Runaway Horses (33 page)

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Authors: Yukio Mishima

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“As hard as I work to keep myself clean,” he said, somewhat out of breath, “I wonder if the day will ever come when I’ll be of service.”
“Maybe tomorrow will be the day,” said Isao, baiting him gently. “And where will Mr. Sawa be but bent over his washtub?”
Sawa never explained what he meant by “be of service” beyond an unswerving insistence that when the hour struck it would be unfitting for any man to be clad in other than dazzling white underwear.
He wrung out his clothes at last. The water struck the dry ground in glittering black drops. Without looking at Isao, he began to speak in a droll tone of voice. “Well, it seems to me that, rather than wait for the master, it might be best to look to young Mr. Iinuma for an early opportunity.”
When he heard this, Isao’s first concern was whether his expression had changed. There could be no doubt that Sawa had sniffed out something. Had Isao himself been guilty of some lapse?
Not giving the least sign that he had caught Isao’s reaction, Sawa draped his laundry over one arm and hastily wiped off the drying pole with a rag.
“When will you be going to Master Kaido’s training camp?” he asked.
“Well, I’m assigned to the week beginning the twentieth of October. It’s all filled up until then. I hear that nowadays a lot of businessmen are attending.”
“Who’s going with you?”
“I asked the ones in my study group at school.”
“You know what? I’d like to go too. Let me see if it’s all right with the master. After all, what good am I but to watch the place when everybody’s gone? So I think he might let me go with you. It would toughen me up and do me a lot of good to get in with you young fellows. When you get to be my age, no matter how eager your spirit is, your body’s got a will of its own. Come on now, what do you say?”
Isao found himself without an answer. Indeed, if Sawa did ask his father, the reply certainly would be yes. And if he were to go with them, it would spoil the chance for the crucial talk with his comrades that Isao had gone to such trouble to arrange. Sawa might even be aware of what was up and be trying to draw him out. Furthermore, if Sawa meant to convey his dedication, his request might well be nothing but a roundabout way of communicating his desire to be numbered among Isao’s comrades.
Turning to Isao, Sawa ran the pole through his undershirt and drawers and then fastened his Etchu loincloth to it by its string. Since he had not wrung them out as well as he might, water from his clothes ran down the slanted pole and dripped from its end, but this did not trouble him at all. While he was thus occupied, the back that bulged beneath the khaki shirt, the whole heavy, insensitive mass of flesh before Isao’s eyes, seemed to be pressing him for an answer. Still, Isao did not know what to say.
Just as he had set the drying pole at a convenient level, a gust of wind caught a corner of the wet cloth and slapped it against Sawa’s cheek. Startled as though a huge white dog were licking his face, he pushed it away and stepped hurriedly back. Then, turning to Isao in a carefree manner, he asked: “Is there any reason why you really wouldn’t want me to come along?”
Had Isao been a youth of some sophistication, he might have turned Sawa aside with a light answer. But since he was indeed thinking that Sawa’s coming would cause difficulty, joking was out of the question.
Sawa did not pursue the matter. Instead, he asked Isao to come to his room to share some delicious cakes he had. The room was a full three mats and Sawa had it to himself in deference to his age. There were no books to be seen, only a few tattered copies of
Kodan Club.
When chided on this point, Sawa would reply that those who read books to imbibe the Japanese Spirit were “pseudopatriots.”
He poured Isao a cup of tea and offered him the rice cakes, a kind called higomochi, which his wife in Kumamoto had sent.
“Anyway,” said Sawa with a sigh, apropos of nothing, “there’s no doubt that the master loves you.”
Then after rummaging through the debris that littered the floor he came up with a fan decorated with a picture of a pretty woman, but when he tried to present Isao with this holiday gift from a neighborhood saké dealer, whose name and phone number were prominently displayed on it, he was rebuffed. The slender lady with a faraway look somewhat resembled Makiko around the eyes, and this was what lent an undue severity to Isao’s abrupt refusal. Sawa, however, had not meant to imply anything, apparently, and his proffering the fan was but another example of his idiosyncratic behavior.
“Would you really like to go to the training camp?” Isao asked, regretting the harshness of his rebuff and wanting to end at once the lingering tension between them.
“No, not really,” answered Sawa, putting him off casually as though he had lost interest in the matter. “I’d probably be busy and couldn’t go anyway. I was just asking.” Then, as though to himself, he repeated his irrelevant remark. “Yes, there’s no doubt that the master loves you.” He wrapped both of his hands, their plump flesh dimpled at the joint of each finger, around the sturdy mug that held his tea and began a story that was wholly unsolicited.
“This is something I think young Master Isao is old enough to know. It’s only recently that the Academy has been so well off. When I started here, we had all we could do to make ends meet. You were never told, and I know that this was in keeping with the master’s theory of education. But if I might say so, it’s getting to be time for you to learn some unpleasant things. Because if your education leaves out anything that you should know, then later on you’ll be scandalized.
“It was three years ago, I think, that the
New Japan
came out with a piece attacking Mr. Koyama, the very one whose birthday it happens to be today. The master said it wouldn’t do to let this go by and say nothing. He went to see Mr. Koyama, but I never found out exactly what decision they came to. Anyway, the master told me to go to the newspaper office and demand that they print a thoroughgoing apology. The instructions he gave me were certainly strange. ‘If they offer money, don’t take it. Throw it back at them angrily and leave,’ he said. ‘But if they don’t offer any money, it’s a sign that you’ve handled things badly.’
“It’s rather fun to pretend to be angry when you really aren’t. And I don’t mind seeing a frightened look on people’s faces. Especially in this case, it helped matters that the one they picked to deal with me was a rather cheeky young editor.
“The master’s strategy was wonderfully worked out. He sends somebody like me to begin the negotiations. If I do say so myself, I seem to be a likable sort of person, and nobody takes it too seriously even if I’m boiling with rage, so this fellow thinks he can settle the matter with a little money. Then when to his surprise I break off the meeting, the other side starts to get a bit uneasy.
“The master arranges matters so there’s never a direct meeting with Mr. Koyama, and in the course of the negotiations he puts five actors on the stage, five hurdles, each steeper than the one before. Each one of these gentlemen is more formidable and prestigious than the last. The other side gets in deeper and deeper without having any idea how far we’re going to go before we settle. Furthermore there can be no question of extortion, since we keep insisting that ‘This isn’t a matter of money,’ and so they have no grounds for going to the police. The second actor to take the stage is Mr. Muto, who was involved in the June Incident. And it’s at this point that the
New Japan
becomes aware, to its great surprise, that this is no simple matter.
“Furthermore, in going from the second actor to the third, the interval is made as indefinite as possible, and while offering the hope that a settlement can be had by a meeting with the third actor, the master arranges it so that this meeting seems as though it’s never going to take place. And then when it finally does come off after all the anxiety, authority has been switched to a fourth party, unknown to them. At this stage, the number of ‘young men who can’t contain their wrath’ soars to far more than a mere one or two hundred, though none of them makes an appearance.
“As might be expected, the newspaper loses no time in hiring a former detective, and this fellow comes rubbing his hands obsequiously, carrying his letter of sanction from the publisher. The master was also very careful in picking out just the right meeting places, and when our fourth actor, Mr. Yoshimori, goes on stage, the setting is perfect. He has connections with a construction company, and so the master makes it the shanty office on a building site.
“After four months of harassment, a smooth big shot who looks easygoing finally appears on the scene as our fifth actor. I can’t tell you his name, but thanks to his hard bargaining, an agreement was reached. The place was in Yanagibashi. The publisher of the
New Japan
himself was there, and kowtowed to us, but with all that, they handed over something like fifty thousand yen. It seems the master got ten thousand as his share. That took care of the Academy very well for a year.”
Isao had been trying to suppress his irritation as he listened. Vanity compelled him to show that petty evils of this sort could by no means upset him. What was hard to bear, however, was the realization that he himself had up to now been enjoying the fruits of such petty evils.
Nevertheless, to suppose that Isao was having his eyes opened for the first time to the true state of affairs would be an exaggeration. Isao himself would not deny that his unwillingness to look into certain fundamental aspects of his life had somehow been the basis for his sense of purity, as well as the source of the strange anger and disquiet that troubled him. To plant one’s feet upon evil and yet render justice was an overblown concept flattering to the vanity of youth. The problem was that Isao’s imagined evil had been of somewhat greater dimensions. But, whatever the case, this did not offer adequate cause for Isao to have misgivings about his purity.
Calming himself with an effort, he asked: “Does my father still make a practice of doing this?”
“Now things are different. Now he’s an important man. That kind of struggle isn’t necessary any more. What I wanted you to know is what the master had to go through before he got where he is.”
Then Sawa, after a slight pause, made still another incongruous statement, and though he tossed it off carelessly, it stunned Isao: “You can go after whoever you want. But don’t go after Busuké Kurahara. If anything should happen to him, the one who’ll suffer most will be the master. Go ahead out of a sense of loyalty, and you’ll find yourself utterly betraying your father.”
21
 
 I
SAO LEFT
S
AWA’S ROOM
abruptly and, determined to probe the significance of his words, shut himself in his own room.
Just as hot pepper becomes less pungent as it numbs the inside of the mouth, so the shock of the words “Don’t go after Busuké Kurahara” was not that intense after a time. They did not necessarily imply that Sawa had penetrated Isao’s secret. For Busuké Kurahara was in the eyes of many men the very personification of capitalistic evil.
If Sawa had perceived that Isao had some plan or other in mind he might well imagine that Kurahara’s name would, as a matter of course, come up as one objective. And his advice not to single out Kurahara would not really depend upon his knowing that Isao had already done so.
There remained a single problem: Sawa’s implication in linking his father’s name to Kurahara. Was Kurahara actually an important financial backer of his father? A secret patron of the Academy of Patriotism? The thought seemed unbearable. But since this was a problem that Isao was unable to solve in his present circumstances, the truth or falsity of the allegation was a matter that would have to be set aside for a time. The irritation that burned greedily within him came more from this uncertainty than from anger.
Actually, Isao knew nothing of Kurahara other than what he had gained from studying photographs of him in newspapers and magazines and carefully reading about what he said and did. Kurahara was the unmistakable incarnation of a capitalism devoid of national allegiance. If one wished to portray the frightening image of a man who loved nothing, there was no better model than Kurahara. At any rate, in an era when everyone was choking, the fact that this man alone could evidently breathe with ease was in itself grounds enough for suspecting that he was a criminal.

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