Runaway Horses

by Yukio Mishima

  KITAZAKI: Well, sir, I will. On this particular night, I was bringing Lieutenant Miura his dinner, and when I was passing Lieutenant Hori’s room, the door was closed, and, all of a sudden, from the inside I heard the Lieutenant shouting as though he were giving an order on the drill field. It rattled me considerably.

  PROSECUTOR: What did Lieutenant Hori say?

  KITAZAKI: That I remember clearly. “Don’t you understand? Give it up!” he shouted angrily.

  PROSECUTOR: Do you have any idea what he meant by “Give it up”?

  KITAZAKI: Well, no, sir. After all, it was something shouted as I was just going by, and I was hard put to keep from dropping my tray. And since, as you see, I’m not good on my feet anyway, it was all I could do to hurry on to Lieutenant Miura’s room. You see, Lieutenant Miura was really famished that night. Earlier he had called down to me: “Hey, old fellow! Hurry up and bring my supper.” And now if I dropped his tray, I thought, I’d have Lieutenant Miura shouting at me. When I put the tray down in front of Lieutenant Miura, he grinned and said: “He’s going at it, isn’t he?” And that was all. He didn’t say another word about it. I think that’s one of the good things about military men.

  PROSECUTOR: How many visitors were in Lieutenant Hori’s room on the night in question?

  KITAZAKI: Well, I believe there was one. Yes . . . that was it, one.

  PROSECUTOR: And when was this night that Lieutenant Hori said, “Give it up”? This is an extremely critical point, so please try to remember exactly. What year, what month, what day? Do you keep a diary?

  KITAZAKI: No, sir. No chance of that.

  PROSECUTOR: Perhaps you didn’t understand my question?

  KITAZAKI: Pardon?

  PROSECUTOR: Do you keep a diary?

  KITAZAKI: Oh, a diary? No, sir, I do not keep one.

  PROSECUTOR: Well, then, what year, what month, what day was it?

  KITAZAKI: Well, I’m fairly sure it was last year. Yes, it was. And because I didn’t think it was at all strange that the sliding door should be closed, I know it wasn’t summer—maybe not even early summer or early fall. The weather must have been cold, but it wasn’t too cold out, so it could have been last spring as late as April, or else from October on. The time of day was dinner time, at night, but as for the day itself . . . well, sir, on that, I’m not quite sure.

  PROSECUTOR: So it was April or October, or perhaps March or November. Can’t you be more specific?

  KITAZAKI: No, sir. But I’m trying hard to remember. Let’s see. . . . Yes, it was October or November.

  PROSECUTOR: But which was it: October or November?

  KITAZAKI: On that point, I’m not sure.

  PROSECUTOR: Could one say that it was either the end of October or the beginning of November?

  KITAZAKI: Yes, sir. That’s fine with me. Forgive me for being so useless.

  PROSECUTOR: Who was the visitor that night?

  KITAZAKI: I don’t know his name. Lieutenant Hori would only tell me how many young visitors he was expecting, and when they were supposed to come.

  PROSECUTOR: His visitor that night was also young?

  KITAZAKI: Yes, sir. It was a student, I believe.

  PROSECUTOR: Would you be able to recognize him again?

  KITAZAKI: Well, sir . . . perhaps.

  PROSECUTOR: Please turn around, Mr. Kitazaki. Is the one who visited the Lieutenant that night there among the defendants? You may if you like get up and examine each of their faces.

  Isao let the tall, bent old man come over to him and stare full into his face. The sunken eyes were clouded like an oyster. A web of dark red veins encroached upon the whites, and the pupils were so beset by their surroundings that they seemed shrunk to lusterless black moles.

  Isao was forbidden to speak, but his eyes challenged the old man: “It was me that time, wasn’t it?” Even with Isao’s face right before him, however, Kitazaki’s gaze seemed somehow to be hindered, as though some shadowy, undefined presence were hovering between the two of them and he were being drawn into it.

  The cane scraped lightly against the floor. The old man was now studying Izutsu’s face. Since he had spent much more time in front of Isao than anyone else, Isao was sure that Kitazaki had recognized him.

  The old man returned to the witness stand. His elbow resting upon his cane, his hand pressed to his forehead, he stared blankly, as though worn out by the effort to chase down the memory, as elusive as mist, that fled before him.

  The prosecutor took up the questioning again, a note of irritation evident in his tone.

  “Well now, did you recognize him there?”

  Kitazaki did not look at the prosecutor as he answered in a barely audible voice but seemed to be addressing his own image faintly reflected in the paneling of the judges’ bench.

  “I can’t be sure, sir. But that first defendant . . .”

  “Iinuma, you mean?”

  “I do not know his name. But the face of that young man on the far left . . . I am certain that he came to my house at some time. It may have had nothing to do with Lieutenant Hori, though.”

  “In that case, maybe he was a guest of Lieutenant Miura?”

  “No, sir. It was not that. Quite some time ago, there was a young man who came to stay with a woman in the rear parlor. I think he is the one. . . .”

  “Iinuma brought a woman to your house?”

  “I cannot be certain. But it was someone like him.”

  “And when was this?”

  “Well, as I look back now, I think it was, yes, some twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years? Iinuma brought a woman to your house twenty years ago?”

  So taken aback was the prosecutor that the spectators burst into laughter. But this reaction did not unsettle the old man in the least. He doggedly repeated his answer.

  “Yes, sir. That is correct. I think it was some twenty years ago.”

  The incompetence of the witness was now clear to everyone. People were laughing at Kitazaki’s senility. Initially, Honda too had the same reaction, but then when the old man earnestly repeated “some twenty years,” his amusement suddenly gave way to a shiver.

  Honda had once heard from Kiyoaki the details of his tryst with Satoko in the back room of Kitazaki’s lodging house. Other than their being the same ages there were no outward similarities between Kiyoaki and Isao. But still this Kitazaki, so close to death himself, had confused in his mind the memories of the two. Only the intensities of hue of all the things that had happened in his old house were blended together, transcending time. Passionate love of years past, passionate dedication in the present—these two had merged vaguely together in exceeding normal bounds, in becoming early failures. From the marsh of memories of a lifetime rose two superb lotuses, red and white, and these must have been seen as a single flower. But through this misapprehension, Honda was sure, in Kitazaki’s senile old mind a stagnant, gray marsh had suddenly been lit up by strange, clear beams of light. The old man, eager to seize this extraordinary brilliance, had stubbornly repeated what he had said, undismayed by either the ridicule of the spectators or the anger of the prosecutor.

  Having grasped this, Honda then had the feeling that the dazzlingly polished brown judges’ bench and the robes of solemn black were suddenly fading before the intense brilliance of the summer sun pouring down outside the windows. As though struck by those powerful rays, the awesome, finely tuned mechanism of the legal order seemed to be melting swiftly away before him like an ice castle. Honda knew that Kitazaki had glimpsed that great bond of light, invisible to ordinary eyes. The summer brightness, which gave a sparkle to each needle of the pines outside the windows, surely had as its source a rope of light more forbidding, more magnificent than the legal order on display within this room.

  “Does the defense wish to examine the witness?”

  When he heard the judge’s question, Honda, still dazed, could only reply: “No, Your Honor.”

  “Very well. Thank you, Mr. Kitazaki.
The witness is dismissed,” said the judge.

  “. . . At this time I would like permission to call as a witness someone present who has not been formally summoned,” said Honda. “Her name is Makiko Kito. For the sake of the defendant Iinuma and the other defendants too, I would like to have her questioned with regard to Iinuma’s change of mind three days before the day set for their action. And since I will present as evidence the diary entries made by the witness at this time, I hope that the questioning can be based upon these.”

  There was no provision for the calling of witnesses in this manner in criminal proceedings, but, depending upon the nature of the testimony to be given, a judge would usually grant permission after conferring with the prosecutor and the assistant judges, and Honda intended to take advantage of this custom.

  The judge asked the prosecutor’s opinion, and he acquiesced coldly, as though he considered it unworthy of his concern. After turning first to the judge on his right, consulting in a whisper, and then doing the same with the judge on his left, Judge Hisamatsu replied to Honda.

  “Very well. You may do so.”

  Accordingly, Makiko appeared at the entrance to the courtroom. She wore a dark blue, waterfall stripe Akashi kimono bound with a Hakata obi. In the midst of summer, Makiko’s naturally white complexion, cool as ice, gave a tranquil, distant look to her face, framed in a border of the jet-black hair hiding her ears and the blue neck of the kimono. Below her lively, moist eyes, her skin was faintly touched, like the coming on of twilight, with the signs of aging. Affixed to the slightly slanted cord that held her obi in place was the figure of a trout done in dark jade. Its hard green luster seemed to impose a crisp firmness upon the easy flowing lines of Makiko’s attire. There was a subtle tension beneath her unruffled exterior. But no one could tell whether the cold expression on her face concealed sorrow or contempt.

  Makiko made her way to the witness stand without so much as glancing in Isao’s direction. All that he saw of her then was the cool seam that ran down the back of her kimono and the huge bow in which her obi was fastened.

  “I hereby swear that, in accordance with my conscience, I will speak the truth, neither concealing nor adding anything thereto.”

  The judge read the oath as before, and Makiko signed the book, which was brought to the witness stand, with a hand that showed no sign of trembling. Then she drew from her sleeve the small case containing her seal, and, taking the slender ivory seal, she pressed it firmly to the paper so that her lovely fingers bent back. Watching from the side, Honda caught a glimpse of red ink between her fingers like a splash of blood.

  On Honda’s desk was the diary that Makiko had been willing to make public. Just as he had requested, Honda had offered this as evidence. Just as he had requested, he had called Makiko as a witness. But Honda could only guess at what the intent of the judge was in allowing this.

  JUDGE: What are the circumstances of your being acquainted with the defendant?

  MAKIKO: My father, Your Honor, is a friend of Mr. Iinuma’s father. And furthermore, since my father enjoys the company of young men, Mr. Iinuma was a frequent guest at our house. And the relationship was much closer than that with relatives.

  JUDGE: When was the last time you saw the defendant, and where was it?

  MAKIKO: The evening of last November twenty-ninth. He came to the house.

  JUDGE: The content of your diary that is being offered as evidence is altogether accurate?

  MAKIKO: Yes, Your Honor, it is.

  JUDGE: The defense may now question the witness.

  HONDA: Yes, Your Honor. Miss Kito, this is your diary of last year, isn’t it?

  MAKIKO: Yes, sir.

  HONDA: This diary is the sort in which the pages are not marked with dates, allowing you to write as much as you like, and you’ve kept such diaries faithfully for years. Is that correct?

  MAKIKO: Yes, sir, that is correct. And so I can at times put in waka and the like.

  HONDA: Your method from long past has been to leave a blank line between entries and not begin a new page each day?

  MAKIKO: Yes, sir. In the last two or three years I’ve been writing so much that if I started a new page each day, even in a diary without printed dates, I would run out of pages by fall. So it doesn’t look neat, but that is how I make entries every day.

  HONDA: Very well, then. Last year, 1932, that is, as to the entry of November twenty-ninth, this was not something that you wrote later, but you can testify that it was written that very night?

  MAKIKO: Yes, sir. I’ve never let a day go by without writing in my diary. That day too I made an entry before going to bed.

  HONDA: Now, in that entry of November twenty-ninth, 1932, I shall read aloud just the portion that pertains to the defendant Iinuma:

  . . . Tonight at around eight o’clock, Isao paid an unexpected visit. Though I had not seen him in quite some time, I was thinking of him tonight, why I don’t know, and perhaps it was my odd faculty for premonition that impelled me toward the entrance hall before the bell rang. As usual, he was wearing his student uniform and had clogs on his feet, but when I looked at his face I sensed that something had happened. He seemed stiff and formal. He suddenly thrust toward me a small keg he was carrying and said: “My mother asked me to bring you this. It’s a few of the oysters we received from Hiroshima.” In the darkness of the entrance hall, the water inside the barrel made a sound like a clucking tongue.

  Fidgeting about, he made the excuse that he had studying to do and so had to go, but the lie was written all over his face. I never would have expected such a thing from the Isao I knew. Pressing him to stay, I accepted the keg and went to tell Father, who cordially said: “Have him come in.”

  I rushed back to the entrance hall. Isao was already slipping out the door. I hurried out after him. I wanted at all costs to find out what was troubling him.

  I am sure he knew that I was following him, but he neither turned around nor altered his pace. When we had reached the front of Hakusan Park, I called out to him: “What are you angry about?” and he finally stopped. He turned around to face me, and he smiled in a grim, embarrassed manner. We then sat down upon a bench in the park, and we talked there, in the cold night wind.

  I asked him how he and his group were getting on. For some time he and his comrades have been gathering at the house and talking about how intolerable are the present circumstances of Japan, and I too have been a part of this, often treating them all to a supper of sukiyaki and the like. And I had been thinking that it was the activity of this group that had been keeping Isao away from the house in recent days.

  Isao answered me with a woeful expression: “What I really meant to do in coming to your house was to talk to you about the group. But when I saw your face, since I had said such brave things before, I was embarrassed and couldn’t say anything. And so I stole away.” The words were spoken slowly and painfully.

  The story that came out from my questions was as follows: Without my having been aware of it, the direction of his group’s activities had gotten altogether out of hand, and the truth of the matter was that each of those involved, to hide his own fears and to measure the courage of the group, had grown ever more violently vocal, and as the numbers increased of those who fell away because this bravado unnerved them, the handful who remained bluffed all the harder. And while their actual resolution grew ever weaker, their words and their plans kept mounting toward a fantastic bloody retribution. They no longer knew what to do with each other. Since none of them could show a trace of weakness in his words, an outsider would no doubt have been appalled by what went on at their meetings, but in fact no one any longer really wanted to take action. With the situation as it was, however, not one of them had the courage to insist on giving up their plan, for fear that he would be branded a coward. Furthermore, if things went on this way, the danger would grow more acute. All unwillingly, they would rush ahead on a collision course with the deed that they had no intention of performing. Isao hims
elf, their leader, no longer wanted to go through with it. Was there no way of drawing back? And the real purpose in his coming to the house tonight had been to ask advice. Those were the circumstances.

  I used every argument I could think of to urge him to give it up. The manly thing to do was to put an end to things. And so, even if his comrades turned their backs on him now, the time would certainly come when they would understand. There were many other ways to serve one’s country. And, if he didn’t mind, I would be willing to try to persuade his comrades from a woman’s standpoint. But when he replied that that would only embarrass him, I thought he was right and I acquiesced.

  When we parted before Hakusan Shrine, Isao turned to me after we had prayed together and said: “Thanks to you, I feel good again. I have no intention of going through with it. As soon as I find the chance, I’ll tell everyone that it’s off.” He laughed cheerfully when he said this, and so I was somewhat relieved. But still, in my breast there was a lingering uneasiness.

  As I write this my head is clear and alert, and I shall not be able to sleep tonight. If some misfortune should overtake that fine young man in whom my father, too, has placed such hope, I think I can say that Japan herself will suffer a great loss. My heart is heavy tonight. I am in no mood to write poems.

  That is the entry. Can you assure us that you are the one who wrote it?