Runaway Horses (26 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
“Exhaustive explanations are my forte,” replied Kurahara. “And I haven’t spared the Prime Minister. What a bother I must be to him.”
“Ah, but it’s not by being a bother to prime ministers that you run risk,” replied the Minister of State. “There was something I had to refrain from saying before out of consideration for the nerves of the ladies, but really, Kurahara, I’d like to see you have a proper regard for your safety. Since you are a pillar of our economy, it would indeed be catastrophic if you were to go the way of Inoué and Dan. However much you take precautions, there’s no possibility of your being over-careful.”
“Since you’re kind enough to tell me this, I presume that you’re well acquainted with the actual circumstances,” replied Kurahara in his hoarse voice, his features without expression. Even if a wave of distress had swept over his face, the restless flames that made the shadows dart across his fleshy cheeks would have concealed it. “All sorts of declarations from would-be assassins come to my home, and the police show much concern. However, having lived as long as I have, I am not the least worried about my personal safety. What fears I have pertain not to myself but to the future of our nation. I take the greatest delight, just like a child, in slipping away from my guards and doing whatever I like. There are those who are so fearful they urge bothersome measures upon me, and there are also those who tell me to use money to protect myself, offering to act as go-betweens. But I have no inclination to do anything of the sort. At this late date, I’m not going to start buying life.”
So confident was Kurahara’s declaration that his companions became ill at ease, but he was not a man to take ready notice of such reactions.
Viscount Matsudaira was warming his smooth white hands over the fire. They had turned a delicate pink, all the way back from the well-trimmed nails. Gazing intently at the ash of the cigar he held at his fingertips, he began a story whose evident intent was to dismay.
“This is something I once heard from a fellow who was a company commander in Manchuria. It impressed itself on my memory because I had never heard such a tragic story. One day this officer received a letter from the father of a private in his company who came from a poor farming district. The family, the father wrote, was crushed by poverty and tormented by hunger. Though there was no way that the father could make amends to his dutiful son for so wishing, he nevertheless hoped for his death in battle as soon as possible. For, without the bereavement payment they would then receive, the family had no means of surviving. As might well be expected, the company commander didn’t dare to show this letter to the son but hid it away. And just a short time later, he told me, it happened that the son died a heroic death in battle.”
“This really happened?” asked Kurahara.
“I have the story from the company commander himself.”
“Really!”
The sap from the logs sputtered in the flames of the fireplace in the silence that followed Kurahara’s response. After a few moments, Kurahara took out his handkerchief, and the sound of his blowing his nose attracted the attention of the others. They saw several tears, bright in the firelight, rolling down over the heavy flesh of Kurahara’s creased cheeks.
These enigmatic tears had a strong emotional effect on all present. The man most startled to see them was Viscount Matsudaira, but he was content to congratulate himself on his story-telling ability. From Marquis Matsugae, however, Kurahara’s tears drew still more tears. That so unsentimental a man would weep in sympathy with another could perhaps be explained only by concluding that his thoroughly egoistic cast of character had been unable to maintain itself before the advance of age. But as for Kurahara’s tears, which would remain something of a mystery in the face of all explanation, perhaps Baron Shinkawa alone was able to view them accurately. Since the Baron’s heart was cold, he ran no risk in any situation. Tears, however, were dangerous. Supposing they did not necessarily proceed from the approach of senility.
The Baron, then, was somewhat moved, somewhat taken aback, and as a consequence, though he made it a practice to discard his cigars half-smoked, neglected to toss the one he was holding into the fire.
16
ISAO MADE UP
his mind that, when he had his audience with Prince Toin, rather than express himself in personal terms, he would bring with him
The League of the Divine Wind.
Since there could be no question of merely lending this to the Prince, he would buy a new copy to present to him. For the first time, he found his mother’s talents to be of some use. He asked her to make a brocade cover for the presentation copy, choosing a pattern as conservative as possible. She went to work with her needle at a pitch of enthusiasm.
The matter, however, came to the ears of his father. Iinuma summoned his son and told him that he was not to see the Prince.
“But why not?” asked the startled Isao.
“Because I said so. There’s no need for an explanation.”
His son had no way of knowing how tangled was the skein of Iinuma’s emotions and to what deep and obscure region it led. Still less could he know the part that Prince Toin had played in the events leading to the death of Kiyoaki.
Since he realized that his anger was impossible to explain, Iinuma himself grew more and more uncomfortable with it. Though he was well aware that the Prince’s role in the affair was obviously that of an injured party, nevertheless, whenever Iinuma traced events back to the remote causes of Kiyoaki’s death, he invariably found himself vexed with the image of a man he had never met, Prince Toin. If there had been no Prince, if the Prince had not been present at that particular time and place . . . Iinuma’s complaint always moved toward this same conclusion. The truth was that if there had been no Prince Toin, Kiyoaki’s irresoluteness would have been still more likely to prevent him from winning Satoko even for a time, but, knowing little of the particulars, Iinuma tended to fasten his resentment doggedly upon the person of the Prince.
Iinuma was still tormented by the long-standing discrepancy between his political tenets and the turbulent emotions that were their source. For the burning, emotional loyalty that had taken form in Iinuma in his boyhood—a loyalty that at times had been shot through with anger and contempt, at times had poured down like a waterfall, at times had erupted like a volcano—this loyalty that was so much a part of him was a loyalty wholly to Kiyoaki. To define it still more precisely, one might well say that it was a loyalty dedicated to Kiyoaki’s beauty. It was a loyalty swerving almost to betrayal, a loyalty ever choked with a dark anger. And for that very reason it was an emotion to which one could give no other name.
He called it loyalty. Well and good. Yet it was something quite other than being dedicated to an ideal. He struggled against the ineffably beautiful temptation that would lure him far from his idealism. He was intensely eager to reconcile idealism and beauty, both of which had such a hold upon his heart, and moreover his emotion flowed from a kind of powerful need to reconcile the two. His was a loyalty that from its inception had the character of a lonely, single-minded fidelity. It was an emotion fated for him from boyhood, a dagger that had been thrust into his grasp.
In teaching his classes, Iinuma was fond of using the expression “love for the Emperor.” Whenever these words passed his lips he felt a surging power go out of him which made his students tremble with emotion and their eyes sparkle. Clearly the source of this inspiration was some experience of his own boyhood. Otherwise, where could it have come from?
Since Iinuma had little self-awareness, he was quite capable of forgetting all that pertained to the distant source of his emotions. Freely transcending time, he directed the fire within him wherever he wished, setting blazes where it pleased him, letting himself rest in the flames, letting himself taste the burning ecstasy and suffering no significant pain in the process. Yet if Iinuma had been more honest with himself, he would undoubtedly have noticed that he used an excessive number of metaphors having to do with emotion. He would undoubtedly have recognized himself as one who had indeed once lived out the original poem but who now made do with mere echoes of it, constantly applying the images of the moon, snow, and blossoms of long ago to scenes that were altering with every passing year. What he did not realize, in short, was that his eloquence had grown hollow.
Thus with regard to reverence for the Imperial Family, though he, Iinuma, should have been ready to cut down on the spot anyone who cast doubt upon this virtue, a chill shadow, like the wavering but constant image of rain flowing down a glass roof, fell upon his own sense of reverence—the name of Prince Toin.
“Who is it that was going to take you to see Prince Toin?” asked Iinuma in a somewhat quieter and roundabout manner. The boy said nothing.
“Who? Why don’t you answer?”
“I can’t answer that question.”
“Why can’t you answer?”
The boy fell silent once more. Iinuma grew furious. To say “Don’t see Prince Toin” was for him an order from father to son. There was no need for explanation. But, to Iinuma, for Isao not to tell him the name of his intermediary was equivalent to rebellion against his father. The truth of the matter was that Iinuma, as Isao’s father, should have been able to explain the basis of his repugnance for the Prince so that his son could have readily understood it. He should have been able to say that Isao was not to see the Prince because he had been involved in the circumstances that had driven to his death the young master whom Iinuma had served. Shame, however, like a rock glowing red with heat, blocked Iinuma’s throat and prevented all explanation.
And for Isao to go against his father like this was most extraordinary. In his father’s presence, Isao had always been reticent and deferential. For the first time Iinuma realized that there was an inviolable core within his son, and now he, who had failed in attempting to form Kiyoaki, in another time and in quite different circumstances, felt the same enervating frustration with Isao and could not stem a sudden rush of anguish.
As father and son thus sat confronting each other, the light of the setting sun, brilliant after an early evening shower, shone from the puddles scattered through the garden outside the room, and the green foliage sparkled as though the trees and shrubbery were growing in the Pure Land. The breeze was cool and refreshing as it blew across their faces. Isao’s anger was sharply defined, like something lying at the bottom of a clear brook. He sensed its presence like a stone that he could place on a Go board wherever he wished. But the emotions that raged within his father were, as always, opaque to Isao, beyond his understanding. The cicadas kept up their solemn chant.
The copy of
The League of the Divine Wind
in its sober rust-and-green brocade cover lay on the table. Isao abruptly picked it up and got to his feet, intending to leave the room without another word. His father was too fast for him. He snatched the book away from his son, and he, too, got to his feet.
The League of the Divine Wind
in its sober rust-and-green brocade cover lay on the table. Isao abruptly picked it up and got to his feet, intending to leave the room without another word. His father was too fast for him. He snatched the book away from his son, and he, too, got to his feet.
For one instant their eyes met. Isao saw that his father’s eyes were utterly cowardly, that no courage shone in them. But in those eyes, like distant pounding hoofs drawing closer, anger was rushing up from the depths of his heart.
“Have you a tongue in your head or not?”
Iinuma threw the book into the garden. The gleaming orange surface of one of the puddles was rent as the book meant for a prince splashed into it and came to rest. The instant that he saw the muddy water close over the object that he had invested with so sacred a character, Isao felt a shock of anger, as if a wall had suddenly burst before his eyes. He clenched his fists without realizing it. His father trembled. He slapped Isao across his face.
At the sound, Isao’s mother came into the room. To Miné the figures of the two men standing there seemed gigantic. The next instant she noticed that her husband’s kimono was in disarray, while that of her son, whom he had just slapped, was not. She looked beyond into the garden sparkling in the glow of the setting sun. Miné remembered her husband’s violent passion at the time that he had beaten her half to death.
Slithering across the tatami floor, Miné interposed herself between the two of them and cried out: “Isao! What are you doing? Apologize to your father. How dare you show such a face to him! Bow down before him and apologize this instant.”
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