Mandarins (8 page)

“When I heard this, I saw, amidst the jolly exchange of cups, the pensive figure of Miura flicker hauntingly before my eyes, and found it impossible to join, even out of a sense of duty, in all the boisterous laughter. Fortunately, the good doctor quickly became aware of my subdued spirits and adroitly steered the raconteur in another direction, completely away from the topic of Madame Narayama. Now I could breathe again and continue to converse without marring the conviviality.

“Yet that evening had been made to bring me naught but bad luck. Disheartened by the gossip concerning the women's rights advocate, I had stood up with my two companions to leave and was standing in front of the Ikuine, about to step into a rickshaw, when another, this one designed for two passengers, suddenly and forcefully swept by, its rain-covered canopy glistening. I had one foot on the running board when, almost exactly at that moment, I saw the oilcloth hood of the other rickshaw raised and someone bounding out in the direction of the entrance. Glimpsing the figure, I threw myself into the safety of the canopy. As the puller lifted the shafts, I felt strangely agitated and involuntarily muttered: “
That
one!” It could be no other than the dark-complexioned, stripe-suited cousin of Miura's wife. Thus, as I sped along the illuminated boulevard of Hirok
ō
ji, the rain streaming from the canopy, I was pursued by dread anxiety at the thought of who might have been his fellow passenger. Might it have been Madame Narayama—or Madame Katsumi, a rose in her hair?

“Even as I agonized over the irresolvable uncertainty of my suspicions, I was fearful of solution—and angered at my own cowardice in having hurriedly jumped into the rickshaw to conceal my identity. To this day, the question of which woman it had been remains for me an enigma.”

Viscount Honda drew out a large handkerchief and, discreetly blowing his nose, looked round again at the contents of the display cases, now bathed in evening light, before quietly resuming his story.

“Of course, I earnestly thought all these matters, particularly what I had heard from Chinchikurin-shujin, to be of extreme interest to Miura, and so the next day immediately sent a letter to him, offering him a date for our fishing jaunt. He immediately replied, saying that as the day would be the sixteenth day in the lunar calendar, we might instead go out in a boat on the river at twilight and view the moon. I had, needless to say, no particularly strong desire to go fishing and so readily consented to his proposal. On the appointed day, we met at the boathouse in Yanagibashi and, before the moon was up, rowed out toward the Great River in an open, flat-bottomed barque.

“Even in those days, the view of the water in the evening may not have been worthy of comparison with the elegance of the more distant past, but something of the beauty that one sees in old woodblock prints remained. When on that evening too we rowed downstream past Manpachi and entered the Great River, we could see the parapet of Ry
ō
goku Bridge, arching above the waves that flickered in the faint mid-autumn twilight and against the sky, as though an immense black Chinese ink stroke had been brushed across it. The silhouettes of the traffic, horses and carriages soon faded into the vaporous mist, and now all that could be seen were the dots of reddish light from the passengers' lanterns, rapidly passing to and fro in the darkness like small winter cherries.

“‘Well, what do you think of it?' asked Miura.

“‘I think one would look in vain for such a view anywhere in Europe,' I replied.

“‘Ah, then you apparently see no harm in enjoying a bit of the discredited past when it comes to scenery.'

“‘Yes, when it comes to scenery, I concede.'

“‘I must say that recently I have grown quite weary of all that is called modern enlightenment.'

“‘If you're not careful, you too will be stung by M
é
rim
é
e's acerbic tongue. You must remember how that sneering rogue allegedly said to Dumas or someone, standing next to him, when a delegate from the shogunate was walking down the boulevard in Paris: “Tell me, who could have bound the Japanese to such an absurdly long sword?” '

“‘Yes, but I prefer the story of H
é
Rú Zh
ā
ng, who, during his stay in Japan as a diplomat, expressed admiration for the sleepwear he saw in a Yokohama hotel: “Here in this country are relics of the Xia and Zhou dynasties!” No, there is nothing that one may ridicule simply on the grounds that it is a thing of the past.'

“Surprised at the suddenly deepening of the darkness as the tide rose, I glanced round and saw that having greatly quickened our pace, we were now south of Ry
ō
goku Bridge, approaching
Shubi-no-matsu
, its trunk and branches appearing in the night to be of an even deeper ebony.

“Eager to broach the subject of Madame Katsumi, I quickly pursued Miura's comment:

“‘If you yourself are so attached to older ways, what will you do about your modern wife?' I asked, testing the waters.

“For several moments, as though he had not heard my question, Miura gazed at the still moonless sky above Otakegura. Finally, he
fixed his eyes on me and said softly but firmly: ‘I shall do nothing. As of about a week ago, we are divorced.'

“Quite taken aback by this unexpected reply, I gripped the gunwales of the boat.

“‘So you knew?' I asked in a strained voice.

“Miura continued with the same air of calm as before:

“‘So you knew it all too?' he asked, throwing the question back at me, as though by way of confirmation.

“‘Perhaps not everything. I did hear about her ties to Madame Narayama.'

“‘And about my wife and her cousin?'

“‘I had some glimmerings of it . . .'

“‘Then surely I need say no more.'

“‘But, but . . . When did
you
become aware of the relationship?'

“‘Between my wife and her cousin? About three months after our marriage—just before commissioning her portrait with the painter Gozeta H
ō
bai.'

“This response too, as you can well imagine, was quite astonishing.

“‘But why, until now, have you tacitly accepted the outrage of it all?'

“‘I did not accept it tacitly—but rather quite openly.'

“For the third time, I was dumbfounded. For several moments I merely stared at him in stupefaction.

“‘Mind you,' he said without the slightest trace of insistence, ‘the relationship of which I approved between my wife and her cousin was the one that I had painted in my imagination, not the one that presently exists. You will remember that I insisted on a marriage based on
amour
. This was not to satisfy my own egotism; it was rather the consequence of my having placed love above all things. Thus, when
once we were married I came to understand that the bonds of affection between us were less than genuine, I regretted my precipitancy and at the same time felt pity for her, now that she was obliged to live with me. As you know, I have never been in the best of health. Moreover, despite my efforts to love my wife, she has been unable to love me—or perhaps it may be that my notion of
amour
was from the beginning such a paltry thing that it could never have inspired passion in her. If therefore there was such true affection between my wife and her cousin, who have known one another since childhood, I would gallantly sacrifice myself to their happiness. Not to do so would be, in effect, to renounce the supremacy of
amour
. It was for that eventuality that, in fact, I intended the portrait of my wife—to hang in my study as a replacement for her.'

“As he spoke, Miura again looked to the sky above the opposite bank. It was as though a black curtain had fallen from the sky, enveloping the towering chinquapins of the Matsuura estate in gloom, with no sign of a cloud from out of which the moon might appear. I lit a cigarette and urged him to continue: ‘And then?'

“‘I learned soon thereafter that the love between my wife and her cousin was something impure. To put it bluntly, I discovered that he also had a liaison with Madame Narayama. I am sure that you will not have any particular desire to know how I acquired such knowledge, and I myself do not wish to elaborate. Suffice it to say that it was by pure chance that I found them together.'

“I let the ashes of my cigarette fall over the gunwale as I vividly recalled the memory of the rainy evening at the Ikuine. Miura immediately continued: ‘That was the first blow. Having largely lost whatever grounds I had for approving of their relationship, I naturally found it impossible to maintain my previous air of benignity. That must have been about the time you returned from Korea. I was daily tormented
by the question of how to separate my wife from her cousin. However false might be his love for her, there was no doubt in my mind that her feelings for him were sincere . . . Such was what I believed. At the same time, for the sake of her happiness as well, I thought it necessary for me to act as a negotiator. But when they—or at least she—perceived my state of mind, she seemed to have reasoned that I had just become aware of their relationship and was now overcome with jealousy. She thus began to keep a wary and hostile watch over me; perhaps she even exercised the same wariness toward you.'

“‘Now that you say that,' I replied, ‘she was standing outside your study, listening to our conversation.'

“‘Yes,' he remarked in return, ‘she is the sort of woman who is quite capable of that.' For several moments we remained silent, staring at the dark surface of the water. Our boat had already passed under what was then Oumayabashi, leaving a faint wake in the night water as we edged toward tree-lined Komakata.

“Miura spoke in a subdued voice: ‘Even then I did not doubt my wife's sincerity. Thus, the knowledge that she did not grasp my true feelings or rather that I had only earned her hatred caused me all the more anguish. From the day I met you at Shinbashi until today, I have constantly been in the throes of that distress. But then about a week ago, a maid or one of the other servants carelessly allowed a letter that should have gone to my wife to find its way to my desk. I immediately thought of her cousin . . . Well, I eventually opened the letter and found to my astonishment that it was a love missive from yet another man. In a word, her love for her cousin was no less impure. Needless to say, this second blow was of vastly more terrible intensity than the first. All my ideals had been ground to dust. At the same time, I was sadly comforted by the abrupt lessening of responsibility.'

“Miura ceased speaking, and now from above the rows of grain
storehouses along the opposite bank we saw just beginning to rise the immense, eerily red globe of the autumn moon. When just a few minutes ago I saw Yoshitoshi's
ukiyo
é
of Kikugor
ō
in Western dress and was reminded of Miura, it was particularly because that red moon was so similar to the lantern moon mounted on the stage.

“Miura, with his thin, pale face and his long hair parted in the middle, gazed at the rising of the moon and then suddenly sighed, remarking sadly even as he smiled: ‘Once, some time ago, you dismissed as a childish dream the cause of the Jinp
Å«
ren rebels and their willingness to fight to the death. Well, perhaps in your eyes my married life too . . .'

“‘Indeed, perhaps so. But then it may also well be that in one hundred years our goal of achieving modern enlightenment will likewise seem no less a childish dream.' ”

Just as the viscount had finished speaking these words, an attendant appeared to inform us that the museum was about to close. We stood up slowly and, giving one last look at the
ukiyo
é
and copperplate prints all around us, silently walked out of the darkened display hall, quite as though we ourselves had emerged from those glass cases as phantoms from the past.

From the time she began her studies, it was well known that Nobuko was a gifted young writer. There was scarcely anyone who doubted that sooner or later she would make her way into the literary world. It was even widely reported that while yet a student at her women's university she had written more than three hundred pages of an autobiographical novel. Upon graduation, however, she found herself in circumstances sufficiently strained as to leave no room for idle self-indulgence: with her widowed mother resolved not to remarry and her sister, Teruko, still attending a girls' school, she was obliged, in conformity to social custom, to set aside her creative endeavors and seek a marriage partner.

Their cousin Shunkichi, enrolled in the literature department of his own university, appeared to have likewise set his sights on a writer's career. Nobuko had long been on friendly terms with him, and now
their common interest in literary topics made for even closer ties. He did not, however, share her unbridled enthusiasm for Tolstoyism, then very much in vogue. He was forever making ironic comments
à la française
or speaking in aphorisms. His sardonic manner sometimes angered the intensely earnest Nobuko, but despite herself she was unable to be entirely contemptuous of his manner. Thus, even while still in university, they would not infrequently attend exhibits and concerts together, usually in the company of Teruko.