Spring Snow (22 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
Iinuma thought for a while before answering.
“Well, no, sir. I haven’t heard anything.” But his awkward pause clung to Kiyoaki’s nerves like a vine.
“You’re lying. You do know something.”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
Finally, however, under the pressure of Kiyoaki’s questions, Iinuma poured out what he had been determined not to reveal. Being able to sense a man’s mood is one thing, but to gauge his probable reaction is quite another. He did not realize that his words would strike Kiyoaki with the force of an axe.
“This is what Miné told me, sir. I’m the only one she told, and I promised faithfully not to breathe a word of it to anyone else. But since it concerns the young master, I think it’s best that I tell it. It was on the day of the New Year’s family party, when Miss Ayakura was here at the house. It’s the day your father the Marquis is kind enough to invite all your relatives’ children here to entertain them, talk to them and listen to their problems, as you know. And so it came about that your father the Marquis asked Miss Ayakura in a joking way if she didn’t have any problems she wanted to discuss with him.
“She answered, also apparently as a joke: ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have a very serious matter I want to discuss with you, Marquis Matsugae. I wonder if I might inquire about your views on education.’
“At this point I must tell you, sir, that this entire incident was related to Miné by the Marquis as—well, a so-called bedtime story”—these two words cost Iinuma inexpressible pain—“and so he told it to her in detail, like a bedtime story, laughing a great deal as he did so. And so she told it to me just as he said it happened. At any rate, Miss Ayakura had caught the interest of your father the Marquis, and he asked: ‘My views on education, you say?’
“And then Miss Ayakura said: ‘Well, according to what I’ve heard from Kiyo, his father seems to be a great advocate of the empirical approach. He told me that you treated him to a guided tour of the world of geishas so that he could learn how best to conduct himself there. And Kiyo seems to be very happy with the results, feeling that he’s now quite a man. But really, Marquis Matsugae, is it true that you champion the empirical method even at the expense of morality?’
“I understand that the lady asked this awkward question with her usual effortless ease. He himself burst out laughing and then answered: ‘What a difficult question! That’s just the sort of thing these moral reform groups ask in their petitions to the Diet. Well, if what Kiyoaki said were true, I could muster something in my defense. But the truth is this: Kiyo himself rejected just that very educational opportunity. As you know, he’s a late bloomer—he’s so fastidious, it’s hard to believe he’s my son. Certainly I asked him to come with me, but I hardly had time to open my mouth before he bristled and stalked off in a high dudgeon. But how amusing! Even though that’s what actually happened, he’s made up a story so as to have something to boast to you about. However, I’m pained to think that I’ve raised a boy who would mention the red-light district to an aristocrat, no matter how close friends they are. I’ll call him in now and let him know how proud I am of his behavior. It might persuade him to go out and have a fling at a geisha house.’
“But Miss Ayakura pleaded with your father the Marquis and finally convinced him to give up such a rash idea. And she also made him promise to forget what she had told him. And so he refrained from mentioning it to anyone else out of respect for his word. But he finally told Miné, laughing all the time and obviously very amused by the whole thing. But he gave her a strict warning not to say a word to anyone. Miné is a woman, of course, and so she couldn’t keep it to herself; she finally told just me. I realized that the young master’s honor was involved, so I threatened her in no uncertain terms, saying that if this story went any further, I would break off with her at once. She was so shaken by the way I said this that I don’t think there’s any danger of the tale spreading.”
As he listened to this account, Kiyoaki became even paler. He was like a man who has been groping wildly in thick fog, striking his head on one obstacle after another, until the fog suddenly lifts about him to reveal a line of white marble columns. The amorphous worry that had enveloped him now assumed a shape that was perfectly clear.
Despite her denial, Satoko had read his letter after all. It had of course dismayed her somewhat, but when she found out at the New Year’s family party from the Marquis himself that it was a lie, she became ecstatic and exhilarated over her “happiest New Year.” Now he understood why she had opened her heart to him so passionately and so suddenly at the stable that day. And finally, her confidence at its highest, she had thus been sufficiently emboldened to invite him to go for that ride through the February snow.
This revelation did not explain Satoko’s tears today nor the severe tongue-lashing she had given him. But it was abundantly clear to him that she was a liar from first to last, that she’d been laughing at him secretly from beginning to end. No matter how one might try to defend her, it was undeniable that she had taken a sadistic pleasure in his discomfiture.
“On the one hand,” he thought bitterly, “she accuses me of behaving like a child and on the other, how obvious it is that she has been behaving as though she wants me to remain that way forever. How shrewd she is! She gives the appearance of being a woman who needs to be dependent at the very moment when she’s up to one of her unscrupulous tricks. She pretended to worship me, but she was really baby-nursing.”
Overcome as he was by resentment, he did not pause to reflect that it was his letter that had begun everything, that it was his lie that had initiated the train of events. All he could see was that his every misfortune sprang from Satoko’s treachery.
She had wounded his pride at a stage in his life—the painful transition between boyhood and manhood—when nothing was more precious to him. Though the affair itself would seem trifling to an adult—as his father’s laughter had so clearly demonstrated—it was a trifle that nevertheless bore upon his self-esteem, and for Kiyoaki at nineteen, nothing was more delicate nor more vulnerable. Whether she realized this or not, she had trampled on it with an incredible lack of sensitivity. He felt sick with disgrace.
Iinuma watched his white face in the lengthening silence with compassion, but he didn’t realize how punishing a blow he had just delivered. This handsome boy had never missed an opportunity to discomfit him, and now, without the least trace of revenge in his intentions, he had crushed Kiyoaki. Furthermore, he had never felt anything so close to affection for him as at this moment, watching him sitting with his head bowed.
His thoughts took a still gentler, more affectionate turn: he would help Kiyoaki up and over to his bed. If the boy began to cry, he too would cry in sympathy. But when Kiyoaki raised his head, his features were hard and set. There was no trace of tears. His cold, piercing glance banished all Iinuma’s fantasies.
“All right,” he said. “You may go now. I’m going to bed.”
He got to his feet by himself and pushed Iinuma toward the door.
21
THE NEXT DAY
Tadeshina telephoned repeatedly, but Kiyoaki would not go to the phone. She then asked to speak to Iinuma and told him that Miss Satoko wanted at all costs to speak directly with the young master and would Iinuma please convey this to him. Kiyoaki, however, had given him strict instructions, and so he could not act as a mediator. Finally, after a number of calls, Satoko herself telephoned Iinuma. The result, however, was the same: his unqualified refusal.
The calls kept up for some days, causing no little stir among the housemaids. Kiyoaki’s response did not vary. At last Tadeshina came in person.
Iinuma received her at a dark side entrance. He sat on his heels on the entrance platform, every fold of his cotton
hakama
in place, determined not to let Tadeshina one step into the house.
hakama
in place, determined not to let Tadeshina one step into the house.
“The young master is absent and so is unable to welcome you.”
“I don’t believe that’s altogether true. However, if you insist that it is, would you please call Mr. Yamada.”
“Even if you were to see Mr. Yamada, I’m afraid that it would make no difference. The young master will not see you.”
“All right then, if that’s the way you feel. I’ll just take the liberty of coming in uninvited and I’ll discuss the matter directly with the young master himself.”
“You are, of course, quite free to enter as you like. But he has locked himself in his room, and there is no way of gaining access to him. And then, I presume that your errand is of a rather confidential nature. If you were to disclose it to Yamada, it might give rise to some talk within the house and eventually come to the ears of His Excellency the Marquis. However, if that prospect does not unduly concern you . . .”
Tadeshina said nothing. As she glared with loathing at Iinuma, she noticed how clearly his pimples stood out, even in the gloom of the entranceway. She herself stood against the background of a bright spring day, the pale green tips of the pine branches flashing in the sunlight. Her old face, its wrinkles barely subdued by their covering layer of white powder, reminded him of a figure painted on crepe. Malice glinted sharply from her eyes sunk deep in their nests of folded skin.
“Thank you very much. I presume that even though you are only following the orders of the young master himself, you must be prepared to take the consequences of addressing yourself to me in such a fashion. Up until now, I have been exercising my ingenuity to some considerable extent on your behalf as well. It would not be wise to depend on it too much from now on. Please be kind enough to convey my respects to the young master.”
Some four or five days later, a thick letter came from Satoko. Usually Tadeshina gave letters for Kiyoaki directly to Iinuma, so as to circumvent Yamada; but this time the letter was placed upon a gold lacquer tray with the family crest and delivered openly by Yamada to Kiyoaki’s room.
Kiyoaki was at pains to call Iinuma to his room and show him the unopened letter. Then he told him to open the window. In his presence he put the letter into the fire of his hibachi. Iinuma watched his white hand darting about in the hibachi contained in paulownia wood, avoiding the small tongues of flame that flared up from time to time, stirring up the fire whenever the weight of the letter threatened to choke it. Iinuma had the feeling that a refined form of crime was being committed before his eyes. Had he helped, he was sure that the thing could have been done more efficiently, but he did not offer to, fearing a refusal. Kiyoaki had called him there to be a witness.
Kiyoaki could not avoid the smoke that rose from the smoldering paper, and a tear rolled down his cheek. Iinuma had once hoped that hard discipline and tears would help Kiyoaki to achieve a suitable attitude to life. Now he sat looking at the tears that graced Kiyoaki’s cheeks, reddened by the fire, tears that owed nothing whatever to any efforts of his. Why was it, he wondered, that he always felt helpless in Kiyoaki’s presence?
∗
One day about a week later, when his father came home unusually early, Kiyoaki dined for the first time in several weeks with both his parents in the Japanese reception room of the main house.
“How time passes!” the Marquis said exuberantly. “Next year you will receive the fifth degree, junior grade. And once you have it, I’ll have all the servants address you that way.”
Kiyoaki dreaded his majority, which was looming over him in the coming year. Possibly Satoko’s faint influence was at the heart of his weary disinterest at the age of nineteen in the prospect of achieving adult status. He had left behind the childhood disposition that makes a boy count the time remaining to New Year on his fingertips and burn with impatience to grow to manhood. He heard his father’s words in a cold and somber mood.
The meal proceeded according to fixed ritual: his mother with her mask of classic melancholy and her never-failing gentility, his father with his red face and deliberately cheerful scorn for the niceties. Still, being perceptive, he was quick to notice something that surprised him: his parents’ eyes met once, though not so that anyone could say they were exchanging glances. There seemed to be nothing more afoot than the usual silent conspiracy between the couple. As Kiyoaki looked into his mother’s face, her expression wavered slightly, and she stumbled for a second over her words.
“Now . . . Kiyoaki . . . there’s something I’d like to ask you which may not be altogether pleasant. Though it would be making far too much of things to call it unpleasant. But I would like to know how you feel about it.”
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