Spring Snow (5 page)
Authors: Yukio Mishima
“I wonder what can be the matter. Something seems to have lodged itself up there,” his mother said to the Abbess, openly puzzled.
The Abbess, though she seemed to be aware that something was wrong, said nothing and smiled as before. If anyone was to speak out clearly, regardless of the effect, it would have to be Kiyoaki. But he held back, fearing the impact of his words on the happy mood of the group. He realized that everyone must have recognized what it was by now.
“Isn’t it a black dog? With its head hanging down?” said Satoko quite plainly. And the ladies gasped as if they were noticing the dog for the first time.
Kiyoaki’s pride was hurt. Satoko, with a boldness that might be construed as unfeminine, had pointed out the dog’s corpse, ignoring its ominous implications. She had adopted a suitably pleasant and straightforward tone of voice, which bore witness to her elegant upbringing; she had the freshness of ripe fruit in a crystal bowl. Kiyoaki was ashamed of his hesitation, and felt cowed by Satoko’s capacity for directness.
His mother issued some quick orders to the maids, who left at once to look for the negligent gardeners. But her profuse apologies to the Abbess for such an unseemly spectacle were cut short by Her Reverence, who made a compassionate proposal that was totally unexpected.
“My presence here would seem to be providential. If you will bury the dog under a mound, I’ll offer a prayer for it.”
The dog had probably been mortally sick or wounded when it came to the stream to drink, and had fallen in. The force of the current had wedged its corpse into the cleft of rocks at the top of the falls. Satoko’s courage had excited Honda’s admiration, but at the same time he felt oppressed by the sight of the dog hanging dead in the falls under a bright sky only faintly flecked with cloud. The dog’s black fur glistened in the clear spray, its white teeth shining in the gaping, dark red, cavernous jaws.
Everyone adjusted quickly to the shift in attention from the red maple leaves to the dog’s burial. And the maids in attendance suddenly livened up, becoming almost frivolous. They had all crossed the bridge and were resting in the arbor designed as a vantage point from which to view the falls when the gardener came rushing up, babbling every cliché of apology in his repertoire. Only then did he climb the steep, treacherous rock face to remove the dripping black body and bury it in a suitable spot.
“I’m going to pick some flowers. Kiyo, won’t you help?” asked Satoko, effectively ruling out any assistance from the maids.
“What kind of flowers would one pick for a dog?” Kiyoaki countered, his obvious reluctance drawing a burst of laughter from the women.
Meanwhile the Abbess removed her drab tunic to reveal the purple habit beneath and the small stole that hung around her neck. She had a presence that radiated grace to those around her, her brightness dissipating the atmosphere of illomen.
“Goodness, the dog is blessed to have Your Reverence offering a requiem for it. Surely it will be reborn as a human being,” said Kiyoaki’s mother with a smile.
Satoko did not bother to wait for Kiyoaki, but started up the hill path, stooping now and then to pick a late-flowering gentian that she had spotted. Kiyoaki found nothing better than a few withered camomiles.
Each time she bent to pick a flower, Satoko’s aquamarine kimono was an inadequate disguise for the roundness of her hips, surprisingly generous on such a slim figure. All at once Kiyoaki felt unsettled, his mind a remote lake of clear water suddenly clouded by a disturbance deep below its surface.
After picking the gentians necessary to complete her bouquet, Satoko suddenly straightened up and stopped abruptly in Kiyoaki’s path, while he did his best to look elsewhere. Her finely shaped nose and huge bright eyes, which he had never yet dared to look into directly, now confronted his vision at uncomfortably close range, a threatening phantom.
“Kiyo, what would you do if all of a sudden I weren’t here any more?” Satoko asked, her words coming in a rushed whisper.
4
THIS WAS A LONG-STANDING
trick of Satoko’s for disconcerting people. Perhaps she achieved her effects without conscious effort, but she never allowed the slightest hint of mischief into her tone to put her victim at ease. Her voice would be heavy with pathos at such times, as though confiding the gravest of secrets.
Although he should have been inured to this by now, Kiyoaki could not help asking: “Not here any more? Why?”
Despite all his efforts to indicate a studied disinterest, Kiyoaki’s reply betrayed his uneasiness. It was what Satoko wanted.
“I can’t tell you why,” she answered, deftly dropping ink into the clear waters of Kiyoaki’s heart. She gave him no time to erect his defenses.
He glared at her. It had always been like this. Which was why he hated her. Without the slightest warning she could plunge him into nameless anxieties. And the drop of ink spread, dull and gray, clouding everything in his heart that had been pellucid only a moment ago.
Satoko was still watching him intently, and her eyes, which had been sad, suddenly twinkled.
On their return, Kiyoaki’s bad temper surprised everyone and gave the women of the Matsugae household something to gossip about.
∗
Kiyoaki was so capricious that he tended to exacerbate the very worries that gnawed at him. Had it been applied to love affairs, his stubborn persistence would have been that of almost any young man. But in his case it was different. Perhaps this was why Satoko deliberately sowed the seeds of dark and thorny flowers, rather than brightly colored ones, knowing what an unhealthy fascination they held for Kiyoaki. Indeed he had always been fertile ground for such seeds. He indulged himself, to the exclusion of all else, in the cultivation of his anxiety.
Satoko had caught his interest. Although a willing prisoner of his discontent, he was still angry with Satoko, who always had a ready supply of fresh ambiguities and riddles to disconcert him. And he was also angered by his own indecision when faced with finding a solution to her teasing.
When he and Honda had been resting in the grass on the island, he had indeed said that he was looking for “something absolutely definite.” What it was he didn’t know, but whenever this bright certainty seemed to shine within his grasp, the fluttering sleeves of Satoko’s aquamarine kimono interposed themselves, trapping him once again in the quicksands of indecision. Though he had sensed something definite, a flash of intuition, distant, unattainable, he chose to believe that Satoko was the barrier that prevented him from taking a single step toward it.
It was even more galling to have to admit that his very pride, by definition, cut him off from all possible means of dealing with Satoko’s riddles and the anxiety they provoked. If, for example, he were now to ask someone: “What does Satoko mean about not being here any more?” it would only betray the depth of his interest in her. “What could I do,” he thought. “No matter what I did to convince them I wasn’t interested in Satoko but only in an abstract anxiety of my own, nobody would believe me.” A multitude of such thoughts raced through his head.
Ordinarily a bore, school under these circumstances offered Kiyoaki some relief. He always spent his lunch hours with Honda, even though Honda’s conversation had taken a somewhat tedious turn of late. On the day of the Abbess’s visit, Honda had accompanied the others to the main house. And there Her Reverence had addressed them with a sermon that had completely seized his imagination. Now he couldn’t wait to assault Kiyoaki’s inattentive ears with his own exegesis of each point.
It was curious that while the sermon had left the dreamy Kiyoaki quite indifferent, it struck rationalistic Honda with the force of cogency.
The Gesshu Temple on the outskirts of Nara was a convent, quite a rarity in Hosso Buddhism. The gist of the sermon had strongly appealed to Honda, and the Abbess had been careful to introduce her listeners to the doctrine of Yuishiki
∗
by using simple examples of no sophistication at all.
by using simple examples of no sophistication at all.
“Then there was the parable that Her Reverence said came to her when she saw the dog’s body hanging over the falls,” said Honda, thoroughly caught up in himself. “I don’t think there’s any doubt whatever that her use of it shows how fond she is of your family. And then her way of telling it—court phrases blending with old-fashioned Kyoto dialect. It’s an elusive language that is filled with all sorts of subtle nuances. It certainly did a great deal to heighten the impact.
“You remember that the story is set in Tang China. A man named Yuan Hsaio was on his way to the famous Mount Kaoyu to study the teachings of Buddha. When night fell, he happened to be beside a cemetery, so he lay down to sleep among the burial mounds. Then in the middle of the night he awoke with a terrible thirst. Stretching out his hand, he scooped up some water from a hole by his side. As he dozed off again, he thought to himself that never had water tasted so pure, so fresh and cold. But when morning came, he saw what he had drunk from in the dark. Incredible though it seemed, what had tasted so delicious was water that had collected in a human skull. He retched and was sick. Yet this experience taught something to Yuan Hsaio. He realized that as long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit distinctions to exist. But if one can suppress it, these distinctions dissolve and one can be as content with a skull as with anything else.
“But what interests me is this: once Yuan Hsaio had been thus enlightened, could he drink that water again, secure in the knowledge that it was pure and delicious? And don’t you think that the same would hold true for chastity? If a boy is naïve, of course, he can worship a prostitute in all innocence. But once he realizes that his woman is a slut, and that he has been living an illusion that merely serves to reflect the image of his own purity, will he be able to love this woman in the same way again? If he can, don’t you think that would be marvelous? To take your own ideal and bend the world to it like that. Wouldn’t that be a remarkable force? It would be like holding the secret key to life right there in your hand, wouldn’t it?”
Honda’s sexual innocence was matched by Kiyoaki’s, who was therefore unable to refute his strange ideal. Nevertheless, being headstrong, he felt that he was different from Honda, that he already had the key to existence within his grasp as a sort of birthright. He did not know what gave him this confidence. Ominously handsome and a dreamer, so arrogant yet so much a prey to anxiety, he was certain that somehow he was the youthful repository of a peerless treasure. Because at times he seemed to wear a quite physical radiance, he bore himself with the pride of a man marked down by a rare disease, even though he suffered neither aches nor painful swellings.
Kiyoaki knew nothing about the history of Gesshu Temple and saw no need to remedy this lack. Honda by contrast, who had no personal ties with it at all, had taken the trouble to do some research in the library. Gesshu, he discovered, was a comparatively new temple, built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. A daughter of the Emperor Higashiyama, wishing to observe a period of mourning for her father, who had died in the prime of life, devoted herself to the worship of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, at the Kiomizu Temple. She soon came to be deeply impressed by the commentaries of an old priest from the Joju Temple on the Hosso concept of existence, and consequently she became a fervent convert to this sect. After her ritual tonsuring, she declined to accept one of the benefices reserved for imperial princesses, deciding instead to found a new temple, one whose nuns would devote themselves to study of the scriptures. And it still preserved its unique place as a convent of the Hosso sect. Satoko’s greataunt, however, though an aristocrat, had the distinction of being the first abbess who was not an imperial princess.
Honda suddenly turned on Kiyoaki.
“Matsugae! What’s the matter with you these days? You haven’t paid the slightest attention to anything I’ve said, have you?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” Kiyoaki replied defensively, for once caught off guard. His beautiful clear eyes looked back at his friend. If Honda thought him insolent, it did not bother Kiyoaki in the least. What he feared was that his friend should become aware of his agony of mind. He knew that if he gave Honda the least encouragement in this direction, there would soon be nothing at all about him that Honda did not know. As this would be an unforgivable violation, he would have lost his only friend.
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