Temple Of Dawn (14 page)

Read Temple Of Dawn Online

Authors: Yukio Mishima

BOOK: Temple Of Dawn
6.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Honda and Hishikawa passed by the royal guard house about nine forty for their ten o’clock audience, suffering in necktie and jacket.
The palace, designed by an Italian architect, had been built in 1882 under King Chulalongkorn and was in style a magnificent mixture of neo-Baroque and Siamese.
It featured an amazingly complex, almost hallucinating facade set against the blue tropical sky. No matter how European the style, the brilliant and overly ornate front possessed the dazzling and intoxicating quality characteristic of tropical Asian architecture. The marble staircases which ascended gracefully to the left and right were guarded at their base by bronze elephants. The main entrance was in the style of the Pantheon in Rome, and the imposing pediment above the arches contained a colorful portrait of King Chulalongkorn. Up to this point, it was purely European neo-Baroque with marble and bas-reliefs and gold. But as one’s gaze mounted to the story above, one saw a pavilion in the Siamese style standing in the center of a gallery of pink marble Corinthian pillars. The ceiling was checkered, alternately maroon and gold on a white base, and the whole structure jutted out impressively like a ship’s turret. It bore the candelabrumlike coat of arms of the Chakri dynasty. The upper stories to the very peak of the golden spire rose in pyramids of intricate, authentic Siamese intercalary roofs in red and gold, the ornate end-tiles of the ridges pointing to the blue sky like the raised shoulders of dancers. It seemed as if the whole point of the Chakri Palace was to have the solid, rationally cold European base crushed by the royal dreams of the tropics—superfluously complex, unnecessarily colorful . . . maddening. It was as though a beaked nightmare with sharp talons and bristling gold and red wings were bent over the torso of a recumbent king, dignified, cold, white.
“Is this supposed to be beautiful?” said Hishikawa, stopping and wiping the perspiration from his upturned face.
“Whether it’s beautiful or not, what’s that to us? We’ve been invited only to see the Princess.”
Honda’s unexpected curtness instantly intimidated Hishikawa, who looked at him with fear in his eyes; nothing further was said. Honda regretted that he had not used this effective method at the very beginning of his visit to Bangkok.
The officer of the guards who served as guide intimated that it had been considerable trouble for them to open the long-closed palace just to humor the whimsical Princess. Honda, at a wink from Hishikawa, quickly slipped a suitable amount of money into the officer’s pocket.
Once the gigantic doors were open, a dark hall was revealed, on the black, white, and gray mottled mosaic floor of which some twenty rococo chairs edged in mahogany had been arranged. A familiar-looking lady-in-waiting took over from the officer and guided the two guests to a large door on the right. Beyond it was a well-lit room with a high ceiling, a purely European palace hall complete with chandeliers, Italian marble tables inlaid with floral patterns, and red and gold Louis Quinze chairs placed around them.
On the walls hung life-sized portraits of the four royal consorts of King Chulalongkorn and the Queen Mother. Hishikawa explained that three of the consorts were sisters. All the portraits had been painted in Victorian style by some Western painter. Their faces revealed the painter’s artistic integrity, his fearful courage, his shameless lies, his malice, his sincerity, and his flattery—all coexisted like waves and sand at the water’s edge in the margin of realism. The somewhat melancholy grace suitable to royalty matched the heavy sensuality of the subjects’ dark skin, and the tropical feeling of the clothes and the background inadvertently blurred the seemingly realistic surface picture with an illusory quality.
The Queen Mother, Thep Sirin, was a wizened aristocrat, and her face showed the most dark and savage dignity of all. Honda walked slowly, carefully examining each painting as he passed by; he learned from Hishikawa that the first consort, Queen Prephaiphim, was the youngest of three sisters. Next came Queen Sawaeng Watana, and then the eldest sister, Queen Sunantha. It was unquestionable to anyone that the eldest was the most beautiful.
Queen Sunantha’s portrait hung in one corner of the room, half concealed in the shadows. She was standing by a window, one hand resting on a table. Outside one could see the hazy blue sky filled with evening clouds and orange branches heavy with fruit.
On the table stood a rose-bud vase in cloisonné containing a small lotus flower, a gold ewer, and wine cups. The queen’s beautiful bare feet were visible below her gold
panun
, and from one shoulder of her embroidered pink jacket hung a wide cordon. A large medal glistened at her breast, and she held an ivory fan. The tassel of the fan and the carpet both reflected the scarlet of the evening glow.
Honda was struck by her most charming small face. Of the five portraits it somehow bore a marked resemblance to that of Princess Moonlight. There were the same ripe, plump lips, the somewhat stern eyes, and the short-cropped hair. The resemblance faded after he had gazed at the portrait for a while. But after a time the impression like evening dusk crept back from some corner of the room, and again he was convinced of the likeness—the small, dark, quick fingers holding the fan, the curved hand resting on the table, and finally the eyes and lips that were the exact duplicate of those of the Princess. But just as the likeness became most apparent, like the sand of an hourglass, it would once more begin irresistibly to slip away.
At that instant an inside door opened and the three old ladies-in-waiting emerged escorting the Princess. Honda and Hishikawa stood where they were and bowed deeply.
The afternoon at the Bang Pa In Palace seemed to have melted the ladies’ hearts, for no one stopped the Princess as she ran toward Honda with a cry of joy. Like a dove picking up scattered peas, Hishikawa busily translated the torrent of words that spurted forth.
“It was a long trip . . . I was lonely. Why didn’t you write me more often? Which country has more elephants, Thailand or India? I don’t want to go to India, I want to go back to Japan.”
Then the Princess took Honda’s hand and led him to a spot in front of the portrait of Queen Sunantha.
“This is my grandmother,” she said proudly.
“Her Serene Highness has invited Mr. Honda to the Chakri Palace because she specifically wanted to show him this beautiful portrait,” offered the first lady-in-waiting.
“I inherited only my body from Queen Sunantha. My heart came from Japan, so really I should leave my body here and only my heart should go back. But to do that I should have to die. So I’ll just have to take my body along, like a child with her favorite doll. Do you understand, Mr. Honda? The pretty me you see is really only the doll I carry with me.”
Judging from the childish manner of her speech, she must have spoken less sophisticatedly than Hishikawa had translated, but as she spoke, the clarity in her serious eyes moved Honda’s heart even before he understood what she was saying.
“There’s another doll.” The Princess as usual paid no attention to what the adults were thinking; and now she left Honda’s side and moved swiftly to the center of the hall, where the sunlight took the shape of the grilled casement windows. She solemnly traced the outline of the creeping vines; then the flowers in the complex floral pattern—there were gaps in the inlay—on the table to which her chest scarcely reached. “There’s another doll,” she continued as if singing, “which looks just like me in Lausanne. But she’s my elder sister and she’s not a doll really. Her body’s Thai and so’s her heart. She’s different from me; I’m really Japanese.”
She accepted the sari and the poetry collection with delight, but she merely leafed through a few pages of the book and looked no further. One of the attendants explained apologetically that the Princess could not yet read English. Honda’s test had not worked.
Entreated by the Princess, Honda talked for a while of his trip to India in the stiff formality of the hall. He noted tears and sadness in the eyes of the Princess as she listened rapturously to him, and he was conscience-stricken at the thought of concealing the news of his departure the néxt day.
He wondered when he would be able to see the Princess again. Surely she would mature into a very beautiful woman, but he would probably never have the opportunity of seeing her. This might be his last chance. Soon the mystery of reincarnation, like the shadow of a butterfly crossing a tropical garden of an afternoon, might vanish from her memory. Perhaps the soul of Isao, regretful of dying without a word of farewell to Honda, had borrowed the lips of the mad little Princess to deliver an apology. It was easier for Honda to leave Bangkok believing this.
Gradually the Princess’s eyes became more moist as she listened to Honda’s stories; she must have had some premonition of his departure. He had carefully chosen childish, entertaining episodes to relate, but the sorrow in her eyes kept deepening.
Honda spoke one sentence at a time which Hishikawa would then translate with gesticulations. Suddenly the Princess’s eyes opened in astonishment. The ladies glared angrily at Honda who had no idea what had happened.
The Princess suddenly uttered a piercing cry and clung to Honda. The attendant rose and attempted to tear her away, but the child put her cheek to his legs and sobbed loudly.
The drama of the other day was reenacted. At length the ladies succeeded in separating the two and signaled Honda to leave the room. As Hishikawa was translating the sign, Honda, was again on the verge of being caught by the sobbing Princess. He ran among the tables and chairs with the little girl in pursuit, and the ladies scrambling after her from three sides. Louis Quinze chairs crashed to the floor, and the palace hall was transformed into a terrain for blindman’s buff.
Finally Honda freed himself, passed quickly through the anteroom, and ran down the marble staircase of the central entrance. There he hesitated to make his final departure, as he listened to the sharp cries of the little girl echoing from the high ceiling of the palace. “The ladies are telling us to go quickly,” said Hishikawa, urging him on. “They’ll take care of her somehow. Let’s go!”
Honda dashed through the spacious front garden, soaked in perspiration.
“I’m sorry. You must have been surprised,” said Hishikawa to the still panting Honda when the car had started to move.
“No. It happens every time,” he replied, trying to freshen up by wiping away the perspiration with a large white handkerchief.
“You told the Princess that you wanted to fly back from India but that you couldn’t get a seat on an Army plane.”
“I did indeed.”
“I made a bad translation there,” Hishikawa explained coolly, obviously feeling no guilt. “I didn’t think and told her the truth. I said that you were going back to Japan, but as you were taking an Army plane you couldn’t get a seat for her and so couldn’t take her with you. That’s why she made such a fuss. She begged you either not to go or to take her with you. The ladies looked so angry because you broke your promise. It was all my fault. I don’t know how to apologize.”
12
 
 R
EGULAR AIR TRANSPORTATION
between Japan and Thailand had commenced the year before, in 1940. But after Japan had begun to send observers into French Indochina in order to control the supply routes to Chiang Kaishek, the Indochinese no longer resisted, and a new southern air route was opened via Saigon, this in addition to the already existing Taipei-Hanoi-Bangkok run.
It was a civilian line administered by Greater Japan Air Lines. But Itsui Products considered military planes more sophisticated in handling important guests. The planes did not provide the most comfortable transportation, but they were speedy and powered by an excellent engine. Furthermore, a military plane gave the impression of an important official tour to friends of the traveler who might come to the airport to meet him or to see him off, and it would simultaneously demonstrate the extent of Itsui’s influence with the military.
Honda was sorry to leave the tropics. When the golden pagodas had faded away in their distant jungle setting, his chancing on indications of reincarnation there began to seem like a fairy tale or a dream. Because of the Princess’s extreme youth, it could all be no more than a children’s song, in spite of the many proofs he had had. He did not know the life story or the cause-and-effect element in the Princess’s dramatic beginning nor how she would end, as he had in the case of Kiyoaki and Isao. He had merely witnessed episodes in the life of the little girl as though he were watching the outlandish floral float of some festival passing before a traveler’s curious eyes.

Other books

Mimi by Lucy Ellmann
Coq au Vin by Charlotte Carter
Smoke and Fire by Donna Grant
The Rising: Antichrist Is Born by Lahaye, Tim, Jenkins, Jerry B.
Nevada (1995) by Grey, Zane
Her Mistletoe Cowboy by Alissa Callen
Her Alpha Protector by Knight, Gwen
Drive Me Crazy by Jenna Bayley-Burke