Spring Snow (4 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
3
HE TAPPED
H
ONDA
on the shoulder and pointed in that direction. Honda raised his head and peered across the water until he too spotted the women. And so they stared from their hiding place like two young snipers. His mother went for her daily walk whenever the mood struck her; but her company was not confined to her personal maids today; two guests, one old and one young, were walking just behind her. All except the young girl were wearing kimonos of muted, quiet colors. And although she was in pale blue, the material was richly embroidered. As she crossed the white sand to walk along the water’s edge, it shone pale and silky like the sky at daybreak. The women’s laughter, carrying on the autumn air, betrayed her uncertain footing on the irregular stepping-stones, but it rang too pure and sounded a little artificial. It always irritated Kiyoaki to hear the women of the household laughing like that, but he was well aware of the effect it had on Honda, who had a glint in his eye like a rooster alerted to the clucking of hens. The brittle stalks of dry autumn grass bent under their chests.
Kiyoaki felt sure that the girl in the pale-blue kimono would never laugh that way. In a great flurry of merriment, his mother’s maids were leading their mistress and the guests hand-in-hand from the edge of the pond to the hill of maples along a path deliberately complicated by a maze of stone bridges that threaded to and fro across the inlets. Kiyoaki and Honda soon lost sight of them behind the tall grass in which they lay.
“You certainly have a lot of women around your house. We have nothing but men,” said Honda, putting a good face on his interest, which was keen enough to make him get up and move to the other side of the island. Here, from the shelter of the pines, he was able to follow the awkward progress of the women. To the left of him, a hollow in the slope held the first four of the nine waterfalls. The stream then followed the curve of the hill and finally splashed down in front of it into the pool below the red Sado rocks. The women were now making their way below these last falls, testing their footing on the stepping-stones. The maple leaves here were especially beautiful, so thick as to blot out the white ribbon of the falls and stain the water at the edge of the pond a deep scarlet. The maids were leading the young woman in the aquamarine kimono across the stepping-stones, her head bent forward, and even at that distance the white of the nape of her neck was visible to Kiyoaki. It made him think of Princess Kasuga and her creamy white neck, something that was never far from his mind.
After the path crossed below the falls, it leveled out for a time, following the waterline as the shore began to come toward the island. Kiyoaki had followed the women’s progress with concentration. But now he caught sight of the profile of the woman in the aquamarine kimono and recognized Satoko. His fantasies were shattered. Why hadn’t he recognized her earlier? Probably his whim that the beautiful girl should be a total stranger.
Now that she had destroyed his illusion, there was no point in remaining hidden. Brushing the burrs from his kimono, Kiyoaki got to his feet and parted the lower branches of the pines that had been his cover.
“Hello,” he called.
This sudden cheerfulness took Honda by surprise, and he craned his neck for a better look. Aware that Kiyoaki’s high spirits were by now a reflex response to the interruption of his dreams, Honda did not mind his friend seizing the initiative.
“Who is it?”
“Oh, it’s Satoko. Did I never show you her picture?” answered Kiyoaki, speaking her name with cool indifference. Satoko, the girl on the shore, was certainly a beauty. Kiyoaki, however, seemed determined to ignore this. For he knew that Satoko was in love with him.
This instinctive rejection of anyone who showed him affection, this need to react with cold disdain, were a failing of Kiyoaki’s that no one could have known better than Honda, who saw this pride as a kind of tumor that had taken hold of Kiyoaki when he was no more than thirteen and had first had to endure people making a fuss over his looks. Like a silvery bloom of mold, it would spread at the slightest touch.
Perhaps, in fact, the dangerous attraction that Kiyoaki’s friendship held for Honda was rooted in the same impulse. So many others had attempted to befriend Kiyoaki, only to be rewarded for their pains with his mockery and contempt. In challenging Kiyoaki’s caustic reserve, Honda alone had been skilled enough to escape disaster. Perhaps he was mistaken, but he wondered if his own acute dislike for Kiyoaki’s gloom-faced tutor sprang from the latter’s expression of perpetual defeat.
Although Honda had never met Satoko, Kiyoaki’s stories were full of her. The Ayakura family, one of twenty-eight among the nobility that bore the lofty rank of Urin, was descended from an ancestor named Namba Yorisuke, a skilled player of
kemari
, the version of football popular at the Imperial Court in the time of the Fujiwaras. The head of the family was appointed a chamberlain of the Imperial Court when it established residence in Tokyo at the time of the Meiji Restoration. The Ayakuras moved to the city and lived in a mansion in Azabu formerly occupied by one of the retainers of the shogun. The family excelled in the sport of
kemari
and in composing
waka.
And since the Emperor had seen fit to honor the family’s young heir with a court rank of “fifth degree, junior grade,” even the post of Grand Councillor of State now seemed within reach.
kemari
, the version of football popular at the Imperial Court in the time of the Fujiwaras. The head of the family was appointed a chamberlain of the Imperial Court when it established residence in Tokyo at the time of the Meiji Restoration. The Ayakuras moved to the city and lived in a mansion in Azabu formerly occupied by one of the retainers of the shogun. The family excelled in the sport of
kemari
and in composing
waka.
And since the Emperor had seen fit to honor the family’s young heir with a court rank of “fifth degree, junior grade,” even the post of Grand Councillor of State now seemed within reach.
Marquis Matsugae, who was conscious of his own family’s lack of polish and who hoped to give the next generation at least a touch of elegance, had entrusted the infant Kiyoaki to the Ayakuras after obtaining his own father’s consent. And so Kiyoaki had been raised in the atmosphere of the court nobility with Satoko, who was two years older and lavished affection on him; until he went to school, she was his only companion and friend. Count Ayakura himself, a warm and personable man who still retained his soft Kyoto accent, taught the young Kiyoaki calligraphy and
waka.
The family would play
sugoroku
, an ancient form of backgammon, far into the night, as was the custom in the Heian era, and the lucky winners would receive traditional prizes, among them candies molded like gifts from the Empress.
waka.
The family would play
sugoroku
, an ancient form of backgammon, far into the night, as was the custom in the Heian era, and the lucky winners would receive traditional prizes, among them candies molded like gifts from the Empress.
Moreover, Count Ayakura arranged for Kiyoaki to continue his early cultural training by going to the palace each New Year to attend the Imperial Poetry Reading Ceremony, in which he himself figured prominently. At first, Kiyoaki had seen this as a chore, but as he grew older, his participation in these elegant and ancient rituals came to hold a certain charm for him.
Satoko was now twenty. And thumbing through Kiyoaki’s picture album, one could see the changes as she grew to maturity, from when she was a child with her cheek pressed affectionately to Kiyoaki’s until the previous May, when she had taken part in the Matsugae Omiyasama festival. At twenty she had passed the stage that was popularly supposed to mark a girl’s greatest beauty, but she was still unmarried.
“So that’s Satoko. And the other one, the woman in the gray tunic everyone’s making such a fuss over, who’s she?”
“Her? Oh yes; that’s Satoko’s great-aunt, the Abbess of Gesshu. I didn’t recognize her at first because of that curious hood.”
Her Reverence the Abbess was indeed an unexpected guest. This was her first visit to the Matsugaes, hence the conducted tour of the garden—something that Kiyoaki’s mother would not have undertaken just for Satoko but was quite happy to do for the Abbess. Her great-aunt’s visit to Tokyo being such a rarity, Satoko had no doubt brought her to see the maple leaves. The Abbess had taken great delight in Kiyoaki when he first came to the Ayakuras, but he could not remember that far back. Later, when he was in middle school and the Abbess had paid a visit to Tokyo, he had been invited to the Ayakuras, but he had had the opportunity to do no more than pay his respects. Even so, the Abbess’s pale face with its air of quiet dignity and the calm authority in her voice had made a lasting impression on him.
Kiyoaki’s voice had brought the group on the shore to an abrupt halt. Startled, they looked toward the island as if pirates had risen before their very eyes from the tall grass beside the decorative iron cranes.
Pulling a small fan from her obi, Kiyoaki’s mother pointed toward the Abbess to indicate that a respectful greeting was expected. Kiyoaki, accordingly, made a deep bow from where he stood on the island. Honda quickly followed suit, and Her Reverence acknowledged them both. His mother then opened her fan and waved it imperiously, its golden sheen suddenly giving off scarlet reflections. Kiyoaki urged Honda to hurry up, knowing that they must come back from the island at once.
“Satoko never misses a chance to come here. She’s taking advantage of her great-aunt,” grumbled Kiyoaki with a show of bad temper, while helping Honda by hurrying to cast off the boat. Honda, however, viewed Kiyoaki’s haste and his grumbling with some skepticism. The way Kiyoaki had lost patience with Honda’s steady, methodical movements and had seized the rough rope in his own unseasoned white hands to try to help with the unpleasant task of unknotting it was enough to raise doubts about the Abbess being the cause of his eagerness.
As Honda rowed back to the shore, Kiyoaki looked dizzy, his face picking up a red flush from the reflection of the maple leaves floating on the water. He nervously avoided Honda’s eyes in an attempt to deny his vulnerability to Satoko. For each moment brought him closer to the young woman who knew altogether too much about him, about his childhood, even about his body’s most intimate details, and to whom he seemed tied by almost overwhelming bonds of emotion.
“Why, Mr. Honda! What a good oarsman you are!” said Kiyoaki’s mother admiringly when they reached the shore. Her pale, classic face had a persistently melancholy cast, even when she laughed. Yet her expression was a façade rather than a true indication of her deeper emotions. She was in fact almost invariably insensitive. She had raised Kiyoaki to tolerate his father’s dissipation and boorish energy, but she was quite incapable of grasping the complexities of her son’s nature.
Satoko’s eyes were riveted on Kiyoaki from the moment he stepped out of the boot. Strong and calm, affectionate from time to time, they invariably unnerved Kiyoaki. He felt, not without reason, that he could read criticism in their glance.
“Her Reverence has honored us with a visit today, and we shall shortly have the pleasure of listening to her speak. But first we wanted to show her the maple leaves. Then you gave us such a fright by that rude shout of yours. What were you doing on the island in the first place?”
“Oh, just watching the sky,” Kiyoaki replied, being as enigmatic to his mother as possible.
“Watching the sky? And what’s there to see in the sky?”
His mother was quite unembarrassed about her failure to grasp the intangible, which struck him as her sole admirable characteristic. He found it comical that she could adopt such a pious expression for the Abbess’s sermons. The Abbess maintained her role of guest throughout this exchange, smiling unassumingly. And he would not look at Satoko, who gazed steadily at the thick, glossy, tousled black hair that brushed his smooth cheeks.
The group now started up the steep path, admiring the maples as they went and amusing themselves by trying to identify the birds singing in the branches above their heads. However much the two young men tried to check their stride, they inevitably drew ahead to walk some distance in front of the women around the Abbess. Honda took advantage of this to discuss Satoko for the first time, and admire her beauty.
“You think so?” Kiyoaki replied, well aware that although Honda’s finding Satoko unattractive would have been a severe blow to his pride, he must make a show of cold indifference. He was firmly convinced that any young woman in Satoko’s relationship to him would have to be beautiful, whether he chose to acknowledge her or not.
At last their climb ended at the bridge below the topmost waterfall, and they stood looking up toward its rim. Just as his mother was savoring the compliments of the Abbess, whose first view of the falls this was, Kiyoaki made an ominous discovery which cut across the mood of the day.
“What’s that? At the top there, what’s damming the water like that?”
His mother responded at once. Using her fan to shade her eyes from the bright sunlight that shone through the branches, she peered upward. The landscape artist had painstakingly built up walls of rock on either side of the rim to ensure a graceful fall of water, and could never have intended the flow to be diverted so awkwardly at the middle of the crest. A mere rock wedged up there could never have caused such a disruption in the flow.
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