Spring Snow

  ∗

  Kiyoaki and Satoko wandered over the beach, trying to avoid the uncomfortably dazzling brightness of the moon. Now, in the middle of the night, there was no trace of human life along the deserted shore, apart from a beached fishing boat, whose tall prow cast a black shadow on the sand. Because of the brilliant moonlight all around, it seemed to offer a reassuring darkness. The moon’s rays washed over the boat, making its planks glisten like bleached bones. When Kiyoaki rested his hand against the side for a moment, his skin seemed to become translucent in the moonlight.

  They embraced immediately in the shadow of the boat as the sea breeze swirled around them. She hardly ever wore Western clothes, and now hated the glaring white of her dress. Forgetting the whiteness of her skin, she had only one thought: to tear the dress off as quickly as possible and hide herself in the darkness.

  No one was likely to see them, but the rays of moonlight, infinitely fragmented over the surface of the sea, were like millions of eyes. She gazed up at the clouds suspended in the sky and the stars that seemed to graze their edges. She could feel Kiyoaki’s small, firm nipples touching hers, brushing against them playfully, then finally pressing against them, pushing down into the rich abundance of her breasts. It was a touch far more intimate than a kiss, something like the playful caress of a young animal. An intense sweetness hovered on the edge of her awareness. The unexpected familiarity when the very edges, the extremities of their bodies brushed together made her think of the stars sparkling among the clouds, even though her eyes were closed.

  From there it was a direct path to a joy as profound as the sea. But even as she felt herself dissolving gradually into the darkness, she felt afraid that this was nothing more than a shadow that was dependent in turn on the fishing boat beside them. They were not lying in the protection of a solid structure or a rocky ridge, but of something fortuitous, that in a few brief hours might be far out to sea. Had the boat not happened to be beached there at that moment, its heavy shadow would have been no more real than a ghost. She was afraid that this huge old fishing boat might begin to slide noiselessly across the sand even now and plunge into the water and sail away. To follow its shadow, to remain forever within it, she herself would have to become the sea. And at that moment, in a single great surge, she did.

  Everything that framed the two of them—the moonlit sky, the sparkling water, the breeze that blew across the sandy beach to rustle the pines at its edge—all these boded destruction. Just beyond the merest flicker of time there boomed a monstrous roar of negation. Its message was carried in the sound of the pines. She felt that she and Kiyoaki were hemmed in, observed, guarded by an unforgiving spirit, just as a single drop of balm that has fallen into a bowl of water has nothing to sustain it but the water itself. This water was black, vast, silent, and the single drop of balm floated in a world of total isolation.

  That “No!” was all-embracing. Was it a creature of the night—or the approaching dawn? To them it seemed incomprehensible. But even though it hovered threateningly over them from moment to moment, it had not yet struck at them directly.

  They both sat up. Their heads were just out of the shadow now and the sinking moon shone directly into their faces. She felt that it was somehow the emblem of their transgression, fixed there so bright and full and conspicuous in the sky.

  The beach was still deserted. They stood up to fetch their clothes, which they had placed in the bottom of the boat. Each of them stared at the other, at the remnant of darkness that was the black area just below their white bellies so brilliantly lit by the moon. Although it lasted only for a moment, they gazed with intense concentration.

  When they had dressed, Kiyoaki sat dangling his legs over the edge of the boat.

  “You know,” he said, “if we had everyone’s blessing, we would probably never dare to do what we’ve done.”

  “You are awful, Kiyo. So that’s what you really want!” she replied in mock affront. Their banter was affectionate enough, but it had an indefinably gritty taste. They sensed that the irrevocable end of their happiness was not far away. She was still sitting in the sand, hiding in the shadow of the boat. His foot, shining in the moonlight, hung in the air in front of her. She reached out, took it in her hand, and kissed his toes.

  ∗

  “I suppose it’s un-called-for—my telling you all this. But you see, there’s no one else I could even think of telling. I know that I’m doing something terrible. But please don’t say anything against it, because I do realize that it will come to an end sometime. But until then, I want to live each day as it comes. Because there’s nothing else to be done.”

  “Then you are quite prepared for whatever may happen?” Honda asked, his voice unable to conceal the deep pity he felt.

  “Yes, I’m quite ready.”

  “Matsugae is too, I think.”

  “That’s why it’s not at all right for him to involve you so deeply in our problems.”

  Honda suddenly felt an unaccountable desire to understand this woman. It was his subtle form of revenge. If she intended to assign him the role of truly understanding friend, rather than one of mere compassionate supporter, then he would have the right to know everything. But it was a formidable challenge to try to understand her—this graceful woman overflowing with love, who was sitting by his side with her heart elsewhere. Nevertheless, his bent for logical inquiry began to gain the upper hand.

  The car jounced a great deal, and tended to throw the two of them together, but she protected herself so skillfully that their knees never so much as brushed, a display of agility that reminded him of a pet squirrel making its exercise wheel whir. He was slightly annoyed. If Kiyoaki were beside her, he thought, she would not be so nimble.

  “You just said that you were prepared for anything, didn’t you?” he asked, not looking at her. “Well then, I wonder how that acceptance of the consequences squares with the realization that it will have to end some day. When it does end, won’t it be too late to make a decision about the consequences? Or alternatively, will your acceptance of the consequences somehow gradually bring about the end, of itself? I know I’m asking you a cruel question.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she replied calmly.

  Despite himself, he glanced at her earnestly. Her profile was beautifully composed, and showed no sign of distress. While he was looking at her, she suddenly shut her eyes, and the long lashes of her left eye cast a still longer shadow over her cheek in the dim light of the roof lamp. The trees and shrubbery glided past in the pre-dawn darkness like black clouds swirling about the car.

  Mori, the driver, kept his reliable back to them, wholly intent on his driving. The thick sliding glass behind him was shut. Unless they went out of their way to put their mouths close to the speaking tube, there was no chance that he would overhear.

  “You say that I’m the one who should be able to end it some day. And as you’re Kiyo’s best friend, you have the right to say it. If I can’t end it and stay alive, then dying . . .”

  She might have wanted to startle Honda into interrupting with a command to stop saying such things, but he doggedly kept silence and waited for her to continue.

  “. . . but the moment will come sometime—and that time is not too far off. And when it does—I can promise you right now—I shan’t shrink from it. I’ve known supreme happiness, and I’m not greedy enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every dream ends. Wouldn’t it be foolish, knowing that nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to do something that does? I’ve nothing in common with these ‘new women.’ But . . . if eternity existed, it would be this moment. And perhaps you, Mr. Honda, will come round to seeing it this way some day.”

  Honda was at last beginning to understand why Kiyoaki had once been so terribly in awe of Satoko.

  “You said that it wasn’t right of Matsugae to involve me in your problems. Why not?”

  “You’re a young man who set himself worthwhile goals. It’s wrong to get you
entangled with us. Kiyo has no right at all to do it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t think of me as such a saint. You’re unlikely to find a more grimly moral family than mine. But despite that, I have already done something that makes me an accomplice in sin.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s not true,” she broke in angrily. “This is our sin, Kiyo’s and mine . . . and nobody else’s.”

  Of course she only meant to convey that she wanted to protect him, but her words had a cold, proud glitter that could not tolerate the intrusion of a third party. In her own mind, she had fashioned their sin into a tiny, brilliant, crystal palace in which she and Kiyoaki could live free from the world around them. A crystal palace so tiny that it would balance on the palm of one’s hand, so tiny that no one else could fit in. Transformed for a fleetingly brief instant, she and Kiyoaki had been able to enter it and now they were spending their last few moments there, observed with extraordinary clarity in all their minute detail by someone standing just outside.

  She suddenly leaned forward with bent head. He reached over to support her and his hand brushed against her hair.

  “Excuse me,” she apologized, “but I think I just felt some sand in my shoe, even though I was so careful. Tadeshina doesn’t look after my shoes, and so if I took them off at home with sand left in them that I didn’t notice, I’d be afraid of what some startled maid might blurt out.”

  He had no idea how to behave while a woman was inspecting her shoes, so he turned away and began to look out of the window with intense concentration.

  They had already reached the outskirts of Tokyo. The night sky had turned to a vivid dark blue. The dawn showed the clouds spread low over the roofs of the houses. Though he wanted to get her home as soon as possible, he still felt regret that the morning light would put an end to what was probably the most extraordinary night of his life. Behind him he heard the sound—so faint that he thought he must be imagining it at first—of Satoko pouring the sand from the shoe she had taken off. To Honda, it sounded like the most enchanting hourglass in the world.

  35

  THE SIAMESE PRINCES were thoroughly enjoying themselves at Chung-nan Villa. One evening shortly before dinner the four young men had rattan chairs brought out and placed on the lawn so that they could enjoy the cool evening breeze before eating. The princes chatted in their native language, Kiyoaki was lost in his own thoughts, and Honda had a book open on his lap.

  “Would you like some twist?” asked Kridsada in Japanese, walking over to Honda and Kiyoaki holding out a pack of gold-tipped Westminster cigarettes. The princes had been quick enough in picking up “twist,” the slang word for cigarettes at Peers. The school rules forbade smoking, but the authorities allowed the upperclassmen a certain amount of laxity, provided they did not go so far as to smoke openly. The boiler room in the basement had thus become a haven for smokers and was known as “the Twist Room.”

  Even now, as the four of them puffed on their cigarettes beneath the open sky without fear of being observed, they sensed the lingering, secret pleasure that went with smoking in the Twist Room. The smell of coal dust that filled the boiler room, eyes flashing white in the gloom as their classmates kept careful watch, the deep, luxurious puffs of smoke, the recurring restless glow of the red tips—these and many other impressions now enriched the fine flavor of their English cigarettes.

  Kiyoaki turned away from the others, and as he watched the smoke trailing away into the sky, he saw how the cloud formations out over the ocean were beginning to dissolve, their clear outlines now blurred and tinged with a pale gold. At once he thought of Satoko. Her image, her scent, were mingled with so many things. There was no alteration of nature, however slight, that did not bring her to mind. If the breeze suddenly dropped and the warm atmosphere of the summer evening pressed in on him, he felt Satoko brush naked against his own nakedness. Even the gradually deepening shadow cast on the lawn by the dense green foliage of the silk tree held a hint of her.

  As for Honda, he could never be quite at ease unless there were books within easy reach. Among those now at hand was a book he had been lent in secret by one of the student houseboys, a book proscribed by the government. Entitled Nationalism and Authentic Socialism, it had been written by a young man named Terujiro Kita, who at twenty-three was looked upon as the Japanese Otto Weininger. However, it was rather too colorful in its presentation of an extremist position, and this aroused caution in Honda’s calm and reasonable mind. It was not that he had any particular dislike of radical political thought. But never having been really angry himself, he tended to view violent anger in others as some terrible, infectious disease. To encounter it in their books was intellectually stimulating, but this kind of pleasure gave him a guilty conscience.

  In order to be prepared for any further discussions on reincarnation with the princes, he had stopped off at his own home that morning after accompanying Satoko back to Tokyo and had borrowed a book from his father’s library, A Summary of Buddhist Thought by Tadanobu Saito. Here for the first time he was treated to a fascinating account of the varied origins of the doctrine of Karma, and he was reminded of the Laws of Manu which had so absorbed him at the beginning of the winter. But at that time his examination ambitions had forced him to postpone a more thorough study of Saito’s book.

  This and several others were spread out on the arms of his rattan chair. After dipping at random into one or another of them, Honda looked up at last from the one that was now open on his lap, his slightly short-sighted eyes narrowed a little. He turned to look at the sharp slope that marked the western border of the garden. Though the sky was still bright, the slope was in deep shadow, and the heavy growth of trees and shrubbery on the ridge stood out blackly against the white glare of the sky. However, the light was breaking through here and there like silver thread skillfully woven into an otherwise dark tapestry. Behind the trees, the western sky was like a sheet of isinglass. The bright summer day had been a gaudy scroll which was tapering off into blankness.

  The young men savored the delicious hint of guilt that added spice to their cigarettes, as a swarm of mosquitos towered up in one corner of the sunset garden. They felt the golden heaviness that comes from a day of swimming, their skin still warm from the midday sun. . . . Though Honda sat there in silence, he felt that the day would be counted as one of the happiest of their youth.

  The princes seemed to feel similarly content. They were obviously pretending to take no notice of Kiyoaki’s amorous pursuits. On the other hand, Kiyoaki and Honda both chose to ignore the princes’ lighthearted forays among the fishermen’s daughters along the beach, though Kiyoaki was careful to follow them up with suitable sums of compensation to the girls’ fathers. And so, under the protective eye of the Great Buddha, whom the princes worshipped every morning on top of the ridge, summer waned in languorous beauty.

  ∗

  Kridsada was the first to notice the servant who came down onto the lawn from the terrace bearing a letter on the gleaming silver tray that he doubtless spent most of his free time polishing, lamenting the while that he had so few occasions to use it at the villa, compared with the house in Shibuya.

  Kridsada jumped up to meet him and took the letter. Then, when he saw that it was a personal letter to Chao P. from his mother the Queen Dowager, he walked over to where Chao P. was sitting and presented it to him facetiously with a deferential flourish.

  Kiyoaki and Honda had, of course, noticed this piece of by-play, but they restrained their curiosity and sat waiting for the princes to come over to them in a rush of nostalgic happiness. As Chao P. took the thick letter from its envelope, they heard the crinkle of paper, and white stationery flashed like the feathers of an arrow winging through the darkness. Then suddenly they were on their feet staring at Chao P., who had let out an agonized cry and collapsed in a faint.

  Kridsada stood looking down at his cousin with astonishment on his face as Kiyoaki and Honda rushed over to help. Then he bent over to pick up the letter,
which had fallen on the grass, and had just started to read when he burst into tears, throwing himself to the ground. The two young Japanese could understand nothing of what Kridsada was sobbing to himself in a rush of Siamese, and since the letter, which Honda now picked up, was in the same language, it furnished no clues either, apart from the glittering golden seal of the royal family of Siam at the top, with its intricate design of pagodas, fabulous beasts, roses, swords, scepters and other devices grouped around three white elephants.

  Chao P. regained consciousness while he was being carried back to his bedroom by servants, but he was obviously still dazed. Kridsada trailed after him, still moaning.

  Though they were ignorant of the facts, it was obvious to Kiyoaki and Honda that some terrible news had arrived. Chao P. lay silent, his head on his pillow and his eyes, as cloudy as two pearls, staring up at the ceiling. The expression on his swarthy face grew less and less discernible by the minute as the room grew rapidly darker. After some time, it was Kridsada who was finally able to explain in English.

  “Princess Chan is dead. Chao P.’s love, my sister. . . . If I had been told first, I could have watched for a chance to tell him in a way that would spare him such a shock, but I suppose his mother, the Queen Dowager, was more afraid of upsetting me and so wrote to Chao P. If so, she miscalculated. But then she may have had a deeper concern . . . to strengthen his courage by making him confront his sorrow head-on.”

  This was more judicious than anything they usually heard from Kridsada. The princes’ violent grief, as powerful as a tropical cloudburst, affected Kiyoaki and Honda profoundly. But they sensed that after the thunder, the lightning, and the rain, their grief would be a wet and glistening jungle that would recover all the more quickly and luxuriantly.