Confessions of a Mask (20 page)

Later that day my sixteen-year-old minx of a sister came to my room and said:

"Brother is crazy about a certain somebody, aren't you?"

"Who said any such thing?"

"I know it perfectly well."

"Well, is it wrong to fall in love with someone?”“Oh no. . . . When will you marry?"

Her words struck deeply within me. My feeling was the same as that of a fugitive from justice when someone, unaware of his guilt, happens to say something to him about his crime.

"Marry? I'm not even thinking about marrying."

"Why, that's wicked! You're crazy about someone without having any intention of marrying her? Oh, that's disgusting. Men really are wicked."

"If you don't leave in a hurry, I'll throw this ink bottle at you."

But even after she had left I could not get her words out of my mind. I started talking to myself: That's right, there could be such a thing in this world as marriage—and children too. Wonder why I forgot this, or at least pretended to forget it. It was only an illusion, telling myself that marriage was too tiny a happiness to exist with the war approaching the final catastrophe. Actually, for me marriage could probably be some very grave happiness. Grave enough—let me see well, to stir the hairs on my body. . . .

These thoughts also spurred me on to the perverse resolve that I must visit Sonoko at the earliest possible moment. Could this feeling have been love? Was it not instead akin to that strange and passionate form of curiosity a man exhibits toward a fear that dwells in him, to a desire to play with fire?

I had received many invitations to come and visit them, not only from Sonoko, but from her mother and grandmother as well. Not wanting to stay at her aunt's house, I wrote asking Sonoko to reserve a hotel room for me. She inquired at every hotel in N Village, but to no avail. Every hotel had either become a branch office of some government bureau or else been allotted for the detention of foreigners whose countries had now surrendered to the enemy.

A hotel . . . a private room . . . a key . . . the curtained windows . . . gentle resistance . . . mutual agreement to begin hostilities . . . Surely then, surely at that time I would be able to do it. Surely normality would burst into flames within me like a divine revelation. Surely I would be reborn as a different person, as a whole man, just as though suddenly released from the spell of some evil spirit. At that instant I would be able to embrace Sonoko without any hesitation, with all my capacities, and to love her truly. All doubts and misgivings would be utterly wiped away and I would be able to say “I love you" from the bottom of my heart. From that day onward I would be able to walk the street during an air raid and shout "This is my sweetheart" at the top of my voice.

The romantic personality is pervaded with a subtle mistrust of intellectualism, and this fact is often conducive to that immoral action called daydreaming. Contrary to belief, daydreaming is not an intellectual process but rather an escape from intellectualism. . . .

But my dream of the hotel was predestined not to come true. When no room could be found for me at any of the hotels, Sonoko wrote repeatedly urging me to stay with them. I finally agreed. Immediately I was seized with a feeling of relief that resembled exhaustion. No matter how I tried to convince myself that my feeling was one of disappointed resignation, I could not escape the fact that it was nothing more than pure relief.

I left for N Village on June the second. By that time everything at the naval arsenal had become so slipshod that any excuse at all was sufficient to obtain leave.

The train was dirty and empty. Why is it, I wonder, that excepting that one happy instance all my memories of trains during the war are such miserable ones? As I traveled toward N Village, along with every jolt of the train came the torment of a childish and pathetic obsession: I was determined that I would not leave without kissing Sonoko. My determination, however, was different from that feeling filled with pride which comes when a person struggles to achieve his desire in spite of timidity : I felt as though I were going thieving. I felt like a fainthearted apprentice in crime who was being coerced into becoming a thief by the leader of his gang. My conscience was pricked by the happiness of being loved. Or perhaps I was craving some still more decisive unhappiness.

Sonoko introduced me to her aunt. I wanted to make a good impression and was trying as hard as I could. Everyone seemed to be silently asking each other: "Why did Sonoko ever fall in love with such a fellow? What a pale bookworm! What on earth can she find to like about him?"

Having the commendable intention of making everyone think well of me, I did not form an exclusive clique with Sonoko as I had that time on the train. I helped her sisters with their English lessons and listened attentively to the grandmother's stories about her days in Berlin long ago. Oddly enough, it seemed that Sonoko was all the closer to me at such times. In the presence of her grandmother or mother I would often exchange impudent winks with her. At mealtime we would touch feet under the table. She too gradually became absorbed in this play. Once when I was being bored by the grandmother's yarns, Sonoko leaned against a window through which I could see green leaves under the cloudy sky of the rainy season, and from behind her grandmother, so that only I could see, she held up the locket that hung against her breast and swayed it before my eyes.

How white was the bosom that could be seen above the crescent-shaped neckline of her dress! Startlingly white. Looking at her smile as she leaned against the window, I could understand the reference to the "wanton blood" that dyed Juliet's cheeks. There is a kind of immodesty that becomes only a virgin, differing from the immodesty of a mature woman, and intoxicates the beholder, like a gentle wind. It is a sort of something that is in bad taste but is still somehow cute, for example, like wanting to tickle a baby.

At moments such as these my mind was apt to become intoxicated with sudden happiness. For a long time I had not approached the forbidden fruit called happiness, but it was now tempting me with a melancholy persistence. I felt as though Sonoko were an abyss above which I stood poised.

Thus time passed and only two days remained until I was due to return to the naval arsenal. I still had not fulfilled the obligation of the kiss that I had imposed upon myself.All the uplands were wrapped in the drizzle of the rainy season. Borrowing a bicycle, I went to the post office to mail a letter. Sonoko was working in a branch of a government office in order to escape being sent away for volunteer labor, but she had promised to meet me at the post office and play truant for the afternoon. On my way there, I passed an abandoned tennis court; it looked lonesome there inside its rusty wire netting, which was dripping from the misty rain. A German boy riding a bicycle passed close beside me, his blond hair and white hands gleaming wet.

I waited a few minutes inside the old-fashioned post office, and during that time the sky became faintly lighter. The rain had ceased. It was but a momentary lull; the clouds did not break, and the light was only platinum colored.

Sonoko brought her bicycle to a halt beyond the glass doors. She was breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, but there was a smile on her healthy red cheeks. "Now! sic 'em!" something said within me; and indeed I felt exactly as though I were a hunting dog being encouraged to give chase. I seemed to be acting under the pressure of a moral obligation that some demon had imposed on me. I jumped on my bicycle and side by side with Sonoko went riding the length of the main street.

We rode on out of the village and through a grove of trees firs, maples, and silver birch, all dripping bright raindrops. Sonoko's hair was beautiful as it streamed behind her in the wind. Her strong thighs rose and fell smartly as she pedaled. She looked like life itself. At the entrance to a golf course, which was no longer being used, we got off our bicycles and walked along a wet lane bordering the fairway.

I was as tense as a new recruit. Over there is a clump of trees, I told myself. Its shadows are exactly right. It's about fifty paces away. After twenty more paces I'll begin saying something to her to relieve the tension. And during the remaining thirty paces it'll be all right just to keep up some ordinary conversation. The fiftieth pace—we'll put down the bicycle stands and stop to look at the view toward the mountains. Then I'll put my hand on her shoulder. I can even say in a low voice: "Being here like this is something I've dreamed about." Then she'll make some innocent reply. I'll tighten the hand I have on her shoulder, swinging her around toward me. And then the only technique I'll need is just the same as that time with Chieko. . . .

I swore to play my role faithfully. It had nothing to do with either love or desire. . . .

Sonoko was actually in my arms. Breathing quickly, she blushed red as fire and closed her eyes. Her lips were childishly beautiful. But they aroused no desire in me. And yet I kept hoping that something would happen within me at any moment—surely when I actually kiss her, surely then I will discover my normality, my unfeigned love.The machine was rushing onward. No one could stop it.

I covered her lips with mine. A second passed. There is not the slightest sensation of pleasure. Two seconds. It is just the same. Three seconds. . . . I understood everything.

I drew away from her and stood for an instant regarding her with sad eyes. If she had looked into my eyes at that instant she would surely have received a hint as to the indefinable nature of my love for her. Whatever it was, no one could have asserted positively whether such a love was or was not humanly possible. But Sonoko, overwhelmed with bashfulness and innocent joy, kept her eyes cast down, doll-like.

Saying not a word, I took her arm, as though she were an invalid, and we began walking toward the bicycles.

I must flee, I kept telling myself. Without a moment's delay I must flee. I was in a panic. And to keep from arousing suspicion by looking as glum as I felt, I pretended to be even more cheerful than usual. The success of my little ruse placed me in an even more difficult position: during the evening meal my happy looks coincided so well with Sonoko's deep absent-mindedness that everyone drew the obvious conclusion.

Sonoko looked even younger and fresher than usual. There had always been a storybook quality about her face and figure. Now there was an air about her that reminded one exactly how a storybook maiden looks and acts when in love. Seeing her naive maidenly heart exposed before me in this way, I was only too clearly aware that I had had no right to hold such a beautiful spirit in my arms, and no matter how I attempted to continue my pretense at gaiety, my conversation flagged. Noticing this, Sonoko's mother expressed some anxiety concerning my health. Sonoko jumped to the hasty conclusion that she knew exactly what I was thinking, and in order to rally me, she shook her locket in my direction, giving the signal of "Don't worry." In spite of myself, I smiled back at her.

The adults at the table showed a row of faces half-shocked and half-annoyed by our audacious exchange of smiles. Suddenly I realized that the imaginations behind this row of faces were already hard at work calling up pictures of a future for the two of us together, and again I was struck with terror.

Next day we went again to the same spot by the golf course. I noticed a clump of wild flowers that we had trampled underfoot upon departing—yellow camomiles, relics of our yesterday. Today the grass was dry.

Habit is a horrible thing. I repeated the kiss for which I had so repented. But this time it was like the kiss one gives his little sister. And by just this much did it savor all the more of immorality."I wonder when I'll see you next," she said.

"Well," I answered, "if the Americans don't make their landing near the arsenal I can get leave again in about a month." I was hoping—no, it was more than mere hope, it was a superstitious certainty—that during that month the Americans would surely land at S Bay and we would all be sent out as a student army to die to the last man, or else that a monstrous bomb, such as no one had ever imagined, would kill me, no matter where I might be taking shelter. . . . Could this have been a premonition of the atom bomb which was soon to fall?

Then we went toward a slope bathed in sunlight. Two silver birch were shading the slope, looking like gentle-hearted sisters. Sonoko, walking along with downcast eyes, broke the silence:

"When we meet next, what sort of present will you bring me?"

"As for a present that I could bring in these days," I answered in desperation, pretending not to understand her meaning, "about the best I could do would be a defective plane or a muddy shovel."

"I don't mean something that has a shape."

"H'm, what could it be?" The more I feigned ignorance the more I was being driven into a corner. "It's a real riddle, isn't it? I'll puzzle it out at leisure on the train going back."

"Yes, please do." Her tone of voice was a strange combination of self-possession and dignity. "I want you to promise you'll bring the gift."

Sonoko had emphasized the word promise, and there was nothing I could do to defend myself except continue my bluff of cheerfulness:

"Good!" I said patronizingly, "let's lock fingers on it.

We locked our fingers together in that way children have for sealing their promises. The gesture seemed innocent enough, but suddenly I was beset with a fear I had known in childhood. I remembered how children said your finger would rot away if you broke a promise after you'd locked fingers on it. And my fear had an even more real reason: even if she did not say so, it was clear that Sonoko's talk of a present was a request for a marriage proposal. My fear was like that which a child feels all about him at night when he is afraid to go alone down a dark passage.