Confessions of a Mask (3 page)

But my work was still far from complete. My every point, down to the very tips of my fingernails, had to be made worthy of the creation of mystery. I stuck a hand mirror in my sash and powdered my face lightly. Then I armed myself with a silver-colored flashlight, an old-fashioned fountain pen of chased metal, and whatever else struck my eye.

I assumed a solemn air and, dressed like this, rushed into my grandmother's sitting-room. Unable to suppress my frantic laughter and delight, I ran about the room crying:

"I'm Tenkatsu! Me, I'm Tenkatsu!"

My grandmother was there sick abed, and also my mother and a visitor and the maid assigned to the sickroom. But not a single person was visible to my eyes. My frenzy was focused upon the consciousness that, through my impersonation, Tenkatsu was being revealed to many eyes. In short, I could see nothing but myself.

And then I chanced to catch sight of my mother's face. She had turned slightly pale and was simply sitting there as though absent-minded. Our glances met; she lowered her eyes.I understood. Tears blurred my eyes.

What was it I understood at that moment, or was on the verge of understanding?
Did the motif of later years—that of "remorse as prelude to sin"—show here the first hint of its beginning?
Or was the moment teaching me how grotesque my isolation would appear to the eyes of love, and at the same time was I learning, from the reverse side of the lesson, my own incapacity for accepting love?
. . .

The maid grabbed me and took me to another room. In an instant, just as though I were a chicken for plucking, she had me stripped of my outrageous masquerade.

My passion for such dressing-up was aggravated when I began going to movies. It continued markedly until I was about nine.

Once I went with our student houseboy to see a film version of the operetta
Fra Diavolo.
The character playing Diavolo wore an unforgettable court costume with cascades of lace at the wrists. When I said how much I should like to dress like that and wear such a wig, the student laughed derisively. And yet I knew that in the servant quarters he often amused the maids with his imitations of the Kabuki character Princess Yaegaki.

After Tenkatsu there came Cleopatra to fascinate me. Once on a snowy day toward the end of December a friendly doctor, yielding to my entreaties, took me to see a movie about her. As it was the end of the year, the
audience was small. The doctor put his feet up on the railing and fell asleep. All alone I gazed avidly, completely enchanted: The Queen of Egypt making her entry into Rome, borne aloft on an ancient and curiously wrought litter carried on the shoulders of a multitude of slaves. Melancholy eyes, the lids thickly stained with eye-shadow. Her other-worldly apparel. And then, later, her half-naked, amber-colored body corning into view from out the Persian rug. . . .

This time, already taking thorough delight in misconduct, I eluded the eyes of my grandmother and parents and, with my younger sister and brother as accomplices, devoted myself to dressing up as Cleopatra. What was I hoping for from this feminine attire? It was not until much later that I discovered hopes the same as mine in Heliogabalus, emperor of Rome in its period of decay, that destroyer of Rome's ancient gods,
that decadent, bestial monarch.

The night-soil man, the Maid of Orleans, and the soldiers' sweaty odor formed one sort of preamble to my life. Tenkatsu and Cleopatra were a second. There is yet a third that should be related.

Although as a child I read every fairy story I could lay my hands on, I never liked the princesses. I was fond only of the princes. I was all the fonder of princes murdered or princes fated for death. I was completely in love with any youth who was killed.But I did not yet understand why, from among Andersen's many fairy tales, only his "Rose-Elf" threw deep shadows over my heart, only that beautiful youth who, while kissing the rose given him as a token by his sweetheart, was stabbed to death and decapitated by a villain with a big knife. I did not yet understand why, out of Wilde's numerous fairy tales, it was only the corpse of the young fisherman in "The Fisherman and His Soul," washed up on the shore clasping a mermaid to his breast, that captivated me.

Naturally I was also fond enough of other childlike things. There was Andersen's "The Nightingale," which I liked well, and I delighted in many childish comic books. But my heart's leaning toward Death and Night and Blood would not be denied.

Visions of "princes slain" pursued me tenaciously. Who could have explained for me why I was so delighted with fancies in which those body-revealing tights worn by the princes were associated with their cruel deaths?
There is a Hungarian fairy tale that I particularly remember in this connection. For a long time my heart was captivated by an extremely realistic illustration to this story.

Printed in primary colors, the illustration showed the
prince dressed in black tights and a rose-colored tunic with spun-gold embroidery on the breast. A dark-blue cape that flashed a scarlet lining was flung about his shoulders, and around his waist there was a green and
clear-cut agony, not fuzzy remorse; it was like being forced to look down from a window at a reflection of fierce summer sunlight that is dividing the street into a glaring contrast of sun and shadow.

One cloudy afternoon during the rainy season I happened to be walking through Azabu on an errand. This was a section of the city I had seldom been in. Suddenly, from behind me, someone called my name. It was Sonoko. Upon looking around and catching sight of her I was not as surprised as I had been that time on the streetcar when I had mistaken another girl for her. To me this chance encounter seemed perfectly natural, as though I had foreseen it all along. I felt as though I had known everything about this instant since long before.

She was wearing a simple dress, with a flower pattern like that of chic wallpaper, and no ornament other than some lace at the V of the neck; there was nothing about her to proclaim that she was now a married woman. She was probably returning from drawing rations as she was carrying a bucket and was also followed by an old servant woman carrying another bucket. She sent the woman on home and walked along talking with me.

"You've become a little thin, haven't you?"

"Ah, thanks to studying for the exams."

"So? Please take care of your health."

Then we fell silent for a time. Soft sunlight began
gold belt. He was equipped with a helmet of green gold, a bright-red sword, and a quiver of green leather. His left hand, gloved in white leather, grasped a bow; his right hand rested upon the branch of one of the ancient trees of the forest; and with a grave, commanding countenance he was looking down the terrifying throat of the raging dragon that was about to set upon him. On his face was the resolve of death. If this prince had been destined to be a conqueror in his engagement with the dragon, how faint would have been his fascination for me. But fortunately the prince was destined to die.

To my regret, however, his fate of death was not perfect. In order to rescue his sister and also to marry a beautiful princess, seven times did this prince endure the ordeal of death and, thanks to the magical powers of a diamond that he held in his mouth, seven times did he rise from death, finally living happily ever after.

The illustration showed a scene just prior to death number one—being devoured by a dragon. After that he was "caught by a great spider and, after his body had been shot full of poison, was eaten ravenously." Again, he was drowned, roasted in a fire, stung by hornets and bitten by snakes, flung bodily into a pit completely lined with there is no saying how many great knives planted with their points up, and crushed to death by countless boulders that came falling "like a torrential rain."

His death by being devoured by the dragon was described in particular detail:"Without a moment's delay, the dragon chewed the prince greedily into bits. It was almost more than he could stand, but the prince summoned all his courage and bore the torture steadfastly until he was finally chewed completely into shreds. Then, in a flash, he
suddenly was put back together again and came springing nimbly right out of the dragon's mouth. There was not a single scratch anywhere on his body. The dragon
sank to the ground and died on the spot."

I read this passage hundreds of times. But the
sentence
"There was not a single scratch anywhere on
his body" seemed to me to be a defect that could not go unchallenged. Reading this, I felt the author had both betrayed me and committed a grave error.

Before long I chanced upon a discovery. This was to read the passage while hiding under my hand:
suddenly was put back together again and came springing nimbly right out of the dragon's mouth. There was not a single scratch anywhere on his body. The dragon.
Thereupon the story became ideal:

"Without a moment's delay, the dragon chewed the prince greedily into bits. It was almost more than he could stand, but the prince summoned all his courage and bore the torture steadfastly until he was finally chewed completely into shreds. Then, in a flash, he sank to the ground and died on the spot."

An adult would certainly have seen the absurdity in such a method of cutting. And even that young and arrogant censor discerned the patent contradiction between "being chewed completely into shreds" and "sinking to the ground," but he was easily infatuated with his own fancies and found it still impossible to discard either phrase.

On the other hand, I delighted in imagining situations in which I myself was dying in battle or being murdered. And yet I had an abnormally strong fear of death. One day I would bully a maid to tears, and the next morning I would see her serving breakfast with a cheerfully smiling face, as though nothing had happened. Then I would read all manner of evil meanings into her smiles. I could not believe them to be other than the diabolical smiles that come from being fully confident of victory. I was sure she was plotting to poison me out of revenge. Waves of fear billowed up in my breast. I was positive the poison had been put in my bowl of broth, and I would not have touched it for all the world. I ended many such meals by jumping up from the table and staring hard at the maid, as though to say "So there!" It seemed to me that the woman was so dismayed at this thwarting of her plans for poisoning me that she could not rise, but was only staring from across the table at the broth, now become completely cold, with some dust floating on its surface, and telling herself I'd left too much for the poison to be effective.

Out of concern for my frail health and also to keep me from learning bad things, my grandmother had forbidden me to play with the neighborhood boys, and my only playmates, excepting maids and nurses, were three girls whom my grandmother had selected from the girls of the neighborhood. The slightest noise affected my grandmother's neuralgia—the violent opening or closing of a door, a toy bugle, wrestling, or any conspicuous sound or vibration whatsoever—and our playing had to be quieter than is usual even among girls. Rather than this I preferred by far to be by myself reading a book, playing with my building blocks, indulging in my willful fancies, or drawing pictures. When my sister and brother were born, they were not given over into my grandmother's hands as I had been, and my father saw to it that they were reared with a freedom befitting children. And yet I did not greatly envy them their liberty and rowdiness.

But things were different when I went visiting at the homes of my cousins. Then even I was called upon to be a boy, a male. An incident which should be related occurred in the early spring of my seventh year, shortly before I entered primary school, during a visit to the home of a certain cousin whom I shall call Sugiko. Upon our arrival there—my grandmother had accompanied me—my great-aunt had praised me to the skies —"How he's grown! How big he's become!"—and my grandmother had been so taken in by this flattery that she had granted a special dispensation regarding the meals I took there. Until then she had been so frightened by the frequent attacks of autointoxication I have already mentioned that she had forbidden me to eat all "blue-skinned" fish. My diet had been carefully limited: of fish, I was allowed only such white-flesh kinds as halibut, turbot, or red snapper; of potatoes, only those mashed and strained through a colander; of sweets, all bean-jams were forbidden and there were only light biscuits, wafers, and other such dry confections; and of fruits, only apples cut in thin slices, or small portions of mandarin oranges. Hence it was on this visit that I ate my first blue-skinned fish—a yellowtail—which I devoured with immense satisfaction. Its delicate flavor signified for me that I had finally been accorded the first of my adult rights, but at the same time it left a rather bitter tang of uneasiness upon the tip of my tongue—uneasiness at becoming an adult—which still recalls me to a feeling of discomfort whenever I taste that flavor.