Runaway Horses (30 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
Thirty seconds passed. Then ten seconds more. Thanks to their imagination, and to the time elapsed, the explosive charge with the cap thrust into it was now far from them. But the fuse had been lit, and all the conditions necessary for the explosion had been fulfilled. The flame crawled along the fuse like a ladybug with set purpose.
Finally the imagined charge, at its imagined distance, detonated. Something ugly and corrupt suddenly heaved as though giving a violent hiccough, and the evening sky was rent for a moment. The oaks shook in the surrounding grove. Everything became transparent. The very report itself was transparent as it beat against the red sky and spread its force. At last all was still.
“Better the Japanese sword,” said Isao abruptly, looking up from the dossiers he had been scrutinizing. “We need twenty swords without fail. Some of our friends can surely slip them out of their homes for us.”
“Wouldn’t it be good to learn how to draw and strike at close range, and how to test a sword on a dead criminal?”
“We don’t have that much time,” said Isao. His voice was quiet but his words had a poetic fervor for the two boys. “Instead, before the end of vacation if possible, or else after the fall term begins, we should all attend Kaido Masugi’s training camp on the rites of purification. We can talk about anything there, and he won’t object to whatever kind of training we do. And if that’s where we’re going, we’ll have a good reason for leaving our houses.”
“It’s not much fun to listen to Master Kaido from morning to night on the evils of Buddhism.”
“That’s something you’ll have to bear with. He’s a man who understands us thoroughly,” Isao replied. He looked at his watch and got to his feet at once.
Isao and his two companions, deliberately waiting until somewhat past the designated hour of six o’clock, peered toward the shrine through the low door beside the already-shut main gate. The light of the evening sun fell upon a group of students. They faced uncertainly in various directions, their uneasiness quite apparent.
“Count them,” said Isao in a low voice.
“Every one of them is there,” said Izutsu, unable to restrain his happiness. Isao, however, knew how imprudent it would be to let himself steep in the satisfaction of being the object of such trust. Every man being present was certainly preferable to having absentees. But they were gathered there because of a telegram. Because they expected action. Because, in other words, of the reckless courage of youth. In order to temper their resolution, he would have to take this opportunity to plunge it into cold water.
With the setting sun behind it, the shrine’s copper-tiled roof was dark, but the sun’s rays caught the splendid ornamental crossbeams of its gable among the glossy branches of the surrounding ilexes and zelkovas. The slanting sunlight fell upon the black granite gravel spread within the shrine fence, catching a little of each pebble and giving it its own shadow, black as grapes at the end of autumn. Two sakaki trees were half in the shadow of the shrine while their upper branches shone brilliant.
The twenty young men were grouped around Isao, who stood facing them with the shrine to his rear. As they watched him silently, he felt the brightness of their eyes, due as much to their inner fire as to the sun striking their faces, he felt their longing for some incandescent power that would lift them up to the heavens, he felt their almost frantic dependence upon him.
“You have performed well in assembling here today,” he said, breaking the silence. “Nothing could have made me happier than your coming here like this, from as far away as Kyushu, with not a man missing. But my summons was not, as you thought, because I had some purpose. There was no purpose whatever. From all over Japan you’ve come, holding fast to the vision within your hearts, and you’ve gathered here utterly in vain.”
Suddenly there was agitation among the group, and a murmur arose.
Isao raised his voice: “Do you understand? This meeting today is absolutely meaningless. There’s no purpose to it. I have no work at all for you to do.”
He said no more, and the murmuring subsided. Silence settled upon the gathered boys even as the night was overtaking them.
Then a single angry voice shouted out. It was a boy named Serikawa, the son of a Shinto priest in the far northeast: “What are you doing to us? If I thought I was being mocked, I couldn’t stand it. I drank the farewell cup of water with my father before leaving home. My father has never ceased being indignant over the plight of the farming villages, and he told me that the time had come for the young to take action. So when the telegram arrived, he said nothing but raised the farewell cup with me and sent me off. If he learns I’ve been made a fool of, do you think my father will have nothing to say?”
“That’s right,” another boy chimed in promptly. “Serikawa is right.”
“What kind of nonsense is this? I don’t recall making any promises. You took my telegram telling you only to meet here, and you let your imaginations run wild. Isn’t that what you did? Was there anything else in that telegram—anything other than the time and the place? Tell me,” Isao demanded, keeping his voice calm as he ridiculed them.
“There’s such a thing as common sense. If you decide to take some important action, are you going to tell people about it in a telegram? We should have decided on a code and a clear commitment from you. If we had, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Seyama, a student at the First High School, who was the same age as Isao. Since he lived in Shibuya, however, coming here could hardly have been much trouble for him.
“Just what wouldn’t have happened? Isn’t that simply going back to a situation where nothing will occur?” said Isao, quietly refuting him. “Isn’t that simply realizing that what you all imagined was mistaken?”
The twilight was deepening so that it was becoming harder and harder to make out one another’s features. There was a long silence. Only the chirping of insects filled the darkness.
“What are we to do then?”
When someone asked this in a pathetic whisper, Isao’s response was immediate: “Whoever wants to go home, go home.”
One white-shirted figure at once detached itself from the group and hurried toward the college gate. Then two more drew away and walked off. Serikawa did not leave. He squatted down by the shrine hedge and held his head in his hands. In a few moments, the others heard Serikawa’s sobs. The sound seemed to penetrate the gloom in their hearts like a chill, white stream, a tiny Milky Way.
“I can’t go back! I can’t!” Serikawa muttered as he wept.
“Why don’t all of you go home?” Isao shouted. “Despite what I’ve told you, you still don’t understand?”
Not a single voice answered him. Furthermore this silence differed markedly from the one that had preceded it. It was a silence that gave the feeling that some huge, warm-blooded beast had risen up in the darkness. For the first time, Isao sensed firm response. It was hot, it had an animal smell, it was filled with blood, its pulse throbbed.
“All right then. You that are left, with no hopes, no expectations whatsoever, are you willing to throw away your lives on an act that probably will amount to nothing at all?”
“Yes,” one voice spoke out with a forceful dignity.
Serikawa rose to his feet and began to walk toward Isao. His eyes, wet with tears, approached through the darkness so thick that a face could barely be seen until it was very close. His voice was choked from weeping, and when he spoke out boldly, its tone was frightfully low: “I’m still here too. I’ll follow anywhere at all, and I’ll keep quiet.”
“Good enough. All right, let us make our vows together before the gods. Let’s offer worship. Then I’ll recite the vows. Say each one of them after me, all together.” The sound of Isao, Izutsu, Sagara, and the remaining seventeen clapping their hands in worship echoed sharply through the darkness, as regularly as the night sea slapping a wooden gunwale.
Isao intoned: “Be it thus that we, emulating the purity of the League of the Divine Wind, hazard ourselves for the task of purging away all evil deities and perverse spirits.”
The youthful voices of the others responded as one: “Be it thus that we, emulating the purity of the League of the Divine Wind, hazard ourselves for the task of purging away all evil deities and perverse spirits.”
Isao’s voice reverberated from the dimly visible plain wood doors of the inner shrine. Strong and deep, it rose up from his chest with all the poignance of the misty fantasies of youth. The stars were already out. The noise of streetcars jangled from far off. Isao chanted again: “Be it thus that we, forging deep friendship among ourselves, aid one another as comrades in responding to the perils that confront the nation.”
“Be it thus that we, never seeking power and giving no thought to personal advancement, go forth to certain death to become the foundation stones for the Restoration.”
As soon as they finished reciting the vows, one boy grasped Isao’s hand and held it with both of his own. Then all of them were clasping each other’s hands, and jostling in their haste to clasp Isao’s. Beneath the starry sky, as their eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, they thrust out their hands again and again on all sides, seeking other hands still ungrasped. No one spoke. Any words would have been inadequate.
Grasping hands were everywhere as though a growth of tenacious ivy had sprung up from the darkness. Each tendril, whether sweaty or dry or hard or soft to the touch, was filled with strength as it held fast for a brief moment marked by a mutual sharing of the warmth of their bodies and their blood. Isao dreamed that he would some night stand like this with his comrades upon the field of battle, taking wordless farewell before their deaths. Bathing in the marvelous satisfaction of having seen the task through to the finish and in the blood that flowed from his own body, yielding his consciousness to that peak of sensitivity where the scarlet and the white threads of ultimate pain and ultimate joy are woven together. . . .
Since there were twenty of them in all, they could not safely meet at the Academy of Patriotism. His father’s eye would be likely to search out Isao’s plans. On the other hand, Izutsu’s home was too small and Sagara’s, too, was unsuitable. This had been a concern of the three of them from the beginning, but no workable plan had suggested itself. Even if the three were to put their pocket money together, they could not cope with the cost of all twenty meeting at a restaurant. And then a coffee shop would hardly be the place to speak of grave matters.
Now, after the handclasps beneath the stars that sealed their alliance, it was Isao who felt a reluctance to put an end to things that night without something further. Then, too, he was hungry. No doubt all the boys were hungry. He turned perplexed eyes toward the main gate, where a dim light was burning.
Below the gate light, a little to one side, was something like a moonflower that seemed to be floating in the air. It was the face of a woman who was standing there, her head slightly bowed, not wanting to be seen. Once his eyes had discovered her, he found he could not turn away.
Somewhere in his heart he had recognized who she was. His dominant wish, however, was to go on a little longer without recognizing her. The woman’s face floating in its dark seclusion, no name yet attached to it, had the character of a mysterious, lovely apparition. It was like the scent of the fragrant olive which, as one walks along a path at night, tells of the blossoms before one sees them. Isao wanted to keep things just as they were, if only for an instant more. At this moment a woman was a woman, not someone with a name attached to her.
And that was not all. Because of her hidden name, because of the agreement not to speak that name, she was transmuted into a marvelous essence, like a moonflower, its supporting vine invisible, floating high up in the darkness. This essence which preceded existence, this phantasm which preceded reality, this portent which preceded the event conveyed with unmistakable force the presence of a substance yet more powerful. This presence which showed itself as gliding through air—this was woman.
Isao had yet to embrace a woman. Still, never so strongly as at this moment, when he keenly sensed this “womanliness that preceded woman,” had he felt that he too knew what ecstasy meant. For this was a presence that he could even now embrace. In time, that is, it had drawn near with an exquisite subtlety, and in space it was only a little distant. The affectionate emotion that filled his breast was like a vapor that could envelop her. And yet once she was gone, Isao, like a child, could forget her entirely.
However, after Isao had for some time let his thoughts dwell upon this presence, he found himself, despite his earlier wish to preserve the moment, unable to bear the uncertainty any longer.
“Wait for me,” he ordered Izutsu in a voice loud enough for all to hear, and sprinted toward the gate. There was a dry, faint stutter of scampering clogs as his white splashed-pattern kimono disappeared into the darkness.
Isao went through the low door beside the gate. Just as he had imagined, the woman standing there was Makiko.
Makiko’s hair was arranged in a different manner, something that even the inexperienced Isao noticed at once. It was a stylish hairdo that covered her ears, leaving only a wavy border about her temples and cheeks, pressing in upon her features and giving her face a heightened air of mystery. Although she was not one to use much makeup, the nape of her neck seemed to stand out like a carving in relief above the crepe of her Akashi kimono, which seemed a solid navy blue in the darkness. A whiff of some fragrant scent from her body struck Isao with unnerving force.
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