"By summer I plan to have a swimming pool built in front of the terrace where the birdhouse is," Honda explained on the way.

But the ladies' response was chill, and he suddenly felt like a clerk at some inn escorting guests on a tour of the premises.

Artists and their ilk proved most difficult for Honda to deal with. He had resumed relations with Makiko at the time of the fifteenth memorial service for Isao in 1948. j.a.panese poetry had not been the cause, as one might have expected. The former perfunctory relationship of counselor and witness (even though it held undertones of conniving) had actually blossomed into friendship, for they both held unvoiced affection for Isao. Honda was at a complete loss for words and had thus broached the inane subject of a swimming pool. Makiko with her pupil at her side stood facing the spectacle of Mount Fuji in the spring.

He knew that the women did not quite feel contemptuous of him, yet he realized they felt easy enough with him to act without constraint. He was outside their circle, alien to their way of life. He could easily imagine Makiko speaking to someone involved in a difficult case: "Mr. Honda's a friend of mine. No, he doesn't write poetry. But he's very understanding, and he's excellent in both civil and criminal cases. I'll speak to him for you."

But within, Honda was afraid of Makiko, and she probably was just as frightened of him. She had revived the old a.s.sociation with him in order to protect her name. Honda had no illusions as to her true character; he knew that she was quite capable of bearing false witness, of telling at the critical moment the most thoroughly believable lies.

Other than that, Honda was likable, un.o.bjectionable to the women. How freely they talked in front of him, whereas they at once hid behind innocuous social chatter when Rie approached. Honda liked to observe these once beautiful, but no longer young women, their perpetual sad conversations, their confusion of their own sensuality with the past, memories and realities encroaching one upon the other, and their habit of distorting nature and reality to suit their whim. He also liked their ability to bestow automatic lyricism on everything beautiful they saw, like a bailiff stamping every piece of furniture he finds. As if this were a way of protecting themselves from whatever beauty they might perceive. Honda liked to see them romp and gambol like two inspired waterfowl who, having stumbled clumsily onto land, slip back into the water, exhibiting forthwith unexpected grace and nimbleness as they swim and dive with abandon. When they composed a poem, they would display unreserved freedom in mental sunbathing, quite without fear of the resultant exposure. It brought to mind the young Princess and the old ladies at Bang Pa In.

Would Ying Chan really come? Where had she stayed the night? Concern suddenly inserted a rough wooden wedge into his mind.

"What a beautiful garden! Hakone to the east and Fuji to the west. It's a crime that you dawdle around without writing a single poem. While we're forced to produce poetry under the polluted skies of Tokyo, you read law books here. What an unfair world!"

"I gave up on legal books long ago," said Honda, offering them some sherry. The movement of kimono sleeves and the graceful motion of their fingers as the two women accepted the sherry gla.s.ses were extremely lovely. Actually Mrs. Tsubakihara slavishly aped Makiko, from the gesture of lightly holding up her sleeve to the way she curled her ringed fingers when picking up the gla.s.s.

"How happy Akio would have been to see this garden!" said Mrs. Tsubakihara, mentioning her dead son. "He adored Mount Fuji, and even before entering the Navy, he had a framed photograph of it in his study so he could always look at it. Such clean-cut, youthful tastes."

Every time she mentioned his name, the ripple of a sob touched her cheeks, as though a precision mechanism existed in the depth of her heart, automatically activated at every reference to him, independent of her wishes, and producing an unvarying facial expression. As an emperor's name is always mentioned with a reverent expression, the fleeting trace of sobs was practically synonymous with the name Akio.

Makiko had spread a notebook on her lap and composed a poem.

"You've already written one!" exclaimed Mrs. Tsubakihara, looking jealously at her teacher's bent head. Honda looked too. The slim, white, fragrant nape that had once attracted young Isao lingered like a fading moon in his eyes.

"That's Mr. Imanishi. I'm sure it must be!" cried Mrs. Tsubakihara, looking at the man crossing the lawn. Even from that distance, the white forehead and tall figure walking in the characteristically infirm manner, trailing its long shadow, were recognizably his.

"How horrible! He's sure to start that vulgar talk again. He'll ruin our enjoyment straightaway," said Mrs. Tsubakihara.

Yasushi Imanishi was about forty and a specialist in German literature. He had introduced the younger German writers during the war and now indiscriminately wrote all kinds of essays. Currently he was dreaming about the Millennium of s.e.x that he was going to write, but as yet there was no sign of his having done so. Probably he had lost interest in writing it now that he had discussed with everyone the details of its contents. What relevance the Millennium, which was altogether weird and gloomy, could hold for him no one could say. He was the second son of the head of Imanishi Securities and was living the comfortable life of a bachelor.

His face was pale and nervous, but he was congenial, talkative, and both the financial world and left-wing writers found him amusing. He really felt that he had discovered for the first time in his life something that suited his personality in this postwar iconoclastic period directed against established authority and convention. This was the struggle taken up by rugged, pale intellectuals. He advocated the political significance of s.e.xual fantasy, which he had adopted as his specialty. Until then, he had been merely a Novalislike romanticist.

Women liked the manner he had of gallantly spicing his aristocratic ways with obscenities. Those who called him degenerate were only revealing that they were holdovers from feudal days. At the same time, Imanishi never failed to disappoint serious progressives by his silly future map of the Millennium.

He never spoke in a loud voice. For that presented the danger of taking matters from the area of delicate sensuality and transforming them into ideology.

The four guests pa.s.sed the time in the arbor basking in the afternoon sun, while they waited for the others to arrive. The gurgling sound of the stream running just below insisted on intruding itself into their awareness. Honda could not help but remember the words: "Everything is in constant flux like a torrent."

Imanishi had called the kingdom of his fantasy "The Land of the Pomegranate." He had named it after the small, ruby-red bursting seeds. He claimed that he traveled to his kingdom asleep and awake, and everyone asked for news of it.

"What's happening in 'The Land of the Pomegranate' these days?"

"As usual the population is well under control. All sorts of problems arise because of the high incidence of incest. A single woman is often aunt, mother, sister, and cousin to the same man. As a result, half the babies are incredibly beautiful, while the other half are ugly and deformed.

"The beautiful children of both s.e.xes are separated in infancy from the ugly ones and a.s.sembled in a place called 'The Garden of the Loved Ones.' The facilities are magnificent, a veritable paradise on earth. An artificial sun constantly gives out exactly the ideal number of ultraviolet rays. No one wears clothes, and all devote themselves to swimming and other physical exercises. Flowers bloom in profusion, and small animals and birds are never caged. The children there eat good nourishing food, but never grow fat, for they are checked weekly by medical examiners. They can only grow more and more beautiful. But reading is strictly forbidden. It spoils natural beauty, so the taboo makes sense.

"But when they reach adolescence, they're brought from the garden once a week to become objects of, s.e.xual amus.e.m.e.nt for the ugly ones outside. After two or three years of this sort of activity, they are destroyed. Don't you think it's true brotherly love to terminate life while beautiful people are still young?

"The creative powers of all artists in the land are utilized to develop various means of slaughter. That is to say, there are theaters throughout the country devoted to s.e.xual murder, in which the beautiful boys and girls are cast in all manner of roles where they are tortured to death. They recreate all sorts of mythological and historical personalities who were s.a.d.i.s.tically murdered while young and beautiful. But of course there are many new creations too. They are n.o.bly murdered in magnificent, sensual costumes, with splendid lighting, brilliant stage settings, and wonderful music; but usually they are toyed with by members of the audience before they are quite dead, and after that the bodies are consumed.

"The graves? The graves are right outside 'The Garden of the Loved Ones.' It's a beautiful place, and ugly deformed people stroll among the tombs on moonlit nights, lost in romantic moods. As statues of the beautiful ones are erected as gravestones, there's no cemetery in the world with so many beautiful bodies."

"Why do they have to kill them?"

"Because they're soon bored by living people."

"The people in 'The Land of the Pomegranate' are infinitely wise. They know very well that there are only two roles for humans in this world: those who remember and those who are remembered.

"Now that I have told you this much, I must inform you about their religion. Such custom is based on religious belief.

"They don't believe in rebirth in 'The Land of the Pomegranate.' Because G.o.d is manifest at the supreme instant of s.e.xual climax, and the true nature of G.o.dliness lies in its unique appearance. There is no possibility that one would become more beautiful after rebirth, and that means that resurrection would hold no meaning. It's unthinkable that a faded shirt should be whiter than a brand-new one, isn't it. So the G.o.ds of 'The Land of the Pomegranate' are used once and thrown away.

"The religion of the country is polytheistic, but in a temporal sort of way; and countless numbers of G.o.ds squander their total physical existence, disappearing once they have expressed this highest moment in eternity. Now you know: 'The Garden of the Loved Ones' is a factory for making G.o.ds.

"To transform history in this world into a chain of beautiful events, the sacrifice of G.o.ds must continue infinitely. Such is the theology. Don't you think it's rational? Furthermore, the people display absolutely no hypocrisy; so beauty and s.e.xual attractiveness are synonyms. They are very well aware that only through s.e.xual desire may one approach G.o.d; that is, beauty.

"One possesses a G.o.d by means of s.e.xual desire, and s.e.xual possession occurs at the climax of pleasure. But an o.r.g.a.s.m does not endure, therefore possession can mean only one thing: the unification of the unenduring with the ephemeralness of the object of s.e.xual desire. The surest method is the elimination of this object at the moment of climax. Therefore, the people of the country are clearly aware that s.e.xual possession is consummated in murder and cannibalism.

"It is certainly wonderful that this paradox of s.e.xual possession controls even the economic structure of the country. The fundamental rule of possession is 'to kill the loved one,' which means that completion of any possession signifies simultaneous termination of possessing, and continued possession is a violation of love. Physical labor is permitted only to create beautiful physiques, and the ugly are exempted from it. Actually industrial production is completely automated and does not require human power. The arts? The only arts are found in the infinite variety of the murder theater as well as in the erection of statues to the beautiful dead. From the religious point of view, sensual realism is the basic style, and abstraction is completely rejected. Incorporation of 'life' in the arts is strictly forbidden.

"The approach to beauty is through s.e.xual desire, but what records this moment of beauty for all eternity is memory . . . Now you have a rough understanding of the fundamental structure of 'The Land of the Pomegranate,' I think. The basic concept is memory, and in a manner of speaking, memory is national policy.

"o.r.g.a.s.m, a phenomenon something like a corporeal crystal, is further crystallized in memory, and following the death of the G.o.d of beauty, one can recall the highest degree of s.e.xual excitement. The people live only in order to reach this point. Compared to this heavenly jewel, the physical existence of human beings, whether the lover or the beloved, the killer or the killed, is only the means of reaching this point. This is the ideal of the country.

"Memory is the sole matter of our spirit. Even should a G.o.d appear at the climax of s.e.xual possession, then that G.o.d becomes 'the remembered one,' and the lover becomes 'the one who remembers.' Only through this time-consuming process is the presence of the G.o.d really proved, is beauty attained for the first time, and is s.e.xual desire distilled into love that is independent of possession. Hence, G.o.ds and humans are not separated in s.p.a.ce, but there is a time lag between them. Here lies the essence of temporal polytheism. Do you understand?

"Murder sounds harsh, but it is necessary for purifying memory and distilling it into its strongest concentrated element. Besides, these ugly, deformed inhabitants are n.o.ble, truly n.o.ble. They are experts in altruism; they live for self-denial. These lovers-c.u.m-murderers-c.u.m-rememberers live their roles faithfully, they remember nothing about themselves, but live only in adoration of the memory of the loved ones' beautiful death. Remembering becomes the single task of their lives. 'The Land of the Pomegranate' is also a country of cypresses, beautiful mementoes, and mourning; it is the most peaceful and quiet place in all the world, a country of recollections.

"Every time I go there, I think I never want to return to a place like j.a.pan. The land is full of the sweetest, tenderest elements of humanity. It is a country of true humanism and peace. They have no such savage custom as eating the flesh of oxen and pigs."

"I would like to ask you one thing. You say that they eat human flesh, but what parts of the human body do they consume?" Makiko asked, amused.

"You know very well without asking," said Imanishi in a quiet, subdued voice.

Honda thought it more than comical that a former judge could listen without flinching to such manner of talk. He had never even dreamed that a man like Imanishi could ever exist. Had Cesare Lombroso, the criminologist, met him, he would have ordered him immediately banished from society.

Honda was repelled by Imanishi's s.e.x-oriented interests, yet he himself indulged in another kind. If this were not a product of Imanishi's imagination, they should all be inhabitants of the s.e.x millennium of the G.o.ds. It was a divine theatrical farce that G.o.d had made Honda live on as one who would remember, killing off Kiyoaki and Isao as those to be remembered. But Imanishi had stated that there was no rebirth. Samsara might be an idea standing in opposition to resurrection, and its characteristic might be its guaranteeing that life occur only once. In particular, Imanishi's theory that there was a time lag between human existence and G.o.d, and that man could meet G.o.d only in memory forced Honda to look back upon his own life and his travels; it evoked something vast and vaguely nostalgic.

What a man Imanishi was!

He intentionally exposed to the sun black inner deformities and was even pleased in so doing. He staked all on the sophistication of his nonchalant face, describing his blackness to others as though it did not concern him at all.

Honda, having long been a part of the legal world, concealed in his heart a certain romantic respect for the self-confident criminal. To be truthful, the confident criminal was extremely rare. Indeed, he had never met anyone who could be so cla.s.sified except Isao.

It followed that Honda concealed feelings of hatred and contempt for repentant offenders.

Which was Imanishi?

He was probably never repentant, but he quite lacked the n.o.bility of the principled criminal. By his vanity and sophistication he was trying to embellish the meanness of a man who has confessed and thus sought to achieve the advantage of both confession and sophistication. The ugliness of this transparent anatomical model! Honda, nevertheless, persistently refused to recognize the fact that he was somewhat attracted to Imanishi, that the invitation he had extended to him to come to the villa was rooted in a kind of envy for his courage. Furthermore, that he concealed this was not because of his conceit and fort.i.tude in demeaning himself to the baseness of one who has confessed, but doubtless because of his fear of Imanishi's X-ray eyes. Honda had secretly labeled his own fear the "sickness of objectivity." It was the ultimate h.e.l.l, filled with pleasurable thrills, into which a cognition that refused to act was finally precipitated.

The man has eyes like a fish, thought Honda, glancing surrept.i.tiously at Imanishi's profile as the latter was talking triumphantly to the women.

Only after the sun had dyed the clouds to the left of Mount Fuji had all the guests a.s.sembled.

When the four made their way from the arbor to the house, Keiko's American lover, the Army lieutenant, was helping her in the kitchen. Shortly, the aging erstwhile Baron and Baroness Shinkawa arrived; then at intervals, Sakurai, a diplomat; Murata, the president of a construction company; Kawaguchi, an important newspaper man; Akiko Kyoya, a singer of French songs; and Ikuko Fujima, a traditional j.a.panese dancer. Such a motley group of guests would have been unthinkable in Honda's former household. Honda's heart, too, was heavy: Ying Chan had not put in an appearance.

26.

FORMER BARON SHINKAWA was seated in a chair by the fireside from which point he coldly observed the other guests.

He was now seventy-two. Grumbling and complaining without fail whenever he left home, he could not forego the joy of going out; at even his age his love for parties had not diminished. He had been very bored during the period of the postwar purges and had fallen into the habit of accepting all invitations. This had continued on into the postpurge years.

But now everyone considered him and his garrulous wife to be the most boring of guests. His sarcasm had lost its bite, and his epigrammatic expressions had become longwinded and shallow. He was never able to recall people's names.

"That . . . what was he called? . . . remember . . . he was often depicted in political cartoons . . . don't you remember? . . . a small, fat man, round as a b.u.t.terball . . . what was his name? . . . a very common one . . ."

His listener could not help but recognize Shinkawa's losing battle with the invisible monster of forgetfulness. This quiet, but tenacious animal would occasionally withdraw only to reappear at once, clinging to Shinkawa, brushing his forehead with its s.h.a.ggy tail.

At last, he would give up and continue his story.

". . . anyway, this politician's wife was a remarkable woman." But the episode in which the most important name was missing no longer held any flavor. Each time he would stamp his foot in sheer vexation, so anxious was he to impart to others the flavor of the tale he alone could savor. It was then that Shinkawa would be aware of a mendicant-like emotion, one he had previously never experienced. In his struggle to find someone to appreciate his simple punning jokes, as though begging for understanding, he had unconsciously become obsequious.

He was pathetically compelled to tear down the refined pride he had so long possessed, and gradually his prime concern became the a.s.sumption of an att.i.tude of contemptuousness-something that he had exhibited most casually on the tip of his nose like cigar smoke in former days. But at the same time, he took great pains to avoid revealing this hidden contempt to anyone. He was fearful that he might not receive other invitations.

In the midst of a party, he would occasionally pull at his wife's sleeve and whisper in her ear: "What a despicable pack. They don't know the first thing about how to speak of the indelicate in a refined way. j.a.panese ugliness is so complete it's almost impressive. But you mustn't let them suspect how we think."

Shinkawa's eyes suddenly became glazed before the flames in the fireplace; he recalled the garden party at the Marquis Matsugae's some forty years ago, proudly remembering that there too he had felt nothing but contempt for his host.

But only one thing had changed. In former times, the object of his contempt could do him no harm; but now just being there profoundly wounded him.

Mrs. Shinkawa was vivacious.

At her age she increasingly found an indefinable interest in talking about herself. Her search for listeners harmonized beautifully with the attempt to abolish cla.s.s distinctions that was now in style. She had never once been concerned about the quality of her audience.

She paid exaggerated compliments to the singer of French songs as though she were talking to royalty, in return for which she obtained a hearing. She shamelessly praised Makiko Kito's poems and then imposed her own tale on the poor woman-once she had been complimented by an Englishman who had called her a poet. He had made the remark when she had compared the late summer clouds over Karuizawa to a Sisley painting.

Now, moved by some uncanny intuition, she began to talk about the garden party at the Matsugae estate as she joined her husband by the fireplace.

"As I think back, those were stupid and uncivilized times when expensive parties entailed nothing more than having a few geisha dance and make music at home. How unimaginative people were then. I must say j.a.pan has made quite a bit of progress: the barbarous customs are gone and it's ordinary for wives to be included in social affairs. Look at them, the women at this party are no longer silent. Conversations that took place at garden parties used to be excruciatingly boring, but now the women converse very wittily."

But it was doubtful whether she had ever listened to anyone's conversation, either now or at any time in the past forty years. She had never tried to talk about anything except herself.

Mrs. Shinkawa suddenly left her husband's side. She cast a glance into a dark mirror mounted on a wall. Looking-gla.s.ses never frightened her. They all functioned as waste-baskets into which she could discard her wrinkles as she stood before them.

Jack, a first lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps, was working hard. The guests looked with pleasure at this member of the "Occupation Forces" who was so gentle and loyal. Keiko treated him grandly, with incomparable regal skill.

Sometimes Jack would extend an arm and encircle her from behind, mischievously touching her breast. She permitted herself a calm, wry smile as she clasped his hairy, ringed fingers.

"Such a child. He's incorrigible," she said in a dry, didactic tone, looking around at everyone. Jack's posterior encased in his Army uniform was capacious, and the guests would compare it with Keiko's majestic b.u.t.tocks, arguing which was the larger.

Mrs. Tsubakihara was still talking with Imanishi. She was taken aback to meet for the first time someone who completely scorned her precious sorrow, but she did not change in the least the idiotic expression of mourning on her face.

"No matter how much you grieve, your son will not come back to life. Besides you've a balloon in your heart so filled with grief that nothing else can possibly get in. It gives you a secure feeling, doesn't it. Let me be rude a bit more: you're convinced that no one else will do you the favor of filling your balloon, so you fill it youself with homemade sorrowgas that you pump into it at a moment's notice. That releases you from the fear of being bothered by any other emotion."

"What a horrible thing to say! How cruel . . ."

Mrs. Tsubakihara looked up at Imanishi from the handkerchief in which she m.u.f.fled her sobs. He thought the look in her eyes was that of an innocent little girl who craved to be raped.

The president of the Murata Construction Company was offering a hyperbolic compliment to Shinkawa, hailing him as a great patron in the financial world. Shinkawa was irked to be a.s.signed to the same category as the vulgar builder. Murata had erected immense billboards bearing his name on all the company's construction sites; the self-advertising was everywhere. But no one looked less like a construction expert. A pale, flat face revealed his background as a reformist bureaucrat of prewar days. He was an idealist who lived parasitically off others. No sooner had he stopped clinging and achieved independent success in business than he discovered a bright, vast ocean where his inherent cra.s.sness could disport itself without restraint. Murata had made the dancer Ikuko Fujima his mistress. Ikuko was wearing a sumptuous kimono interwoven with silk and lacquer threads, and a five-carat diamond blazed on her finger; when she laughed, she held her neck and back rigidly erect.

"An extremely fine house, sir, but if you'd let me build it for you, I could have saved you a lot of money. What a shame," Murata repeated at least three times to Honda.

The diplomat Sakurai and the senior reporter Kawaguchi were discussing international problems, standing on either side of Akiko Kyoya. Sakurai's fishlike skin and Kawaguchi's, marked by age and spoiled by sake, provided a good contrast between the two and their careers. One was cold- and the other hot-blooded. They were discussing weighty problems, as men are wont to do in the company of women, in an effort to impress the singer Akiko. She, on the other hand, was completely oblivious to the subtle rivalry and inane vanity, constantly helping herself to the canapes, glancing alternately with her melancholic, dark eyes at the disheveled white hair and the overly groomed head. She pursed her mouth into the shape of an O and tossed one tidbit after another between her goldfish lips.

Makiko Kito took the trouble of going up to Imanishi and saying: "You have the most peculiar tastes."

"Must I get your permission every time I make love to your pupil? It's as though I were making love to my mother, I feel a kind of sacred tremor. At any rate, I'll never make the mistake of making love to you. What you think of me is written all over your face. I'm the type that repels you s.e.xually more than any other, right?"

"You know very well you do."

Makiko felt relieved and spoke in a most charming voice. Then she laid a strip of silence between them, that resembled the black edge of tatami matting.

"Even if you should succeed in making love to her, you could never a.s.sume the role of her son. Her dead son is extremely sacred and beautiful to her; she is a holy priestess serving him."

"Well, I don't know. To me everything looks suspicious. It's blasphemy that a living person should continue harboring pure emotions and expressing them."

"That's why I say she is serving the pure sentiment of the dead."

"Anyway she does it out of her necessity to live. That already makes it suspicious."

Makiko narrowed her eyes and laughed in sheer repulsion.

"There isn't a real man at this party," she said. With that she left Imanishi as Honda called to her. Mrs. Tsubakihara was seated on the edge of a bench built into the wall, crying as she leaned back. Outside, the night air was extremely cold, and condensed droplets of moisture trickled down the panes.

Honda intended to ask Makiko to take care of Mrs. Tsubakihara. If her tears stemmed less from her painful memories than from the small amount of liquor she had consumed, she could well be a sentimental drinker.

Rie, her face pallid, approached Honda and whispered in his ear.

"There's been a strange noise. It started a little while ago in the garden . . . I wonder if I'm hearing things."

"Did you look?"