Let’s go to that new . . . what’s the building? . . . at the corner of Hibiya,” he said irritably, unable to remember.
“You mean the Nikkatsu Hotel?” said Katsumi. And soon, glimpsing the soiled mustard color of the river through the crowd, they crossed the Sukiya Bridge.
Keiko was most kind and also intelligent, but that she lacked a certain gentleness was obvious. Of any subject—literature, art, music, or even philosophy—she spoke with her extravagant feminine, pleasure-loving enthusiasm as though she were talking about perfume or necklaces. She never actually paraded her erudition in art or philosophy, and her knowledge was not necessarily well balanced; but in some fields her information was quite thorough.
As he recalled, upper-class women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were either stuffy self-appointed virtuous types or brazen minxes, so Keiko’s well-roundedness surprised him. But he could foresee trouble for the man who became her husband. She was never cruel, but in her one sensed a certain intolerable fastidiousness in little things.
Could that be a defense? But for what purpose? To be sure, she had never been raised in such a way that she would require armor. She had never found it necessary to fight the world. Rather, the world always showed her deference, and one felt in her a kind of purity that was overpowering in its authority.
Keiko was congenitally incapable of distinguishing between affection and favor, and thus anyone she granted a boon might assume that she loved him.
This occasion was no exception. On the mezzanine overlooking the lobby that resembled a new rugby field, Keiko, a glass of sherry before her, began giving instructions. Honda was overwhelmed. It was as though he were listening to a lecture in a course on French cooking on how to prepare a fowl named Ying Chan.
“You’ve seen her twice since then. How were things? How far do you think you can go?” she asked Katsumi first. Then she pulled out a large box of cigars, which she seemed to have forgotten about until that moment, and silently placed it in Honda’s lap.
“How did it go? I think the time’s almost ripe.”
Honda traced the pattern on the cigar box with his fingers. It reminded him of the paper currency of some small European country, its gold coins and pink ribbons embossed in golden letters on a green background. He was conjuring up the aroma of cigars; he had not smoked for some time. Simultaneously he sharply repelled Katsumi’s words. Nevertheless, he was surprised when he discovered himself enjoying the repugnance like an omen of something.
“Did you at least kiss her?” asked Keiko.
“Yes, once.”
“How was it?”
“How was it . . .? Well, I took her back to the Foreign Student Center and kissed her just a little behind the gate.”
“Yes? And how was it?”
“She seemed pretty flustered. It was probably her first time.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. Couldn’t you have gone further?”
“But she’s special. She’s a princess.”
Keiko turned to Honda. “The best way,” she said, “would be for you to take her to Gotemba. Why don’t you say you’re throwing a party and invite her to stay overnight? As late as possible. She can’t very well turn you down because you know she’s stayed out other nights; and besides, she has to make up for the party she stood you up on. If she’s alone with Katsumi she’ll be on her guard, so you must go with them. Of course, Katsumi will drive. You can tell her that I’ll be waiting in Gotemba. It won’t be true, but I won’t be inconvenienced . . . When you reach your villa she’ll find it strange that no one else is there. But even so, a foreign princess can’t possibly run away, so it must be left to Katsumi. You can leave her to him for the night and wait for your
canard à l’orange
to be ready.”
canard à l’orange
to be ready.”
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