The Decay Of The Angel (33 page)

Authors: Yukio Mishima

BOOK: The Decay Of The Angel

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Honda saw that she wanted him to tell her of Kiyoaki. Scrupulously polite, he recounted his memories of Kiyoaki’s love and its sad conclusion.

The Abbess sat motionless through the long story, a smile always on her lips. Occasionally she would nod. She listened with care even as she gracefully took the cold refreshments the old nun had brought in.

Calmly, without a touch of emotion, she said: “It has been a most interesting story, but unfortunately I did not know Mr. Matsugae. I fear you have confused me with someone else.”

“But I believe that your name is Satoko Ayakura?” He coughed in the urgency of his words.

“That was my lay name.”

“Then you must have known Kiyoaki.” He was angry.

It had to be not forgetfulness but unabashed prevarication. He knew that the Abbess had reasons enough to pretend ignorance; but that a woman far from the vulgar world, of her venerable state, should lie thus openly gave grounds for doubting the depth of her convictions. If she still carried with her all the hypocrisy of that other world, then there must be doubts about the validity of her conversion when she entered this one. The dreams of sixty years seemed betrayed in that instant.

His persistence passed a reasonable limit, but she did not seem to resent it. For all the heat, her purple cloak was cool. Her eyes and her always beautiful voice were serene.

“No, Mr. Honda, I have forgotten none of the blessings that were mine in the other world. But I fear I have never heard the name Kiyoaki Matsugae. Don’t you suppose, Mr. Honda, that there never was such a person? You seem convinced that there was; but don’t you suppose that there was no such person from the beginning, anywhere? I couldn’t help thinking so as I listened to you.”

“Why then do we know each other? And the Ayakuras and the Matsugaes must still have family registers.”

“Yes, such documents might solve problems in the other world. But did you really know a person called Kiyoaki? And can you say definitely that the two of us have met before?”

“I came here sixty years ago.”

“Memory is like a phantom mirror. It sometimes shows things too distant to be seen, and sometimes it shows them as if they were here.”

“But if there was no Kiyoaki from the beginning—” Honda was groping through a fog. His meeting here with the Abbess seemed half a dream. He spoke loudly, as if to retrieve the self that receded like traces of breath vanishing from a lacquer tray. “If there was no Kiyoaki, then there was no Isao. There was no Ying Chan, and who knows, perhaps there has been no I.”

For the first time there was strength in her eyes.

“That too is as it is in each heart.”

A long silence ensued. The Abbess clapped gently. The novice appeared and knelt in the doorway.

“Mr. Honda has been kind enough to come all this way. I think he should see the south garden. I will take him there.”

The novice led her by the hand. Honda stood up as if pulled by strings, and followed them through the dark rooms.

The novice slid open a door and led him to the veranda. The wide south garden was before him.

The lawn, with the hills behind it, blazed in the summer sun.

“We have had cuckoos since morning,” said the novice.

The grove beyond the lawn was dominated by maples. A wattled gate led to the hills. Some of the maples were red even now in the summer, flames among the green. Steppingstones were scattered easily over the lawn, and wild carnations bloomed shyly among them. In a corner to the left were a well and a well wheel. A celadon stool on the lawn seemed so hot in the sun that it would surely burn anyone who tried to sit on it. Summer clouds ranged their dizzying shoulders over the green hills.

It was a bright, quiet garden, without striking features. Like a rosary rubbed between the hands, the shrilling of cicadas held sway.

There was no other sound. The garden was empty. He had come, thought Honda, to a place that had no memories, nothing.

The noontide sun of summer flowed over the still garden.

T
HE
E
ND

November 25, 1970
The Sea of Fertility

Footnote

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Translator’s note: the code is that used by the Japanese for the Kana syllabary.