Spring Snow (15 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
“It’s all very simple: the story is that I did go to school today but came home early. No one here knows anything different. My cold?” Made uneasy by the glass door at his back, he continued in a low, muffled voice. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll be at school tomorrow, and we can talk about it then. Don’t start telephoning just because I wasn’t at school—you do exaggerate!”
When Honda rang off, he was shaking with anger at Kiyoaki’s icy response to his expressions of concern, but there was more to it than his unfriendly tone or his rudeness. Honda had never once put Kiyoaki in the position of having to share a secret.
Once he had recovered himself, however, he began to think: “To telephone just because he wasn’t at school today—that’s not very like me.” And indeed, something more than friendly concern had driven him to telephone so hurriedly. When rushing across the snow-covered schoolyard to the administration office at recess to make the call, he had been driven by a feeling of foreboding that he could not pin down.
Kiyoaki’s desk had been empty all morning. Looking at it, Honda experienced the sense of dread of a man whose worst fears are confirmed. The old desk, with its scars under the new varnish, reflected the direct glare of the snow through the window. It made him think of an upright coffin draped in white, the kind used to bury ancient warriors in a sitting position.
His gloom persisted even after he had got home. Then there was a phone call; it was Iinuma with a message from Kiyoaki: he was sorry about the way he had spoken to Honda. If he sent a rickshaw to Honda’s house tonight, would he please come to visit him? Iinuma’s heavy, sepulchral tone depressed him still further. He curtly refused, saying that they could discuss things when Kiyoaki was well enough to go back to school.
When Iinuma delivered this message, Kiyoaki felt the discomfort of real sickness. Afterwards, he called Iinuma to his room late that night, but instead of ordering him to do something, he surprised Iinuma by unburdening himself of his vexations.
“Satoko causes nothing but trouble. It’s true what they say, isn’t it? A woman will destroy the friendship of men. If Satoko hadn’t behaved so willfully this morning, I wouldn’t have given Honda such cause for anger.”
During the night it stopped snowing, and the next day was clear and pleasant. Prevailing over his mother and the rest of the household, Kiyoaki left for school. He intended to get there before Honda and be the first to say good morning. But as the sun rose in the sky, the dazzling splendor of this winter morning worked a change of mood. He was affected by a deep, insuppressible happiness that transformed him. Later, when Honda came into the classroom and returned his smile with a nonchalant one of his own, Kiyoaki in a sudden about-face abandoned his intention to tell him everything about the day before.
Honda had managed a smile, but no words. After putting his book bag down on his desk, he leaned on the windowsill for a few moments and looked out at the snow. Then after a quick glance at his watch that presumably told him there were still thirty minutes to spare before class, he turned without a word and walked out. Kiyoaki felt impelled to follow him.
A number of small flowerbeds were laid out geometrically along the side of the school, a two-story wooden structure. In their midst was an arbor. Not far beyond the edge of the beds the ground dropped away sharply, and a small path led down the slope to a pond surrounded by a grove of trees. Kiyoaki was reasonably sure that Honda would not go down to the pond, since the melting snow would make walking extremely difficult. Just as he had guessed, Honda stopped in the arbor, brushed the snow off one of the benches and sat down. Kiyoaki, threading his way through the drifts in the flower garden, walked up to him.
“Why are you following me?” asked Honda, squinting into the brilliant light as he looked up.
“I behaved very badly yesterday,” Kiyoaki apologized smoothly.
“Never mind. Your cold was just an excuse, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Copying Honda, Kiyoaki brushed some snow off the bench and then sat down beside him. Because of the glare, the two of them had to squint painfully to look at each other, which greatly reduced the emotional charge in the atmosphere. The pond below was hidden from view, although they only had to stand up to see it through the snow-laden tree branches. They were surrounded by the sound of trickling water, proof that the mounds of snow on the school roof, on the arbor, and on the trees were now melting. The frozen crust that covered the flowerbeds had collapsed here and there, leaving coarse, layered chips of ice that glittered like split granite.
Honda expected Kiyoaki to divulge some portentous secret and yet he didn’t want to admit to himself that he was curious, which almost made him hope that Kiyoaki would say nothing at all. Any confidence that smacked even remotely of condescension would be bitterly distasteful.
It was Honda, then, who spoke first, wishing only to find a subject that had no bearing on the issue between them.
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about personality lately. Take the times we live in, this school, this society—I feel alien to them all. At least I would like to think I did. And the same can be said for you too.”
“Yes, of course,” Kiyoaki replied, his tone as uninterested and aloof as ever, yet with a sweetness that was very much in character.
“But let me ask you this: what happens after a hundred years? Without us having any say in the matter, all our ideas will be lumped together under the heading, ‘The Thought of the Age.’ Take the history of art, for example: it proves my point irrefutably, whether you like it or not. Each period has its own style, and no artist living in a particular era can completely transcend that era’s style, whatever his individual out-look.”
“Does our age have its style too?”
“I think I’d be more inclined to say that the style of the Meiji era is still dying. But how would I know? To live in the midst of an era is to be oblivious to its style. You and I, you see, must be immersed in some style of living or other, but we’re like goldfish swimming around in a bowl without ever noticing it. Take yourself: yours is a world of feeling. You appear different from most people. And you yourself are quite sure that you have never allowed your personality to be compromised. However, there is absolutely no way of proving that. The testimony of your contemporaries has no value whatever. Who knows? It may just be that your world of feeling represents the style of this era in its purest form. But then again, there’s no way of knowing.”
“Well, then, who does decide?”
“Time. Time is what matters. As time goes by, you and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is. And later, when they say that young men in the early Taisho era thought, dressed, talked, in such and such a way, they’ll be talking about you and me. We’ll all be lumped together. You detest that bunch on the
kendo
team, don’t you? You despise them?”
kendo
team, don’t you? You despise them?”
“Yes,” Kiyoaki said, uncomfortably aware that the cold was beginning to penetrate the seat of his trousers, but gazing nevertheless at some green camellia leaves beside the frame of the arbor. Freshly bared by the melting snow, they were gleaming brightly. “Yes, I not only dislike them, I despise them.”
Taking his perfunctory reply in his stride, Honda went on: “All right, then, just imagine this if you can. In a few decades, people will see you and the people you despise as one and the same, a single entity. Your slow-witted friends—with their sentimentality, their vicious narrow-mindedness that condemns as effeminate anyone who’ is not like themselves, their harassment of the underclassmen, their fanatical worship of General Nogi, the frame of mind that lets them draw such incredible satisfaction from sweeping the ground every morning around the sakaki planted by the Meiji Emperor—you with all your sensitivity will be seen cheek-by-jowl with these people when they stop to think about our times in years to come. You see, this is the easiest way to establish the essence of our era—to take the lowest common denominator. Once the churning water has settled to a calm surface, you can see the rainbow oil slick floating there. And that’s the way it will be. After we’re all dead, it will be easy to analyze us and isolate our basic elements for everyone to see. And of course this essence, the thought that is the foundation of our era, will be considered quite benighted a hundred years from now. And you and I have no way of escaping the verdict, no way to prove that we didn’t share the discredited views of our contemporaries. And what standard will history apply to that outlook? What do you think? The thoughts of the geniuses of our age? Of great men? Not at all. Those who come after us and decide what was in our minds will adopt the criterion of the uncritical thought patterns of your friends on the
kendo
team. In other words, they’ll seize upon the most primitive and popular credos of our day. You see every era has always been characterized solely in terms of such idiocies.”
kendo
team. In other words, they’ll seize upon the most primitive and popular credos of our day. You see every era has always been characterized solely in terms of such idiocies.”
Kiyoaki was not sure where this was taking Honda, but as he listened, a germ of thought began to grow in his mind. By now several of their classmates were to be seen at the open windows of their second-floor classroom. The windows of the other rooms were shut, reflecting the glare of the morning sun and the brilliant blue of the sky. A familiar morning scene. When he thought of the events of the previous day, the morning of the snowstorm, he felt as if he had been drawn unwillingly from a dark world of sensuous excitement into the clear, bright courts of reason.
“Well, that’s history,” he said. He was embarrassed by the immaturity of his remarks in contrast to Honda’s, but he was finally making an effort to come to grips with the other’s thought. “In other words, no matter what we think, or hope for, or feel—all that has not the slightest bearing on the course of history? Is that what you mean?”
“That’s it exactly. Europeans believe that a man like Napoleon can impose his will on history. We Japanese think the same of the men like your grandfather and his contemporaries who brought about the Meiji Restoration. But is that really true? Does history ever obey the will of men? Looking at you always makes me ponder that question. You’re not a great man and you’re not a genius either. But, nonetheless, you have one characteristic that sets you quite apart: you have no trace whatever of willpower. And so I am always fascinated to think of you in relation to history.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No, not a bit. I’m thinking in terms of unconscious participation in history. For example, let’s say that I have will-power—”
“You certainly have.”
“Say that I want to alter the course of history. I devote all my energies and resources to this end. I use every ounce of strength I possess to bend history to my will. Say I possess the prestige and authority so necessary to bring this about. None of this would ensure that history proceeded according to my wishes. Then, on the other hand, perhaps a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years later, history might veer abruptly to take a course that was consonant with my vision and ideals—and this without my having had anything whatever to do with it. Perhaps society would assume a form that was the exact replica of my dreams of a hundred or two hundred years before; history, enjoying the new glory that had been my vision, would smile at me with cool condescension and mock my ambition. And people would say: ‘Well, that’s history.’”
“But there is such a thing as the time being ripe for everything, isn’t there?” asked Kiyoaki. “Your vision’s time would finally have come, that’s all. Maybe it wouldn’t even take as long as a hundred years; maybe thirty or fifty. That sort of thing often happens. And perhaps even after your death, your will would serve as an invisible guideline, unknown to anyone, that would help bring about what you wanted to accomplish in your lifetime. Maybe if someone like you had never lived, history would never have taken such a turn, no matter how long it lasted.”
Even though such cold, uncongenial abstractions were a struggle for him, Kiyoaki felt stirred by a certain warmth, an excitement that he knew he had Honda to thank for. He was reluctant to acknowledge satisfaction from such a source. But as he looked around the white-carpeted school grounds, with the bare branches of the trees casting shadows over the snow-covered flowerbeds, and the clear sound of trickling water in his ears, he knew he was happy that Honda had started this discussion. Even though he must have known that he was still engrossed in the memory of the happiness and fascination of the day before, Honda had chosen to ignore it, a decision that seemed appropriate to the purity of the snow around them. At that moment, some of it slid off the roof, baring a few square feet of wet tile, gleaming black.
“And so,” continued Honda, “if society turned out as I wanted it to after a hundred years, you’d call that an accomplishment?”
“It must be.”
“Whose accomplishment?”
“That of your will.”
“You’re joking. I’d be dead. As I just told you, all this came about without my having had anything to do with it.”
“Well, can’t you say that it’s the accomplishment of the will of history then?”
“So history has a will, eh? It’s always dangerous to try to personify history. As far as I’m concerned, history has no will of its own and, furthermore, it hasn’t the least concern for mine either. So if there is no will whatever involved in the process, you can’t talk about accomplishments. And all the socalled accomplishments of history prove it. They’re no sooner achieved than they begin to crumble away. History is a record of destruction. One must always make room for the next ephemeral crystal. For history, to build and to destroy are one and the same thing.
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