Runaway Horses

by Yukio Mishima

  “There’s such a thing as common sense. If you decide to take some important action, are you going to tell people about it in a telegram? We should have decided on a code and a clear commitment from you. If we had, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Seyama, a student at the First High School, who was the same age as Isao. Since he lived in Shibuya, however, coming here could hardly have been much trouble for him.

  “Just what wouldn’t have happened? Isn’t that simply going back to a situation where nothing will occur?” said Isao, quietly refuting him. “Isn’t that simply realizing that what you all imagined was mistaken?”

  The twilight was deepening so that it was becoming harder and harder to make out one another’s features. There was a long silence. Only the chirping of insects filled the darkness.

  “What are we to do then?”

  When someone asked this in a pathetic whisper, Isao’s response was immediate: “Whoever wants to go home, go home.”

  One white-shirted figure at once detached itself from the group and hurried toward the college gate. Then two more drew away and walked off. Serikawa did not leave. He squatted down by the shrine hedge and held his head in his hands. In a few moments, the others heard Serikawa’s sobs. The sound seemed to penetrate the gloom in their hearts like a chill, white stream, a tiny Milky Way.

  “I can’t go back! I can’t!” Serikawa muttered as he wept.

  “Why don’t all of you go home?” Isao shouted. “Despite what I’ve told you, you still don’t understand?”

  Not a single voice answered him. Furthermore this silence differed markedly from the one that had preceded it. It was a silence that gave the feeling that some huge, warm-blooded beast had risen up in the darkness. For the first time, Isao sensed firm response. It was hot, it had an animal smell, it was filled with blood, its pulse throbbed.

  “All right then. You that are left, with no hopes, no expectations whatsoever, are you willing to throw away your lives on an act that probably will amount to nothing at all?”

  “Yes,” one voice spoke out with a forceful dignity.

  Serikawa rose to his feet and began to walk toward Isao. His eyes, wet with tears, approached through the darkness so thick that a face could barely be seen until it was very close. His voice was choked from weeping, and when he spoke out boldly, its tone was frightfully low: “I’m still here too. I’ll follow anywhere at all, and I’ll keep quiet.”

  “Good enough. All right, let us make our vows together before the gods. Let’s offer worship. Then I’ll recite the vows. Say each one of them after me, all together.” The sound of Isao, Izutsu, Sagara, and the remaining seventeen clapping their hands in worship echoed sharply through the darkness, as regularly as the night sea slapping a wooden gunwale.

  Isao intoned: “Be it thus that we, emulating the purity of the League of the Divine Wind, hazard ourselves for the task of purging away all evil deities and perverse spirits.”

  The youthful voices of the others responded as one: “Be it thus that we, emulating the purity of the League of the Divine Wind, hazard ourselves for the task of purging away all evil deities and perverse spirits.”

  Isao’s voice reverberated from the dimly visible plain wood doors of the inner shrine. Strong and deep, it rose up from his chest with all the poignance of the misty fantasies of youth. The stars were already out. The noise of streetcars jangled from far off. Isao chanted again: “Be it thus that we, forging deep friendship among ourselves, aid one another as comrades in responding to the perils that confront the nation.”

  “Be it thus that we, never seeking power and giving no thought to personal advancement, go forth to certain death to become the foundation stones for the Restoration.”

  As soon as they finished reciting the vows, one boy grasped Isao’s hand and held it with both of his own. Then all of them were clasping each other’s hands, and jostling in their haste to clasp Isao’s. Beneath the starry sky, as their eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, they thrust out their hands again and again on all sides, seeking other hands still ungrasped. No one spoke. Any words would have been inadequate.

  Grasping hands were everywhere as though a growth of tenacious ivy had sprung up from the darkness. Each tendril, whether sweaty or dry or hard or soft to the touch, was filled with strength as it held fast for a brief moment marked by a mutual sharing of the warmth of their bodies and their blood. Isao dreamed that he would some night stand like this with his comrades upon the field of battle, taking wordless farewell before their deaths. Bathing in the marvelous satisfaction of having seen the task through to the finish and in the blood that flowed from his own body, yielding his consciousness to that peak of sensitivity where the scarlet and the white threads of ultimate pain and ultimate joy are woven together. . . .

  Since there were twenty of them in all, they could not safely meet at the Academy of Patriotism. His father’s eye would be likely to search out Isao’s plans. On the other hand, Izutsu’s home was too small and Sagara’s, too, was unsuitable. This had been a concern of the three of them from the beginning, but no workable plan had suggested itself. Even if the three were to put their pocket money together, they could not cope with the cost of all twenty meeting at a restaurant. And then a coffee shop would hardly be the place to speak of grave matters.

  Now, after the handclasps beneath the stars that sealed their alliance, it was Isao who felt a reluctance to put an end to things that night without something further. Then, too, he was hungry. No doubt all the boys were hungry. He turned perplexed eyes toward the main gate, where a dim light was burning.

  Below the gate light, a little to one side, was something like a moonflower that seemed to be floating in the air. It was the face of a woman who was standing there, her head slightly bowed, not wanting to be seen. Once his eyes had discovered her, he found he could not turn away.

  Somewhere in his heart he had recognized who she was. His dominant wish, however, was to go on a little longer without recognizing her. The woman’s face floating in its dark seclusion, no name yet attached to it, had the character of a mysterious, lovely apparition. It was like the scent of the fragrant olive which, as one walks along a path at night, tells of the blossoms before one sees them. Isao wanted to keep things just as they were, if only for an instant more. At this moment a woman was a woman, not someone with a name attached to her.

  And that was not all. Because of her hidden name, because of the agreement not to speak that name, she was transmuted into a marvelous essence, like a moonflower, its supporting vine invisible, floating high up in the darkness. This essence which preceded existence, this phantasm which preceded reality, this portent which preceded the event conveyed with unmistakable force the presence of a substance yet more powerful. This presence which showed itself as gliding through air—this was woman.

  Isao had yet to embrace a woman. Still, never so strongly as at this moment, when he keenly sensed this “womanliness that preceded woman,” had he felt that he too knew what ecstasy meant. For this was a presence that he could even now embrace. In time, that is, it had drawn near with an exquisite subtlety, and in space it was only a little distant. The affectionate emotion that filled his breast was like a vapor that could envelop her. And yet once she was gone, Isao, like a child, could forget her entirely.

  However, after Isao had for some time let his thoughts dwell upon this presence, he found himself, despite his earlier wish to preserve the moment, unable to bear the uncertainty any longer.

  “Wait for me,” he ordered Izutsu in a voice loud enough for all to hear, and sprinted toward the gate. There was a dry, faint stutter of scampering clogs as his white splashed-pattern kimono disappeared into the darkness.

  Isao went through the low door beside the gate. Just as he had imagined, the woman standing there was Makiko.

  Makiko’s hair was arranged in a different manner, something that even the inexperienced Isao noticed at once. It was a stylish hairdo that covered her ears, leaving only a wavy
border about her temples and cheeks, pressing in upon her features and giving her face a heightened air of mystery. Although she was not one to use much makeup, the nape of her neck seemed to stand out like a carving in relief above the crepe of her Akashi kimono, which seemed a solid navy blue in the darkness. A whiff of some fragrant scent from her body struck Isao with unnerving force.

  “Miss Makiko! What are you doing here?”

  “What am I doing? All of you came here at six, didn’t you, to recite your vows?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Don’t be stupid!” Makiko’s teeth gleamed as she laughed. “Didn’t you yourself say so?”

  Thus challenged, Isao had to conclude that a few days ago, concerned as he was with the ever-present worry of not having a place to meet, he had probably happened to let slip the time and place of the vows in her presence. He had always been willing to confide anything to Makiko, but he felt ashamed at the thought of revealing something important and then forgetting about it, with her of all people. Perhaps he lacked some quality essential in one who was to lead men and bring about events. In his carelessness in so grave a matter, Isao could not fail to detect a certain unmanly dependence upon her. Though quite different before his comrades, in Makiko’s presence he felt a subtle desire to seem a heedless young man.

  “Well . . . it’s just that you took me by surprise. But why have you come?”

  “I thought that, after gathering a large group of students together, you might be hard put for a place to bring them. First of all I imagine you are quite hungry, aren’t you?”

  Isao scratched his head with a fresh, boyish candor.

  “We’d be happy to offer all of you dinner at our house, but since it’s a long way from here, Father suggested that I treat you to a sukiyaki dinner in Shibuya, and he gave me the money for it. He was invited to a poetry composition party tonight, and so I’m here in his place to offer you gentlemen our hospitality. Don’t worry, I can take care of the bill.”

  Then Makiko, as though drawing up a fresh-caught fish, held up a large Panama handbag with a quick motion of her white hand. Despite the fragile grace of the slender wrist that appeared from the sleeve, however, it was a hand that seemed to convey something of the fatigue of late summer.

  19

  ABOUT THIS SAME TIME, Honda was attending a performance of Matsukazé at the Osaka Nō Theater in Tennoji-Dogashiba at the invitation of a colleague fond of performing Nō chants himself. It was a production featuring Kanesuké Noguchi from Tokyo as shité with Yazo Tamura assisting him as waki. The theater stood upon the eastern slope of Uemachi Hill between Tennoji and Osaka Castle. This had been a section of fine villas at the beginning of the Taisho period and was still a secluded area containing high-walled mansions. One of these functioned as a Nō theater under the auspices of the Sumitomo family.

  Most of the guests were merchant princes, and Honda recognized many of them. As for the famous actor, the harsh-voiced Noguchi, Honda’s colleague had warned him beforehand that, although his intonation might sound like a goose being strangled, Honda was not by any means to laugh. And he predicted that, ignorant of Nō though Honda was, once the play was underway he would suddenly find himself emotionally aroused.

  Honda had reached the age at which advice of this sort did not provoke any childish antipathy. Although the reason that had been his foundation had begun to crumble when he met Isao Iinuma at the beginning of the summer, his usual habits of thought had not changed. Once again he found himself believing that, just as he had never contracted venereal disease, neither had he ever experienced emotional arousal.

  As soon as the exchange was finished between the waki as a priest and the clown, the shité and his companion made their entrance along the passageway at the left rear. Honda’s colleague explained to him that the serene and tranquil accompaniment now being played was ordinarily limited to that entrance scene in god plays. Matsukazé contained the sole exception to this rule. Such was the high regard, it seemed, in which this music was held as expressing the full force of the occult.

  Matsukazé and Murasamé, both clad in white robes revealing scarlet underskirts spilling out beneath, faced each other on the entrance bridgeway, and then began to chant in unison as quietly as the rain falling and sinking into a sandy beach: “Drawing our brine cart along, how briefly we live in this sad world, how fleetingly!”

  Though Honda was distracted by the reflection of the pointed pines falling on the highly polished cypress floor of the stage, gleaming too brilliantly beneath the rather harsh lighting of this Nō theater, the final “how fleetingly!” rang clear in his ear, as the lighter and brighter tones of the companion entangled the deeper and more melancholy voice, ever on the verge of breaking, of Kanesuké Noguchi.

  Since there was, of course, nothing to interfere with listening, the words were easily recalled.

  “Drawing our brine cart along, how briefly we live in this sad world, how fleetingly!”

  No matter how lean, how slender of body, the graceful figure of the verse took on significant form in Honda’s mind. At that moment he shuddered without knowing why.

  Then the companion began to chant the second verse: “The waves beat close to us, here at the Bay of Suma. Even the moon moves us to tears that wet our sleeves.”

  After the two had joined together to chant the concluding words, the shité, as Matsukazé, began a vigorous soliloquy: “The autumn wind saddens the heart. A little away from the sea . . .”

  Although Kanesuké Noguchi wore the mask of a beautiful young woman, his voice had nothing that would recall a woman’s charm. It was a voice that made one think of the rasping together of rusty, discolored metal. Furthermore, his recitation was broken by interruptions, and his style of chanting seemed to be tearing the beauty of the words to shreds. But despite all this, the mood inspired was like the outpouring of a dark and ineffably elegant mist, like the sight of a moonbeam shining into a corner of a ruined palace to fall upon a mother-of-pearl furnishing. Because the light passed through a worn and ravaged bamboo blind, the elegance of the shattered fragments shone all the more.

  Gradually, then, his harsh voice became far from irritating. Rather, one had the feeling that only through this harsh voice could one for the first time become aware of the briny sadness of Matsukazé and the melancholy love that afflicts those in the realm of the dead.

  Honda at some point began to find it hard to tell whether the images that shifted to and fro before him were reality or illusion. On the gleaming cypress surface of the stage, like the mirroring sea at the shoreline, was reflected the glittering embroidery of the white robes and scarlet underskirts of two beautiful women.

  Mingling with the words of the soliloquy, the first line still held stubborn sway in Honda’s heart: “Drawing our brine cart along, how briefly we live in this sad world, how fleetingly!”

  What came to his mind was not the meaning of this line but the significance of the unaccountable shudder that he had felt when the shité and his companion had stood together on the bridgeway and recited it, the moment of recitation imbued with perfect stillness, the chant falling like quiet rain.

  And what was that significance? Just then beauty itself had begun to walk before him. Like the beach plover, strong in flight but unsteady on the ground, the white tabi-shod feet moved on tiptoe as though come for a few brief moments to make their way through the world known to man.

  This beauty, however, would occur but once. A man could do nothing but commit it to memory immediately and reflect upon it thereafter. Then too it was a beauty that preserved a noble futility, a purposelessness.

  Keeping pace with Honda’s thoughts, the Nō drama of Matsukazé flowed on, a small stream of never-failing emotion.

  “Dwelling in this world we find thus so wretched, even while envying the carefree moon clear above us, come let us ladle out the tidewater she summons.”

  That which chanted and moved about on the stage bathed in moonlight was now no longe
r the ghosts of two beautiful women but something beyond description. One might call it the essence of time, the pith of emotion, the dream that stubbornly obtrudes upon reality. It had no purpose, no meaning. From moment to moment it fashioned a beauty not of this world. For here what hope is there that one moment of beauty will follow at once upon another?

  Thus did Honda gradually become drawn into a mood of somber detachment. His thoughts had now become clearly focused. Kiyoaki’s existence, his life, its consequences—Honda realized that it was a long time indeed since he had concentrated so intently on all this. It was easy to think of Kiyoaki’s life as a breath of fragrance that had wafted faintly over a single era before vanishing. Even so, Kiyoaki’s sin, Kiyoaki’s heartbreak remained. And Honda himself would never be able to make reparation.

  Honda recalled a morning of melting snow on the campus of the Peers School before classes began. He and Kiyoaki, sitting in an arbor encircled by flowerbeds and listening to the fresh sound of trickling water, were deeply involved in a long conversation, something rare with them.

  That was early spring in the second year of Taisho, 1913. Kiyoaki and Honda were both nineteen. Since then nineteen years had passed. Honda remembered insisting that like it or not, a hundred years later he and Kiyoaki would be included in the thought of the era, lumped together with those they had the least regard for, classified with them on the basis of a few meager similarities. He remembered also that he had talked of the irony of the human will’s relationship to history, vehemently maintaining that every strong-willed person was in the last analysis frustrated and that there was only one way to participate in history: “To function as a shining, forever unchanging, beautiful nonwilling particle.”

  His terms had been entirely abstract; yet as he had been speaking on that morning of melting snow, his eyes had been resting upon the shining, beautiful features of Kiyoaki. Obviously, with Kiyoaki before him, a youth so lacking in will, so single-mindedly devoted to the vagaries of emotion, Honda’s words had of their own accord fashioned a portrait of Kiyoaki himself: “To function as a shining, forever unchanging, beautiful nonwilling particle”—a clear definition of Kiyoaki’s manner of living.