Spring Snow (23 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
“Now . . . Kiyoaki . . . there’s something I’d like to ask you which may not be altogether pleasant. Though it would be making far too much of things to call it unpleasant. But I would like to know how you feel about it.”
“What is it?”
“Well, the fact is that Miss Satoko has received another wedding proposal. And this time the circumstances are extremely complex and delicate. If it proceeds much further, there can be no question of a free and easy refusal being permissible. As always, Miss Satoko is disinclined to let anyone know how she really feels, but this time I doubt if she would feel like giving an outright refusal as she has done in the past. And then her parents are also disposed in favor. So now let’s say something about you. You and Miss Satoko have been fond of each other ever since you were babies. About her getting married, you have nothing to say against it? All you have to do now is just to tell us how you feel. For if you have an objection, I think it would be most helpful if your father knew the exact reason.”
Kiyoaki answered expressionlessly and without hesitation, without even pausing in the use of his chopsticks. “I have no objection at all. It’s something that doesn’t concern me in the least.”
A brief silence followed, after which the Marquis spoke in a tone that indicated how unruffled his good mood was. “Well now, at this point it’s still possible to go back. If just for the sake of argument we were to suppose that you might feel yourself involved somehow, even to the smallest degree, what would you say to that?”
“I feel no involvement whatever.”
“I said it was for the sake of argument, didn’t I? But if that’s the case, well and good. We have a long-standing obligation to that family, and therefore I intend to do all I can to help in this matter and to spare no expense in bringing it to a suitably happy conclusion. Well, at any rate, that’s the way things stand. Next month is the Omiyasama festival, but if things keep progressing at this rate, I imagine that Satoko is going to find herself rather busy and won’t be able to take part in it this year.”
“In that case, perhaps it would be a good idea not to go to the trouble of inviting her.”
“Well, this is a surprise,” the Marquis exclaimed with a loud laugh. “I had no idea that you were at each others’ throats.”
And the laugh was the end of the discussion.
In the final analysis Kiyoaki was a mystery to his parents. His emotional reactions were quite different from theirs. As often as they had tried to fathom what he was thinking, they had always been frustrated in their efforts. And so they eventually gave up. With regard to the present matter, they even bore the Ayakuras some resentment for having educated their son, although they themselves had entrusted them with him. They wondered if the courtly elegance that they had both yearned for did not, after all, consist in precisely the kind of fluctuating moods that made their son so difficult to understand. From a distance, such elegance had an undeniable attraction, but when they were confronted with it in the person of their own son, the effect was an enigma.
The Marquis and Marquise, whatever their intrigues, wore their emotions like clothes that were dyed in the vivid primary colors of the tropics. Kiyoaki’s emotions, however, were as subtly complex as the layer upon layer of color in the dresses of the court ladies; they were constantly merging—the drab brown of an autumn leaf shading into crimson, the crimson dissolving into the green of bambo grass. His father was exhausted by the mere attempt at solving the riddle of his son’s moods. He was exhausted by the mere sight of his handsome son’s bored indifference and his cold silences. He searched the memories of his own youth, but he could not recall any torment that had given rise to the kind of instability that ruled his son. Kiyoaki was like a lake whose clear waters reveal the very pebbles on its bed at one moment, only to cloud over the next in a sudden squall.
After a few moments, the Marquis spoke to Kiyoaki again: “By the way, I’ve been thinking of letting Iinuma go fairly soon.”
“Why’s that?” Kiyoaki asked, looking genuinely surprised for the first time that evening. This really was unexpected.
“Well, he’s been very faithful to you for a long time now, but you’ll be grown up next year. And then he’s graduated from college, so I think this is a good time. There’s also a more specific reason. A rather unpleasant rumor about him has come to my attention.”
“What sort of rumor?”
“That his conduct within the house has been a bit irregular. Not to mince words, it seems that he’s been carrying on with one of the maids, Miné. In the old days it would have been a matter of my having to cut him down with my own sword.”
As she listened to her husband’s words, the Marquise’s calm reserve was admirable. In every aspect of this matter, she would be her husband’s staunch ally.
“From whom did you hear this rumor, Father?” Kiyoaki persisted.
“That’s irrelevant.”
Kiyoaki had an immediate vision of Tadeshina’s face.
“Yes, in the old days I would have had to cut him down. But times have changed. And then he came here with a fine recommendation from the people in Kagoshima, and I know his old middle-school principal, who comes up here to give us New Year greetings. It’s best to let him go without creating any kind of stir that would damage his future prospects. Not only that, but I want to handle it tactfully, so as to make things easy for him. I’ll send Miné off on her own too. And then if they’re both still in the mood and want to marry, well and good. I’m willing to find work for him. The main thing is to get him out of the house, so it would be best to handle it in a way that will give him no cause for resentment. That’s the best thing. After all, he served you faithfully for such a long time, and we have no complaints about him in that regard.”
“How compassionate you are! And so generous!” the Marquise exclaimed.
Kiyoaki passed Iinuma in the corridor that night but said nothing to him.
As he lay with his head on his pillow, his head was a whirling mass of images. He was faced with the stark realization that from now on he would be alone. He had no friend but Honda, and he had told Honda nothing about his immediate problem.
He had a dream, and in the midst of it, the thought came to him that he would never be able to record it in his journal. The events were far too complex and irrational for that.
All sorts of faces appeared in it. The snow-covered parade ground of the Third Regiment seemed to be spread out before him. There stood Honda, dressed as an officer. Then he thought he saw a flock of peacocks settle suddenly on the snow. He saw Satoko. She wore a jeweled necklace, and on either side of her stood the two Siamese princes holding a golden crown that they were about to place on her head. In another corner, Iinuma and Tadeshina were having a heated argument. Then he saw their entangled bodies go rolling over the edge and down into a vast, gaping chasm. Miné came riding up in a carriage and his mother and father came out to meet her with obsequious smiles. Then he himself seemed to be sailing on a pitching raft over a vast ocean. “I’m too involved in my dream-world,” he thought while still in the middle of this one. “They’ve spilled over into reality. They’re a flood that’s sweeping me away.”
22
PRINCE HARUNORI
, the third son of His Imperial Highness Prince Toin, had recently attained his twenty-fifth birthday and a generalcy in the Imperial Horse Guards. He had a magnanimous, sturdy nature, and on him rested most of his father’s hopes. To select a bride for such a paragon, his father did not require anyone’s mediation, and so a vast array of candidates had been brought directly to the young man’s attention. None of these, however, had struck his imperial fancy. Thus the years went by, and just when his imperial parents were at their wits’ end, Marquis Matsugae took a chance and invited them to the cherry blossom celebration at his estate. There Satoko Ayakura was casually presented to them. The imperial couple were quite taken with her, and when the Ayakuras later received a confidential request for a photograph, they hastily obeyed by sending a picture of her in a formal kimono. When Prince Harunori’s parents showed it to him, he did not make his usual derogatory remarks, but stared at it for some considerable time. Satoko’s advanced age of twenty-one became a matter of no consequence.
Marquis Matsugae was well aware of the debt he owed the Ayakuras for having taken care of Kiyoaki as a child and he had long been anxious to do something to help the Count’s family regain something of its former grandeur. The best way to achieve this, short of a marriage into the Emperor’s immediate family, would be a marriage that united the Ayakuras with one of the princes, and the flawless lineage of the Ayakuras as a noble Urin family precluded any question of status being an obstacle. What the Ayakuras did lack, however, was the financial means for the incredible expenses they would incur in their new position. These ranged from a huge dowry to the money that would have to be disbursed regularly for the traditional seasonal gifts to all the retainers of the imperial household, an appalling sum to consider. The Marquis, nevertheless, was prepared to underwrite the cost in all particulars.
With cool composure, Satoko watched the bustle as these events went on around her. There was very little sun in April that year, and as one dark day gave way to another beneath the overcast sky, the fresh imprint of spring faded, to be replaced by the signs of approaching summer. Satoko looked out over the wide, neglected garden from a bay window of her austere room in the handsome, old-fashioned mansion that now retained its pretensions only in its imposing gate. She saw how the camellia blossoms had already fallen and new buds were pushing out from the thick dark clusters of leaves. The intricate tracery of branches and pointed leaves of the pomegranate, bristling with thorns, also showed reddish buds that were straining to burst. All the new buds grew vertical, so that the entire garden seemed to be standing on tiptoe and stretching upward to reach the sky. Indeed, every day seemed to bring it closer to its goal.
Tadeshina was deeply concerned that Satoko had become so subdued and that she should so often appear lost in thought. On the other hand, she listened attentively to all her mother and father had to say and followed their wishes as a quiet brook its banks. She now accepted everything with a faint smile, and there was no trace of her former willfulness. But behind the screen of gentle compliance, Satoko was hiding an indifference as vast as the gray April sky.
One day early in May, Satoko was invited to tea at the summer villa of Their Imperial Highnesses, Prince and Princess Toin. Ordinarily, an invitation should have come from the Matsugaes by this time of year to attend their Omiyasama festival, but although all her hopes were now centered on it, it did not come. In its place, an official of the Prince’s household appeared bearing the invitation to tea, handed it casually to a steward of the Ayakuras, and departed.
Despite the semblance of complete naturalness that attended this and similar incidents, they were in fact carefully plotted in the deepest secrecy, and though her parents said little, they were supporting the conspirators in their attempt to ensnare Satoko in the complex spell that was stealthily being woven around her.
The Count and Countess, of course, were also invited to tea at the Toinnomiya villa. Since it seemed that to go in a carriage sent by the Prince with all its appropriate trappings would be to create too much of a spectacle, the Ayakuras decided they would rather ride in one kindly lent by Marquis Matsugae. The villa, built just a few years before, toward the end of the Meiji era, stood on the outskirts of Yokohama. Had their purpose been different, a trip of this sort would have had the happy, carefree spirit of an all-too-infrequent family outing in the country.
For the first time in many days, the weather was pleasant, a good omen cheerfully noted by the Count and his wife. Since Boys’ Day was approaching, nearly every house they passed along the way had hoisted its cloth or paper carps, one for each son, and they were flapping vigorously in the stiff south breeze. They ranged in size from huge black carp to tiny red ones that looked like goldfish. If five or more were hanging from the same staff, they seemed to bunch awkwardly together, unable to swim freely in the wind’s powerful current. When the carriage passed one farmhouse on the edge of the mountains, the school of carp above the roof was so vast that the Count was moved to raise a white forefinger to count them from the window. There were ten in all.
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