Authors: Yukio Mishima

Runaway Horses (9 page)

BOOK: Runaway Horses

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Human beings eating, digesting, excreting, reproducing, loving and hating . . . Honda reflected that these were the human beings under the court’s jurisdiction. If worst came to worst they would appear before it as defendants.

They alone had reality. Human beings who sneezed, laughed, human beings who went about with absurdly dangling reproductive gear. If all human beings were like this, there was no basis whatsoever for Honda’s fearful mystery. Even if a single reborn Kiyoaki might be hidden in their midst.

Honda sat at the place of honor to which the priests directed him. On the table before him were wooden boxes of various delicacies and jars of saké as well as plates and small bowls. At appropriate intervals stood vases of wild lilies. Makiko was sitting on the same side of the table, and he was occasionally able to catch a glimpse of her lovely profile and the wisps of hair that fell over her cheek.

The rays of the early summer sun, scattered by tree branches, fell upon the garden. Now it was the turn for humans to feast.

8

A
FTER
H
ONDA HAD
returned home in the afternoon, he asked his wife to arrange for dinner guests and then took a short nap. He had a dream that Kiyoaki suddenly appeared and began telling him how joyful he was at their being reunited. When Honda awoke, however, he did not allow this to excite him. He accounted for it as merely an illustration of the lingering thoughts that had occupied his fatigued mind since the previous night.

Iinuma and his son arrived at six o’clock. Intending to leave directly by train afterwards, they had brought their luggage with them. When Honda and Iinuma sat down together, they felt awkward about immediately returning to their talk of the past, and instead began to discuss recent politics and social conditions. But Iinuma, apparently in deference to Honda’s position, refrained from voicing any outright complaints about the evils of the times. Isao sat upright, hands on knees, as he listened.

Those eyes of his, which had flashed brightly even from behind a kendo mask yesterday, seemed extravagantly brilliant here in an ordinary room. They seemed to express intense determination. To have such eyes close to one, to be gazed at intently by such eyes was an extraordinary experience.

Honda sensed Isao’s eyes on him as he talked with Iinuma, and he felt uneasy. “It’s quite uncalled for to stare like that during a conversation,” he thought, feeling tempted to say a word of remonstrance. Eyes of that kind should not be brought to bear upon the petty doings of everyday life. Honda felt somehow accused by their clear brilliance.

Two men may talk together enthusiastically for an hour or so about shared experiences, and yet not have a true conversation. A lonely man who wants to indulge his nostalgic mood feels the need of someone with whom to share it. When he finds such a companion, he starts to pour out his monologue as though recounting a dream. And so the talk goes on between them, their monologues alternating, but after a time they suddenly become aware that they have nothing to say to each other. They are like two men standing at either side of a chasm, the bridge across which has been destroyed.

Then at last, since they cannot bear to remain silent, their conversation turns again to the past. For some reason, Honda found himself yielding to the urge to ask Iinuma why he had published an article in a right-wing newspaper accusing Marquis Matsugae of being disloyal and unfilial.

“Ah, that!” answered Iinuma. “I hesitated before making an attack on the Marquis, who was so kind to me, but I felt I had to write that article regardless of the consequences. I did it solely out of concern for the nation.”

Such a smooth, ready answer naturally did not satisfy Honda. He remarked that Kiyoaki, after reading the article and sensing its significance, told him he missed Iinuma.

A startling surge of emotion swept over Iinuma’s face, which had already begun to show the effects of the saké they were drinking. The neat moustache trembled slightly.

“Is that right? The young master said that? He must have known how I felt. My motive in writing that article—how should I put it—was to make a public complaint, even though it meant sacrificing the Marquis, so that no one could blame the young master himself. I was afraid the young master’s involvement might somehow become known, and the scandal would do him irreparable harm. By taking the initiative and exposing the Marquis’s disloyalty, I could shield the young master. And then, too, wouldn’t any good father want to bear the brunt of the scandal himself? That was what I expected. Perhaps it was inevitable that the Marquis would become enraged at me, but when I think how the young master understood my intentions, I feel an overwhelming gratitude.

“Judge Honda, please listen to what I have to say. It’s the saké that gives me the courage to tell you this, but I’m not exaggerating. When I heard that the young master had passed away I wept for three whole days and nights. I thought that I would at least attend the wake, and I went to the Matsugae mansion, only to be turned away at the door. It seems that the arrangements concerning me were very thorough. Even on the day of the public funeral service I was kept out by their police. And so I could not offer incense for the departed young master.

“Of course I brought it on myself, but it’s a grievance that I’ll bear for the rest of my days. Even now I sometimes speak bitterly about it to my wife. What an unhappy fate for the young master! To die without achieving what he wished, and at barely twenty.” Iinuma pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away his tears.

Honda’s wife had come in to pour the saké, and sat there speechless. Young Isao, who had apparently never seen his father so overcome with emotion, had stopped eating and was looking down. Honda stared at Iinuma across the brightly lit, dish-laden table as if he were gauging the distance between them.

Honda did not doubt the genuineness of Iinuma’s sentiment. Thus, since his grief expressed such finality, he could hardly have known of Kiyoaki’s reincarnation. Otherwise his emotion would surely have been far more ambiguous and uncertain.

As he reflected, Honda found himself scrutinizing his own inner thoughts. Why did the sight of Iinuma’s grief provoke no tears from him? For one thing, there was the tempering his emotions had undergone in a profession that prized reason. And for another, there was the newfound hope that Kiyoaki lived again. A mere hint of the possibility of reincarnation made even the keenest grief suddenly seem to lose its freshness and reality, and begin to scatter like dry leaves. Somehow that was related to man’s unwillingness to tolerate any injury to the dignity that he achieved through sorrow. In a sense, such a loss was more fearful than death.

When Iinuma had gained control of himself, he at once turned to his son and asked him to go to send a telegram for him. He had forgotten to tell the students of the academy to come to meet them at Tokyo Station the next morning. Rié suggested sending the maid, but Honda, realizing that Iinuma wanted his son out of the way for a time, quickly sketched a map to show Isao how to find the nearest post office that was open at night.

After Isao left, Rié went back to the kitchen. At last Honda had a chance to question Iinuma closely, but, while he was wondering how to broach the subject, Iinuma himself began to speak of Kiyoaki.

“I failed wretchedly in educating the young master, so I intended to do my best to give my own son what I considered an ideal education. But again something was missing. When I look at my grown son, it’s incredible how the young master’s good qualities come to my mind. In spite of how I failed with him.”

“But you have a wonderful son. From what I’ve seen of him, he’s quite superior to Kiyoaki Matsugae.”

“Judge Honda, you’re being too polite.”

“Well, consider Isao’s physical fitness. Kiyoaki neglected his body completely.” Honda felt the excitement rising within him as he tried to lead Iinuma to the crucial point of the mystery. “It’s no wonder he died so early from pneumonia—he was handsome, but he had no strength. But you were with him ever since he was a child. You must have been thoroughly familiar with his body.”

“By no means!” Iinuma hastily protested. “I never so much as washed the young master’s back.”

“Why not?”

Embarrassment contorted Iinuma’s blunt features, and the blood rushed to his swarthy cheeks.

“When the young master was undressed, I could never bring myself to look at him directly.”

After Isao’s return from the post office, it was soon time to leave. Honda, whose profession had not equipped him to deal with the young, realized that he had yet to exchange a word with Isao.

“What sort of books do you like to read?” he asked, rather awkwardly.

“Let me show you, sir.” Isao, who was just putting something into his suitcase, took out a thin paperbound book and showed it to him. “I bought this last month after a friend recommended it, and I’ve already read it three times. I’ve never been so moved by a book. Have you read it, Your Honor?”

Honda looked at the title and author’s name printed in old-style characters on the plain cover:
The League of the Divine Wind
by Tsunanori Yamao. He turned over the small book, hardly more than a pamphlet, and noted that even the publisher was unfamiliar. He was about to give it back without a word when he found his hand checked by Isao’s strong hand, callused from the kendo stave.

“If Your Honor is interested, please read it. It’s a splendid book. I’ll lend it to you. You may send it back later.”

His father had just gone out to the lavatory, or he would have scolded him for his presumption. As Honda looked at the flashing eyes of the enthusiastic young man, he saw at once that Isao believed that lending his favorite book was the only way he could express his gratitude for Honda’s kindness. Honda accepted the book, and thanked him for it.

“It’s good of you to part with a book that means so much to you.”

“No, no, I’m delighted to have Your Honor read it. I’m sure, sir, that you too will be moved by it.”

The force of Isao’s answer gave Honda a glimpse into a world where the pursuit of idealism was easy, where youthful enthusiasms were readily shared—a world as simple as the endlessly repeated pattern of white splashes on the coarse blue kimono of his student days. He felt a twinge of envy.

One of Rié’s merits was that she never gave a critique of guests immediately after their departure. Though not in the least credulous, she had a kind of languid, bovine steadiness. Still, even two or three months after the visit of a particular guest, she would sometimes surprise Honda with a casual allusion to a shortcoming she had noted.

Honda was extremely fond of Rié, but she was not the sort of woman to whom he could pour out his fantasies and dreams. No doubt she would be delighted if he did. Certainly she would not ridicule them, but neither would she believe in them.

Honda made it a rule never to discuss professional matters with his wife, and he had no difficulty being just as secretive about the products of his by no means fertile imagination. As for the events that had so bewildered him since the day before, he intended to keep them as hidden as Kiyoaki’s dream journal at the back of his desk drawer.

Honda entered his study to confront the work that had to be done before morning, but the stack of thick Mino paper on which the court proceedings had been recorded in hard-to-read brush strokes gave such a severe check to his sense of duty that he was unable to begin.

He reached out absently, picked up the pamphlet that Isao had left, and, without any eagerness, began to read it.