Confessions of a Mask (25 page)

But a year passed and we awakened. We discovered that we were living in a nursery no longer but were inhabitants of an adult edifice where any door that opened only part way had to be repaired promptly. Our relationship was just such a door, one that could never be opened beyond a certain point, and it was sure to require repairing sooner or later. Beyond this there was also the fact that adults cannot endure the monotonous games that delight children. The many meetings which we examined one by one were nothing but stereotyped things, each of like size and thickness—a pack of playing cards whose edges matched to a fraction of an inch when stacked one above the other.Moreover, from this relationship I was cunningly extracting an immoral delight, which only I could understand. My immorality was a subtle one, going even a step beyond the ordinary vices of the world, and like an exquisite poison, it was pure corruption. Since immorality was the very basis and first principle of my nature I found an all the more truly fiendish flavor of secret sin in my virtuous behavior, in this blameless relationship with a woman, in my honorable conduct, and in being regarded as a man of lofty principles.

We had stretched out our arms to each other and supported something in our joined hands, but this thing we were holding was like a sort of gas that exists when you believe in its existence and disappears when you doubt. The task of supporting it seems simple at first glance, but actually requires an ultimate refinement of calculation and a consummate skill. I had called an artificial "normality" into being in that space within our hands, and had induced Sonoko to take part in the dangerous operation of trying to sustain an almost chimerical "love" from moment to moment. She seemed to have become party to the plot without realizing it. This lack of realization on her part was probably the only reason her assistance was so effective.

But the time came when even Sonoko became dimly aware of the indomitable force of this nameless danger, this danger that differed completely from the- usual roughhewn dangers of the world in having a precise, measurable density.

One day in late summer I met Sonoko, who had just returned from a mountain resort, at a restaurant called the Coq d'Or. As soon as we met I told her about my having resigned from the civil service.

"What'll you do now?"

"Oh, let the future take care of itself."

"Well, it is a surprise." She did not have anything else to say about the matter. This sort of etiquette of noninterference was already well established between us.

Sonoko had been tanned by the mountain sun, and her skin had lost its radiant whiteness there above her breasts. The large pearl in her ring had become gloomily clouded from the heat. The sound of her high voice, always a blend of sadness and indolence, was most appropriate to the season.

For a time we again carried on a meaningless, endlessly revolving, insincere conversation. At times it seemed nothing but a great skidding through empty air. It gave
us
a feeling that we were overhearing a conversation being carried on by two strangers. It was a feeling like that felt at the borderline between sleeping and waking, when one's impatient efforts to go back to sleep without awakening from a happy dream only make the recapture of the dream all the more impossible. I discovered how our hearts, as though infected with some malignant virus, were being eaten away by the uneasy awakening that was brazenly intruding upon our dream, by the futile pleasure of our dream seen at the threshold of consciousness. As though at a signal previously agreed upon, the disease had attacked both our hearts almost simultaneously. We reacted with a show of gaiety. As though each of us feared what the other might say at any moment, we capped joke upon joke.

Even though her sun tan introduced a tiny note of discord, there beneath her fashionable upswept coiffure the same tranquillity as always was overflowing from her softly moist eyes, her youthful eyebrows, her slightly heavyish lips. Whenever other women passed our table they always noticed Sonoko. A waiter was moving about the room, carrying a silver tray on which iced desserts were arranged on a large block of ice carved in the shape of a swan. Sonoko was softly jingling the clasp of her plastic handbag, and a ring glittered on her finger.

"Are you bored with this?" I asked.

"Don't say that."

Her tone of voice sounded full of a weariness that was somehow strange. It could even have been called charming. She had turned her head and was looking out the window at the summer street. When she spoke again her words came slowly:

"Sometimes I become confused. I wonder why we're meeting like this. And yet in the end I always meet you again."

"Probably because at least it's not a meaningless minus. Even if it certainly is a meaningless plus."

"But I have something called a husband, remember. Even if the plus is meaningless, there oughtn't to be room for any plus at all.""It's tiresome arithmetic, isn't it?"

I perceived that Sonoko had finally arrived at the doorway to doubt. She had begun to feel that the door that opened only halfway could not be left as it was. Perhaps by now this sort of sensitivity to disorder had come to absorb the largest part of the feelings Sonoko and I shared in common. I too was still far from the age when one is willing to accept things the way they are.

And yet it seemed as though I had suddenly been confronted with clear proof that my nameless fear had infected Sonoko unawares and, moreover, that the sole possession we shared in common was the sign of fear. Sonoko again gave voice to this fear. I tried not to listen. But my mouth made flippant replies.

"If we go on like this," she said, "what do you think will happen? Won't we be driven into some corner we can't escape from?"

"I think that I respect you and that there's nothing to be ashamed of before anybody. Why is it wrong for two friends to meet?"

"That's the way it's been up to now. It's been just like you say. I think you've acted very honorably. But I don't know about the future. Even though we don't do the slightest thing to be ashamed of, I still somehow have terrible dreams. Then I feel as though God is punishing me for future sins."

The solid sound of this word future made me shudder. "If we keep on like this," she continued, "I'm afraid that one day something will happen that will hurt us both. And after we're hurt won't it be too late? Because isn't what we're doing the same as playing with fire?”“What kind of thing do you mean when you say playing with fire?"

"Oh, all sorts of things."

"But you can't regard what we're doing as playing with fire. It's just like playing with water."

She did not smile. During the occasional pauses in our conversation she had been pressing her lips together fiercely.

"Lately I've begun to think I'm an awful woman. I can't think of myself as anything but a bad woman with a filthy soul. Even in my dreams I oughtn't think about anyone except my husband. I've made up my mind to be baptized this fall."

I guessed that in this idle sort of confession, due partly to an intoxication with the sound of her own words, Sonoko was approaching the feminine paradox of meaning the opposite of what she said and was unconsciously wanting to say what must not be said. As for me, I had the right neither to rejoice at this nor to lament it. In the first place, how could I, who felt not the slightest jealousy of her husband, have exercised these rights either by claiming or refusing them? I was silent. The sight of my own hands, white and frail at the height of summer, filled me with despair.

"And right now?" I said at last.

"Now?" She lowered her eyes.

"Yes, who is it you're thinking about right now?"

". . . My husband.""Then it's not necessary to be baptized, is it?"

"Oh, it is! . . . I'm afraid. I still feel as though I am shaking violently."

"So then, right now?"

"Now?"

Sonoko lifted her grave eyes as though unconsciously asking someone for help. In the pupils of her eyes I discovered a beauty I had never seen before. They were deep, unblinking, fatalistic pupils, like fountains constantly singing with an outpouring of emotions. I was at a loss for words, as was always the case when she turned those eyes upon me. Suddenly I reached to the ashtray across the table and ground out my half-smoked cigarette. As I did so the slender vase in the center of the table upset, soaking the table with water.

A waiter came and cleaned up the mess. The sight of the water-wrinkled tablecloth being wiped gave us a wretched feeling, providing us with an excuse for leaving a little earlier.

The summer streets were annoyingly crowded. Healthy looking lovers were passing by, their chests thrown out, their arms bare. I felt that every one of them was scorning me. The scorn was like the strong summer sunlight burning into me.

Thirty minutes remained before time for us to part. I cannot say whether it was precisely because of the pain of parting, but a gloomy, nervous irritation resembling a sort of passion had given rise to a feeling of wanting to daub that half-hour over with thick colors like oil paints. I halted in front of a dance hall where a loud-speaker was hurling the wild strains of a rhumba into the street. I had suddenly been reminded of a line from a poem I had read long before:

. . . But always it was a dance without an end. . . .

I had forgotten the rest. It must be from a poem by Andre Salmon. . . .

Although such a place was outside her experience, Sonoko nodded assent and accompanied me into the dance hall for thirty minutes of dancing.

The hall was crowded with office workers who came every day for an hour or two of dancing, extending their lunch hours to suit their own pleasure. A sultry heat struck us full in the face. Abetted by a defective ventilation system and heavy drapes that shut out the open air, the stifling fever-heat that stagnated within the place was raising a milky fog of dust-motes against the reflecting lights. One did not need to be told what kind of people these were who were dancing there, not noticing the heat, effusing smells of sweat and bad perfume and cheap pomade. I was sorry I had brought Sonoko.

But it was too late to turn back now. Without any heart for it, we pushed through the dancing crowd. Even the infrequent electric fans did not deliver the slightest breeze. Young fellows were dancing with the hostesses, cheek pressed against sweaty cheek. The sides of the girls' noses had become murky, and their sweat-caked face powder looked like acne upon their skin. The backs of their dresses looked even more soiled and sodden than the tablecloth had looked a little while before.

Whether one danced or not, sweat spread over the body. Sonoko was taking short breaths as though suffocating.

Looking for a breath of fresh air, we passed through an archway entwined with artificial, out-of-season flowers, went out into the courtyard, and seated ourselves on two of the crude chairs. Here there was fresh air, true enough, but the concrete floor was reflecting heat intense enough to reach even to the chairs in the shade.

Our mouths were sticky with the syrupy sweetness of Coca-Cola. It seemed that Sonoko too had been silenced by the same agony of disdain I was feeling about everything. After a time I could no longer endure this silence and began looking around us.

There was a fat girl leaning lazily against the wall, fanning her bosom with her handkerchief. The swing band was playing a quickstep that seemed overpowering. There in the courtyard were some potted evergreens that rose askew from the parched earth in which they were confined. All the chairs in the shade of the awning were taken, no one wishing to brave the sunlight.

There was a single group, however, sitting there full in the sunshine, chatting together as though they were completely alone. It was made up of two girls and two young men. One of the girls was smoking a cigarette in an affected way that showed she was unaccustomed to smoking, giving a little choking cough after each puff. Both of the girls were wearing peculiar dresses that seemed to have been made from summer-kimono material. The dresses were sleeveless, revealing arms as red as those of fishwives, marked here and there with insect bites. Every time the boys made a coarse joke the girls would look at each other and laugh simperingly. The fierce summer sun that beat down on their heads did not seem to bother them particularly.

One of the boys was wearing an aloha shirt, a garment then much in vogue among the gangs of young toughs in the city. His face was pale and crafty looking, but he had powerful arms. A lewd smile was forever flickering about his lips, appearing and disappearing. He would make the girls laugh by poking their breasts with a finger.

Then my attention was drawn to the other boy. He was a youth of twenty-one or -two, with coarse but regular and swarthy features. He had taken off his shirt and stood there half naked, rewinding a belly-band about his middle. The coarse cotton material was soaked with sweat and had become a light-gray color. He seemed to be intentionally dawdling over his task of winding and was constantly joining in the talk and laughter of his companions. His naked chest showed bulging muscles, fully developed and tensely knit; a deep cleft ran down between the solid muscles of his chest toward his abdomen. The thick, fetter-like sinews of his flesh narrowed down from different directions to the sides of his chest, where they interlocked in tight coils. The hot mass of his smooth torso was being severely and tightly imprisoned by each succeeding turn of the soiled cotton belly-band. His bare, sun-tanned shoulders gleamed as 'though covered with oil. And black tufts stuck out from the cracks of his armpits, catching the sunlight, curling and glittering with glints of gold.