Spring Snow (2 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
In the middle of the park a large pond spread out against the backdrop of a hill covered with maples. The pond was big enough to boat on; it had an island in the middle, water lilies in flower, and even water shields that could be picked for the kitchen. The drawing-room of the main house faced the pond, as did the banqueting room of the Western house.
Some two hundred stone lanterns were scattered at random along the banks and on the island, which also boasted three cranes made out of cast-iron, two stretching their long necks to the sky and the other with its head bent low.
Water sprang from its source at the crest of the maple hill and descended the slopes in several falls; the stream then passed beneath a stone bridge and dropped into a pool that was shaded by red rocks from the island of Sado, before flowing into the pond at a spot where, in season, a patch of lovely irises bloomed. The pond was stocked both with carp and winter crucian. Twice a year, the Marquis allowed schoolchildren to come there on picnics.
When Kiyoaki was a child, the servants had frightened him with stories about the snapping turtles. Long ago, when his grandfather was ill, a friend had presented him with a hundred of these turtles in the hope that their meat would rebuild his strength. Released into the pond, they had bred rapidly. Once a snapping turtle got your finger in its beak, the servants told Kiyoaki, that was the end of it.
There were several pavilions used for the tea ceremony and also a large billiard room. Behind the main house, wild yams grew thick in the grounds, and there was a grove of cypresses planted by Kiyoaki’s grandfather, and intersected by two paths. One led to the rear gate; the other climbed a small hill to the plateau at its top where a shrine stood at one corner of a wide expanse of grass. This was where his grandfather and two uncles were enshrined. The steps, lanterns, and torii, all stone, were traditional, but on either side of the steps, in place of the usual lion-dogs, a pair of cannon shells from the Russo-Japanese War had been painted white and set in the ground. Somewhat lower down there was a shrine to Inari, the harvest god, behind a magnificent trellis of wisteria. The anniversary of his grandfather’s death fell at the end of May; thus the wisteria was always in full glory when the family gathered here for the services, and the women would stand in its shade to avoid the glare of the sun. Their white faces, powdered even more meticulously than usual for the occasion, were dappled in violet, as though some exquisite shadow of death had fallen across their cheeks.
The women. No one could count exactly the multitude of women who lived in the Matsugae mansion. Kiyoaki’s grandmother, of course, took precedence over them all, though she preferred to live in retirement at some distance from the main house, with eight maids to attend to her needs. Every morning, rain or shine, Kiyoaki’s mother would finish dressing and go at once with two maids in attendance to pay her respects to the old lady. And every day the old lady would scrutinize her daughter-in-law’s appearance.
“That hairstyle isn’t very becoming. Why not try doing it in the high-collar way tomorrow? I’m sure it would look better on you,” she would say, her eyes narrowed lovingly. But when the hair was arranged the Western way next morning, the old lady would comment: “Really, Tsujiko, a high-collar hair-do simply doesn’t suit an old-fashioned Japanese beauty like you. Please try the Marumage style tomorrow.” And so, for as long as Kiyoaki could remember, his mother’s coiffure had been perpetually changing.
The hairdressers and their apprentices were in constant attendance. Not only did his mother’s hair demand their services but they had to look after more than forty maids. However, they had shown concern for the hair of a male member of the household on only one occasion. This was when Kiyoaki was in his first year at the middle school attached to Peers School. The honor had fallen to him of being selected to act as a page in the New Year’s festivities at the Imperial Palace.
“I know the people at school want you to look like a little monk,” said one of the hairdressers, “but that shaved head just won’t look right with your fine costume today.”
“But they’ll scold me if my hair is long.”
“All right, all right,” said the hairdresser. “Let me see what I can do to improve it. You’ll be wearing a hat in any case, but I think we can arrange things so that even when you take it off, you’ll outshine all the other young gentlemen.”
So he said, but Kiyoaki at thirteen had had his head clipped so closely that it looked blue. When the hairdresser parted his hair, the comb hurt, and the hair oil stung his skin. For all the hairdresser’s vaunted skill, the head reflected in the mirror looked no different from any boy’s, yet at the banquet Kiyoaki was praised for his extraordinary beauty.
The Emperor Meiji himself had once honored the Matsugae residence with his presence. To entertain his Imperial Majesty, an exhibition of sumo wrestling had been staged beneath a huge gingko tree, around which a space had been curtained off. The Emperor watched from a balcony on the second floor of the Western house. Kiyoaki confided to the hairdresser that on that occasion he had been permitted to appear before the Emperor, and His Majesty had deigned to pat him on the head. That had taken place four years ago, but it nevertheless was possible that the Emperor might remember the head of a mere page at the New Year’s festivities.
“Really?” exclaimed the hairdresser, overwhelmed. “Young master, you mean to say you were caressed by the Emperor himself!” So saying, he slid backward across the tatami floor, clapping his hands in genuine reverence at the child.
The costume of a page attending a lady of the court consisted of matching blue velvet jacket and trousers, the latter reaching to just below the knees. Down either side of the jacket was a row of four large white fluffy pompons and more were attached to the cuffs and the trousers. The page wore a sword at his waist, and the shoes on his white-stockinged feet were fastened with black enamel buttons. A white silk tie was knotted in the center of his broad lace collar, and a tricorn hat, adorned with a large feather, hung down his back on a silk cord. Each New Year, about twenty sons of the nobility with outstanding school records were selected to take turns—in fours—bearing the train of the Empress, or in pairs to carry the train of an imperial princess during the three days of festivities. Kiyoaki carried the train of the Empress once and did the same for the Princess Kasuga. When it was his turn to bear the Empress’s train she had proceeded with solemn dignity down corridors fragrant with the musky incense lit by the palace attendants, and he had stood in attendance behind her during the audience. She was a woman of great elegance and intelligence, but by then she was already elderly, close to sixty. Princess Kasuga, however, was not much more than thirty. Beautiful, elegant, imposing, she was like a flower at its moment of perfection.
Even now, Kiyoaki could remember less about the rather sober train favored by the Empress than about the Princess’s broad sweep of white ermine, with its scattered black spots and its border of pearls. The Empress’s train had four loops for the pages’ hands, and the Princess’s two. Kiyoaki and the others had been so exhaustively drilled that they had no trouble in holding firm while advancing at a steady pace.
Princess Kasuga’s hair had the blackness and sheen of fine lacquer. Seen from behind, her elaborate coiffure seemed to dissolve into the rich white skin-textures of the nape of her neck, leaving single strands against her bare shoulders whose faint sheen was set off by her décolleté.
She held herself erect, and walked straight ahead with a firm step, betraying no tremor to her trainbearers, but in Kiyoaki’s eyes that great fan of white fur seemed to glow and fade to the sound of music, like a snow-covered peak first hidden, then exposed by a fluid pattern of clouds. At that moment, for the first time in his life, he was struck by the full force of womanly beauty—a dazzling burst of elegance that made his senses reel.
Princess Kasuga’s lavish use of French perfume extended to her train, and its fragrance overpowered the musky odor of incense. Some way down the corridor, Kiyoaki stumbled for a moment, inadvertently tugging at the train. The Princess turned her head slightly, and, as a sign that she was not at all annoyed, smiled gently at the youthful offender. Her gesture went unnoticed; body perfectly erect in that fractional turn, she had allowed Kiyoaki a glimpse of a corner of her mouth. At that moment, a single wisp of hair slipped over her clear white cheek, and out of the fine-drawn corner of an eye a smile flashed in a spark of black fire. But the pure line of her nose did not move. It was as if nothing had happened . . . this fleeting angle of the Princess’s face—too slight to be called a profile—made Kiyoaki feel as if he had seen a rainbow flicker for a bare instant through a prism of pure crystal.
His father, Marquis Matsugae, watched his son’s part in the festivities, absorbing the boy’s brilliant appearance in his beautiful ceremonial costume, and savoring the complacency of a man who sees a lifelong dream fulfilled. This triumph dispelled completely his lingering fears of still seeming an imposter, for all his attempts to establish himself as someone fit to receive the Emperor in his own home. For now, in the person of his own son, the Marquis had seen the ultimate fusion of the aristocratic and the samurai traditions, a perfect congruence between the old court nobles and the new nobility.
But as the ceremony continued, the Marquis’s gratification at the praise people had lavished on the boy’s looks changed to feelings of discomfort. At thirteen, Kiyoaki was altogether too handsome. Putting aside natural affection for his own son, the Marquis could not help noticing that he stood out even in comparison with the other pages. His pale cheeks flushed crimson when he was excited, his brows were sharply defined and his wide eyes, still childishly earnest, were framed by long lashes. They were dark and had a seductive glint in them. And so the Marquis was roused by the flood of compliments to take note of the exceptional beauty of his son and heir, and he sensed something disquieting in it. He was touched by an uneasy premonition. But Marquis Matsugae was an extremely optimistic man, and he shook off his discomfiture as soon as the ceremony was over.
Similar apprehensions were more persistent in the mind of young Iinuma, who had come to live in the Matsugae household as a boy of seventeen the year before Kiyoaki’s service as a page. Iinuma had been recommended as Kiyoaki’s personal tutor by the middle school of his village in Kagoshima, and he had been sent to the Matsugaes with testimonies to his mental and physical abilities. The present Marquis’s father was revered as a fierce and powerful god in Kagoshima, and Iinuma had visualized life in the Matsugae household entirely in terms of what he had heard at home or at school about the exploits of the former Marquis. In his year with them, however, their luxurious way of life had disrupted this expectation and had wounded his youthfully puritanical sensibilities.
He could shut his eyes to other things, but not to Kiyoaki, who was his personal responsibility. Everything about Kiyoaki—his looks, his delicacy, his sensitivity, his turn of mind, his interests—grated on Iinuma. And everything about the Marquis and Marquise’s attitude toward their son’s education was equally distressing. “I’ll never raise a son of mine that way, not even if I am made a Marquis. What weight do you suppose the Marquis gives to his own father’s tenets?”
The Marquis was punctilious in observing the annual rites for his father, but almost never spoke of him. At first, Iinuma used to dream that the Marquis would talk more often about his father and that his reminiscences might reveal something of the affection in which he held his father’s memory, but in the course of the year such hopes flickered and died.
The night that Kiyoaki returned home after performing his duties as an imperial page, the Marquis and his wife gave a private family dinner to celebrate the occasion. When the time came for Kiyoaki to hurry off to bed, Iinuma helped him to his room. The thirteen-year-old boy’s cheeks were flushed with the wine that his father, half as a joke, had forced upon him. He burrowed into the silken quilts and let his head fall back on the pillow, his breath warm and heavy. The tracery of blue veins under his close-cropped hair throbbed around his earlobes, and the skin was so extraordinarily transparent that one could almost see the fragile mechanism inside. Even in the half-light of the room, his lips were red. And the sounds of breathing that came from this boy, who looked as though he had never experienced anguish, seemed to be the mocking echo of a sad folksong.
Iinuma looked down at his face, at the sensitive darting eyes with their long lashes—the eyes of an otter—and he knew that it was hopeless to expect him to swear the enthusiastic oaths of loyalty to the Emperor that a night like this would have invoked in any normal young Japanese boy striving toward manhood, who had been privileged to carry out so glorious a task.
Kiyoaki’s eyes were now wide open as he lay on his back staring at the ceiling, and they were filled with tears. And when this glistening gaze turned on him, Iinuma’s distaste deepened. But this made it all the more imperative for him to believe in his own loyalty. When Kiyoaki apparently felt too warm, he pulled his bare arms, slightly flushed, out from under the quilt and started to fold them behind his head; Iinuma admonished him and pulled shut the loose collar of his nightgown: “You’ll catch cold. You ought to go to sleep now.”
“Iinuma, you know . . . I made a blunder today. If you promise not to tell Father or Mother, I’ll say what it was.”
“What was it?”
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