The rain continued day and night. She could see from the window the wet hydrangeas. The pastel violet b.a.l.l.s of flowers floating in the gloomy day appeared as her own soul gone astray.

There was nothing more insufferable than the idea that Princess Moonlight existed in this world. It was shattered because of her.

Rie had lived her whole life without once knowing the terror of emotions. Thus she was surprised by the eruption of the riotous feelings of solitude within her. The barren woman had given birth for the first time, but to something monstrous.

Thus it was that Rie learned that she too had imagination. What had never been used, what had rusted in a corner of her long and tranquil life was suddenly unearthed out of necessity and polished and sharpened. At any rate, anything born of necessity is accompanied by bitterness, and her propensity toward flights of fancy held no sweetness.

Imagination based on reality might have opened and freed a mind, but that which attempted to come as close to the truth as possible demeaned and dried it up. Furthermore, if that truth did not really exist, everything would at once be transformed into futility.

But imagining a crime in which there was some truth would do no harm. Rie's imagination was a double-edged sword. She believed that there was truth somewhere and she desired that it not exist. Thus her jealous imagination was trapped by its own self-denial, and yet could not tolerate its own existence. Just as excessive acidity in the stomach gradually eats away the stomach walls, so her imagination eroded the root of its own imaginativeness, and at the same time she was driven by a desire to be saved that was a scream for help. Truth. If there were truth, she would be saved! The desire that appeared at the end of such a one-sided obsessive search inevitably began to resemble an urge for self-punishment. Because that truth-if it really existed-would crush her.

But punishment sought and obtained naturally holds a sense of unfairness. Why should an attorney be punished? That would be a reversal. When what she craved finally came to pa.s.s, instead of the delight of fulfillment, dissatisfaction and anger would flare up. Even now she could feel the heat of the burning stake. She must not allow such injustice to occur. She must not expose herself to such incomparably exquisite pain. Suffering from doubt was already enough; why should she pile the pain of recognition upon it?

Desiring to search out the truth, and yet to deny it, wanting to deny the truth, yet seeking only salvation in it. Such emotion went forever around in circles, just as the stray traveler on a mountain road, intending to go forward, somehow always returned to the point he started from.

It was like being enveloped in fog where in one area the details are uncannily distinct. One follows a ray of light only to discover that the moon is not there, rather it is at one's back and what one sees ahead is its reflection.

Yet Rie had not completely lost all sense of self-examination. Sometimes disgusted with herself, she wanted to cover her face in shame. Yet she felt that it was none of her fault that she had turned into an ugly, unlovable being because of her husband. She felt that her husband had really changed her into something despicable because he had no desire to love her. When she arrived at this realization, hatred welled up in her breast like a gushing spring.

But in her state, she tended to avoid the truth of the matter that even if she had not been turned by jealousy into one so repulsive, there were other causes that had transformed her into what she now was, that even had she stayed unchanged she would no longer have been loved. Her husband was perforce to be despised, but from his own need to turn away from her charms, he could not help but change her into an unlovable creature.

Rie had taken to gazing for long periods into her mirror. Wisps of stray hair emphasized the unloveliness of her cheeks. Everything about her seemed artificial, including the swelling of her face.

Since she had become aware of the bulging years ago, she had made up rather heavily. She disliked the way her eyes looked hooded, and she would apply dark eyebrow pencil and thick powder. When they had been younger, Honda had teased her by calling her "Moonface." She was irked at being chided about her affliction, but the night he called her "Moonface" his affection had been particularly warm, and thinking her handicap had probably increased his feeling, Rie had begun to take pride in her face. But on reflection, the s.e.xual pa.s.sion inspired by her edema contained a certain, subtle cruelty. To be sure, on such nights his lovemaking was pa.s.sionate, but in view of his admonition that she remain absolutely pa.s.sive, he might have been entertaining the illusion of a several-day-old corpse with her swollen face.

The reflection in the mirror was a living ruin. Under her l.u.s.terless hair, a sinewy malice appeared on her moonlike features like the ribs of a round fan. Her face had gradually turned into one not of a woman, and whatever feminine roundness it had, persisted only in the swelling. Even that was the cold, faded, tiresome roundness of the moon in daylight.

To apply beautifying makeup now would only signal defeat. But being ugly was also a defeat. She had lost all desire for repairing the defects in her present face; so the dents remained dents, the ugliness ugliness, and everything continued tranquilly like the rise and fall of sand dunes. Rie thought that it might just not be her husband's fault that she was unable to tear herself away from jealousy, but the fault of the enormous boredom that enveloped her like heavy bedding. She felt that she would need a frightening amount of strength to push it away and indolently did nothing about it. But if she was so lazy why could she find not even momentary peace?

Rie suddenly remembered the winter beauty of Mount Fuji, which she had been able to see from the second floor of the house soon after her marriage. She had been told by her mother-in-law to bring down the dinner service reserved for the New Year's celebrations and had gone obediently up to the storage room on the second floor. She had seen Fuji from there. She had tied a red cord across her sleeves to keep them down as new brides did.

Rie noticed that the rain had stopped and the evening light was limpid. Thinking to dispel her worries by looking at Fuji, she went up to the storage room on the second floor for the first time in many years. She climbed over the stacked guest bedding and opened the window with its opaque gla.s.s panes. The postwar sky, unlike that of former days, was bright, but an isingla.s.s cloudiness had settled everywhere. Fuji was not visible.

39.

HONDA AWAKENED with a need to urinate.

Tattered ends of interrupted dreams.

He had felt like strolling about a small residential district of Tokyo with its rows of little hedged gardens. The houses were tiny, and in front of them bonsai had been placed on shelves in the yards; some had small flower patches bordered with sh.e.l.ls. The gardens were damp and filled with the inevitable snails. Two children sat facing each other on the edge of a veranda drinking warm sugar water and savoring wafers with broken corners. It was one of those Tokyo districts from which such scenes had now totally vanished. He had come to a dead-end alley surrounded by hedges. A decrepit wooden wicket gate stood at the farther end.

When he opened the wicket and stepped in, it proved to be the bright front garden of an old-fashioned hotel, and a garden party was in progress. The manager with a Ronald Colman moustache came forward and bowed respectfully.

Just then the brilliant, pathetic sound of bugles rose from the buffet tent, the ground suddenly split asunder, and Princess Moonlight clad in a golden dress emerged on the wings of a golden peac.o.c.k. The a.s.sembly applauded as the peac.o.c.k flew over their heads making a bell-like sound with its wings.

Princess Moonlight's shiny, brown thighs astride the golden peac.o.c.k exposed her privates, and in short order she sent down a shower of fragrant urine onto the upturned faces of the onlookers.

Why had she not gone to the toilet? Honda wondered. He must scold her for such outlandish manners. He entered the hotel in search of a bathroom.

Inside, the building was completely still and contrasted with the commotion outdoors.

The door of each room was unlocked and slightly ajar. Honda opened each one and saw that every room was empty except for a coffin on the bed.

A voice told him that that was the toilet he was looking for.

Unable to contain himself longer, he entered a room and tried to urinate into the coffin, but he could not out of fear of committing blasphemy.

It was at that point that he awakened.

Such dreams were merely the pitiful signs of old age when the urge to urinate came at shorter and shorter intervals. After returning from the toilet, completely awake and clear-headed, he was taken up with recapturing the broken threads of the dream. He knew that there was undeniable happiness to be found there.

He wished to recapture the feeling of radiant joy by making it go on. In it a brilliantly pure, unreserved delight existed to the fullest. And the joy was real. If, even in a dream, Honda could not think that the joy of capturing an unrepeatable segment of time in his life was real, what else could reality be? When he glanced up to the sky he caught sight of the transformed figure of the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King set in a complete harmony of affinity and sympathy, soaring astride the golden peac.o.c.k. Ying Chan was his.

The next morning even after he awakened, the happy feeling distinctly persisted, and Honda was in high spirits.

Of course, the dream that he had had in his second sleep was so vague and shapeless that he could not possibly recall it. He could only remember that it had contained none of the happiness of the first. But the brilliant light in this latter had pierced the acc.u.mulation of the second dream that was like a snowdrift and had stayed in his memory until morning.

All day he again thought of Ying Chan, using her absence as a lever. He was astonished when he realized that something like the pa.s.sion of the youthful first love he had never known infused his fifty-seven-year-old body.

On reflection, falling in love for him was not only extraordinary, but rather comical. By having closely observed Kiyoaki Matsugae, he knew full well what sort of man should fall in love.

Falling in love was a special privilege given to someone whose external, sensuous charm and internal ignorance, disorganization, and lack of cognizance permitted him to form a kind of fantasy about others. It was a rude privilege. Honda was quite aware that since his childhood he had been the opposite of such a man.

He had often observed the contrariness of human fate that let one individual partic.i.p.ate in history out of ignorance and another fail to because of eagerness. Thus he believed that the greatest reason for not obtaining what one wished lay in the desire to obtain. Because Honda had never wanted money, millions had come to him.

That was how he thought. His inability ever to obtain anything was not the result of any shortcoming or innate flaw in himself, nor was it some bad luck he carried with him. It was his habit to formulate everything into laws, to universalize. So it was no small wonder that he set out to circ.u.mvent this particular one. It was his manner to do everything by himself, thus he could easily play both the role of legislator and violator. In other words, he limited what he wanted to what he could never get. If by chance he obtained the object of his desire, it invariably proved worthless. Thus he strove to attribute all manner of impossibilities to this object, to put it at as great a distance as he could. In other words, he kept a pa.s.sionate apathy in his heart.

In the case of Ying Chan the shrouding in mystery of this thick-petaled Thai rose was achieved almost completely after the incident that night in Gotemba. It consisted in relegating her to some unattainable place, somewhere his perception could never penetrate. (In the first place, the length of his arm and that of his perception were the same.) The pleasure one gets by seeing necessarily presupposes some unseeable sphere. Honda felt that he had seen to the ends of the world during his experience in India. And he wanted to know the feeling of an indolent animal licking its resin-smeared fur and relaxing in a pool of sunshine, sending its prey someplace where the claws of perception could never reach. In trying to simulate such an animal, was he not trying to imitate G.o.d?

It was unbearable for Honda that his carnal desires should so perfectly overlap with his desire for perceiving; and he knew very well that love would never be born in him unless he could separate the two. How could a rose spring up between a pair of gigantic trunks entwined and ugly? Love should not open up like a parasitic orchid on either one with their shameless hanging roots, nor from his insipid desire for perception, nor from his rank fifty-seven-year-old l.u.s.t. It was necessary that Ying Chan should exist beyond the reach of his desire for perceiving, that he deal only with the impossibility of his desire.

Absence was the best for this. It was indeed. It was the only pure, perfect material for his love. Without absence the nocturnal beast of perception would immediately begin to glare and soon tear everything apart with its sharp claws. Biting into the unknown, transforming everything into familiar corpses, stepping into the morgue of perception-this frightfully boring disease had once been cured by India, had it not? What India and Benares had taught him was that, escaping the ultimate of perception, Ying Chan like a single remaining rose should be locked tightly away at the back of a dusty ebony shelf; he could pretend to know it already so that it would escape the eyes of his perception. That Honda had achieved. He had locked the cupboard himself, and it was by his will that he did not open it.

Long ago Kiyoaki, fascinated by the completely impossible, had committed an impropriety. But Honda created the impossible so that he would commit no violation of it. For the minute he attempted a violation, beauty could no longer exist in this world.

He remembered the freshness of the morning when Ying Chan had vanished. A part of himself had been driven by fear, yet another part had enjoyed the situation. Even after he had discovered that she was no longer in her room, he did not panic and at once summon Katsumi. He was totally engrossed in savoring her ubiquitous lingering fragrance.

It had been a beautiful sunny morning. The bed was rumpled. He detected in the minute wrinkles in the sheet evidence of where her feverish body had tossed and turned in her distress. Honda picked up a curly wisp of hair hidden under the swells of the blanket that was like a nest where some lovely little animal had suffered. He looked to see if there were traces of Ying Chan's transparent saliva in the hollow of the pillow that still held its innocent indentation.

Only then had he gone down to tell Katsumi.

Katsumi had turned white. Honda had no difficulty in concealing the fact that he was not at all surprised.

They decided to join forces to search for her.

It would be untrue for Honda to deny he was then entertaining the thought of Ying Chan's death. He did not believe she was dead, but in this sunny interval in the rainy season death wafted even in the wasted fragrance of the morning coffee. Something tragic enclosed the morning like a fine silvery edging. It was the proof of grace Honda had dreamt about.

Though he had absolutely no intention of doing so, he suggested to Katsumi that perhaps they should notify the police and enjoyed seeing the extremely alarmed expression this evoked.

Honda visualized with a thrill Ying Chan's body floating in the swimming pool that reflected the blue sky. He went out to the terrace and looked into the rain puddles in the excavation. He felt that the gla.s.s that demarcated the real from the unreal had been completely shattered that moment and that he could thus easily step into the world of the unknown. The universe could be anything that morning. Anything was possible: death, murder, suicide, even universal destruction right in the midst of the bright fresh panorama.

As he and Katsumi descended the narrow lane across the soaking lawn toward the mountain stream, Honda enjoyed, in a swift flight of imagination, a foreboding of his once considerable social prestige collapsing amidst great fracas if a suicide scandal were to appear in the newspapers. But this was ridiculous exaggeration. The incident had taken place only between Katsumi and Ying Chan, and no one in the world knew anything about Honda's peephole.

For the first time in many days one could see Fuji beyond the garden. It was already a summer mountain. Its snowy skirts had been hoisted unexpectedly high, and the color of the earth in the morning sun glowed like rain-soaked brick.

They looked in the stream; they searched in the cypress woods.

When they left the grounds Honda suggested that Katsumi go to Keiko's house where he just might find her in. This he obstinately refused to do, offering instead to check by car along the road to the station. He was terrified of facing his aunt.

Honda himself was hesitant about visiting Keiko at such an early hour, but it was unavoidable in this instance. He pushed the bell. Surprisingly, she appeared, makeup completed and dressed in an emerald-green dress and a cardigan.

"Good morning," she said quite normally. "You're looking for Ying Chan? She came over here while it was still dark. She's asleep now in Jack's bed. Lucky Jack wasn't here. What a scene if he had been. Since she seemed upset, I gave her some chartreuse and let her sleep. After that I was wide awake, so I just stayed up. What a horrible man you are! But I asked no questions about what happened. Would you like to see her lovely face while she's sleeping?"

Honda, still extremely patient, controlled his desire to see Ying Chan. Neither she nor even Keiko had contacted him.

He was waiting for madness to take complete possession of him.

Reason was threatened by an extreme of anxiety, and just as the old fox in the farce Fox Hunt jumped at his prey although he was quite aware of the danger of a trap, Honda was waiting for the moment when he would be driven into blind self-destruction despite his experience and knowledge, accomplishment and skill, reason and objectivity-or rather, he was waiting for the moment when the acc.u.mulation of them all would drive him to it.

Just as a boy must wait for maturity, so a fifty-seven-year-old too had to attend his own ripening; and that was toward catastrophe. When all the trees in the withered November thickets had lost their leaves and the underbrush had yellowed and when in the clarity of the winter sun the place appeared as white and dry as the Pure Land, like the snake gourd, a single spot of crimson among dead vines, he fervently awaited his ripening toward catastrophe.

Whether what he sought was a flamelike lack of discernment or death, Honda's age made it difficult for him to know. Someplace, he knew not where, something was being slowly and carefully prepared. And now the only thing certain in the future was death.

At his office in the Marunouchi Building, when he heard a young law clerk receiving a private telephone call, shielding it so that his superiors would not know, Honda was overcome by intense loneliness. The call was obviously from a woman, and the young man, concerned about those around him, pretended reluctance; but in the distance Honda could almost hear the clear, attractive voice of the young woman.

Probably the two shared a secret language and communicated with each other by using business jargon. Honda suddenly conceived a plan for firing the young man whose eternally well-groomed hair, romantic eyes, and arrogant lips were all so unbecoming to a law office.

The best time to catch Keiko, who spent her days going to luncheons, c.o.c.ktail parties, and formal dinners, was now at eleven o'clock in the morning. After having overheard the young clerk, Honda was loathe to make the call from the small office in his loud voice. Saying he was going to do some shopping, he went out.

The shopping arcade in the Marunouchi Building was one of the few places where prewar Tokyo still lingered on, and Honda enjoyed window-shopping at the haberdasheries or selecting paper for calligraphy. Gentlemen, obviously prewar types, were hunting for reasonable purchases that would not be too hard on their pockets; they walked cautiously to avoid slipping on the mosaic floor that was particularly slippery after the rain.

Honda called Keiko from a pay phone.

As usual she did not answer at once, but he was positive she was at home. He pictured her magnificent, opulent back; she must be in her slip putting on makeup after having selected her attire for the luncheon party and was oblivious to the telephone.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," she said in her rich, leisurely voice. "I've been thoughtless not to call. Have you been well?"

"Quite well, thanks. I wondered if we could have lunch sometime soon."

"Oh, how kind! But you really want to see Ying Chan, not me."

Honda was at once at a loss for words and decided to wait for Keiko's lead. "I'm sorry I've troubled you. By the way, she never contacted me after that night. Have you seen her?"

"No, not since then. I wonder what she's doing. Isn't she taking exams or something?"

"I don't think she studies much."

Honda was amazed by his own ability to carry on the conversation so calmly.

"But you want to see her anyway," began Keiko. Then she thought for a moment. The interval of silence was neither heavy nor important. White powder was probably floating in the shafts of morning light falling through the bedroom windows. Honda knew that she was not the kind of woman to feign mystery, so he waited, leaving everything up to her.

"I shall pose a condition, I think," she said.

"What is that?"

"Ying Chan escaped to my place and she trusts me completely. So if I tell her that I shall be present too, she won't turn you down straightaway. Is that all right?"

"What do you mean is it all right? I was going to ask you to do precisely that."

"I really want to let you see her alone, but for a while . . . Where shall I call to give you the answer?"

"At my office. I've decided to go there every morning from now on," replied Honda and hung up.

The world was transformed from that moment on. How could he bear to wait for the next hour, the next day? He made a little wager with himself: if Ying Chan wore the emerald ring when she met him, that would mean she had forgiven him; if she did not, that would signify the opposite.

40.

KEIKO'S HOUSE was situated in the higher section of Azabu and was deep-set with a driveway that led up to the entrance. There was a semicircular Regency facade built by Keiko's father in memory of his youth in Brighton. One warm afternoon toward the end of June, Honda had accepted an invitation to tea and entered the mansion with the feeling of returning to prewar j.a.pan.

Following a typhoon and thunder and rain, suddenly in the summer light, unusual for the rainy season, the quiet woods on the front grounds seemed to store remembrances of an entire period. He thought he was returning to nostalgic old music. This kind of mansion, now almost the only one remaining in the burned ruins, had become even more privileged, sinful, and gloomy by reason of its solitariness. It was just as though remembrances left behind by the times were to have their impact suddenly heightened with the pa.s.sing of the years.

A formal invitation had come to him announcing that Keiko's house had been released by the American Occupation Forces, and that she wished to give a tea to celebrate the occasion. She did not touch on the matter of Ying Chan. Honda came bearing a bouquet of flowers. While the house had been confiscated, Keiko had lived with her mother in a separate dwelling that had once been the steward's, and she had never invited guests to visit in Tokyo during that time.

A servant in white gloves met him at the door. The circular entrance hall was high-domed. The cryptomeria doors on one side were painted with cranes, while on the other they opened onto a spiral staircase of marble that led to the second floor. Halfway up the stairs, in a dark niche, stood a bronze Venus with eyes demurely lowered.

The doors with the Kano-style cranes, both half open, led to the drawing room. He found no one there.

Light from a row of small windows brightened the room, and the panes were old-fashioned crystal surfaces that refracted rainbow colors. Further to the interior, one side recessed into a niche. Golden clouds had been painted all over the wall, on which hung a narrow scroll with calligraphy. A chandelier was suspended from the Momoyamastyle latticed ceiling. All the small tables and chairs were splendid Louis Quinze-d'epoque. The upholstery of each chair bore a different design; altogether they formed the sequence of a fete champetre by Watteau.

While Honda was examining the chairs, a familiar fragrance came to him, and turning around, he saw Keiko standing there in a fashionable double-skirted afternoon dress of heavy mustard pongee.

"How do you like them? Aren't they antediluvian?"

"What a perfectly splendid mingling of East and West!"

"My father's taste rather ran to this sort in everything. But don't you think they're well preserved? The confiscation of the house couldn't be avoided, but I ran around and did what I could so that it wouldn't be destroyed by ignoramuses. Since they used the place for Army VIPs, they turned it back to me quite undamaged, as you can see. There are childhood memories for me in every corner. It was lucky that some of the country b.u.mpkins from Ohio didn't run the place down. I wanted you to see it today."