Spring Snow (52 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
“And where would you like me to examine the patient?” asked Dr. Ozu. The Marquis and the Count exchanged glances.
“Well,” the Marquis replied, “the truth of the matter is that the patient isn’t here at the moment.”
As soon as he learned that he was being asked then and there to sign a medical certificate for a patient he had never set eyes on, the doctor went red with anger. What particularly provoked him was the look that he was sure he had caught in the Marquis’s eyes: a flicker of presumption that his signature would indeed be forthcoming.
“What’s the meaning of this preposterous request?” he demanded. “Do you by any chance take me for one of your society doctors who can be bought and paid for?”
“Believe me, Doctor,” the Marquis replied, “we have by no means mistaken you for a gentleman of that sort.” He took his cigar out of his mouth and began to pace the room. Then, gazing across at the doctor and noting how his plump, healthy ruddy cheeks were quivering in the firelight, he addressed him in a deep, solemn tone: “As for this medical certificate, it is something that is essential to the continued tranquillity of His Sacred Majesty.”
∗
When the Marquis had the signed certificate in his hand, he at once requested a meeting with Prince Toin at his earliest convenience, and went next night to the Prince’s residence.
Fortunately enough, the young prince was away again on regimental maneuvers. Since the Marquis had specifically requested an audience with Prince Haruhisa, the Princess was not at her husband’s side when he greeted the Marquis.
Prince Toin seemed to be in a jovial mood as he urged a fine French wine on his guest and spoke of this and that, not forgetting to declare once again how fine the entertainment had been at the blossom festival the previous spring. Quite some time had passed since the two had had a chance to talk together like this, and the Marquis again recalled the experiences they had shared during the Paris Olympics of 1900 and went on to entertain the Prince with a variety of anecdotes about their well-remembered cabaret at the champagne fountain. It seemed as if neither had a care in the world.
Nevertheless the Marquis was well aware that beneath the Prince’s dignified and unruffled composure, he was in fact waiting with anxiety and misgiving to hear what he had to tell him. The Prince had not said a word about the betrothal ceremony, now only a few days distant. Like sunlight falling on a sparse grove of trees, the lamplight on the handsome gray moustache revealed a fleeting expression of uneasiness which from time to time contorted the mouth beneath.
“Well now, as regards my intruding on you here tonight . . . ,” the Marquis said, broaching the crucial topic in a deliberately frivolous tone, as agile as a bird that darts straight to its nest after flying around for a time with careless ease. “I have the unpleasant task of imparting some unfortunate news that is not at all easy to express. Ayakura’s daughter has gone out of her mind.”
“What?” The Prince’s eyes opened wide with shock.
“Ayakura, being the sort of fellow he is, kept it completely hidden. Without even consulting me, he put Satoko into a convent, hoping to avoid a scandal, and yet up until now he hasn’t been able to summon enough courage to inform Your Highness of what has happened.”
“Why, this is incredible! Waiting until now!”
The Prince pressed his lips firmly together, and the edges of his moustache dipped downward. He stared for some moments at the pointed toes of his shoes glinting in the light cast by the fireplace.
“This is a medical certificate signed by Dr. Ozu. Indeed, as you see, it’s dated a month ago, but Ayakura didn’t show it to me. All this is due to my failure to keep a sharp eye on everything, and there is no way for me adequately to express my sorrow . . .”
“If she’s ill, she’s ill. It can’t be helped. But why didn’t he tell me about it earlier? And so that’s what the trip to the Kansai was about! Now that you mention it, when they were here to pay their respects before leaving, her color wasn’t good at all, and Princess Toin was concerned about it.”
“Her mind hasn’t been right since last September, and she’s been doing all sorts of odd things, they say, until finally her behavior was brought to my attention.”
“Well, that’s how the situation stands; nothing can be done about it,” said the Prince. “I’ll go to the palace early tomorrow to express my apologies to the Emperor. I wonder how His Majesty will take it? You’ll let me take this certificate, then, won’t you? I’ll have to show it to him.”
Prince Toin’s exquisite breeding was evident in that he said not one word about young Prince Harunori. As for the Marquis, he kept his shrewd eyes fixed throughout the interview on each shift of expression in the Prince’s face. In it, he had seen dark threatening waves rise and fall and rise again. And after he had watched the process for some time, he felt his own anxiety receding. The moment of greatest danger had passed.
The Prince summoned his wife, and after the three of them had gone well into the night discussing the best plan to follow, Marquis Matsugae finally took his leave.
∗
The following morning, Prince Harunori happened to return from maneuvers just at the awkward moment when his father was about to leave for the Imperial Palace. Prince Toin took his son aside and broke the news to him. There was no trace of emotion on his young, sturdy face as he replied that he would behave entirely according to his father’s wishes in the matter. And so, far from being resentful, the young man showed no signs even of being perturbed at the course of events.
Since he was tired after the all-night maneuvers, he went to bed as soon as he had seen his father off. His mother, however, feeling sure that he would be unable to sleep after such news, came to his room.
As he raised his eyes to her, she noticed that they were slightly bloodshot from lack of sleep, but his look was as direct and unflinching as ever.
“So it was just last night,” he said to her, “that Marquis Matsugae came to tell us about it.”
“Yes, just last night.”
“You know, Mother, I just happened to think of something that took place a long time ago, when I was a lieutenant at the palace. I told you about it then, didn’t I? Anyway, I was going for an audience with the Emperor and I happened to run into Marshal Yamagata in the corridor. I’ll never forget it, Mother. It was the corridor that ran along the side of the front reception room. The Marshal was just coming from an audience, I think. As usual, he was wearing that uniform overcoat with the wide lapels, the peak of his cap was down over his eyes, and his hands were sticking in his pockets as if he didn’t give a damn about anybody. He was coming toward me down that dark corridor with his sword almost dragging at his side. I instantly stepped aside, stood to attention and saluted him. He glanced at me quickly from under the peak of his cap with those eyes that never smiled. Surely, Mother, Marshal Yamagata must have known who I was. But he turned his head away abruptly, looking annoyed, threw back his shoulders inside that overcoat at the same time, and swaggered away down the corridor without so much as returning my salute. Now why, Mother, do you suppose I happened to remember that just now?”
∗
An article in next day’s paper informed the general public that they were going to be deprived of the festivities they had been anticipating with such pleasure. There would be no betrothal ceremony. The engagement had been dissolved “because of circumstances in the family of His Imperial Majesty Prince Harunori.” And so it came about that Kiyoaki, who had been told nothing at all about recent events, finally learned what had happened from a newspaper.
48
AFTER THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT
became known, the family watched over Kiyoaki even more closely, and the steward Yamada accompanied him even to school. His classmates, having no inkling of the circumstances, did not know what to make of such solicitude, ordinarily shown only to the youngest of the grade-school boys. Furthermore, his father and mother no longer uttered a word about the affair in his presence, and everyone else in the household behaved in front of him as though nothing had happened.
Society, however, was agog. Kiyoaki was surprised to find that even the sons of the most prestigious families at Peers were so much in the dark over this event that some of them asked him, of all people, what he thought of the affair.
“Everybody’s so sympathetic toward the Ayakuras, but do you know what I think?” one student demanded. “I think that this is going to undermine people’s reverence for the Imperial Family. Isn’t everybody saying that they found out later that this Miss Ayakura wasn’t quite right in her mind? But I want to know why this only came out right now.”
While Kiyoaki was wondering how best to answer, Honda, who was standing beside him, stepped into the breach.
“Even if someone is sick, there’s no way of knowing until the symptoms appear, is there? Why don’t you stop gossiping like a schoolgirl?”
But this kind of appeal to masculinity was ineffective at Peers. To begin with, Honda’s family did not have the status to qualify him as a person in the know, who could provide a plausible ending to this sort of exchange. In order to qualify as a person in the know, one had to be able to say something like: “She happens to be my cousin,” or perhaps, “He is the son of my uncle’s mistress.” A boy such as this had to show that he was proud to have faint blood ties to crime and scandal, and yet at the same time parade his own noble aloofness intact. And so with a slight curl to his lip, he would drop enough of a hint to indicate that, unlike the rumormongering rabble, he had access to behind-the-scenes information. At this school, mere boys of fifteen or sixteen were apt to put on airs and say: “It’s given the Home Minister quite a headache, you know. He called up late last night to talk to Father about it”; or again: “Everyone thinks that the Home Minister is laid up with a cold, but the truth is that he was in such a hurry to get to an imperial audience that he missed the step getting out of his carriage and sprained his ankle.”
Strangely enough, Kiyoaki’s habitual secretiveness seemed to have worked to his advantage in this business. For other than Honda, none of his classmates had any idea of his relations with Satoko, nor was anyone aware of Marquis Matsugae’s role in the matter. There was, however, a son of the ancient court nobility who was related to the Ayakuras and vehemently insisted that someone as beautiful and gifted as Satoko could not possibly have gone mad; but all he provoked were scornful smiles from his classmates, who thought him simply anxious to defend his own kind.
All of this caused Kiyoaki constant pain. In comparison with Satoko’s public humiliation, however, he did not even have a slighting remark to contend with. And however acute his private agony, it was, after all, the torment of a coward.
Whenever this business came up with his classmates or he heard Satoko’s name on their lips, he would look out of the window of the second-floor classroom as though absorbed in the view of the distant mountains, now wholly in the grip of winter, their snow-covered slopes sparkling in the clear morning air. He would imagine Satoko herself, now remote and unapproachable, presenting a similar purity to the world at large, without a word in her own defense. The brightness, distant yet almost painful, was visible to Kiyoaki alone. Its flawlessness struck him to the heart. By accepting everything—sin, shame, the imputation of madness—she had absolved herself. But what of him?
There were times when he wanted to shout out his guilt at the top of his voice. But then her terrible self-sacrifice would be in vain. Would it really be an act of courage to nullify that for the sake of quieting his conscience? Or did true courage demand rather that he silently endure his present existence as a virtual prisoner? It was too complex an evaluation for him. But at any rate, to continue as he was, despite the worsening pain, in other words to submit to the will of his parents and the whole household, was to persist in a course of action that was becoming more and more difficult.
There had been a time when idleness and melancholy seemed to be the intrinsic elements of life as he wanted it to be. How had he happened to lose his capacity for such enjoyment, his ability to luxuriate in it without ever getting bored? It was gone, as unnoticed as an umbrella forgotten at someone’s house.
Now he needed something to hope for if he was to endure idleness and melancholy. And since there was nothing even remotely encouraging about his situation, he began to construct a hope of his own.
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