Once the gigantic doors were open, a dark hall was revealed, on the black, white, and gray mottled mosaic floor of which some twenty rococo chairs edged in mahogany had been arranged. A familiar-looking lady-in-waiting took over from the officer and guided the two guests to a large door on the right. Beyond it was a well-lit room with a high ceiling, a purely European palace hall complete with chandeliers, Italian marble tables inlaid with floral patterns, and red and gold Louis Quinze chairs placed around them.
On the walls hung life-sized portraits of the four royal consorts of King Chulalongkorn and the Queen Mother. Hishikawa explained that three of the consorts were sisters. All the portraits had been painted in Victorian style by some Western painter. Their faces revealed the painter’s artistic integrity, his fearful courage, his shameless lies, his malice, his sincerity, and his flattery—all coexisted like waves and sand at the water’s edge in the margin of realism. The somewhat melancholy grace suitable to royalty matched the heavy sensuality of the subjects’ dark skin, and the tropical feeling of the clothes and the background inadvertently blurred the seemingly realistic surface picture with an illusory quality.
The Queen Mother, Thep Sirin, was a wizened aristocrat, and her face showed the most dark and savage dignity of all. Honda walked slowly, carefully examining each painting as he passed by; he learned from Hishikawa that the first consort, Queen Prephaiphim, was the youngest of three sisters. Next came Queen Sawaeng Watana, and then the eldest sister, Queen Sunantha. It was unquestionable to anyone that the eldest was the most beautiful.
Queen Sunantha’s portrait hung in one corner of the room, half concealed in the shadows. She was standing by a window, one hand resting on a table. Outside one could see the hazy blue sky filled with evening clouds and orange branches heavy with fruit.
On the table stood a rose-bud vase in cloisonné containing a small lotus flower, a gold ewer, and wine cups. The queen’s beautiful bare feet were visible below her gold panun, and from one shoulder of her embroidered pink jacket hung a wide cordon. A large medal glistened at her breast, and she held an ivory fan. The tassel of the fan and the carpet both reflected the scarlet of the evening glow.
Honda was struck by her most charming small face. Of the five portraits it somehow bore a marked resemblance to that of Princess Moonlight. There were the same ripe, plump lips, the somewhat stern eyes, and the short-cropped hair. The resemblance faded after he had gazed at the portrait for a while. But after a time the impression like evening dusk crept back from some corner of the room, and again he was convinced of the likeness—the small, dark, quick fingers holding the fan, the curved hand resting on the table, and finally the eyes and lips that were the exact duplicate of those of the Princess. But just as the likeness became most apparent, like the sand of an hourglass, it would once more begin irresistibly to slip away.
At that instant an inside door opened and the three old ladies-in-waiting emerged escorting the Princess. Honda and Hishikawa stood where they were and bowed deeply.
The afternoon at the Bang Pa In Palace seemed to have melted the ladies’ hearts, for no one stopped the Princess as she ran toward Honda with a cry of joy. Like a dove picking up scattered peas, Hishikawa busily translated the torrent of words that spurted forth.
“It was a long trip . . . I was lonely. Why didn’t you write me more often? Which country has more elephants, Thailand or India? I don’t want to go to India, I want to go back to Japan.”
Then the Princess took Honda’s hand and led him to a spot in front of the portrait of Queen Sunantha.
“This is my grandmother,” she said proudly.
“Her Serene Highness has invited Mr. Honda to the Chakri Palace because she specifically wanted to show him this beautiful portrait,” offered the first lady-in-waiting.
“I inherited only my body from Queen Sunantha. My heart came from Japan, so really I should leave my body here and only my heart should go back. But to do that I should have to die. So I’ll just have to take my body along, like a child with her favorite doll. Do you understand, Mr. Honda? The pretty me you see is really only the doll I carry with me.”
Judging from the childish manner of her speech, she must have spoken less sophisticatedly than Hishikawa had translated, but as she spoke, the clarity in her serious eyes moved Honda’s heart even before he understood what she was saying.
“There’s another doll.” The Princess as usual paid no attention to what the adults were thinking; and now she left Honda’s side and moved swiftly to the center of the hall, where the sunlight took the shape of the grilled casement windows. She solemnly traced the outline of the creeping vines; then the flowers in the complex floral pattern—there were gaps in the inlay—on the table to which her chest scarcely reached. “There’s another doll,” she continued as if singing, “which looks just like me in Lausanne. But she’s my elder sister and she’s not a doll really. Her body’s Thai and so’s her heart. She’s different from me; I’m really Japanese.”
She accepted the sari and the poetry collection with delight, but she merely leafed through a few pages of the book and looked no further. One of the attendants explained apologetically that the Princess could not yet read English. Honda’s test had not worked.
Entreated by the Princess, Honda talked for a while of his trip to India in the stiff formality of the hall. He noted tears and sadness in the eyes of the Princess as she listened rapturously to him, and he was conscience-stricken at the thought of concealing the news of his departure the néxt day.
He wondered when he would be able to see the Princess again. Surely she would mature into a very beautiful woman, but he would probably never have the opportunity of seeing her. This might be his last chance. Soon the mystery of reincarnation, like the shadow of a butterfly crossing a tropical garden of an afternoon, might vanish from her memory. Perhaps the soul of Isao, regretful of dying without a word of farewell to Honda, had borrowed the lips of the mad little Princess to deliver an apology. It was easier for Honda to leave Bangkok believing this.
Gradually the Princess’s eyes became more moist as she listened to Honda’s stories; she must have had some premonition of his departure. He had carefully chosen childish, entertaining episodes to relate, but the sorrow in her eyes kept deepening.
Honda spoke one sentence at a time which Hishikawa would then translate with gesticulations. Suddenly the Princess’s eyes opened in astonishment. The ladies glared angrily at Honda who had no idea what had happened.
The Princess suddenly uttered a piercing cry and clung to Honda. The attendant rose and attempted to tear her away, but the child put her cheek to his legs and sobbed loudly.
The drama of the other day was reenacted. At length the ladies succeeded in separating the two and signaled Honda to leave the room. As Hishikawa was translating the sign, Honda, was again on the verge of being caught by the sobbing Princess. He ran among the tables and chairs with the little girl in pursuit, and the ladies scrambling after her from three sides. Louis Quinze chairs crashed to the floor, and the palace hall was transformed into a terrain for blindman’s buff.
Finally Honda freed himself, passed quickly through the anteroom, and ran down the marble staircase of the central entrance. There he hesitated to make his final departure, as he listened to the sharp cries of the little girl echoing from the high ceiling of the palace. “The ladies are telling us to go quickly,” said Hishikawa, urging him on. “They’ll take care of her somehow. Let’s go!”
Honda dashed through the spacious front garden, soaked in perspiration.
“I’m sorry. You must have been surprised,” said Hishikawa to the still panting Honda when the car had started to move.
“No. It happens every time,” he replied, trying to freshen up by wiping away the perspiration with a large white handkerchief.
“You told the Princess that you wanted to fly back from India but that you couldn’t get a seat on an Army plane.”
“I did indeed.”
“
I made a bad translation there,” Hishikawa explained coolly, obviously feeling no guilt. “I didn’t think and told her the truth. I said that you were going back to Japan, but as you were taking an Army plane you couldn’t get a seat for her and so couldn’t take her with you. That’s why she made such a fuss. She begged you either not to go or to take her with you. The ladies looked so angry because you broke your promise. It was all my fault. I don’t know how to apologize.”
12
REGULAR AIR TRANSPORTATION between Japan and Thailand had commenced the year before, in 1940. But after Japan had begun to send observers into French Indochina in order to control the supply routes to Chiang Kaishek, the Indochinese no longer resisted, and a new southern air route was opened via Saigon, this in addition to the already existing Taipei-Hanoi-Bangkok run.
It was a civilian line administered by Greater Japan Air Lines. But Itsui Products considered military planes more sophisticated in handling important guests. The planes did not provide the most comfortable transportation, but they were speedy and powered by an excellent engine. Furthermore, a military plane gave the impression of an important official tour to friends of the traveler who might come to the airport to meet him or to see him off, and it would simultaneously demonstrate the extent of Itsui’s influence with the military.
Honda was sorry to leave the tropics. When the golden pagodas had faded away in their distant jungle setting, his chancing on indications of reincarnation there began to seem like a fairy tale or a dream. Because of the Princess’s extreme youth, it could all be no more than a children’s song, in spite of the many proofs he had had. He did not know the life story or the cause-and-effect element in the Princess’s dramatic beginning nor how she would end, as he had in the case of Kiyoaki and Isao. He had merely witnessed episodes in the life of the little girl as though he were watching the outlandish floral float of some festival passing before a traveler’s curious eyes.
How strange it was that even a miracle required the commonplace! As the plane approached Japan, Honda realized with relief that he was returning to the familiar daily routine and had escaped the miracle of Benares. Finally, he had lost not only the process of reason, but even measure for his feelings. He felt no particular sorrow in leaving the Princess, and he felt neither annoyance nor any other emotion toward the officers on the plane who were heatedly discussing the approaching war.
He was naturally pleased to see his wife at the airport. Just as he expected, he felt that the Honda who had left Japan and the one who had come back had immediately fused into the same unchanged person. His wife’s sleepy face, somewhat swollen and white, had acted as a catalyst to effect this fusing. The time interval between his two phases disappeared, and the deep, raw wound inflicted by the Indian trip seemed to vanish without a trace.
His wife stood at the rear of the crowd of friends who had come to meet him. She removed the dull-hued shawl from her shoulders.
“Welcome home.”
She bowed to him, thrusting under his nose her familiar bangs, which she always rearranged herself after each permanent done at a beauty parlor whose styling she did not like. Her hair gave off the faint scorched odor of some chemical that had been used.
“Mother is well, but the nights have turned chilly and I didn’t want her to catch cold. She’s impatiently waiting at home.”
Honda experienced a surge of tenderness when Rié talked about her mother-in-law without being asked, yet there was no touch of obligation in her tone. Life was again exactly as it should be.
“I want you to go to a department store as soon as possible, maybe tomorrow, and get a doll,” said Honda on the way home in the car.
“All right.”
“I promised the little princess I met in Thailand to send her a Japanese doll.”
“An ordinary one with a little girl’s haircut?”
“That’s right. I don’t think I’d send a very big one . . . one about so,” he said, holding his hands in front of his chest and abdomen to indicate the size. Momentarily he thought of sending a boy doll to stand for the transmigration of a boy’s soul, but he thought it might seem strange, and decided against it.
His mother was there to greet him in the vestibule of the house in Hongo, her old hunched shoulders clad in a dark silk striped kimono. She had dyed her bobbed hair a pitch black and the thin gold earpieces of her glasses passed over it. Honda thought he would suggest sometime that she should not wear her glasses in that way, but whenever it occurred to him the time never seemed right.
He walked along the matted corridor to the inner room of his familiar spacious house, now dark and cold, accompanied by his mother and wife. He realized that his manner of walking resembled that of his deceased father when the latter had used to return home.
“I’m so relieved you could get back before war broke out. I was worried.” His mother, once a zealous member of the Women’s Patriotic League, panted as she walked through the corridor swept by chilly night drafts. The old woman feared war.
After two or three days of rest, Honda resumed the trip to his office in the Marunouchi Building, and his busy but peaceful days recommenced. The Japanese winter rapidly awakened his reason that resembled a seasonal winter bird—he naturally had not seen that in Southeast Asia—some crane that had again migrated to the frozen bay of his heart as it returned to Japan.
On the morning of December eighth, his wife came into the bedroom to awaken him. “I’m sorry to wake you earlier than usual,” she said quietly.
“What is it?”
Thinking that his mother’s health might have taken a turn for the worse, he scrambled to his feet.
“We’re at war with the United States. Just now, on the radio . . .” Rié seemed still apologetic for having awakened him so early.
That morning, excited over the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor, no one in the office could settle down to work. Honda was amazed at the ceaseless and irrepressible laughter of the young office girls and wondered if women knew no other way of expressing patriotic exultation except through physical joy.
Lunch time came. The staff discussed going to the Imperial Palace Square together. After sending them off, Honda locked the office and set out alone for an afternoon stroll. His steps led him of their own accord toward the square in front of the palace.
Everyone in the Marunouchi area seemed to have had the same idea, and the wide boulevard was jammed with pedestrians.
He was forty-six, Honda mused. Nothing of youth, power, or pure passion remained in either his physical or spiritual being. He would have to prepare for death, perhaps in another ten years. More than likely he would not die in the war. He had had no military training; and even if he had, there was no danger of being called to the battlefield.
All he had to do was to stay behind and applaud the patriotic acts of the young. So they had gone to bomb Hawaii! It was a glamorous action from which his age had absolutely excluded him.
But was it only age? No. He was basically unsuited for any physical action.
Like everyone else, he had lived by approaching death step by step, but he did not know any other way. He had never run. Once he had tried to save a man’s life, but he had never been placed in any position where the efforts of another had been required to save him. He lacked the requisite quality for being saved. He had never given people the feeling of impending crisis where they would feel compelled to extend their hand in help, where they would be forced to try to rescue that certain glorious something that was in danger. The quality was charisma, and regrettably Honda was totally self-reliant and completely devoid of that.
It would be an exaggeration to say that he was jealous of the excitement about the attack on Pearl Harbor. He had simply become the captive of the egoistic and melancholy conviction that henceforth his life would definitely end and he would never achieve greatness. But had he ever really desired that in life?
On the other hand all glamorous and heroic acts faded away against the hallucination of
Benares. Was it perhaps because the mystery of transmigration had warped his mind, robbed him of courage, made him recognize the futility of all brave actions, and in the end taught him to utilize all his knowledge of philosophy merely for the sake of self-love? Like a man skirting around the lighting of firecrackers, Honda felt that his mind shrank violently from the sight of such mass paroxysms.
The little flags waving and the shouts of banzai sounding in front of the Imperial Palace could be seen and heard from a considerable distance. Honda maintained a good stretch of the pebbled square between himself and the demonstrators; from a distance he noted the color of the dead grass covering the banks of the moat around the palace and the wintry hue of the pines. Two girls in dark blue office smocks passed by laughing, holding hands, running toward the bridge at the entrance to the palace, their white teeth flashing and glistening moistly in the winter sun.
The beautiful, bow-shaped winter lips of the women created a momentary crevice, attractive and warm, in the clear air as they passed by. The heroes in the bombers must dream at times of just such lips. Young men were always like that, seeking the most rigorous and yet attracted to the most tender. Could the tenderest thing they seek be death? Honda himself had once been a young man of promise, but not one attracted to death.
Suddenly the expanse of pebbled space beneath the winter sun became in Honda’s eyes a vast and barren field. The image in the photograph labeled “Memorial Service for the War Dead, Vicinity of the Tokuri Temple,” shown him by Kiyoaki thirty long years ago, returned vividly to his mind. It was Kiyoaki’s favorite picture from the entire collection of photographs of the Russo-Japanese War. It now super-imposed itself upon the scenery before him and finally occupied his entire consciousness. That was the end of one war, and here was the beginning of another. At any rate, it was an ominous illusion.