Masuyama listened in astonishment, but he shrank from re*
vealing the truth to Kawasaki now. He hesitated even to l^t Kawasaki know that Mangiku was intending to be friendly, much less the whole truth. Kawasaki was baffled as to how he should respond to the entirely unfamiliar emotions of this world into which he had suddenly plunged; if he were informed of Mangiku's feelings, he might easily suppose they represented just one more snare laid for him. His eyes were too clear: for all his grasp of the principles of theatre, he could not detect the dark, aesthetic presence lurking behind the texts.
The New Year came and with it the first night of the new programme.
Mangiku was in love. His sharp-eyed disciples were the first to gossip about it. Masuyama, a frequent visitor to Mangiku's dressing-room, sensed it in the atmosphere almost immediately.; Mangiku was wrapped in his love like a silkworm in its cocoon, soon to emerge as a butterfly. His dressing-room was the cocoon of his love, Mangiku was of a retiring disposition in any 162
case, but the contrast with the New Year's excitement elsewhere gave his dressing-room a peculiarly solemn hush.
Gn the opening night, Masuyama, noticing as he passed Mangiku's dressing-room that the door was wide open, decided to take a look inside. He saw Mangiku from behind, seated before the mirror in full costume, waiting for his signal to go on. His eyes took in the pale lavender of Mangiku's robe, the gentle slope of the powdered and half-exposed shoulders, the glossy, lacquer-black wig. Mangiku at such moments in the deserted dressing-room looked like a woman absorbed in her spinning; she was spinning her love, and would continue spinning for ever, her mind elsewhere.
Masuyama intuitively understood that the mould for this on-> nagata's love had been provided by the stage alone. The stage was present all day long, the stage where love was incessantly shouting, grieving, shedding blood. Music celebrating the sublime heights of love sounded perpetually in Mangiku's ears, and each exquisite gesture of his body was constantly employed on stage for the purpose of love. To the tips of his fingers, nothing about Mangiku was alien to love. His toes encased in white tabi, the seductive colours of his under kimono barely glimpsed through the openings in his sleeves, the long, swanlike nape of his neck were all in the service of love.
Masuyama did not doubt but that Mangiku would obtain guidance in pursuing his love from the grandiose emotions of his stage roles. The ordinary actor is apt to enrich his performances by infusing them with the emotions of his real life, but not Mangiku. The instant that Mangiku fell in love, the loves of Yukihime, Omiwa, Hinaginu, and the other tragic heroines came to his support.
The thought of Mangiku in love took Masuyama aback, however. Those tragic emotions for which he had yearned so fervently since his days as a high-school student, those sublime emotions which Mangiku always evoked through his corporeal presence on stage, encasing his sensual faculties in icy flames, Mangiku was now visibly nurturing in real life. But the object of these emotions - granted that he had some talent - was an ignoramus as far as kabuki was concerned; he was merely a 163
young, commonplace-looking director whose only qualification as the object of Mangiku's love consisted in being a foreigner in this country, a young traveller who would soon depart the world of kabuki and never return.
7 If Only I Could Change Them! was well received. Kawasaki, despite his announced intention of disappearing after opening night, came to the theatre every day to complain of the performance, to rush back and forth incessantly through the sub-terranean passages under the stage, to finger with curiosity the mechanisms of the trap door or the hanamichi. Masuyama thought this man had something childish about him.
The newspaper reviews praised Mangiku. Masuyama made it a point to show them to Kawasaki, but he merely pouted, like an obstinate child, and all but spat out the words, 'They're all good at acting. But there wasn't any direction.' Masuyama naturally did not relay to Mangiku these harsh words, and Kawasaki himself was on his best behaviour when he actually met Mangiku. It nevertheless irritated Masuyama that Mangiku, who was utterly blind when it came to other people's feelings, should not have questioned that Kawasaki was aware of his good will. But Kawasaki was absolutely insensitive to what other people might feel. This was the one trait that Kawasaki and Mangiku had in common.
A week after the first performance Masuyama was summoned to Mangiku's dressing-room. Mangiku displayed on his table amulets and charms from the shrine where he regularly worshipped, as well as some small New Year's cakes. The cakes would no doubt be distributed later among his disciples. Mangiku pressed some sweets on Masuyama, a sign that he was in a good mood. 'Mr Kawasaki was here a little while ago,' he said.
'Yes, I saw him out front.'
'I wonder if he's still in the theatre.'
'I imagine he'll stay until If Only is over.'
'Did he say anything about being busy afterwards?'
164
'No, nothing particular.'
'Then, I have a little favour I'd like.to ask you.'
Masuyama assumed as businesslike an expression as he could muster. 'What might it be?'
Tonight, you see, when the performance is over ... I mean, tonight...' The colour had mounted in Mangiku's cheeks. His voice was clearer and higher-pitched than usual. 'Tonight, when the performance is over, I thought I'd like to have dinner with him. Would you mind asking if he's free?'
'I'll ask him.'
'It's dreadful of me, isn't it, to ask you such a thing.'
That's quite all right.' Masuyama sensed that Mangiku's eyes at that moment had stopped roving and were trying to read his expression. He seemed to expect - and even to desire - some perturbation on Masuyama's part. 'Very well,' Masuyama said, rising at once, 'I'll inform him.'
Hardly had Masuyama gone into the lobby than he ran into Kawasaki, coming from the opposite direction; this chance meeting amidst the crowd thronging the lobby during the interval seemed like a stroke of fate. Kawasaki's manner poorly accorded with the festive air pervading the lobby. The somehow haughty airs which the young man always adopted seemed rather comic when set amidst a buzzing crowd of solid citizens dressed in holiday finery and attending the theatre merely for the pleasure of seeing a play.
Masuyama led Kawasaki to a corner of the lobby and informed him of Mangiku's request.
'I wonder what he wants with me now? Dinner together -
that's funny. I have nothing else to do tonight, and there's no reason why I can't go, but I don't see why.'
'I suppose there's something he wants to discuss about the play.'
'The play! I've said all I want to on that subject.'
At this moment a gratuitous desire to do evil, an emotion always associated on the stage with minor villains, took seed within Masuyama's heart, though he did not realize it; he was not aware that he himself was now acting like a character in a play. 'Don't you see - being invited to dinner gives you a mar-165
vellous opportunity to tell him everything you've got on your mind, this time without mincing words.'
'All the same -'
•I don't suppose you've got the nerve to tell him.'
The remark wounded the young man's pride. 'All right. I'll go. I've known all along that sooner or later I'd have my chance to have it out with him in the open. Please tell him that I'm glad to accept his invitation.'
Mangiku appeared in the last work of the programme and was not free until the entire performance was over. Once the show ends, actors normally make a quick change of clothes'and rush from the theatre, but Mangiku showed no sign of haste as he completed his dressing by putting a cape and a scarf Of a muted colour over his outer kimono. He waited for Kawasaki.
When Kawasaki at last appeared, he curtly greeted Mangiku, not bothering to take his hands from his overcoat pockets.
The disciple who always waited on Mangiku as his 'lady's maid' rushed up, as if to announce some major calamity. 'It's started to snow,' he reported with a bow.
'A heavy snow?' Mangiku touched
his cape to his cheek.
'No, just a flurry.'
'We'll need an umbrella to the car,' Mangiku said. The disciple rushed off for an umbrella.
Masuyama saw them to the stage entrance. The door attendant had politely arranged Mangiku's and Kawasaki's footwear next to each other. Mangiku's disciple stood outside in the thin snow, holding an open umbrella. The snow fell so sparsely that one couldn't be sure one saw it against the dark concrete wall beyond. One or two flakes fluttered on to the doorstep at the stage entrance.
Mangiku bowed to Masuyama. 'We'll be leaving now,' he said. The smile on his lips could be seen indistinctly behind his scarf. He turned to the disciple, That's all right. I'll carry the umbrella. I'd like you to go instead and tell the driver we're ready.' Mangiku held the umbrella over Kawasaki's head. As Kawasaki in his overcoat and Mangiku in his cape walked off side by side under the umbrella, a few flakes suddenly flew - all but bounced - from the umbrella,
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Masuyama watched them go. He felt as though a big, black wet umbrella were being noisily opened inside his heart. He could tell that the illusion, first formed when as a boy he saw Mangiku perform, an illusion which he had preserved intact even after he joined the kabuki staff, had shattered that instant in all directions, like a delicate piece of crystal dropped from a height. At last I know what disillusion means, he thought. I might as well give up the theatre.
But Masuyama knew that along with disillusion a new sensation was assaulting him, jealousy. He dreaded where this new emotion might lead him.
Translated by Donald Keene
The Pearl
December 10 was Mrs Sasaki's birthday, but since it was Mrs Sasaki's wish to celebrate the occasion with the minimum of fuss, she had invited to her house for afternoon tea only her closest friends. Assembled were Mesdames Yamamoto, Matsumura, Azuma, and Kasuga - all four being forty-three years of age, exact contemporaries of their hostess.
These ladies were thus members, as it were, of a Keep-OurAges-Secret Society, and could be trusted implicitly not to di-vulge to outsiders the number of candles on today's cake. In inviting to her birthday party only guests of this nature Mrs Sasaki was showing her customary prudence.
On this occasion Mrs Sasaki wore a pearl ring. Diamonds at an all-female gathering had not seemed in the best of taste.
Furthermore, pearls better matched the colour of the dress she was wearing on this particular day.
Shortly after the party had begun, Mrs Sasaki was moving across for one last inspection of the cake when the pearl in her ring, already a little loose, finally fell from its socket. It seemed a most inauspicious event for this happy occasion, but it would have been no less embarrassing to have everyone aware of the misfortune, so Mrs Sasaki simply left the pearl close by the rim of the large cake dish and resolved to do something about it later. Around the cake were set out the plates, forks, and paper napkins for herself and the four guests. It now occurred to Mrs Sasaki that she had no wish to be seen wearing a ring with no stone while cutting this cake, and accordingly she removed the ring from her finger and very deftly, without turning round, slipped it into a recess in the wall behind her back.
Amid the general excitement of the exchange of gossip, and 168
Mrs Sasaki'
169
s surprise and pleasure at the thoughtful presents brought by her guests, the matter of the pearl was very quickly forgotten. Before long it was time for the customary ceremony of lighting and extinguishing the candles on the cake. Everyone crowded excitedly about the table, lending a hand in the not untroublesome task of lighting forty-three candles.
Mrs Sasaki, with her limited lung capacity, could hardly be expected to blow out all that number at one puff, and her appearance of utter helplessness gave rise to a great deal of hil-arious comment.
The procedure followed in serving the cake was that, after the first bold cut, Mrs Sasaki carved for each guest individually a slice of whatever thickness was requested and transferred this to a small plate, which the guest then carried back with her to her own seat. With everyone stretching out hands at the same time, the crush and confusion around the table was con«
siderable.
On top of the cake was a floral design executed in pink icing and liberally interspersed with small silver balls. These were silver-painted crystals of sugar - a common enough decoration on birthday cakes. In the struggle to secure helpings, moreover, flakes of icing, crumbs of cake, and a number of these silver balls came to be scattered all over the white tablecloth. Some of the guests gathered these stray particles between their fingers and put them on their plates. Others popped them straight into their mouths.
In time all returned to their seats and ate their portions of cake at their leisure, laughing. It was not a home-made cake, having been ordered by Mrs Sasaki from a certain high-class confectioner's, but the guests were unanimous in praising its excellence.
Mrs Sasaki was bathed in happiness. But suddenly, with a tinge of anxiety, she recalled the pearl she had abandoned on the table, and, rising from her chair as casually as she could, she moved across to look for it. At the spot where she was sure she had left it, the pearl was no longer to be seen.
Mrs Sasaki abhorred losing things, At once and without thinking, right in the middle of the party, she became wholly engrossed in her search, and the tension in her manner was so obvious that it attracted everyone's attention.
'Is there something the matter?' someone asked.
'No, not at all, just a moment...'
Mrs Sasaki's reply was ambiguous, but before she had time to decide to return to her chair, first one, then another, and finally every one of her guests had risen and was turning back the tablecloth or groping about on the floor.
Mrs Azuma, seeing this commotion, felt that the whole thing was just too deplorable for words. She was incensed at a hostess who could create such an impossible situation over the loss of a solitary pearl.
Mrs Azuma resolved to offer herself as a sacrifice and to save the day. With a heroic smile she declared: 'That's it then! It must have been a pearl I ate just now! A silver ball dropped on the tablecloth when I was given my cake, and I just picked it up and swallowed it without thinking. It did seem to stick in my throat a little. Had it been a diamond, now, I would naturally return it - by an operation, if necessary - but as it's a pearl I must simply beg your forgiveness.'
This announcement at once resolved the company's anxieties, and it was felt, above all, that it had saved the hostess from an embarrassing predicament. No one made any attempt to investi-gate the truth or falsity of Mrs Azuma's confession. Mrs. Sasaki took one of the remaining silver balls and put it in her mouth.
'Mm,' she said. 'Certainly tastes like a pearl, this one!'
Thus this small incident, too, was cast into the crucible of good-humoured teasing, and there - amid general laughter - it melted away.
When the party Was over Mrs Azuma drove off in her two-seater sports car, taking with her in the other seat her close friend and neighbour Mrs Kasuga. Before two minutes had passed Mrs Azuma said, 'Own up! It was you who swallowed the pearl, wasn't it? I covered up for you, and took the blame on myself.'
This unceremonious manner of speaking concealed deep 170
affection, but, however friendly the intention may have been, to Mrs Kasuga a wrongful accusation was a wrongful accusation.
She had no recollection whatsoever of having swallowed a pearl in mistake for a sugar ball. She was - as Mrs Azuma too must surely know - fastidious in her eating habits, and, if she so much as detected a single hair in her food, whatever she happened to be eating at the time immediately stuck in her gullet.
'Oh, really now!' protested the timid Mrs Kasuga, in a small voice, her eyes studying Mrs Azuma's face in some puzzlement.
'I just couldn't do a thing like that!'
'It's no good pretending. The moment I saw that green look on your face, I knew.'
The little disturbance at the party had se
emed closed by Mrs Azuma's frank confession, but even now it had left behind this strange awkwardness. Mrs Kasuga, wondering how best to demonstrate her innocence, was at the same time seized by the fantasy that a solitary pearl was lodged somewhere in her intestines. It was unlikely, of course, that she should mistakenly swallow a pearl for a sugar ball, but in all that confusion of talk and laughter one had to admit that it was at least a possibility.
Though she thought back over the events of the party again and again, no moment in which she might have inserted a pearl into her mouth came to mind - but, after all, if it was an unconscious act one would not expect to remember it.
Mrs Kasuga blushed deeply as her imagination chanced upon one further aspect of the matter. It had occurred to her that when one accepted a pearl into one's system it almost certainly
- its lustre a trifle dimmed, perhaps, by gastric juices - re-emerged intact within a day or two.
And with this thought the design of Mrs Azuma, too, seemed to have become transparently clear. Undoubtedly Mrs Azuma had viewed this same prospect with embarrassment and shame, and had therefore cast her responsibility on to another, making it appear that she had considerately taken the blame to protect a friend.
Meanwhile Mrs Yamamoto and Mrs Matsumura, whose homes lay in a similar direction, were returning together in a 171
taxi. Soon after the taxi had started Mrs Matsumura opened her handbag to make a few adjustments to her make-up. She remembered that she had done nothing to her face since all that commotion at the party.
As she was removing the powder compact her attention was caught by a sudden dull gleam as something tumbled to the bottom of the bag. Groping about with the tips of her fingers, Mrs Matsumura retrieved the object, and saw to her amazement that it was a pearl.
Mrs Matsumura stifled an exclamation of surprise. Recently her relationship with Mrs Yamamoto had been far from cordial, and she had no wish to share with that lady a discovery with such awkward implications for herself.