Spring Snow (45 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
Since all the solutions left something to be desired in terms of good taste, it was better to wait for someone else to make the unpleasant decision. Someone else’s foot would have to stretch out to intercept the falling ball. Even if one kicked the ball oneself, it was quite possible that it might be seized by some unexpected whim of its own as it reached the high point of its arc, and come sailing down in a new and unpredictable trajectory.
The specter of ruin never rose before the Count. If it was not a grave crisis to have the fiancée of an imperial prince, whose engagement had been sanctioned by the Emperor himself, carrying another man’s offspring in her womb, then the world would never know a grave crisis. Still, the descending ball would not inevitably be his to kick; surely someone else’s turn to cope with it would come. The Count was never one to be long vexed by worries, and as an inevitable consequence, his worries always ended up by vexing others.
And then it happened that on the day after the tumult of Tadeshina’s attempt on her life, the telephone call came from Marquis Matsugae.
∗
That the Marquis should have known what had happened despite all efforts to hush it up was simply incredible to the Count. He would not have been surprised to learn that there was an informer in his household. But since his prime suspect, Tadeshina herself, had been unconscious throughout the previous day, all his most likely speculations were left with the ground cut out from under them.
Having heard from his wife that Tadeshina was recovering at a good rate, that she could talk and that her appetite had even returned, the Count therefore summoned up his extreme reserves of courage and decided to visit the sickroom all by himself.
“You needn’t come with me. I’ll go and see her on my own. Perhaps the woman will be more inclined to tell the truth that way,” he told his wife.
“But the room is in a terrible state, and if you visit her without warning, she’ll be upset. I’ll go and tell her first, and help her to get herself ready.”
“As you wish.”
The Count had to endure a two-hour wait. When the patient heard the news from the Countess, she immediately began to apply her makeup.
She had been granted the exceptional privilege of a room in the main house, but it was no more than four and a half mats large, and never caught the sun. When her bedding was laid out, it occupied almost the whole floor. The Count had never been in there before.
Finally, a servant came to escort him to the room. A chair for him had been placed on the tatami floor and Tadeshina’s bedding had been put away. Dressed in a sleeved coverlet and with her elbows supported on a pile of pillows on her lap, Tadeshina bowed in reverence as the master entered. As she did so, her forehead seemed to press down on the pillows in front of her, but he noticed that, perfect as her bow was, she overcame her weakness sufficiently to preserve a slight gap between her forehead and the pillows. She was concerned about her makeup, that smooth expanse of thick, congealed white that extended right up to her scrupulously groomed hairline.
“Well, you’ve had quite an ordeal,” the Count began, after sitting down. “But you pulled through, and that’s the main thing. You shouldn’t worry us so.”
Although he found nothing awkward in looking down at her from his position in the chair, he felt that for some reason neither his voice nor his meaning was reaching her.
“How unworthy I am to receive Your Excellency’s visit! I am altogether in a state of dread. Never can I express adequately the deep shame that I feel . . .”
Her head still bowed, she seemed to be dabbing her eyes with the tissue paper she had pulled from her sleeve, but he realized that in so doing she was again being careful to preserve her makeup.
“According to the doctor, ten days rest and you’ll be your old self again. So just relax and take a good long rest.”
“Oh thank you so much, Your Excellency. I am covered with shame, having failed so miserably in trying to die.”
As the Count looked down at the old woman cowering in her russet chrysanthemum-patterned bedjacket, he sensed the offensive aura that surrounds someone who has gone down the road of death only to turn back. He smelled the breath of defilement that clung to everything in the small room, even to its cabinet and drawers, and he grew more and more uneasy. The very care and skill that had gone into the application of the liquid white makeup on the nape of her neck, still visible as she bowed her head, and that had arranged her coiffure so that not a single hair straggled out of place, only served to intensify his indefinable sense of fear.
“Actually,” he said, putting the question as casually as he could, “I was rather taken aback to receive a telephone call from Marquis Matsugae today. He already knew what had happened. And so I thought I might ask you if you did not have some explanation for it.”
But there are questions that answer themselves as soon as they are formulated. The words had hardly passed his lips before the answer came to him with startling suddenness, just as she raised her head.
The old court-style makeup covering her face was thicker than ever. She had painted her lips a bright red that covered even their innermost edge. Not content merely to subdue her wrinkles with makeup, she had applied layer upon layer of white to create a smooth surface which did not, however, blend into her skin, roughened by her recent ordeal. The effect was as if the makeup were clinging to her skin as though the pores had sprouted a white mold. The Count furtively looked away before he started to speak again.
“You wrote to the Marquis beforehand, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” she answered, her head still raised, her voice quite steady. “I really intended to die, and so I wrote to him begging him to do what was necessary after I was gone.”
“You told him everything in that letter?”
“No, sir.”
“There are things you left out?”
“Yes, Your Excellency, there are many things I left out,” she replied, now cheerful.
41
ALTHOUGH THE
C
OUNT HAD
no very clear-cut idea of anything he might wish to keep from Marquis Matsugae, he had only to hear Tadeshina mention her omissions to feel suddenly uneasy.
“And the things you left out—what were they?”
“What does the master mean? I answered Your Excellency as I did, simply because you were pleased to ask me if I had told the Marquis
everything
in the letter. There must be something on the master’s mind to make him ask such a question.”
everything
in the letter. There must be something on the master’s mind to make him ask such a question.”
“This is no time to talk in riddles. I’ve come here alone like this because I thought we could talk freely without regard for others. So it would be as well if you said clearly what you meant.”
“There are many, many things I did not discuss in that letter. Among them is the matter that the master was pleased to confide to me some eight years ago at Kitazaki’s. I intended to die with that sealed in my heart.”
“Kitazaki’s?”
The Count shuddered as he heard that name, which rang like doom in his ears. He now understood what Tadeshina had been hinting at, and as he did so his anxiety deepened. He felt driven to tear away any vestige of doubt.
“What did I say at Kitazaki’s?”
“It was an evening during the rainy season. The master can hardly have forgotten. Miss Satoko, though she was slowly growing up to be a young lady, was still only thirteen. Marquis Matsugae came here that day to pay one of his rare visits. And when he was leaving, the master’s mood seemed to be not what it should be. And so he went to Kitazaki’s house for a little recreation. And that night he was pleased to tell me something.”
The Count was fully aware of the drift of Tadeshina’s remarks. She intended to forge a weapon from his words that night and to make her own dereliction entirely his responsibility. He suddenly doubted that she had ever really intended to kill herself.
Her eyes now regarded him from the heavily powdered face above the pile of pillows like two loopholes cut into the white walls of a fortress. The darkness behind that wall was teeming with things from the past and out of it could come flying an arrow, aimed at him as he stood exposed in the bright light outside.
“Why do you bring that up now? It was something I said as a joke.”
“Was it really?”
Suddenly those loophole eyes seemed to narrow still further. He had the feeling that darkness itself in all its intensity was pointed at him. Then she went on, her voice heavy, “But still . . . that night, at Kitazaki’s house. . . .”
Kitazaki, Kitazaki—that name, bound up with memories the Count had been trying to ignore, came to the lips of this sly old woman again and again. Though eight years had passed since he last set foot there, every detail of the house now sprang vividly to mind once again. The inn stood at the foot of a slope, and although it had no gate nor entranceway to speak of, it was surrounded by quite a large garden with a wooden fence. The gloomy, damp front hall, a spot favored by slugs and snails, had been preempted by four or five pairs of black boots. Even their blotched, yellowish brown leather linings, greasy and moldy with sweat, now flashed before his eyes, as did the broad-striped name-tabs that hung out of them. That night the sound of rude and boisterous singing had greeted him at the front door. The Russo-Japanese War was at its height, and the quartering of soldiers was a respectable and sure source of income. It had given the inn a reputable appearance along with the smell of a stable. As he was led to a room at the rear, he walked along the corridor as if passing through a quarantine ward, fearful even that his sleeve might brush against a pillar along the way. He had a profound aversion to human sweat and all that related to it.
On that night in the rainy season eight years ago, the Count had been unable to regain his usual composure after ushering out his guest the Marquis. And that was the moment that Tadeshina, shrewdly gauging her master’s mood from his expression, had chosen to speak.
“Kitazaki tells me that something very amusing has come his way and that he would like nothing better than to offer it to the master for his enjoyment. Would the master not consider going there tonight, just for a little recreation?”
Since she was free to do such things as “visiting her relatives” once Satoko had gone to bed, there was no obstacle to her going out and then meeting the Count at a prearranged spot.
Kitazaki received the Count with extreme obsequiousness and served him saké, then left the room to return carrying an old scroll which he laid deferentially on the table.
“It is indeed noisy here tonight,” he said apologetically. “Somebody is about to leave for the front, and is having a farewell party. It’s terribly hot, but perhaps it would be well to close the rain shutters, Your Excellency.”
Kitazaki meant that by so doing, the din that echoed from the second floor of the main wing would be somewhat lessened. The Count agreed and he closed the shutters. However, the falling rain immediately seemed to sound more insistently on every side, caging him into the room. The brilliant color of the Genji sliding door gave it a kind of suffocating, panting sensuality, as though the room itself were a picture rolled up within a forbidden scroll.
Sitting opposite the Count, Kitazaki reached respectfully across the table with his wrinkled but honest-looking old hands and unfastened the purple cord that bound the scroll. Then he began to unroll it for the Count, revealing first the pretentious inscription at the top. It was a koan:
Chao Chu went to a nun one day to say, “Do you have it? Do you have it?” And when the nun in turn raised her fists at him, Chao Chu went on his Way at once, declaring: “Shallow water affords poor anchorage.”
The oppressive heat of that night! Its sultry torpor, only aggravated by the breeze stirred at his back by Tadeshina’s fan, seemed to the Count to equal that of a rice-steaming basket. The saké had begun to take effect; the Count heard the drumming of the rain outside as if it were striking the back of his skull; the world outside was lost in innocent thoughts of victory in war. And thus the Count sat looking down at the erotic scroll. Suddenly Kitazaki’s hands flashed through the air to clap together on a mosquito. He apologized at once for the disturbance of the noise, and the Count caught a glimpse of the tiny black smudge of crushed mosquito in his dry white palm, together with a red smear of blood, an unclean image that unsettled him. Why had the mosquito not bitten him? Was he really so well protected from everything?
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