Runaway Horses (44 page)

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Authors: Yukio Mishima

BOOK: Runaway Horses
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“Thank you. This is certainly not an everyday present! Well then, do come in.”
“Today I can’t. Please excuse me.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got to study.”
“What a fibber! When did you start grinding away so at your books?”
Makiko insisted upon Isao’s staying and then disappeared into the house. He heard the General’s voice telling her to invite him in.
Isao shut his eyes and gave himself over greedily to the image of Makiko before him a moment ago. Her beautiful smiling face with its fair skin—he wanted to store this image in his heart just as it was, unflawed. But if he were too eager, it would shatter like a mirror that has slipped from one’s grasp.
What was best, he thought, was to leave at once. If he did so, the Kitos would, he was sure, take his abrupt departure as nothing more than a bit of boyish rudeness and would later perceive its true significance as his farewell. The dim light of the entrance hall served well to hide Isao’s expression.
The whiteness of the flat stone where one removed one’s shoes stood out in the chill pool of darkness that pressed against the floor platform, which seemed to Isao like a quay where a ship might berth. He himself was a ship that was about to cast off. The floor’s edge, then, was the trim quay where people were finally received or denied, or bade farewell. And he was a ship loaded down with a full cargo of emotion, riding low in the dark winter sea of death.
Isao turned to leave the entrance hall, just as Makiko reappeared. She cried out: “What’s this? Why are you going? After Father said to have you come in.”
“Please excuse me,” answered Isao, pulling the sliding door shut behind him. His heart pounded as if he had accomplished something difficult. He felt like running, but then he reflected that to run would be unfitting and ruin everything. Departing by a different route would be enough. Instead of going back down the stone steps, he could turn toward the rear of the house, in the direction of Hakusan Shrine. He could return home by going through the shrine precincts. But as Isao was about to turn onto the path, deserted this late at night, that led through Hakusanmaé to the shrine itself, he caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Makiko’s white shawl. She was coming along behind him, not pursuing at all but keeping the same pace.
Isao went on walking. He had made the decision never to see Makiko again. He was on a path along the edge of Hakusan Park, which was at the rear of the shrine. To pass through the shrine grounds he would have to stoop and go beneath an elevated passageway just ahead, that joined the forehall with the shrine office. Light shone faintly through the close-worked lattice of the passageway.
Makiko finally called out. Isao had to stop. But he felt that if he looked back at her some ill-omened event might occur.
Instead of answering her, Isao turned away and walked to the top of a small hill opposite the park. A flagpole stood on the crest. The front of the hill was a steep drop covered with a growth of trees and shrubbery.
Finally he heard Makiko’s quiet voice at his shoulder.
“Why are you angry?”
Her voice hung in the darkness, charged with anxiety. Isao had to face her.
Her silvery white shawl concealed her mouth. But the faint light coming from the distant shops revealed tears shining in her eyes. Isao felt as if he were choking.
“I’m not angry at anything.”
“You came to say farewell. It’s true, isn’t it?”
Makiko pronounced this non sequitur with assurance, as though she were placing a white chess piece upon a new square.
Isao said nothing as he kept his eyes upon the scene below. A tall, sinewy zelkova tree, its upper roots exposed, lifted its branches to spread a delicate tracery across the face of the night and dim the stars caught within its branches. Two or three persimmon trees stood on the edge of the cliff, their scanty leaves black against the sky. Beyond the valley the land rose again, and the brightness of the shopping district misted the eaves of the houses along the hilltop. From here, a good many lights still seemed to be burning, but the effect was not at all that of a bustling city. Rather, the bright points were like small stones lying at the bottom of a brook.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” said Makiko once again.
This time her voice was very close to him, inflaming his cheek. It was then that he felt Makiko’s hands pressing upon the back of his neck. Her cold fingers were like a sword blade against the close-cropped nape. When the time came to receive the finishing stroke, when his neck shivered in anticipation of the falling blade, no doubt he would feel a chill like this. Isao shuddered, but his eyes told him nothing.
And yet for Makiko to have stretched out her arms and clasped his neck as she was doing, she had to be standing before him. This is what Isao had not perceived. Whether she had been incredibly quick or incredibly slow, she must have moved in front of him. And he did not see her.
Makiko’s face was no more visible than before. What he could see was something blacker than the night, the rich abundance of her hair just at the level of his chest. She had buried her face there. The perfume that rose from her seemed to screen his vision. His senses were fully taken up with that scent. Isao’s feet trembled in his clogs and the thongs creaked faintly. His footing seemed to be giving way, and like a man seized by a drowning person, he reached out in self-protection and clasped Makiko in his arms.
He embraced her, but what he felt beneath her light coat was no more than the firmness of her bulky, tight-wound obi with its padded layers and its huge bow. This was a substance that seemed to put him at a greater distance from Makiko than before he had embraced her. And yet what this sensation conveyed to Isao was the reality behind all his mental images of a woman’s body. No nakedness could seem so utterly naked.
Here began his rapture. Suddenly it was like a runaway stallion breaking free of the yoke. A wild strength flowed into his arms as he held the woman. He clasped her tighter, feeling their two bodies shake like the mast of a plunging ship. The face that had been buried in his chest was lifted. Makiko had lifted her face! Her expression was just what he had dreamed night after night that it would be when he said his last farewell. Tears sparkled on that lovely white face that was without a trace of makeup. Her tight-shut eyes looked at Isao with a force stronger than that of vision. Her face was like a delicate bubble that now floated before his eyes after having risen from some unimaginable depth. In the darkness her lips trembled as she sighed again and again. Isao could not bear having her lips so close to his. To banish them, all he could do was touch his own lips to hers. As naturally as one leaf falls and comes to rest upon another, Isao came upon the first and final kiss of his life. Makiko’s lips reminded him of the red leaves of the cherry trees that he had seen in Yanagawa. He was startled by the sweetness that began to flow gently through him once their mouths were joined. The world trembled at the point of contact between their lips. From this point radiated a transformation that altered his very flesh. The sensation of being steeped in something indescribably warm and smooth reached a climax when he realized that he had drunk in some of Makiko’s saliva.
When they finally drew their lips apart, they clung to each other and wept.
“Tell me just one thing. When will it be? Tomorrow? The day after?”
Because he realized that, were he in possession of himself, he would never answer such a question, Isao told her at once.
“It’s December third.”
“Only three days from now. Will I see you again?”
“No. I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
They began to walk in silence. Makiko chose a roundabout route, and Isao had to follow her through a small open space in Hakusan Park and down a dark path along the outbuildings where the shrine’s sacred palanquins were kept.
“I know what I’ll do,” said Makiko in the darkness beside him. “I can take the train to Sakurai tomorrow and go to Omiwa Shrine. I’ll pray for your good fortune in battle at the Sai Shrine. I’ll bring back a talisman for each of you, and see that you have them by December second. How many should I get?”
“Eleven. . . . No, there’re twelve of us.”
A kind of shyness kept Isao from daring to tell Makiko that each man would undertake his mission with a petal of her lilies hidden upon him.
The two of them entered the lighted area in front of the shrine, but there was no sign of anyone else being there. Since she did not want to cause any trouble at the Academy, Makiko asked him how to get to their hideaway, and he wrote the directions on a slip of paper and gave it to her.
Such light as there was had only one source, a small night lantern donated by a Hakusanshito photo studio. It cast a feeble glow over the stone guardian dogs, the gold-lettered tablet, the embossed carving of a dragon breathing fire, and the wooden steps leading to the shrine. Only the white pendants that hung from the sacred ropes stood out with any clarity. Weak though the light was, it reached as far as the white wall of the shrine office, some twenty feet away. Shadows of sakaki leaves made a lovely pattern upon it.
Each of them prayed silently. Then they passed beneath the torii and parted at the top of the long stone stairway.
30
 
 O
N THE MORNING
of December first, Isao, pretending that he was off to school, went directly to the hideaway. Sawa had been sent on an errand by the headmaster and was unable to attend the meeting, but the other ten were all present. The action was now only two days away, and, though it was necessary to work out some details, the main purpose of the meeting was to renew everyone’s resolution to take his own life, whatever difficulty he might find himself in, immediately after the blow had been struck.
The expressions on the faces of his comrades seemed to Isao to be clear and determined. The group had sold two regular swords and bought six short swords. Thus each now had his own sharp-bladed dagger. But someone made the suggestion that, as an extra precaution, it would be well if they all had a hidden dagger too, and the others agreed. They knew that poison was the most effective way to commit a hasty suicide, but they spurned this womanish means of putting an end to life.
The practice was to lock the door of the house when the group was assembled. When a knock sounded, everyone presumed that Sawa had come after all, stealing time from the task he was sent to do.
Izutsu went downstairs and called out: “Mr. Sawa?”
“Yes,” came the answer in a low voice, but when Izutsu slid the door open, a stranger entered, pushed his way past, and began running up the stairs, still in his street shoes.
“Get away!” Izutsu shouted, as a second and third man rushed in and twisted his arms behind him.
The comrades who tried to escape by jumping down into the backyard from the overhanging roof were seized by detectives who had moved in from the rear. Isao snatched up one of the daggers in front of him to thrust it into his own stomach, but a detective caught his wrist. In the struggle that followed, the officer suffered a cut finger. Inoué grappled with the detectives and threw one of them, but two or three others brought him down.
And so the eleven were handcuffed and brought to the Yotsuya police station. On the afternoon of the same day, Sawa was arrested as he was returning to the Academy.
31
 

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