"And where are your other guests?"

"They're all in the garden. It's hot, but the breeze is pleasant. Won't you come out?"

Keiko made no reference to Ying Chan.

Opening a door in one corner of the room, she stepped out onto the terrace that led to the garden. In the shade of the large trees cane chairs and small tables were scattered about. The clouds were extremely beautiful, and the colors in the women's clothes heightened the green of the lawn. Flowerlike hats swayed to and fro.

Upon approaching the group Honda realized that it was composed of old women; furthermore, he was the only male guest there. He felt out of place as he was introduced. Each time the pink hands, blotched and wrinkled, were extended, he hesitated to shake them; he was depressed by the acc.u.mulation of hands; they darkened his heart like a cargo of dried fruit in the hold of a ship.

Western women, apparently unaware of the gaping zippers on their backs, swung their broad hips and cackled with laughter. Their sunken eyes with brown or blue pupils were focused on things he could not locate. When p.r.o.nouncing certain words they would open their dark mouths so wide that he could see their tonsils, and they gave themselves to the conversation with a kind of vulgar enthusiasm. One of them, s.n.a.t.c.hing up two or three thin sandwiches with red manicured fingers, turned suddenly to Honda and announced that she had been divorced three times and wanted to know whether the j.a.panese divorced a lot too.

The colorfully dressed guests strolled about the grove to escape the heat and were visible through the trees. Two or three of them emerged from the entrance to it. There was Ying Chan accompanied by a Western woman on either side.

Honda's heart pounded as though he had stumbled. This was it, this palpitation was important; thanks to it, life had stopped being solid dead matter and was transformed into a liquid, even gaseous state. Just seeing her had done him good. Sugar cubes melted in tea at the instant of this palpitation; the buildings all became unsteady; all the bridges bent as if they were candy; and life became synonymous with lightning or with the wavering poppy in the wind or with the swinging of a curtain. Extremely self-centered satisfaction and unpleasant shyness intermingled as in a hangover, projecting Honda with one thrust into a dream world.

Escorted by two tall women, Ying Chan in a sleeveless salmon-pink dress, her black hair l.u.s.trous as jet falling over her shoulders, suddenly came out of the grove into the sunlight. Honda took double pleasure in being reminded of the Princess's picnic at Bang Pa In, when she had been attended by the old ladies.

Keiko, unnoticed, was standing at his side.

"How do you like that? Don't I keep my promises?" she whispered in his ear.

A childlike insecurity welled up in Honda, and he was afraid that he could not possibly go through with the scene unless he depended completely on Keiko for help. Step by step, a smiling Ying Chan approached this incomprehensible fear. He was fl.u.s.tered by his concern to control his emotion before Ying Chan should reach him, but the closer she came, the more it grew. Honda was tongue-tied before he even tried to speak.

"Just act as though nothing ever happened. You'd better not mention anything about Gotemba," Keiko whispered in his ear again.

Fortunately Ying Chan's progress was interrupted in the middle of the lawn when another woman stopped her to chat. She seemed not to have noticed him as yet. Ten or fifteen yards away she swayed on the branch of time like a beautiful orange that could be reached in seconds, ripe, heavy with fragrance and juice. Honda examined everything about her: her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her legs, her smile, her white teeth. Everything had been nurtured under the burning summer sun, yet inside, her heart was surely impenetrably cold.

When Ying Chan finally joined the group in the circle of chairs it was still uncertain whether she had really not noticed Honda or was pretending not to have.

"It's Mr. Honda," Keiko said encouragingly.

"Oh?" said Ying Chan, turning around with a perfectly relaxed smile. Her face in the summer light was revived and her lips were more relaxed and smiling. Her eyebrows flowed, and in the amber brightness of her face her large, black eyes were luminous. Her face was enjoying its season. Summer had relaxed her as though she were stretching self-indulgently in an ample bath. The naturalness of her pose was complete. As he visualized the hollow between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s under her bra.s.siere perspiring as if in a steamroom, he could feel the summer concealed deep within her body.

When she extended a hand her eyes were expressionless. Honda took it somewhat shakily. She was not wearing the emerald ring. Though the wager he had made was with himself, he realized now that he had wanted to lose, to be coldly rejected. He was surprised to note that even rejection gave him a pleasant sensation and did not at all disturb his audacious reveries.

Ying Chan took up an empty teacup, so Honda stretched his arm and touched the handle of the antique silver teapot. But the heat of the metal made him hesitate. He probably was motivated by a fear that the destination of his action would be interrupted by a fog of insecurity, that certainly his hand would tremble, and that he might do something terribly clumsy. A servant's white-gloved hand immediately came to his rescue and relieved him of his concern.

"You look well, now that summer's here," he finally managed to say. While he was quite unaware of it, his manner of speaking was more polite than usual.

"Yes, I like summer." Smiling softly, Ying Chan answered as if out of a textbook.

The old ladies around her, manifesting their interest, asked him to translate the conversation. The fragrance of the lemon on the table and the smell of old bodies and perfume put Honda's nerves on edge, but he translated the conversation. The old ladies laughed meaninglessly, commenting that the j.a.panese word for summer made them feel decidedly warm, conjecturing about a possible tropical etymology for the word.

Intuitively Honda felt Ying Chan's ennui. Looking around, he saw that Keiko had already gone. Boredom was increasing in Ying Chan like a silent animal sadly rubbing itself against the sultry gra.s.s. This intuition of his was the only bond with her. She moved gracefully, smiling and talking in English, but he gradually began to feel that she wanted perhaps to tell him about her boredom. It was a kind of music made by the acc.u.mulation of the summer melancholy of her flesh, from her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s down to her beautiful light legs. It was constantly in his ears, high and low, like the faint hum of insects flitting in the summer sky.

But it did not necessarily mean that she was bored with the party. Rather, the aura of ennui filling her body could have been her natural state that the summer had revived. She was obviously quite at home in this ennui. Retreating slightly into the shade of a tree, she spoke with vivacity, holding her teacup, surrounded by old ladies who addressed her as Your Serene Highness. She suddenly took off a shoe and with one sharp, stocking-clad toe casually scratched the calf of her other leg with the exquisite balance of a flamingo, holding the teacup perfectly steady and not spilling a single drop into the saucer.

Momentarily Honda was confident that he could slip into Ying Chan's heart straight and smoothly, even if he were not forgiven.

"That was quite a feat." Honda found a momentary interval in the conversation and spoke in j.a.panese.

"What?"

Ying Chan raised questioning eyes. There was nothing more charming than her mouth, which, when given a riddle, responded with an instant "What?" like a bubble floating on the surface of the water, making no effort to solve it. She did not at all mind unintelligibility, so he should have the same sort of courage. He had prepared a note written in pencil on a page torn from a little memorandum.

"Please see me alone," he said. "During the day is all right. Only an hour will do. How about today? Can you come here?" He handed her the paper with the time and place written on it.

Ying Chan deftly avoided the observant eyes of the ladies and glanced at the paper in the sun. Her momentary effort at evasion made Honda happy.

"Are you free?"

"Yes."

"Will you come?"

"Yes."

Ying Chan's "yes" was almost too distinct, but it was accompanied by a beautiful smile that at once softened her answer. It was clear that she was thinking of nothing.

Where do love and hatred go? Where do the tropical cloud shadows and the violent rains that fall like stones disappear to? To be made to realize the futility of his suffering was stronger than being made to realize the futility of his occasional happiness.

Keiko had disappeared, but now she returned leading two guests into the garden from the drawing room as she had done when Honda arrived. One old woman, on seeing the beautifully kimonoed figures, one in light and the other in dark blue, made hard and rasping sounds of admiration with her parrotlike tongue. Honda turned to look. It was Makiko attended by Mrs. Tsubakihara.

Honda had been rapturously gazing at Ying Chan's jet-black hair suddenly blowing in the wind like a sail, and the arrival seemed particularly untimely. As they approached, the two greeted Honda first of all. "How lucky you are today," said Makiko coldly, looking around at the old ladies. "The only thorn in a bouquet of roses!"

Of course, the two women were introduced to the Westerners and amenities were exchanged, but they were pleased to return to Honda, with whom they talked in j.a.panese.

When the clouds shifted and the shadows deepened on her hair, Makiko said: "Did you see the demonstration on June twenty-fifth?"

"No, I only read about it in the papers."

"So did I. They threw Molotov c.o.c.ktails everywhere in Shinjuku, and some police boxes were burned down. It was a terrible riot, I hear. At this rate, I wonder if the Communists won't take over."

"I don't think so."

"But things seem to get worse every month; even homemade guns are appearing. I imagine that the Communists and the Koreans will soon turn the whole of Tokyo into a sea of flames."

"We can't do much about it, can we?"

"You'll have a long life because you don't worry," said Makiko. "But looking at the world these days, I wonder what would have happened if Isao had lived. I started to write a series of poems called 'June Twenty-fifth.' I wanted to write poetry at the lowest level, one on which it would be impossible to create; I'd been looking for material that could never be turned into poetry when I finally hit on this."

"You say you hit on it, but you didn't go to see it yourself."

"A poet has long sight, unlike people like you."

It was unusual for Makiko to talk in such a relaxed fashion about her own poetry. But her att.i.tude was a kind of priming. She looked around and smiled into Honda's eyes.

"I hear you were pretty upset in Gotemba the other day."

"Who told you?" Honda asked, unperturbed.

"Keiko," said Makiko calmly.

"Come to think," she continued, "it might have been an emergency, but Ying Chan has a lot of nerve barging into someone's house in the middle of the night and banging on the lovers' bedroom door. Jack's a lovely boy to treat her so kindly. He's really a well-bred and charming American."

Honda was confused. He was certain that Keiko had said that morning: "Lucky that Jack wasn't here. What a scene if he had been." And now Makiko was talking as though he had stayed the night. It was either Makiko's misunderstanding or Keiko's lie. The discovery of Keiko's meaningless little falsehood gave him a secret feeling of superiority that he was reluctant to share with Makiko. He wanted to avoid the absurdity of getting involved in women's gossip. Furthermore, Makiko had thought nothing of perjuring herself in front of judges. Honda never lied, but at times he had the habit of ignoring some paltry truth gliding away in front of him like trash flowing down a little gutter. It was a small vice that dated from the days of his judgeship.

As he attempted to change the subject, Mrs. Tsubakihara came sidling up as though seeking Makiko's protection. He was surprised that her face had become so drawn in the short time since he had last seen her. Her sorrowful expression itself had a wasted look, her eyes were hollow, and her lips, garishly painted orange, made her utterly grotesque.

With a smile in her eyes, Makiko suddenly lifted her disciple's round white chin with one finger and showed it to Honda.

"She gives me such a difficult time, threatening me with her ideas of suicide."

Mrs. Tsubakihara let her chin rest on Makiko's finger as though she wished to remain forever in that position, but the latter immediately removed it. Mrs. Tsubakihara, looking across the lawn where an evening breeze was beginning to rise, half spoke to Honda in a thick voice: "But without talent how can one go on living?"

"If the untalented had to die, everybody in j.a.pan would be dead," Makiko responded in amus.e.m.e.nt.

Honda observed this exchange with a shudder.

41.

AT FOUR O'CLOCK two days later, the appointed hour, Honda was waiting in the lobby of the Tokyo Kaikan. If Ying Chan came, he intended to take her to the roof garden restaurant which had opened that same summer.

The lobby was a convenient place to wait inconspicuously for someone. The easy chairs upholstered in leather were s.p.a.ciously arranged and he could spread the bound newspaper in front of his face. In an inside pocket Honda had three hand-rolled Monte Cristo Havanas which he had obtained after a long wait. Ying Chan would doubtless be there before he could smoke them all. No sooner had he seated himself in a chair than the windows darkened; his only concern was that the showers might come and they might be unable to have dinner in the roof garden.

Thus a rich fifty-seven-year-old man awaited a Thai girl. The realization ultimately saved him from his fear, and he felt that he had returned to a normal daily life. He was a kind of harbor and not by nature a ship. The only natural state of his existence, that of waiting for Ying Chan, was reestablished. It was almost the form of his very soul.

An older man of means who did not seek the simpler male pleasures. He was a troublesome being, and he easily made the decision to exchange the earth for his boredom; but on the surface he was the embodiment of modesty, a spirit that preferred to lie low in a delimited, hollow area. He had the same att.i.tude toward history and eras, miracles and revolutions. Sitting on a covered abyss as though on a toilet, he simply smoked his cigar and waited. He depended on his opponent's will for a decision and only under such conditions did his dream for the first time a.s.sume a distinct shape. Then, though only through a peephole, he saw the ambiguous form of ultimate happiness. Could death take him to extreme happiness in this condition? If so, Ying Chan must be death.

Honda was ready to play the cards of apprehension or despair he held in his hand. This time of expectant waiting was like black lacquer inlaid with countless mother-of-pearl pieces of uncertainty.

From the cellarlike Grill Rossini on the same floor, the tinkling sound of silverware could be heard as tables were set in preparation for the dinner hour. Like the knives and forks in the waiters' hands that had not yet been separated, emotion and reason commingled in Honda; and not a single plan (a malicious tendency of reason) had been made-his will was still uninvolved. The pleasure which he had discovered at the end of his life entailed such an indolent abandonment of human will. As he thus relinquished it, the determination to engage himself in history that had so obsessed him since youth was also suspended in s.p.a.ce, and history hung detached somewhere in mid-air.

A circus girl soaring on her trapeze through the blinding height of timeless, dark hours, the skirt of her white skintight tunic fluttering . . . Ying Chan.

Outside the window it had grown dark. Two transients and their respective families were exchanging interminable greetings beside Honda; they lasted so long that he felt almost faint. A young couple, apparently engaged, were stonily silent like two manic depressives. Through the window he could see the stir of tree branches along the street, but the rain seemed not to have come. The wooden binding of the newspaper felt in Honda's hands like an extremely long shinbone. He smoked the three cigars. Ying Chan did not appear.

At long last he ate a reluctant meal and made his way to the Foreign Student Center. His behavior was against all good sense.

He entered the simple, four-storied building in Azabu. In the entry hall two or three dark-skinned, sharp-eyed youths in short-sleeved shirts of a large plaid were reading poorly printed Southeast Asian magazines. Honda went to the front desk and asked for Ying Chan.

"She's out," the clerk answered automatically. The response seemed too quick to be genuine. As Honda asked two or three questions the sharp-eyed youths all stared at him. The stifling night air made him feel as though he were in the waiting room of some little tropical airport.

"Could you tell me her room number?"

"It's against the rules. You can see the students only in this lobby and only by their consent."

When Honda gave up and left, the young men returned to their magazines. Brown ankles jutted out sharply like thorns from all the pairs of crossed legs.

He could walk freely through the front garden, but no one was there. The sound of a guitar came from a brightly lit room on the third floor, and the windows were open wide to the humid weather. A melody sung in a high but soft voice resembling a high-pitched Chinese viol twined around the sounds of the strings like a yellowed vine. Listening to the sad voice, Honda recalled the unforgettable nights in Bangkok just before the war.

If only he could slip in, he wanted to go through every room, for he did not believe that Ying Chan was out. She was everywhere in the humid evening darkness of the rainy season. In the faint fragrance of flowers that had probably been cultivated by foreign students, in the distinct yellow gladioli or the pale violet of the Roger's bronze leaf intermingling in the dark . . . Minute elements of Ying Chan floating all about gradually coalesced into shape and solidified into her being. He could sense her even in the faint whir of mosquito wings.

Most of the windows were dark. Only one room at the corner of the third floor cast a bright radiance through moving lace curtains. Curious, Honda gazed at the window. Someone was standing just inside looking down at the garden. The wind caused the curtains to flutter and he caught a fleeting glimpse. It was Ying Chan wearing a slip. Involuntarily he ran toward the window and came directly under a street lamp. Ying Chan seemed shocked on recognizing him. Immediately the light was turned off and the window was closed.

Honda leaned against the corner of the building and waited a long time. The minutes dripped away and the blood throbbed in his temples. Time dripped like drops of blood. He pressed his cheek against the thin blue moss growing on the concrete, letting it cool his hot old cheeks.

After a while, a rustling like that of a snake's tongue sounded from the third-floor window. It was slowly opened, and something soft and white fell at Honda's feet. He picked it up and opened a piece of crumpled white paper. Inside was a wad of cotton large enough to fill his palm. It seemed to have been pressed into a compact ma.s.s, for as he released the outer wrapping it swelled like something alive. Honda fumbled with the layers of cotton. Inside lay the emerald ring protected by the golden yakshas.

He glanced up to the window again, but it was tightly closed and there was not the faintest ray of light.

When he left the Foreign Student Center and came to his senses, Honda realized that he was only a couple of blocks from Keiko's. Customarily he did not use his car for his rendezvous. He could summon a taxi, but he decided to punish himself by walking in spite of the pain in his back and hips. Even if she were not in, he could not possibly go straight home without first knocking at her door.

Were he young, he would have cried aloud as he walked. If he were young! But he had never cried when he was young! He had been a promising youth who thought he should use reason to bring success to himself and others instead of wasting time in shedding tears. What sweet sorrow, what lyrical despair! He permitted himself to feel like this only in a hypothetical past tense. By so doing, he eradicated all authenticity from his present emotion. If only sweet romanticism were allowed to one of his years! But neither now nor when he had been young had his makeup permitted anything of sweetness to himself. His only recourse was to daydream about a different kind of self in the past. How different? It had been quite impossible to become a Kiyoaki or an Isao.

If Honda's imagination let him dream that he would have been of this or that personality were he only young and thus served to protect him through the years at every dangerous emotional point, then his reluctance to recognize his present emotional condition was probably the result of such self-denial in his youth. At any rate, it was impossible for him to cry aloud as he walked-not when he was young and not now. In anyone's eyes this old gentleman in his Burberry coat and Borsalino would appear to be just a nocturnal stroller, whimsical, solitary.

Thus, as a result of the unpleasant self-consciousness that made him to refer to all emotions only indirectly, Honda had become so safe that he no longer had to worry about self-consciousness. It had become possible for him to act on any impulse or any desire, however shameless. If one studied his every action, one might conclude incorrectly that he was a man who acted on impulse. His hasty trip to Keiko's house along this nocturnal road, threatened at any moment by heavy showers, was one of his idiotic impulses. As he walked, he felt the urge to thrust his hand down his throat and, as though drawing a pocket watch from his vest, extract his heart.

It was improbable that Keiko would be home at this hour of the night, but she was.

Honda was at once shown into the resplendent drawing room. The Louis Quinze chairs with their straight backs would not let him relax, and he felt he was about to pa.s.s out from sheer exhaustion.

The cryptomeria doors were half open just as they had been the other day. The night solitude in the drawing room was enhanced by the overpowering brilliance of the chandelier. Through the window he saw the lights of the town twinkling through the far end of the grove in the garden, but he did not have the energy to walk over and out. It was better to endure the demoralizing heat and disintegrate in perspiration.

He heard Keiko's footsteps as she descended the spiral marble staircase to the entrance hall. She was wearing a colorful mumu with a long train. She entered the drawing room and closed the door with the cranes behind her. Her black hair was standing erect as if in a storm, flying about, shapelessly swollen, making her face with its light makeup appear unusually small and pale. She walked around among the chairs and sat down facing Honda in front of the niche with its mural of golden clouds. Cognac had been placed on the small table between them. Beneath the hem of her dress peeked her bare feet in bedroom slippers adorned with bouquets of dried tropical fruit. The red lacquer of her toenails was the same color as the large hibiscus flowers on her black mumu. Nevertheless, the abundance of dark hair standing on her head in front of the golden clouds added immeasurably to the gloom.

"Please excuse me. My hair looks mad. Your sudden visit upset even that. Unfortunately I just washed it a little while ago. I was going to set it tomorrow. You men don't know about such ordeals. But is something wrong? You look pale."

Briefly Honda told her what had happened, but he was disgusted to be speaking like a defense lawyer. He could not escape the habit of describing logically, inductively, even in this matter of such burning urgency. His words were useful only for arranging events into some sort of order. He had wanted to appeal to her by wordless, senseless screams for help. At least he had until he entered the house.

"The moral of the story is not to rush into things, it would seem," said Keiko. "I told you to leave everything to me. I don't know what to do either. Even so, Ying Chan was very, very rude. I wonder if that's the way in the South where she comes from. But I know that you're quite taken with her capricious manners." She offered him cognac and said: "And what are you suggesting I do?"

She did not sound at all annoyed, but displayed her characteristic melancholy enthusiasm.

Honda was slipping the ring on and off his little finger. "I would like you to return this to Ying Chan and ask her to accept it. The separation of this ring from her body makes me feel as though the relationship between her and my past is permanently severed."

Keiko was silent, and Honda feared that she was angry with him. She held the gla.s.s of cognac at eye level and watched how the once rippling liquid gradually slipped down the concave surface of the snifter, forming viscous, transparent cloud patterns. Her large eyes under the black mountain of hair were almost frightening. Her serious expression was too natural for someone trying to suppress a sardonic smile. Honda thought that her eyes were like those of a child who has watched the crushing of an ant. "I came to ask you merely to do that," he said encouragingly. "That's all."

He was gambling on an extremely trivial exaggeration. Where could he find pleasure except in a kind of ethical principle not to neglect the ludicrous? He had picked Ying Chan out of this garbage pail of a world, and though he ached to possess her he had not so much as laid a finger on her. He was seeking to intensify this idiocy to the point where his l.u.s.t would intersect the orbits of the stars.

"Why don't you forget about the girl?" said Keiko finally. "Just the other day I heard she was dancing cheek to cheek with some vulgar student at a the dansant at the Mimatsu."