Confessions of a Mask (22 page)

”. . . All the family is concerned about you and Sonoko. I have been appointed ambassador plentipotentiary in the matter. What I have to say is brief-I simply want to ask how you feel about it. Naturally Sonoko is counting on you, and everyone else is too. My mother has apparently even begun thinking about when the ceremony should be. Maybe it's too early for that, but I imagine it would be all right to go ahead and fix a date for the engagement now. But of course we're only guessing. That's why I want to ask how you feel about it. The family would like to settle everything, including making arrangements with your family, just as soon as we hear from you. But I certainly don't mean to force you to take any step you're not ready to take. Just tell me how you really feel and I'll quit worrying. Even if your answer is no, I'll never hold it against you or be angry, nor will it affect our friendship. Of course I'll be delighted if it's yes, but my feelings won't be hurt even if it's no. What I want is your frank answer, freely given. I sincerely hope you'll answer without any feeling of compulsion or obligation. As your very good friend I'm awaiting your answer. . . ."

I was thunderstruck. I looked around, feeling that someone might have been watching me as I read the letter.

I had never dreamed that this could happen. I had failed to take into account the fact that Sonoko and her family might have an attitude toward the war markedly different from my own. I was a student, still under twenty-one, and working in an airplane factory ; moreover, having grown up during a series of wars, I had thought too much of the romantic sway of war. Actually, however, even during such times of violent disaster as these to which the war had now brought us, the magnetic needle of human affairs still remained pointing in the same direction as always. And up to now even I had thought I was in love. So why had I failed to realize that the everyday affairs and responsibilities of life went on even in wartime?

As I reread Kusano's letter, however, a strange, faint smile came playing about my lips, and at last a quite ordinary feeling of superiority rose in me. I'm a conqueror, I told myself. A person who has never known happiness has no right to scorn it. But I give an appearance of happiness in which no one can detect any flaw, and so have as much right to scorn it as anyone else.

Even though my heart was filled with uneasiness and unspeakable grief, I put a brazen, cynical smile upon my lips. I told myself that all I had to do was clear one small hurdle. All I had to do was to regard all the past few months as absurd; to decide that from the beginning I'd never been in love with a girl called Sonoko, not with such a chit of a girl; to believe that I'd been prompted by a trifling passion (liar!) and had deceived her. Then there'd be no reason why I couldn't refuse her. Surely a mere kiss didn't obligate me! . . .

I was elated with the conclusion to which my thoughts had brought me: "I'm not in love with Sonoko."

What a splendid thing! I've become a man who can entice a woman without even loving her, and then, when love blazes up in her, abandon her without thinking twice about it. How far I am from being the upright and virtuous honor student I appear to be. . . . And yet I could not have been ignorant of the fact that there is no such thing as a libertine who abandons a woman without first achieving his purpose. But I ignored any such thoughts. I had acquired the habit of closing my ears completely, like an obstinate old woman, to anything I did not want to hear.

The only thing needed now was to devise a way to get out of the marriage. I set about the task exactly as though I were a jealous lover scheming to prevent a marriage between the girl he loved and someone else.

I opened the window and called my mother.

The large vegetable garden was bright in the strong summer sunlight. Rows of tomatoes and eggplants lifted their parched leaves toward the sun, defiantly, sharply. The sun kept pouring its scorching rays thickly over the strong-veined leaves. As far as the eye could reach the dark abundance of vegetable life was crushed beneath the brilliance that fell upon the garden. Beyond the garden there was a grove of trees around a shrine that turned its face gloomily in my direction. And beyond that there was low land, across which electric trains passed unseen from time to time, filling the countryside with vibrations. After each heedless passage of an upthrust trolley pole the cable was left swaying lazily, flashing in the sunlight.

In response to my call a large straw hat with a blue-ribbon streamer rose from the middle of the vegetable garden. It was my mother. The straw hat my uncle was wearing—he was my mother's elder brother—remained motionless, bent over like a drooping sunflower, without once turning in my direction.

With her present way of life my mother's complexion had become somewhat tanned and I could see the flash of her white teeth as she moved toward me. When she was close enough to be heard, she called out to me in a high-pitched childlike voice:

"What is it? If you want to tell me something, come out here."

"It's something important. You come here a minute."

My mother approached slowly, as though protesting. She was carrying a basket heaped with ripe tomatoes. Reaching the house, she put the basket on the window sill and asked what I wanted.

I did not show her the letter, but told her briefly what it said. As I was speaking I forgot why I had called her; it may have been that I was chattering on simply to convince myself. I told her that whoever became my wile would certainly have a hard time living in the same house with my nervous and fussy father, and yet there was no hope of having a separate house in such times as these. Moreover, there would probably be all the difference in the world between the ways of our old-fashioned family and what I described as Sonoko's vivacious, easygoing family. And as for me, I didn't want the worry of taking on the responsibility of a wife so soon. . . . I gave all these various trite objections with a cool air, hoping my mother would agree and obstinately oppose any thought of my marrying. But she was as calm and indulgent as ever.

"That's a funny way to talk," she broke in, as though giving little thought to the matter. "So then, how do you really feel? Do you love her, or don't you?"

"Of course, I also—well--" I mumbled. "But I was not so serious as all that. I only meant it half in fun. Then she became serious and got me into deep water."

"Then there's no problem is there? The sooner you straighten it out the better for both of you. After all, the letter is only trying to find out how you feel about it. You'd better just send a plain answer—So I'll be getting back. Everything's all right now, isn't it?"

"H'm," I answered and gave a little sigh.

My mother went as far as the bamboo gate, around which corn was growing. Then she came running back nervously to the window where I was. Her expression now was somehow changed.

"Listen, about what we were just saying—" She looked at me with an odd expression, as though she were a strange woman looking at me for the first time, "—about Sonoko. You—she—if you've—well—"

Catching her meaning, I laughed and said:

"Don't be foolish, Mother." I felt as though I had never before laughed so bitterly. "Do you really think I did any such thing? Do you trust me so little?""Oh, I knew it. I just had to make sure." She resumed her cheerful countenance, hiding her embarrassment. "That's what mothers are for—to worry about such things. Don't worry. I trust you." . . .

That night I wrote a letter of indirect refusal, which sounded artificial even to me. I wrote that it was a very sudden thing and that as yet my feelings had not gone quite that far.

On my way back to the arsenal next morning, I stopped by the post office to mail the letter. The woman at the special-delivery window looked suspiciously at my trembling hands. I stared at my letter as she took it up in her rough, dirty hands and stamped it swiftly. I found comfort in seeing my unhappiness handled in such an efficient, businesslike manner.

The enemy planes had changed their targets now and were attacking smaller cities and towns. It seemed as though life had momentarily been delivered from all danger. Views favoring surrender had become fashionable among the students. One of our young assistant professors began making suggestive allusions to peace, trying to curry favor with the students. Seeing the smug bulge of his short nose as he gave voice to the most skeptical views, I thought: "Don't you try to fool me." And on the other hand I also despised the fanatics who still believed in victory. It was all the same to me whether the war was won or lost. The only thing I wanted was to start a new life.

While visiting the house in the suburbs I was taken with a high fever, the cause of which was unknown. As I lay staring at the ceiling, which seemed to revolve feverishly, I muttered Sonoko's name continuously to myself as though it were a sacred scripture. When I was finally able to get out of bed I heard the news of the destruction of Hiroshima.

It was our last chance. People were saying that Tokyo would be next. Wearing white shirt and shorts, I walked about the streets. The people had reached the limits of desperation and were now going about their affairs with cheerful faces. From one moment to the next nothing happened. Everywhere there was an air of cheerful excitement. It was just as though one was continuing to blow up an already bulging toy balloon, wondering: "Will it burst now? will it burst now?" And yet from moment to moment nothing happened. This state of things lasted for almost ten days. If it had gone on any longer, there would have been nothing to do but go crazy.

Then one day some trim planes threaded their way through the stupid antiaircraft fire and rained propaganda leaflets down from the summer sky. The leaflets contained news of the surrender proposals. That evening my father came straight from his office to the house in the suburbs. He came in through the garden and spoke immediately, sitting down on the veranda.

"Listen," he said, "that propaganda is true." He showed me a copy of the original English text, which he had obtained from a reliable source.

I took the copy into my hands, but even before I had had time to read it I had already grasped the reality of the news. It was not the reality of defeat. Instead, for me—for me alone—it meant that fearful days were beginning. It meant that, whether I would or no, and despite everything that had deceived me into believing such a day would never come, the very next day I must begin that "everyday life" of a member of human society. How the mere words made me tremble!

CHAPTER FOUR

Contrary to my expectations, that everyday life which I feared showed not the slightest sign of beginning. Instead, it felt as though the country were engaged in a sort of civil war, and people seemed to be giving even less thought to "tomorrow" than they had during the real war.

The schoolmate who had lent me his university uniform was discharged from the army, and I returned his uniform to him. Then for a time I had the illusion that I had been liberated from memories, from memories of all my past.

My sister died. I derived a superficial peace-of-mind from the discovery that even I could shed tears.

Sonoko became formally engaged and was married shortly after my sister's death. My reaction to this event—would I be right in describing it as the feeling of having had a burden lifted from my shoulders? I pretended to myself that I was pleased. I boasted to myself that this was only natural since it was I who had done the jilting and not she.

I had long insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.

I passed the next year with vague and optimistic feelings. There were my law studies, perfunctorily performed, and my automatic goings and comings between university and home. . . . I was not paying attention to anything, nor was anything paying attention to me. I had acquired a worldly-wise smile like that of a young priest. I had the feeling of being neither alive nor dead. It seemed that my former desire for the natural and spontaneous suicide of death in war had been completely eradicated, and forgotten.

True pain can only come gradually. It is exactly like tuberculosis in that the disease has already progressed to a critical stage before the patient becomes aware of its symptoms.One day I stopped in a bookstore, where new publications were gradually beginning to reappear, and happened to take down a translation in a crude paper binding. It was a collection of wordy essays by a French writer. I opened the book at random and one line on the page burned itself into my eyes. An acute feeling of uneasiness forced me to close the book and return it to the shelf.

On my way to school the next morning something suddenly possessed me to stop by the same bookstore, which was near the main gate of the university, and buy the book I had looked at the day before. During a lecture on the Civil Code, I took the book out stealthily and, laying it beside my open notebook, hunted up the same line. It now gave me an even more vivid feeling of unease than it had the day before:

. . . The measure of a woman's power is the degree of suffering with which she can punish her lover.. ..