Death in Midsummer & Other Stories (20 page)

DEALER: Kiyoko? Who are you?

SUPER: I'm the superintendent of the apartment house she lives in.

Are you sure she hasn't been here ? If she comes -

DEALER: Steady, steady. Don't get so excited. If she comes, what then?

SUPER : Her friend tells me she just stole a bottle of sulphuric acid from his shop. He's a pharmacist.

DEALER: Sulphuric acid?

SUPER: He says she dashed out with the bottle in her hand. I've been looking everywhere for her. A man I met on the way said he saw her go into your shop.

DEALER: A-acid, you say?

SUPER: It wasn't so long ago her lover got killed. With a high-140

strung girl like that, there's no telling what she might do. That's what worries me. Just supposing she threw it in somebody's face.

DEALER: YOU think she would?
[He recoils and puts his hands to
his face in fright.]...
No, that's not what she's planning. She's going to throw the acid in her own face.

SUPER: What?

DEALER: Yes, I mean, she'll disfigure herself. What a horrible thing to happen! That beautiful face - she's about to commit a suicide of the face.

SUPER: Why should she do such a thing?

DEALER: Don't you understand what I'm saying ?
[Hepoints at the
wardrobe.]
Kiyoko is in there. She's locked it from the inside.

SUPER:That's terrible. We must get her out of there.

DEALER: The door is solid as a rock.

SUPER: All the same, we've got to do something.
[He bangs on the
door.]
Kiyoko! Kiyoko!

DEALER : A face like that will turn into a witch's! What a black day this has been!
[He joins in banging on the door.]
Come out!

Don't cause us any trouble. Come out!

SUPER: Kiyoko, Miss Kiyoko.

[A horrible scream is heard from inside the wardrobe. The two
men wilt abjectly. A terrible silence. The
DEALERS?
length brings
his hands together in an unconscious attitude of prayer. He wrings
out his words.]

DEALER: Come out. I beg you. The wardrobe is useless to me now.

You can have it for three thousand yen. Three thousand yen, that's all. I'm letting you have it. Please come out.
[The door
finally opens with a heart-rending screeching noise. The
DEALER

and the
SUPERINTENDENT
automatically fall back,
KIYOKO

emerges, the vial held in her hand. Her face is not in the least
altered.]
Your face - nothing's happened!

SUPER: Thank heavens.

DEALER: Thank heavens, my eye. I didn't bargain on that. You're a cheat. Frightening people this way - you might've caused me apoplexy. It's no laughing matter.

KIYOKO
[calmly]:
I haven't cheated you. I really intended to throw the acid in my face.

141

DEALER: Then what was that scream?

KIYOKO: I switched on the light inside the wardrobe. I saw my face reflected in the mirrors all around me, and the reflections of the reflections of my face in the mirror by the mirror behind it, and these reflections reflected again. Mirrors reflecting mirrors, reflecting my profile, and the mirrors reflected again. An endless, infinite number of my faces, stretching on and on.... It was so cold inside the wardrobe. I was waiting, wondering if among all those faces of mine his might not suddenly appear.

DEALER [
shuddering again]:
And did it?

KIYOKO: NO, it didn't. To the ends of the earth, to the ends of the sea, to the ends of the whole world, my face and only my face. I removed the cap from the bottle and I stared at my face in the mirror. I thought, Supposing my face disfigured by this acid were repeated to the ends of the earth? Suddenly I had a vision of my face after I had disfigured it, the horrible face of a witch scarred and festering.

DEALER: And then you screamed?

KIYOKO: Yes.

DEALER: That was when you lost the courage to throw the acid in your face, wasn't it ?

K i YOKO : No. I came back to my senses and screwed the cap on the bottle again, not because I had lost my nerve, but because I realized that even the terrible suffering, jealousy, anger, torment, and pain I had gone through had not been enough to change a human face, that no matter what happened my face was my face.

DEALER: You see, you can't win when you fight with nature.

KIYOKO: I wasn't beaten. I became reconciled to nature.

DEALER: A convenient way of looking at it.

KIYOKO: I
have
become reconciled.
[She drops the bottle on to the
floor. The
DEALER
hastens to kick it aside.]
It's spring now, isn't it? I've realized it for the first time. The seasons have meant nothing to me for such a long, long time, ever since he disappeared into this wardrobe.
[She sniffs the air around her.]
It's the height of spring. Even in this musty old shop I can smell it -

where is it coming from ? - a fragrance of spring earth, of plants and trees, of flowers. The cherry blossoms must be in full glory.

142

Clouds of blossoms, and apart from them only the pines. The strong green of the branches amidst the smoky blossoms, the outlines sharp because they've never had any dreams. The birds are singing.
[A twittering of birds is heard.]
A singing of birds passing like sunlight through the thickest walls. Even as we stand here the spring relentlessly presses in on us, with such a multitude of cherry blossoms, such a multitude of singing birds.

Every last branch holds as many as it can and shuts its eyes in rapture under the delicious weight. And the wind -1 can smell the fragrance of his living body in this wind. I had forgotten. It was spring!

DEALER : Will you kindly purchase the wardrobe and leave ?

KIYOKO : You were saying a while ago that you'd let me have it for three thousand yen, weren't you?

DEALER: Don't be silly. That was only in case your face was disfigured. The price is still five hundred thousand yen. No, six hundred thousand.

KIYOKO: I don't want it.

DEALER: YOU don't?

KIYOKO: That's right. I really don't want it any more. Sell it to some foolish rich man. Don't worry. I won't make any more trouble for you.

DEALER : Thank heavens for that.

SUPER: Let's go back together to the apartment. You'll have to apologize to your friend in the pharmacy for making him worry.

Then you should get a good night's sleep. You must be exhausted.

KIYOKO [
taking a card from her handbag and examining it]:
No, I have an engagement now.

SUPER: Where?

DEALER [
noticing the card
KIYOKO
holds]:
With that gentleman?

Now?

KIYOKO: Yes, with that gentleman, now.

DEALER: If you go, you can be sure he'll give you quite a time.

KI YO KO : I'm not worried. Nothing can bother me, no matter what happens. Who do you suppose can wound me now?

SUPER: Spring is a dangerous season.

143

DEALER: You'll be ruined. Your heart'll be torn to shreds. You'll end up no longer able to feel anything.

KIYOKO: Still, nothing that happens can ever change my face.

[
KIYOKO
takes a lipstick from her bag, applies it to her lips, then
turning her back on the two men, who watch her blankly, she
suddenly rushes off to right, fast as the wind.]

CURTAIN

Translated by Donald Keene

Masuyama had been overwhelmed by Mangiku's artistry; that was how it happened that, after getting a degree in classical Japanese literature, he had chosen to join the kabuki theatre staff. He had been entranced by seeing Mangiku Sanokawa perform.

Masuyama's addiction to kabuki began when he was a high-school student. At the time, Mangiku, still a fledgling
onnagata,
was appearing in such minor roles as the ghost butterfly in
Kagami Jishi
or, at best, the waiting maid Chidori in
The Dis-owning of Genta.
Mangiku's acting was unassertive and ortho-dox; nobody suspected he would achieve his present eminence.

But even in those days Masuyama sensed the icy flames given off by this actor's aloof beauty. The general public, needless to say, noticed nothing. For that matter, none of the drama critics had ever called attention to the peculiar quality of Mangiku, like shoots of flame visible through the snow, which illuminated his performances from very early in his career. Now everyone spoke as if Mangiku had been a personal discovery.

Mangiku Sanokawa was a true
onnagata,
a species seldom encountered nowadays. Unlike most contemporary
onnagata,
he was quite incapable of performing successfully in male roles.

His stage presence was colourful, but with dark overtones; his every gesture was the essence of delicacy. Mangiku never expressed anything - not even strength, authority, endurance, or courage - except through the single medium open to him, feminine expression, but through this medium he could filter every variety of human emotion. That is the way of the true
onnagata
but in recent years this breed has become rare indeed. Their tonal colouring, produced by a particular, exquisitely refined musical instrument, cannot be achieved by playing a normal 145

instrument in a minor key, nor, for that matter, is it produced by a mere slavish imitation of real women.

Yukihime, the Snow Princess, in
Kinkakuji
was one of Mangiku's most successful roles. Masuyama remembered having seen Magiku
perform
Yukihime ten times during a single month, but no matter how often he repeated this experience, his intoxication did not diminish. Everything symbolizing Sanokawa Mangiku may be found in this play, the elements en-twined, beginning with the opening words of the narrator: The Golden Pavilion, the mountain retreat of Lord Yoshimitsu, Prime Minister and Monk of the Deer Park, stands three stories high, its garden graced with lovely sights: the night-lodging stone, the water trickling below the rocks, the flow of the cas-cade heavy with spring, the willows and cherry-trees planted together; the capital now is a vast, many-hued brocade.' The dazzling brilliance of the set, depicting cherry-trees in blossom, a waterfall, and the glittering Golden Pavilion; the drums, suggesting the dark sound of the waterfall and contributing a constant agitation to the stage; the pale, sadistic face of the lecherous Daizen Matsunaga, the rebel general; the miracle of the magic sword which shines in morning sunlight with the holy image of Fudo, but shows a dragon's form when pointed at the setting sun; the radiance of the sunset glow on the waterfall and cherry-trees; the cherry blossoms scattering down petal by petal

- everything in the play exists for the sake of one woman, the beautiful, aristocratic Yukihime. There is nothing unusual about Yukihime's costume, the crimson silk robe customarily worn by young princesses. But a ghostly presence of snow befitting her name, hovers about this granddaughter of the great painter Sesshu, permeated with snow, may be sensed across the breadth of the scene; this phantom snow gives Yukihime's crimson robe its dazzling brilliance.

Masuyama loved especially the scene where the princess, bound with ropes to a cherry-tree, remembers the legend told of her grandfather, and with her toes draws in the fallen blossoms a rat, which comes to life and gnaws through the ropes binding her. It hardly needs be said that Mangiku Sanokawa did not 146

adopt the puppetlike movements favoured by some
onnagata
in this scene. The ropes fastening him to the tree made Mangiku look lovelier than ever: all the artificial arabesques of this
onnagata
- the delicate gestures of the body, the play of the fingers, the arch of the hand - contrived though they might appear when employed for the movements of daily life, took on a strange vitality when used by Yukihime, bound to a tree. The intricate, contorted attitudes imposed by the constraint of the rope made of each instant an exquisite crisis, and the crises seemed to flow, one into the next, with the irresistible energy of successive waves.

Mangiku's performances unquestionably possessed moments of diabolic power. He used his lovely eyes so effectively that often with one flash he could create in an entire audience the illusion that the character of a scene had completely altered: when his glance embraced the stage from the
hanamichi
or the
hanamichi
from the stage, or when he darted one upward look at the bell in
Dojoji.
In the palace scene from
Imoseyama,
Mangiku took the part of Omiwa, whose lover was stolen from her by Princess Tachibana and who has been cruelly mocked by the court ladies at the back of the stage saying, 'A groom without peer has been found for our princess! What joy for us all!'

The narrator, seated at the side of the stage, declaims in powerful tones, 'Omiwa, hearing this, at once looks back.' At this moment Omiwa's character is completely transformed, and her face reveals the marks of a possessive attachment.

Masuyama felt a kind of terror every time he witnessed this moment. For an instant a diabolic shadow had swept over both the bright stage with its splendid set and beautiful costumes and over the thousands of intently watching spectators. This force clearly emanated from Mangiku's body, but at the same time transcended his flesh. Masuyama sensed in such passages something like a dark spring welling forth from this figure on the stage, this figure so imbued with softness, fragility, grace, delicacy, and feminine charms. He could not identify it, but he thought that a strange, evil presence, the final residue of the actor's fascination, a seductive evil which leads men astray and 147

makes them drown in an instant of beauty, was the true nature of the dark spring he had detected. But one explains nothing merely by giving it a name.

Omiwa shakes her head and her hair tumbles in disarray. On the stage, to which she now returns from the
hanamichi,
Fun-ashichi's blade is waiting to kill her.

'The house is full of music, an autumn sadness in its tone,'