Rie said that she did not like the unspeakably somber harshness of the land. She was afraid of melancholia. She knew instinctively that she had no use for such feelings in her old age. But to Honda, who was dreaming of pleasure, it was this very gloominess that was indispensable to him.

"It's nothing. If we clear the area and plant some greenery and put up a house, it'll be almost too cheerful," he had said.

Hiring carpenters from the area to build the house and employing people there to plant the trees and do the landscaping was a slow process, but it kept the expenses down. Honda retained from former days his habit of considering indiscriminate expenditure vulgar. Nevertheless, the pleasure of leisurely guiding a guest around and showing off his extensive property was surely an emotion born long ago in his boyhood when he had frequented the Matsugae estate. He did not mind the chilliness of early spring which stung the skin with the frigidity of the lingering snows of Hakone, because it was the chilliness of his own garden; by the same token, the loneliness of only two people casting faint shadows on the expanse of lawn pleased him, because it was the loneliness of his own property. He felt as though he were grasping the real luxury of private ownership for the first time. Furthermore, it pleased him that he had come to it not through fanaticism, but completely by means of his own logical thinking and good timing.

Keiko's overly handsome profile held no trace of coquetry or reserve. She had the ability to make any man beside her-even the fifty-seven-year-old Honda-feel as though he were a mere stripling. It was a woman's power to impose on a fifty-seven-year-old man the apparent cheerfulness and sunniness of a youth bound by pure hypocrisy and vanity, one who kept up appearances at all costs, though uneasy and respectful with women.

From Honda's point of view, age was nothing to be taken into account. Until he was in his forties he had been conscientious about the plusses and minuses of age. Now, however, he had an actually casual and carefree idea of it. He was not surprised when sometimes he happened to discover clear signs of true childishness in himself, in his fifty-seven-year-old body. Old age was, somehow, a kind of declaration of bankruptcy.

He had grown terribly concerned about his health and terrified of his self-indulgence in emotion. If the function of reason was control, the urgent necessity for it had pa.s.sed. Experiences were nothing but cleaned bones on a dinner plate.

Keiko stood at the center of the greensward, contrasting the view of Hakone to the east with that of Fuji to the northwest. She exuded a stateliness which was best described as regal; the fullness of her suit coat, her erect neck, everything conveyed the air of a commanding general. Her young officer must surely be subjected to all manner of orders, including ones not so easy to execute.

Compared to the clear, snow-dotted ridges of Hakone, Fuji, half covered by clouds, appeared ephemeral. Honda noticed that some optical illusion made it now higher, now lower.

"Today I heard a nightingale for the first time," said Honda, looking through the fragile withered upper branches of the thin cypress trees that he had purchased in the neighborhood and transplanted to his property.

"Nightingales come in mid-March," said Keiko. "You'll be able to see cuckoos in May. You can see as well as hear them, mind you. This is probably the only place that one can see and hear cuckoos at the same time."

"Let's go in. I'll build a fire and make some tea," Honda suggested.

"I brought some cookies," said Keiko, referring to the package she had left in the vestibule a short while ago. The Hattori Clock Shop at the corner of Owari-cho on the Ginza had been turned into a PX after the war; and Keiko, having free access to this facility, usually bought her gifts there. English-made cookies familiar to her since prewar days could be purchased there inexpensively. The thin, hard, plum jam sandwiched in them served to connect the afternoon teas of her childhood with those of the present.

"I have a ring I should like you to appraise," said Honda, starting to walk.

24.

FRAGRANT DAPHNE still in bud surrounded the terrace, and the birdhouse built in one corner bore the same type of red tile roof that covered the main house. When they saw Honda and Keiko approaching, the tiny sparrows that had flocked around the feeder darted away chirping, as though p.r.i.c.ked by needles.

Just inside the entrance stood another door with a stained-gla.s.s center, and to either side were windows latticed with orange panes like those of Dutch mansions in the late Edo period. One could indistinctly see inside through them. Honda liked to stand here and look at the interior sinking in the wistful colors of the evening sun, an interior he himself had meticulously designed, with its thick beams purchased from a rural house and transferred intact, the chaste North German antique chandelier, the paneled doors with simple line drawings of Otsu folk painting, footman's armor, and a bow and arrows-all bathed in the fading yellow light, exuding the feeling of some gloomy still life, as if some Dutch painter like Jan Treck had done a j.a.panese scene.

Honda invited Keiko to enter. He seated her in the chair by the fireplace and tried to light the kindling, but it would not catch. Only the fireplace had been planned by a specialist from Tokyo; it was well designed and never let the smoke reverse and flow back into the room. But whenever he tried to build a fire, Honda always realized that he had never in his life had the opportunity of mastering the simplest techniques or knowledge. Indeed, he had never even handled basic materials.

It was strange to learn this at his age. He had never once known leisure in his entire life. Thus he had obviously never made any contact with nature, with the waves of the ocean, with the hardness of trees, with the weight of rocks, and with the tools like ship's fittings, nets, or hunting rifles that workers came to know through their work, and the aristocrats, conversely, were familiar with through the graciousness of their living. Kiyoaki had turned his leisure not toward nature but only toward his own emotions; if he had matured, he would have grown into nothing but idleness.

"Let me help," said Keiko, bending down with dignity, after watching Honda's ineptness for some time, the tip of her tongue protruding between her hard lips. Her hips appeared almost limitless to Honda's upturned eyes. The blue celadon color of her tight skirt, filled like a gigantic vase of the Yi Dynasty, was enhanced by the cut of the suit that had a sharply narrowed waistline.

As Honda had nothing to do while Keiko occupied herself with the fire, he left the room to fetch the ring he had mentioned. When he returned, savage vermilion flames were already slithering up the logs, and pieces of kindling were gnashing their teeth in the coquettishly clinging smoke, while sap secreted from the freshly cut wood sizzled. The brick lining of the fireplace flickered in the firelight. Keiko calmly brushed her hands and observed the result of her efforts with obvious satisfaction.

"How is this?"

"I'm impressed," said Honda, extending his hand into the firelight and handing the ring to Keiko. "This is the ring I mentioned a while ago. What do you think? I bought it as a present."

Keiko withdrew her fingers with their red manicured tips from the area of the flames and scrutinized the ring in the fading light from the window.

"A man's ring," she said.

It was formed of a dark green, square emerald encircled by gold finely sculpted to depict a pair of protective yaksha with impressive half-b.e.s.t.i.a.l faces. Keiko moved the ring from her fingertips, probably to avoid the reflection of her red nails, and holding it between her fingers, slipped it on her index finger. Although a man's ring, it was the size for some delicate, dark-skinned finger; it was not overly large even on her.

"It's a good stone. But with old emeralds the inside fissures always effloresce in the long run. There's danger of fragility when the cloudiness rises from underneath. This one shows that condition. But still it's a good stone. And the carving is unusual. It'll be valuable as an antique."

"Where do you think I bought it?"

"Abroad?"

"No, in the ruins of Tokyo. At Prince Toin's shop."

"Oh yes, those days . . . But no matter what financial trouble the Prince might have had, for him to open an antique shop . . . ! I've been there two or three times myself. Everything interesting turned out to be something I had seen at relatives' long ago. But the shop had to close. I heard that the Prince was never there; the former steward who was acting as head clerk was running the show and stealing all the profits. Not a single member of royalty has started a successful business after the war. No matter what the property tax, they should have safeguarded what possessions they had left. There was always some promoter who would talk them into something. Especially Prince Toin, who had always been a soldier. He reminds me of the poor samurai who all went bankrupt after the Restoration."

Then Honda told her the history of the ring.

In 1947, Honda heard that Prince Toin had lost his t.i.tle after the war and had bought up art objects cheaply from members of the former n.o.bility overburdened with property taxes. He had opened an antique shop for foreigners. The Prince would not have remembered him even if Honda had gone to see him, but he had been moved to look in at the shop out of sheer curiosity without identifying himself. In a gla.s.s case, he discovered the ring of Princess Chantrapa, which the Siamese prince Chao P. had lost in the dormitory of the Peers School thirty-four long years before.

It was obvious that the ring, which had been believed mislaid at the time, had in reality been stolen. The sales clerk, of course, did not disclose the origin of the object, but it must have come from the house of some former n.o.ble. The man who had had to sell it must have been a student at the school when Honda was there. He was moved by an old sense of justice to purchase it, wanting to return it himself somehow to the original owner.

"Then are you going to Thailand to give it back? To clear the name of your alma mater?" teased Keiko.

"I intended to someday. But it's not necessary, now. The Princess has come to j.a.pan to study."

"A dead girl here to study?"

"No, no, Chantrapa the second-Ying Chan, I mean," said Honda. "I've invited her to the party tomorrow. I intend to put the ring on her finger then. She's seventeen years old, with beautiful black hair and bright eyes. She speaks j.a.panese quite well; she must have studied hard before leaving her country."

25.

THE NEXT MORNING Honda awoke alone in the villa, and for protection against the cold, donned a woolen scarf, a cardigan, and a thick winter coat. He crossed the lawn and walked to the arbor at the west end of the garden. More than anything else he had been antic.i.p.ating watching Fuji at dawn.

The mountain was tinted crimson in the sunrise. Its tip glowed the color of a brilliant rose stone, and to his eyes it was a dreamlike illusion, a cla.s.sical cathedral roof, a j.a.panese Temple of Dawn.

Sometimes Honda was confused as to whether he sought solitude or frivolous pleasure. He lacked something essential to become a serious pleasure-seeker.

For the first time somewhere within-and at his age!-a desire for transformation had awakened. Having earnestly observed other men's reincarnation without so much as turning an eye, he had never brooded over the impossibility of his own. And now that he was reaching an age when the last glow of life revealed the expanse of his past, the certainty of its impossibility heightened the illusion of the possibility of rebirth all the more.

He too might do something unexpected. To this day all his actions had been predictable, and his reason had always cast its light one step ahead, like a flashlight held by someone walking along a dark road at night. By schemes and predictions he had been able to avoid surprising himself. The most frightening thing was that all mysteries, including the miracle of transmigration, finished by being cut and dried.

He needed to be surprised. It had become almost a necessity of life. If there were a special right in scorning reason and trampling it, he had the rational self-conceit to think that it was permitted only to him! He had to involve his stable world in some amorphous turmoil again, in something with which he was not at all familiar!

Honda knew very well that he had lost all physical qualifications for that. His hair had grown thin, his sideburns were streaked with white, and his stomach had swollen like remorse itself. All the characteristics of early old age which he had considered so ugly as a youth now marked his body unsparingly. Of course, even when young, he had never regarded himself as handsome, like Kiyoaki, but he had not thought himself to be particularly ugly either. At least he had not found it necessary to place himself among the negative numbers in a world of beauty and to construct his equations in consequence. Why was it that now when his ugliness had become so obvious, the world about him was still beautiful? This was indeed far worse than death itself; the worst death!

It was twenty minutes past six. Two thirds covered by snow, Fuji had brushed off the colors of dawn and stood against the blue sky in sharply etched beauty. It was almost too clearly visible. The texture of the snow was delicate, full of the sensitive tension of its undulations. It called to mind the fine play of lean muscle. Except for the lower slopes, there were only two slightly reddish black patches near the top and near the Hoei summit. The blue sky was hard and cloudless; had he thrown a rock, the sharp sound of stone hitting it would have echoed back.

This Fuji influenced all dispositions, controlled all emotions. It was the pure white essence of questionability itself that rose before him.

Honda's hunger sharpened in the tranquility. He looked forward to his breakfast of bread purchased in Tokyo and the soft-boiled egg and coffee he would make as he listened to the chirping of the birds. His wife was due to arrive with Princess Ying Chan at eleven o'clock to begin preparations for the party.

After breakfast he returned to the garden.

It was close to eight. Little by little small wisps of cloud had begun to rise like snow drifting on the other side of Mount Fuji. They spread stealthily, as if to spy on the near side, extending their tentacles as they progressed. Suddenly they were swallowed up by the ceramic blue sky. These seemingly insignificant ambushes were not to be ignored. Such clouds tended to regroup up to noon, repeating their surprise attacks and eventually covering the entire mountain.

Honda sat absentmindedly in the arbor until about ten o'clock. He had stored away the books that all his life had never been far from him and was dreaming of raw materials from which life and emotion had not been filtered out. He sat motionless, doing nothing. A cloud, which had appeared faintly to the left and which soon stopped at the Hoei summit, raised its tail like a leaping dolphin.

His wife, who he insisted be punctual, arrived at eleven o'clock in a clamorous taxi. Princess Ying Chan was not beside her. "Oh dear, you're alone!" said Honda at once to this bloated, sour woman as she removed several packages from the car.

Rie did not answer for a minute, but raised her eyelids like heavy sunshades.

"I'll explain later when I've more time. I've had so much trouble. Help me with these packages first."

Rie had waited until the designated time, but Princess Ying Chan had not made her appearance. This was after two or three telephone calls. She had finally phoned the only available contact, the Foreign Student Center, and was told that the Princess had not returned to her dormitory the night before. She had been invited to dine at the home of some j.a.panese family where a new student from Thailand was staying.

Rie had been worried and had considered delaying the time of her own arrival at the villa. But she had no way of informing Honda, since they did not yet have a phone. Instead, she had hurried to the Foreign Student Center where she left a note written in English with the caretaker, carefully explaining with a map how to get to the villa. If things went well, the Princess should arrive by the time the party started in the evening.

"Well, if that was the trouble, you could have asked Makiko Kito to help find her."

"But I couldn't possibly impose on a guest. Even she would have a hard time locating a girl from a foreign country she doesn't know at all and then bringing her all the way over here. And besides, you can't expect a celebrity like Makiko to go out of her way. She probably thinks she's doing us a favor just by coming."

Honda fell silent. He would reserve judgment.

When a picture is removed from the wall where it has long hung, it leaves a fresh whiteness the exact size and shape of the frame. The resulting image is pure, to be sure, but it is quite out of step with its environment; it is too strong, too insistent. Now that Honda had retired from his professional activities on the bench he had left all matters concerning justice to his wife. The whiteness of the wall was always claiming: I am just, I am right, who could possibly blame me?

To begin with, it was the wealth into which Honda had unexpectedly come and the ugliness of age which Rie had begun to notice in herself that had removed the framed portrait of the quiet submissive wife from the wall. As her husband grew rich, Rie became afraid of him. But the more fearful she was, the more arrogant she became, showing unconscious hostility to everyone, talking constantly of her chronic kidney ailment, and yet more than ever wanting affection. This desire for love made her even more homely.

As soon as she arrived at the villa and had carried the packages of food to the kitchen, Rie began noisily to wash Honda's breakfast dishes. She was sure her fatigue would aggravate her illness and was preparing the excuse of being made to work too hard though no one had ordered her to do so. She kept doing what was harmful to her health, expecting Honda to stop her. If he did not do so now, things would be difficult later.

"Why don't you rest a while and do that later?" he said kindly. "We have plenty of time. Ying Chan really causes a lot of trouble, doesn't she? She was saying she wanted so much to help. After all that, I have to pitch in at the last minute."

"Your help will make things worse."

Rie returned to the living room wiping her wet hands.

In the dusky chamber where a patch of afternoon sun lay by the window, Rie's eyes under her puffy lids looked like the small holes in a woman's No mask. The regrets of a barren woman, uncured, worsening over the years, a body bloated with regrets like a billowing tarpaulin. "I am right, but I'm a failure." The unchanging gentleness she had shown her deceased mother-in-law had come from this self-reproach. If she had had children, if only she had had many children, she would have been able to melt her husband with the acc.u.mulation of their soft, sweet flesh. But deterioration had long since begun in a world where propagation was denied, just as a fish cast up from the sea on an autumn afternoon gradually rots away. Rie shuddered before this rich husband of hers.

Honda had thoughtfully ignored the distress of his wife, who was always hoping for the impossible. Now he could not bear the truth that he craved that too and in so doing was reduced to her level. But this fresh abhorrence made the existence of Rie quite important.

"Where did Ying Chan stay last night? Why did she stay away? There's a housemother at the Foreign Student Center and supervision is probably strict. Why did she? Who was she with?" said Honda, pursuing his thought.

It was simply uneasiness. It was the same daily unsettled feeling, the precise category of emotion he experienced mornings when he shaved himself badly or nights when he could not find a comfortable position for his head on the pillow. It was a far cry from concern for a fellow human; it was somewhat detached and yet it seemed to conform to an urgent necessity in life. He had felt as though some foreign object had been cast into his mind, something like a small black Buddha image carved in black ebony from the Thai jungles.

His wife continued to prattle on about insignificant details such as how to receive the guests and which rooms should be given to those who were spending the night. All that was of no interest to Honda.

Gradually Rie became aware that her husband's mind had wandered. In the past she had never felt any suspicion about her husband when he ensconced himself in his study, for it was certain that his law studies had bound him there; but now his absentmindedness signified the burning of an invisible flame, and his silence betokened some kind of scheme.

Rie's eyes followed her husband's gaze in an effort to find the source of his distraction. But there beyond the window lay only the garden with its dead gra.s.s on which two or three little birds had come to sport.

The guests had been invited to come at four, since Honda wanted them to see the view while the sun was still in the sky. Keiko came at one with an offer to help. Both Honda and Rie were pleased with this unexpected a.s.sistance.

Among all her husband's new friends, strangely, it was only to Keiko that Rie opened up. She felt intuitively that Keiko was not an enemy. The reason was Keiko's kindness, her great bosom and huge hips, her calm speech. Even the fragrance of her perfume seemed to lend a sort of security to Rie's innate modesty, like the official red seal of approval stamped conspicuously on certificates hung in bakeries.

Seated next to the fireplace Honda, mellowed, opened the morning paper that Rie had brought from Tokyo, listening absently to the women's conversation in the kitchen.

The headline on the first page was: ENTIRE ADMINISTRATIVE TREATY APPENDICES, according to which sixteen American Air Force bases were to be retained after the j.a.panese-American peace treaty went into effect. Printed to one side was a talk by Senator Smith expressing American determination-OBLIGATION TO PROTECT j.a.pAN. WILL NOT TOLERATE COMMUNIST AGGRESSION. On the second page American economic trends were reported under the t.i.tle DECREASE IN CIVILIAN PRODUCTION: NEW REVERSAL RESULTS FROM ECONOMIC SLUMP IN WESTERN EUROPE, which appeared in bold print and showed definite concern.

But Honda's mind was constantly brought back to Ying Chan's absence. He conjured up all sorts of situations and his unshackled imagination made him uneasy. From the most ominous to the most obscene, reality had the multilayered cross section of wood agate. He had never seen reality take such form insofar as he could recall.

Honda was startled by the loud crackling of the newspaper as he folded it. The page facing the fire was hot and dry. He idly mused that it was impossible for a newspaper to be so hot. The sensation was strangely bound with the sluggishness that lingered deep in his slackened body. Then the flames curling over a fresh log suddenly reminded him of the funeral pyres at Benares.

Keiko appeared in a large ap.r.o.n and said: "How about serving sherry and whiskey and water, and perhaps some Dubonnet for aperitifs? c.o.c.ktails are too much trouble. Let's not serve them."

"I leave everything up to you."

"And what about the Thai princess? We should have a few soft drinks in case she doesn't indulge."

"She might not come," Honda answered placidly.

"Oh?" Keiko said calmly and withdrew. Her impeccable courtesy made her perspicacity rather uncanny. Honda thought that one would often overestimate a woman like her because of this elegant nonchalance.

Makiko Kito was the first to arrive. She was accompanied by her pupil Mrs. Tsubakihara, in whose chauffeured car they had driven over the Hakone mountains.

Makiko's reputation as a poetess was at its height. Honda had no standards for measuring poetic values; but when he heard Makiko's name repeated by the most unexpected people, he realized how highly she must be regarded. Mrs. Tsubakihara, from a former zaibatsu family, was about fifty, the same age as Makiko. But she showed deference to Makiko as if she were a G.o.ddess.

Mrs. Tsubakihara was in perpetual mourning for her son, a Navy ensign, who had died seven years ago. Honda knew nothing of her past, but she seemed like a sad bit of fruit pickled in the vinegar of grief.

Makiko was still beautiful. Her pellucid skin showed signs of aging, but it retained the freshness of lingering snow; and the creeping gray in her hair, untouched by artificial coloring, gave the stamp of sincerity to her poetry. Her behavior was natural, but she emitted a sense of mystery. She never overlooked strategic presents or dinner invitations to important personalities. She won over those who might speak ill of her. Though all real emotion had long since dried up, she preserved a lingering hint of sorrow and the illusion of being alone.

Compared to her grief, that of Mrs. Tsubakihara seemed immature. The comparison was indeed cruel; Makiko's aesthetic sorrow, which had been distilled into a mask, produced masterpieces, while the fresh, unhealed grief of her disciple remained in a raw, unformed state, providing no inspiration for the creation of moving poetry. Whatever slight reputation Mrs. Tsubakihara enjoyed as a poetess would at once disappear were it not for Makiko's support.

Makiko extracted poetic emotion from the raw grief of this constant companion, drawing forth an abstracted sadness that no longer was the possession of anyone and labeling it with her own name. Thus, the unworked gem of sorrow and the skilled craftsman combined to bring forth innumerable masterpieces-m.u.f.flers that succeeded in concealing the aging necks that carried them year after year.

Makiko was irritated to have arrived early.

"The chauffeur drove too fast," she said, looking at Mrs. Tsubakihara beside her.

"Quite so. The traffic was not so congested as we expected."

"Let's see the garden first. We were looking forward to that," she said to Honda. "Please don't bother, we'll just take our time and stroll about and maybe write a little poetry."

Honda insisted on showing them around and took along a bottle of sherry and some tidbits, intending to serve them in the arbor. The afternoon had grown warm. Beyond the garden, which narrowed as it sloped gently to the valley, one could see Mount Fuji to the west. It was veiled by the cotton clouds of spring, and only the snow-clad summit was sharply limned against the azure sky.