Beauty and Sadness

by Yasunari Kawabata

  “Why don’t you publish it? Are you worried about hurting me? When a woman’s married to a novelist that sort of thing can’t be helped. If you’re worried about anyone, it ought to be Otoko.” By that time in her recovery, Fumiko’s skin seemed quite lustrous and pretty. Was it the marvel of youth? Even her appetite for her husband had become keener.

  About the time A Girl of Sixteen was published, Fumiko became pregnant again.

  A Girl of Sixteen was praised by the critics. Moreover, a great many readers liked it. Fumiko could scarcely have forgotten her jealousy, but she showed only pleasure at her husband’s success. And it was this novel, reputedly the finest of his early writings, that continued to outsell all his other works. For Fumiko it had meant new clothes, even jewelry, to say nothing of helping to pay for the education of her son and daughter. Had she by now very nearly forgotten that all this was because of a young girl’s affair with her husband? Did she accept the money as his normal income? At the least, was that long past tragic love, for her, no longer tragic?

  Oki was by no means opposed to that, but it sometimes made him stop to think. Otoko, as model for the novel’s heroine, had received no compensation. Nor had a word of complaint come either from her or from her mother. Unlike the painter or sculptor of a realistic portrait, he was able to enter his model’s thoughts and feelings, to change her appearance as he pleased, to invent and to idealize out of his own imagination. Yet the girl was beyond doubt Otoko. He had freely poured out his youthful passion, without thinking of her predicament, or of the troubles that might lie ahead for an unmarried girl. No doubt it was his passion that had attracted readers, but possibly it had also become an obstacle to her marriage. The novel had brought him money and fame. It seemed that Fumiko’s jealousy had been diverted, and perhaps the wound had healed. There was even a difference in the loss of their babies. Fumiko was still his wife; she had had a normal recovery from the miscarriage, and in due time she gave birth to a baby girl. The years passed, and the only person that never changed was the girl in the pages of his book. From a vulgar domestic point of view it was fortunate that he had not stressed Fumiko’s wild jealousy, though that was possibly a weakness of the novel. But it was also what made it so readable, and his heroine so appealing.

  Later, when people spoke of Oki’s best works they invariably began with A Girl of Sixteen. As a novelist, he found this depressing, and he would gloomily tell himself how much he disliked it. Still, the book did have the freshness of youth. And public taste supported by established critical opinion could hardly be swayed even by the author’s objections. The work began to have a life of its own. But what had become of Otoko after her mother took her to Kyoto? The question preyed on his mind, partly because of the continuing life of the novel.

  Only in recent years had Otoko made a name for herself as a painter. Until then he had heard nothing of her. He supposed she had married and was living an ordinary life, as indeed he hoped. But he found it hard to imagine of a girl with her temperament. Did that mean, he sometimes asked himself, that he still felt a lingering attachment to her?

  And so it was a shock to learn that Otoko had become a painter.

  Oki had no idea how she might have suffered, what difficulties she might have overcome, but her accomplishment gave him keen pleasure. When he came across one of her paintings in a gallery his heart leaped. It was not her own exhibition; there was only one picture of hers—a study of a peony—among works by various artists. At the very top of the silk she had painted a single red peony. It was a full front view of the flower, larger than life, with few leaves and a single white bud low on the stem. In that unnaturally large flower he saw Otoko’s pride and nobility. He bought it immediately, but since it bore her signature he decided to give it to the writers’ club he belonged to, instead of taking it home. High on the club wall, the picture made a different impression on him than it had in the crowded gallery. That huge red peony looked like an apparition, loneliness seemed to radiate from deep within it. Around that time he saw a magazine photograph of Otoko in her studio.

  For many years Oki had wanted to be in Kyoto for the New Year’s Eve bells, but this painting had tempted him to try to hear them with Otoko.

  North Kamakura was also called Yamanouchi—“Within the Hills”—and a road lined with flowering trees ran between the low hills on the north and south. Soon the blossoms along the road would signal the arrival of another spring. He had got in the habit of going out for a walk to the southern hills and it was from the crest of one of them that he gazed at the purple sunset.

  The sunset lost its purple glow and became a cold, dark blue, shading off to an ashy gray. Spring seemed to have turned back to winter. The sun was gone, there was no longer any pink in the thin haze. It began to feel chilly. Oki went down into the valley and walked back to his home on one of the northern hills.

  “There was a young woman here from Kyoto, a Miss Sakami,” Fumiko announced. “She brought two pictures and a box of cakes.”

  “Is she gone already?”

  “Taichiro took her to the station. Maybe they tried to find you.”

  “Oh?”

  “She was almost frighteningly pretty,” his wife said, her eyes fixed on him. “Who is she?” Oki did his best to seem unconcerned, but her feminine intuition must have told her the girl had some connection with Ueno Otoko.

  “Where are the pictures?” he asked.

  “In your study. They’re still wrapped up, I haven’t looked at them.”

  It seemed Keiko had done what he asked of her at Kyoto Station. Oki went to his study and unwrapped them. The two pictures were simply framed. One of them was called Plum Tree but showed neither branches nor trunk, only a single plum blossom as large as a baby’s face. Moreover, that one blossom had both red petals and white petals. Each of the red petals was painted in an odd combination of dark and light shades of red.

  The shape of this large plum blossom was not especially distorted, but it gave no impression of being a static decorative design. A strange apparition seemed to be swaying back and forth. It looked as if it were really swaying. Perhaps that was because of the background, which at first Oki had taken for thick, overlapping sheets of ice and then on closer inspection had seen as a range of snowy mountains. Only mountains would convey such a sense of vastness. But no real mountains narrowed at the base or were so jagged—that was the abstract element in her style. The background might be an image of Keiko’s own feeling. Even if you took it as cascading snowy mountains, it was not a cold snow-white. The cold of the snow and its warm color made a kind of music. The snow was not a uniform white, many colors seemed to be harmonized in it. It had the same tonality as the variations of red and white in the blossom’s petals. Whether you thought of the picture as cold or warm, the plum blossom throbbed with the youthful emotions of the painter. Probably Keiko had just painted it for him, to match the season. At least, the plum blossom was recognizable.

  As he looked at the painting Oki thought of the old plum tree in his garden. He had always merely accepted the gardener’s opinion that it was a freak, a sport of nature, without bothering to check on the man’s rather vague botanical lore. The plum tree bore red and white blossoms. Not that it had been grafted—red and white blossoms were interspersed on a single branch. Nor were all the branches like that: some had only white blossoms, some only red. However, most of the smaller branches mingled red and white together, though these were not necessarily the same branches every year. Oki loved this old plum. Just now its buds were beginning to open.

  Evidently Keiko had symbolized this strange plum tree by a single blossom. No doubt she had heard about the tree from Otoko. He and Fumiko were already living in this house when he met Otoko, and, though she had never come here, he must have told her about it. She had remembered—and told her pupil.

  Had she also confessed her old love?

  “That’s by Otoko, I suppose.”

  “What?” Oki turned. Absorbed by the painting
, he had not noticed that his wife was standing behind him.

  “Isn’t that Otoko’s painting?”

  “Certainly not. She wouldn’t do anything so youthful. It’s by the girl who was just here. You see? It’s signed ‘Keiko.’ ”

  “An odd picture.” Fumiko’s voice was hard.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” He made an effort to reply gently. “But young people these days, even in Japanese-style paintings …”

  “Is this what you call abstract?”

  “Well, maybe it doesn’t go quite that far.”

  “The other one is even odder. You can’t tell whether it’s fish or clouds—I’ve never seen such a daub of colors, streaked on any old way.” She knelt a little behind him, at one side.

  “Hmm. Fish and clouds seem very different. Maybe it isn’t either one.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “You can take it any way you like.” He bent over to glance at the back of the picture, which was leaning against the wall. “Untitled. She calls it Untitled.”

  This painting had no recognizable shapes at all, and its colors were even stronger and more varied than those in Plum Tree. Probably because of the many horizontal lines, Fumiko had tried to see it as fish or clouds. At first glance there seemed to be no harmony among the colors, either. Yet it was unusually passionate for a picture in the classical Japanese technique. Of course there was nothing random or haphazard about it. Being untitled left it open to any interpretation, perhaps because the artist’s seemingly hidden subjective feelings were in fact revealed. Oki searched for the heart of the picture.

  “Just what is she to Otoko?” his wife demanded.

  “A student who lives with her.”

  “Is that so? I want to destroy those pictures.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Why are you so violent?”

  “She’s poured out her feelings about Otoko. They’re not pictures we should keep in this house.”

  Startled by this lightning flash of feminine jealousy, he said quietly: “Why do you think they’re about Otoko?”

  “Can’t you see it?”

  “That’s only your imagination. You’re beginning to see ghosts.” But as he spoke a tiny flame lighted up in his heart.

  It seemed clear that the plum tree painting expressed Otoko’s love for him. And so even the untitled one seemed to have the same theme. In it Keiko had also used mineral pigments, heavily overlaying them to blend with moist pigments a little below and to the left of the center of the picture. He felt he could glimpse the spirit of the picture in the strange, windowlike bright space within that overlaid portion. One could think of it as Otoko’s still glowing love.

  “After all, it wasn’t Otoko who painted them,” he said. Fumiko seemed to suspect that he had been with Otoko when he heard the temple bells in Kyoto. However, she had said nothing at the time, perhaps because it was New Year’s Day.

  “Anyway, I detest those pictures!” Her eyelids quivered with rage. “I won’t have them in the house!”

  “Whether you detest them or not, they belong to the artist. Even if she’s a young girl, do you think it’s right to destroy a work of art? In the first place, are you sure she’s giving them to us, and not just letting us see them?”

  For a moment Fumiko was silenced. Then she said: “Taichiro answered the door. Now he must have taken her to the station, though he’s been gone awfully long.” Was that bothering her too? The station was not far away, and trains left every fifteen minutes. “I suppose he’s the one being seduced this time. A girl that pretty, with an evil fascination …”

  Oki put the two paintings back together and began wrapping them. “Stop talking about being seduced. I don’t like it. If she’s all that pretty, these pictures are just herself, a young girl’s narcissism.”

  “No, I’m certain they’re about Otoko.”

  “Then maybe she and Otoko are lovers.”

  “Lovers?” Fumiko was caught off guard. “You think they’re lovers?”

  “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lesbians. Living together at an old temple in Kyoto, both of them insanely passionate, it seems.”

  Calling them lesbians had given Fumiko pause. When she spoke again, her voice was calm. “Even if they are, I think those pictures show that Otoko still loves you.” Oki felt ashamed of having brought up lesbianism to talk himself out of a difficulty.

  “Probably we’re both wrong. We both looked at them with preconceived ideas.”

  “Then why did she want to paint such pictures?”

  “Hmm.” Realistic or not, a picture expressed the inner thoughts and feelings of the artist. But he was afraid to pursue that kind of discussion with his wife. Perhaps her first impression of Keiko’s paintings had been unexpectedly accurate. And perhaps his own casual impression of lesbianism had been accurate too.

  Fumiko left the study. He waited for his son to return.

  Taichiro had begun to teach Japanese literature at a private college. On days when he had no lectures he would go to the departmental library at his school, or do some research at home. He had originally wanted to study “modern literature”—Japanese literature since Meiji—but because his father objected he was specializing in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. His ability to read English, French, and German was unusual in his field. He was talented enough, but so quiet he seemed rather glum, the very opposite of his aimlessly cheerful sister Kumiko, with her smattering of flower arrangement, dressmaking, knitting, and all kinds of arts and crafts. Kumiko had always regarded her older brother as eccentric: even when she asked him to go skating or to play tennis he never gave her a decent answer. He would have nothing to do with her girl friends. He invited his students to the house, but he scarcely introduced them to her. Kumiko was not the sort to bear a grudge, but sometimes she used to pout because her mother was so solicitous toward her brother’s students.

  “When Taichiro has guests all we do is serve tea,” her mother would respond. “But you make a great fuss, rummaging around in the refrigerator and the cupboards, or going ahead and having food brought in.”

  “Yes, but he has only his students!” she would reply, sniffing.

  Kumiko had married and gone to London with her husband; they only heard from her two or three times a year. Taichiro was not yet financially independent and had never talked about marriage.

  Oki himself began to worry at how long Taichiro had been gone.

  He looked out the small French window of his study. At the base of the hill behind the house a high mound of earth, dug out during the war in making an air raid shelter, was already hidden by weeds so modest one barely noticed them. Among the weeds bloomed a mass of flowers the color of lapis lazuli. The flowers too were extremely small, but they were a bright, strong blue. Except for the sweet daphne, these flowers bloomed earlier than any in their garden. And they stayed in bloom a long time. Whatever they were, they could hardly be familiar harbingers of spring, but they were so close to his window that he often thought he would like to take one in his hand and study it. He had never yet gone to pick one, but that only seemed to increase his love for these tiny lapis-blue flowers.

  Soon after them, dandelions also came to bloom in the thicket of weeds. They were long-lived too. Even now in the fading evening light you could see the yellow of dandelions and the blue of all the little flowers. For a long time Oki looked out the window.

  Taichiro still had not come home.

  THE FESTIVAL OF THE FULL MOON

  Otoko was planning to take Keiko to the temple on Mt. Kurama for the Festival of the Full Moon. The festival was always held in May, but on a different date from that of the old lunar calendar. Early in the evening before the festival, the moon was rising in the clear sky over the Eastern Hills.

  Otoko watched it from the veranda. “I think we’ll have a fine moon tomorrow,” she called in to Keiko. Visitors to the festival were supposed to drink from a sake bowl reflecting the full moon, so a cloudy, moonless night w
ould have been disappointing.

  Keiko came out on the veranda and put her hand lightly on Otoko’s back.

  “The moon of May,” said Otoko.

  Finally Keiko spoke. “Shall we go for a drive along the Eastern Hills? Or out toward Otsu, to see the moon in Lake Biwa?”

  “The moon in Lake Biwa? There’s nothing special about that.”

  “Does it look better in a sake bowl?” Keiko asked, sitting down at Otoko’s feet. “Anyway, I like the colors in the garden tonight.”

  “Really?” Otoko looked down at the garden. “Bring a cushion, won’t you? And turn off the light in there.”

  From the studio veranda one could see only the inner garden—the view was cut off by the temple’s main residence. It was a rather artless oblong garden, but about half of it was bathed in moonlight, so that even the steppingstones took on different colors in the light and shadow. A white azalea blooming in the shadow seemed to be floating. The scarlet maple near the veranda still had fresh young leaves, though they were darkened by the night. In spring people often mistook its bright red budding leaves for flowers, and wondered what kind of blossoms they were. The garden also had a rich cover of hair moss.

  “Suppose I make some of our new tea,” said Keiko. Otoko kept on gazing at her familiar garden, as if she were not used to seeing it at all hours. She was sitting there with her head slightly lowered, preoccupied, her eyes fixed on the moonlit half of the garden.

  When Keiko returned with the tea she mentioned reading somewhere that Rodin’s model for The Kiss was still alive, and around eighty years old. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “That’s because you’re young! Must you die early if an artist immortalized your youth? It’s wrong to hunt out models like that!”

  Her outburst had come from being reminded of Oki’s novel. But Otoko, at thirty-nine, was beautiful. “Actually,” Keiko went on calmly, “it made me think of asking you to paint me once, while I’m young.”