To the Spring Equinox and Beyond (30 page)

Once a friend of mine with literary tastes told me an anecdote about the writer D'Annunzio and a young woman. According to my friend, D'Annunzio is now Italy's most famous novelist, so his intention in recounting the story was probably to let me know how influential the man was. But I was far more interested in the woman than in the writer himself. The story went something like this:

Once D'Annunzio was invited to a party. As it is customary in the West to make literary figures an adornment of the entire nation, the gathering there treated him with respect and affability as a great man. And while he was sauntering here and there in the hall attracting all the attention to himself, he accidentally dropped his handkerchief. The place was so crowded that neither he nor the people near him noticed it. Then a beautiful young lady picked up the handkerchief and brought it to him. "Is this yours?" she asked, offering it to him. D'Annunzio thanked her, but thought it necessary to add a compliment on the lady's beauty. "Keep it as your own," he said, anticipating her happiness. "I present it to you." She made no reply, but merely holding the handkerchief between her fingers, quietly went to the fireplace and tossed it into the flames. Everyone there, except D'Annunzio himself, smiled.

When I heard the story, it provided me with an image not of a beautiful Italian woman with brown hair but, instead, of Chiyoko with her own eyes and eyebrows. I further thought that if the girl were not Chiyoko but her sister Momoyoko, she would no doubt have gracefully accepted the gift with at least outward civility, no matter what her own personal feelings would have been. For Chiyoko that would have been impossible.

My uncle Matsumoto, in his usual sarcastic way, has given the two sisters nicknames. He calls them Big Toad and Little Toad because their lips, which are a little too long for their thinness, resemble the toad-mouth-like metal clasp of a coin purse. He's always either made them laugh or angered them by this comparison. Calling them "toad" refers only to their physical features and has nothing to do with their personalities, though. But my uncle also has the habit of saying, "Little Toad's lovable for her gentleness, but Big Toad's a little too fierce." When I hear him make this comment, I want to question his critical eye, wondering what he takes Chiyoko to be. Her speech and behavior sometimes seem fierce not because she has something unwomanly or coarse in her, but because she abandons herself to her own too feminine tenderness, oblivious of everything around her—I'm sure this is right. Her discernment of good and bad, of right and wrong, is almost independent of anything she has learned or experienced. It merely flares up intuitively and takes direct aim at the person she happens to be dealing with. So you sometimes feel as if you've been struck by lightning; the strong jolt you receive means that sparks of purity are bursting from her. The sensation is completely different from what you would feel if thorns were flung at you or poisons poured into you. As evidence, I can vouch that many a time, no matter how violently she's scolded me, I've felt as if I'd had my very heart purified by her. I've even experienced some rare moments when I thought I had met in her one of the exalted. Standing alone, I would like to vindicate her to the world as the most womanly of all women!

Where is the discontent I feel about Chiyoko in the role of my wife, this Chiyoko whom I think so much of? Once I asked myself this question. Even before I began thinking about the reason, I was frightened. I couldn't bear imagining for very long the two of us as man and wife. My mother would undoubtedly be astonished to hear these words. Even friends my own age would probably be unable to understand. However, since there's no need to let these solitary thoughts lie buried in silence, I'll tell them to you now. In a word, Chiyoko's a woman who does not know fear, but I'm a man who knows only that. And so, not only are we ill-matched, but if we were to get married, we would have to reverse our relationship as man and wife.

I've always thought, "There's nothing more beautiful than a pure feeling. There's nothing stronger than something beautiful." It's quite natural that the strong shouldn't be afraid. If I took Chiyoko as my wife, I couldn't endure the powerful light emanating from her eyes. That light would not necessarily be expressive of anger—if it were one of mercy, love, or adoration, I would still feel the same. I would most certainly be cowed by it because I'm too deficient in emotion to return anything as bright as her emotion, much less anything brighter. I've been raised by the world as a poor drinker, unqualified to fully appreciate a cask of mellowed wine given to me.

If Chiyoko were to become my wife, she'd certainly experience a cruel disappointment. In return for lavishly bestowing on her husband so much of the beautiful feeling that she's been endowed with, she'd certainly expect him to be active in society as the one reward for the mental nourishment she's given him. A woman as young and unlearned and narrow in outlook as Chiyoko is— pitifully so—would not regard a man as a man unless he grabbed the power or fortune actually visible to her eyes and devoted his entire mind and talents to worldly success. With the kind of simplicity she has, she's obsessed by the idea that if she were to become my wife, she could demand such activity of me and expect that I'd be capable of doing it merely because she demanded it. This is where the source of the unhappiness between us lies. And I am, as I said, of such a somber disposition that I'd be incapable of accepting the amount of that beautiful feeling she would offer as my wife. Even if I were able to absorb it—as thirsty soil absorbs water poured onto it— I could never be made to put it to the good uses she'd want me to. If her purity actually affected me in some way or another, it would only reveal itself in some unexpected form she'd never understand, no matter how often I explained it to her. And if she actually noticed it, she'd no more appreciate it than if I applied pomade to my hair or wrapped my feet in
tabi
of expensive silk. What I'm saying is that from her point of view, she'd only be wasting her beauty on me, and eventually she'd come to lament more and more our unhappy union.

Whenever I compare myself to Chiyoko, I'm inclined to repeat the words "a woman unafraid and a man afraid" until the proposition seems not my own invention but one found in the pages of a Western novel. The other day my uncle Matsumoto, in one of his usual lectures, made a distinction between poetry and philosophy, and since then those words about fear have reminded me of poetry and philosophy, subjects quite alien to me. Although he's only a dilettante, he is rather well versed in those fields, so he was able to tell me a number of interesting things. But he was wrong in calling me "an emotional person like you," as if he implicitly attributed to me a poet's personality. The way I see it, not being afraid is characteristic of poets, while being afraid is the destiny of philosophers. My hesitancy, my inability to be resolute, comes from an oversolicitous concern about the results of my actions. Chiyoko's ability to behave as freely as the wind comes from the instantaneous outpouring of her heart. Her emotion is so strong that it blinds her to the future. She's one of the most fearless persons I know. And so she despises my own fearfulness. For my own part I have deep pity for her, liable as she is to stumble from the burden of emotion of a poet who does not realize the irony of fate. No, sometimes I shudder in terror for her.

Keitaro had some trouble understanding the last part of Sunaga's narrative. Perhaps he was in his own way a poet or a philosopher. But these would merely be words used by others to characterize him as they saw him, and he considered himself neither. The words "poetry" and "philosophy" meant to him something dreamlike, almost beneath notice, with no value except possibly on the moon. Moreover, he had a thorough dislike of theory. A mere theory lacking the power to guide him, no matter how finely it was conceived, was as useless to him as a counterfeit bill. Therefore, he should not have allowed the phrase "a man afraid and a woman unafraid," which sounded like words found in a fortune-telling cracker sold by a street hawker, to pass without some comment. But since it was introduced into Sunaga's personal history as a natural sequence of the narrator's intimate thoughts, Keitaro felt he had to listen submissively in spite of not really knowing what it all meant.

Sunaga also noticed that he had digressed. "This has gotten too theoretical, too complicated. I've let myself run on and on."

"Never mind. It's really been quite interesting."

"It's all because of your cane, isn't it?"

"It seems so, oddly enough. While you're at it, why not go on a little more?"

"I've got nothing more to add," Sunaga replied quite definitely and turned to look at the quiet flow of water.

Keitaro too was silent for a time. For some strange reason, what he had heard from Sunaga—whether poetry or philosophy he couldn't tell—remained in his mind, towering like a huge column of a shapeless cloud that would not soon vanish. The silent Sunaga that Keitaro found sitting before him now looked like some singular person quite removed from the image of the friend so familiar to him. Certain that Sunaga still had something of the story yet to unfold, Keitaro asked when that incident last spoken of had occurred. Sunaga said that it was in about his third year at the university. Keitaro then asked what course the relationship had taken in this period of over a year, how it was proceeding, and what resolution Sunaga had come to. Sunaga merely smiled and said, "Let's get out of here first." They paid for their meal and left. As Sunaga observed the shadow of the cane Keitaro wielded so proudly, he came out with another helpless smile.

When they entered the compound of Taishakuten Temple of Shibamata, they looked as if they were obligated to pay homage to its commonplace edifice. Soon they went out the gate. Both were thinking that they would immediately take a train back to Tokyo, but at the station they found that they still had a great deal of time left before one of the slower local trains was due. They entered a nearby teahouse to rest. What follows is the story Keitaro got Sunaga to tell him on the strength of that earlier promise.

There was one incident during the summer vacation intervening between my third and fourth year at the university. I was in my upstairs room, wondering how I would get through the impending hot season, when my mother came up to suggest a visit to Kamakura if I had the time. About a week earlier the Taguchis had gone there for the summer. My uncle actually doesn't like seaside resorts, so the family usually spent each summer at his villa in Karuizawa. But when my cousins insisted that year, he allowed them to spend the vacation swimming in the sea and so had rented a villa at Zaimokuza in Kamakura.

Before the Taguchis left, Chiyoko had come over to say good-bye and to give us some information about the place. I had heard Chiyoko eagerly inviting my mother to visit them, telling her that even though she herself had not yet seen it, she had been told the house was rather large, built in two or three tiers on a cool bluff in the recess of a hill. So I advised my mother to go by herself, since it would be quite pleasant for her. She took from her kimono a letter that Chiyoko had given her. It was signed by both Chiyoko and Momoyoko, and conveyed what seemed to be their mother's order to have my mother and me join them. If my mother was to go, I would have to accompany her, for it would be worrisome to have someone her age riding the train alone. As for me, unsociable as I am, I hated causing trouble by forcing ourselves on a family already in confusion in a new place, even though we might not actually be a burden to them. But my mother's face indicated her desire to go, although it seemed much more for my own sake than hers, and that made me all the more disinclined. However, we decided to go after all. Others may not be able to understand me, but I'm that strong-willed and weak-willed at the same time.