Beauty and Sadness

by Yasunari Kawabata

  “That’s my sacrifice to avoid divorce. So that you won’t be jealous.”

  “You will make me angry!”

  Bantering as usual, they went on with breakfast. If anything, Fumiko seemed in a good humor. She had thought of Otoko, but this morning she was evidently not in a mood to dig up the past.

  The rain had slackened, though as yet there were no rifts in the clouds.

  “Is Taichiro still asleep?” Oki asked her. “Get him up!”

  Fumiko nodded. “All right, but I doubt if I can. He’ll tell me to let him sleep because he’s on vacation.”

  “Isn’t he going to Kyoto today?”

  “He can leave for the airport after dinner.… Why is he going anyway, when it’s so hot?”

  “Maybe you should ask him. He’s taken it into his head to visit Sanetaka’s grave again, behind the Nisonin Temple. It seems he’s going to write a thesis on the Sanetaka Chronicle.… Do you know who Sanetaka was?”

  “A court noble?”

  “Of course he was a noble! He rose to be chamberlain under Yoshimasa, and he was a friend of the poet Sogi and his circle. Sanetaka was one of the aristocrats who kept literature and art alive during the wars of the sixteenth century. He seems to have had an interesting personality, and he left an enormous diary. Taichiro wants to use it to study the culture of that period.”

  “Oh? And where is the temple?”

  “At the foot of Mt. Ogura.”

  “But where is that? Didn’t you take me there once?”

  “A long time ago. It was the place with all the poetic associations.”

  “That was in Saga, wasn’t it? Now I remember.”

  “Taichiro is dredging up so many incidental details that he says I should put them into a novel. He calls them worthless anecdotes. I suppose he thinks he’s quite a scholar, telling me I can liven up a novel with his worthless anecdotes and blown-up legends.”

  Fumiko smiled discreetly.

  “Go wake your young scholar!” Oki got up from the table. “Who ever heard of a son sleeping while his father is already at work?”

  He went into his study and sat at the desk, head propped in his hands, reflecting on their exchange about a retirement age for novelists. It did not seem at all funny. He heard someone gargling in the lavatory. Taichiro came in wiping his face with a towel.

  “A little late, aren’t you?” Oki asked sharply.

  “I was just lying there daydreaming.”

  “Daydreaming about what?”

  “Father, did you know they excavated the tomb of Princess Kazunomiya?”

  “They violated a princess’s grave?”

  “I suppose you could call it that,” said Taichiro placatingly. “Don’t they often excavate old tombs for scholarly research?”

  “But if it’s Princess Kazunomiya’s tomb it couldn’t be very old. When did she die, anyway?”

  “In 1877,” he answered promptly.

  “Then it’s less than a century ago!”

  “That’s right. But they say she was just a skeleton.”

  Oki frowned.

  “They say even her pillow and all her clothing had disintegrated—there was nothing but the skeleton.”

  “It’s inhuman to dig up a grave like that.”

  “She was in a lovely, innocent pose, like a child taking a nap.”

  “The skeleton?”

  “Yes. And it seems there was a hank of hair behind the skull—widow’s length, but it was black hair that suggested a highborn woman who died young.”

  “Were you daydreaming about her?”

  “Yes, but there was something else too, something beautiful and mysterious and fragile.…”

  “What was it?” Oki could not respond to his son’s enthusiasm. He felt disgusted by the insolence of digging up the skeleton of a tragic Imperial Princess, who must have died before she was thirty.

  “Something you’d never think of.” Taichiro stood there dangling his towel. “Why don’t I go get Mother and tell her about it too?” Oki nodded.

  Taichiro was repeating the story to his mother as he came back with her to the study.

  Oki had taken a volume of the Dictionary of Japanese History from the bookshelf in the corridor, opened it to the entry on Kazunomiya, and lit a cigarette. His son was holding what looked like a slender magazine. Oki asked if it was the excavation report.

  “No, it’s a museum journal. One of the staff members wrote an essay called ‘Vanishing Beauty’ about something ghostlike they saw. Maybe it isn’t mentioned in the report.” He began summarizing the essay for them. “A glass plate a little larger than a calling card was found between the arms of the skeleton of Princess Kazunomiya. That seems to have been the only thing they found with her. They were excavating the tombs of the Tokugawa Shoguns in Shiba, so they opened Kazunomiya’s too.… The man in charge of textiles thought it might be a pocket mirror, or a wet-plate photograph. He wrapped it in paper and took it back to the museum.”

  “Is that a photograph on glass?” his mother asked.

  “Yes, you spread an emulsion on a glass plate, and it’s developed while it’s still wet. Like those old photographs, you know.”

  “Oh, those.”

  “The glass looked transparent, but when the textile expert examined it at the museum, holding it to the light at various angles, he could see the figure of a young man wearing ceremonial robes and a court hat. It was a photograph. Badly faded, of course.”

  “Was it the Shogun Iemochi?” Oki asked, becoming interested.

  “So it seems. Presumably she was buried holding a photograph of her dead husband. The textile man thought so too, and he was going to consult the Research Institute for Cultural Properties the next day, hoping they could bring it out more clearly somehow or other.… But by morning the image had faded away completely. Overnight the photograph had turned into plain glass.”

  “Really?” Fumiko looked at him in surprise.

  “That’s because it was exposed to the air and light after being buried for years,” said Oki.

  “That’s right. There’s a witness to prove the textile man saw a real photograph. He showed it to a guard who came around just as he was looking at it, and the guard said he saw the same image of a young nobleman.”

  “My!”

  “The essay calls it ‘truly a story of fleeting life.’ ” Taichiro paused. “But the staff member who wrote it has literary aspirations, so instead of ending there he went on to embellish it. You know Prince Arisugawa was said to be deeply in love with Kazunomiya. Maybe the photograph showed her lover instead of her husband. Maybe when Kazunomiya was dying she secretly ordered her attendants to bury the glass photograph of her lover along with her corpse. That’s what one would expect of a tragic princess, he says.”

  “Just his imagination, don’t you think? It makes a good story to have a picture of her lover vanish overnight, after being brought back from the grave.”

  “He says that the picture should have been buried in the earth forever. Kazunomiya would have wanted it to disappear that night.”

  “I suppose she would.”

  “This suddenly vanishing beauty could be recaptured by a writer and made into a moving work of art—that’s how he ends his essay. Wouldn’t you like to write something about it, Father?”

  “I’m not sure I could,” said Oki. “Maybe as a short story, beginning with a scene at the excavation.… But isn’t the essay enough?”

  “Do you think so?” He seemed disappointed. “I read it in bed this morning, and had an urge to tell you about it. I’ll leave it here for you.” He put the journal on his father’s desk.

  “I’d like to read it.”

  As Taichiro was going to the door Fumiko asked: “What about the princess’s skeleton? They didn’t take her off to a college or a museum, did they? That would be too cruel! They must have buried her again just as she was, surely.”

  “The essay doesn’t say, but probably they did.”

  “Still
, the picture she was holding is gone—the poor dead princess must be lonely.”

  “That didn’t occur to me,” he said. “Father, would you end with a touch like that?”

  “It’s a bit too sentimental.”

  Taichiro left the study. Fumiko was about to leave too. “Aren’t you planning to work?” she asked.

  “Not yet. After a story like that I need a walk.” Oki got up from his desk. “It seems to have stopped raining.”

  “Anyway, it ought to be nice and cool after such a downpour.” She glanced out at the cloudy sky. “Please go through the kitchen, and take a look at the leak.”

  “You talk about how lonely the poor dead princess must be, and in the next breath you tell me to go look at a leak.”

  His clogs were in the shoe box at the kitchen entrance. As Fumiko took them out for him, she said: “Do you think it’s all right for Taichiro to talk about a tomb, and then go visit one in Kyoto?”

  Oki was startled. “Why not? You really do jump from one thing to another!”

  “I’m not jumping. I’ve been wondering from the time he began telling us about Princess Kazunomiya.”

  “But Sanetaka’s tomb is hundreds of years older.”

  “He’s going to Kyoto to meet that young lady!”

  Again Oki was caught off guard. Fumiko had been squatting to set out his clogs, but now as he slipped into them she stood up and looked him in the eye.

  “That frighteningly beautiful young lady—don’t you think she’s frightening?”

  Oki hesitated. He had kept his night with Keiko secret from her.

  “I have an uneasy feeling about it.” Fumiko’s eyes were still on him. “We haven’t had a real thunderstorm yet this summer.”

  “There you go, jumping again!”

  “If we have a bad storm tonight, lightning might strike the plane.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve never heard of an airplane being struck by lightning in Japan.”

  Glad to be safely out of the house, Oki noticed dark rain clouds and a lowering sky. The dampness was oppressive. But even if the sky cleared he would hardly have felt exhilarated. The thought of his son going to Kyoto to see Keiko weighed on his mind. Of course he could not be certain, but ever since his wife had surprised him with the notion it had begun to seem likely.

  When he left his study to go for a walk he had intended to visit one of the old Kamakura temples, but because of Fumiko’s odd remark the tombs on the temple grounds seemed repellent to him. Instead he went to climb a small wooded hill near his house. The hill was rich with the fragrance of summer trees and earth after the rain. As he felt himself becoming hidden among the leaves, memories of Keiko’s lovely body came rising up vividly before him.

  First he saw one of her nipples. It was a pink nipple, almost transparently pink. Some Japanese women have fair skin glowing with femininity, perhaps even finer and more lustrous than the faintly pink gleaming skin of young girls in the West. And the nipples of some Japanese girls are an incomparably delicate shade of pink. Keiko’s complexion was not quite so fair, but the pink of her nipple seemed freshly washed and moist. It was like a flower bud against her creamy breast. It had no ugly little wrinkles or granular texture, and was just the right modest size to suckle on lovingly.

  But it was not only its beauty that brought the image of Keiko’s nipple back to Oki. Although she had allowed him her right nipple at the hotel that night, she had avoided giving the left one. When he tried to touch it, she pressed down hard on it with the palm of her hand. And when he pulled her hand away, Keiko turned and twisted, recoiling from him.

  “Don’t do that! Please!… The left one is no good.”

  Oki’s hand froze. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It doesn’t come out.”

  “Doesn’t come out?” He was bewildered.

  “It’s no good. I hate it.” Keiko was still breathing in gasps. Oki could not understand.

  What was it that did not “come out”? What was “no good”? Could it be that her left nipple was sunken, or misshapen? Was Keiko worried about being deformed? Or was she a shy young girl who could not bear to reveal that her nipples did not match? He recalled that when he picked her up in his arms and put her on the bed, and she curled herself into a ball, she seemed to protect her left breast more than the other one, pressing it tightly under the crook of her left arm. However, he had seen both of her breasts, before as well as after that. Anything odd about the form of her left nipple ought to have attracted his attention.

  In fact, even when he forcibly pulled Keiko’s hand away and looked at the left nipple, he saw nothing unnatural about it. Examining it closely, all he could tell was that the left one might be a trifle smaller than the right. That was not unusual—why should Keiko be so anxious to keep it from him?

  Her resistance made him all the more eager. Vigorously seeking out her left nipple, he said: “Is there some one special person you let touch it?”

  Keiko shook her head. “No. There’s no one.” She stared up at him wide-eyed. He could not be sure, but her eyes seemed sad, almost tearful. At least it was not the look of a woman being caressed. Although Keiko closed her eyes again and let him do as he pleased, she seemed withdrawn. Oki noticed and relaxed his grip, but then she began undulating as if that excited her all the more.

  Was Keiko’s right breast a somewhat spoiled virgin, and the left still virginal? Oki realized that they gave her different feelings. He could understand why she might say the left one was “no good.” That would be extremely bold, for a girl being caressed by him for the first time. Possibly it was the tactic of an extraordinarily guileful young girl. Any man would be tempted by the thought of a woman deriving a different level of pleasure from her two breasts, and would want to try to equalize them. Even if she had been born that way, and nothing could be done, the very abnormality would tempt him. Oki had never known a woman whose nipples were so different in their sensitivity.

  To be sure, all women differed more or less in the ways they liked to be caressed. Was Keiko’s reaction merely a striking instance of this? Indeed, many women had had their tastes cultivated by the habits of their lovers. In that case, an insensitive left nipple would be an especially tempting target—probably the difference had been created by someone inexperienced with women. The thought that the left one was still a virgin whetted his appetite. But to equalize them would take time. He was not sure he could meet her so often.

  Hence it was foolish to seek out her left nipple against her wish, when he was embracing her for the first time. He began to search instead for the places where she liked to be caressed. He found them. And then, just as he was beginning to handle her more roughly, he heard her call out to Otoko. He flinched, and Keiko pushed him away. She sat up in bed, and then got up and went to the dressing table to brush her tangled hair. He did not want to look.

  As the rain became heavy again, he was plunged into a lonely mood. Loneliness seemed to come and go as it pleased.

  Keiko returned and knelt beside the bed. “Will you put your arms around me and go to sleep now?” she said coaxingly, peering into his face.

  Without a word Oki put his left arm around her and stretched out on his back. Keiko joined him and snuggled close. Memories of Otoko came to him one after another. After a while he broke the silence: “Now I notice your scent.”

  “My scent?”

  “The smell of a woman.”

  “Oh? Because it’s so hot and sticky.… I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s not that. The good smell of a woman.”

  It was the scent that comes naturally from a woman’s skin when she lies in the embrace of a lover. Any woman would have it, even a young girl. It not only arouses a man but reassures and gratifies him. The woman’s willingness to yield herself seems to emanate from her whole body.

  Oki had nestled his face between her breasts to let her know that it was a good smell. He had lain there quietly with his eyes closed, enveloped in her scent.<
br />
  Even now, here in the grove, the last image of her body to come rising up before him was that of her nipple. It was as fresh and vivid as ever.

  I mustn’t let Taichiro see her, he told himself. I mustn’t let him.

  He was holding the trunk of a slender tree in a tight grip.

  But what can I do? He shook the tree, dislodging a shower of raindrops. The ground was still so wet that his clogs were soaked at the toe. Oki gazed at the green leaves surrounding him. All at once he felt smothered by that dense cover of green.

  There seemed to be only one way to keep his son from seeing Keiko: telling him that he had spent the night with her at Enoshima. Otherwise, perhaps he could try sending a telegram to Otoko, or directly to Keiko.

  Oki hurried home and asked for Taichiro.

  “He’s gone to Tokyo,” his wife said.

  “Already? But he’s taking an evening plane. Do you think he’ll come home again first?”

  “No. That would be out of his way.… He said he wanted to stop in at school to pick up some research materials.”

  “I wonder.”

  “Is anything wrong? You’re not looking well.”

  Avoiding her eyes, Oki went into his study. He had missed Taichiro and had not sent a telegram to Otoko or Keiko.

  Taichiro flew to Kyoto by the six o’clock plane. Keiko was waiting at the airport.

  He fumbled for a greeting. “You shouldn’t have—I had no idea you’d come out to meet me.”

  “Aren’t you grateful?”

  “I am. But you shouldn’t have bothered.” She saw that his eyes were alight, and lowered her gaze demurely.

  “Did you come from Kyoto?” he asked, still rather ill at ease.

  “Yes, from Kyoto,” Keiko replied politely. “I live there, after all. Where else would I be coming from?”

  He started to laugh apologetically and looked down, his eyes resting on her obi. “You’re so dazzling, it’s hard to believe you’re here to meet someone like me.”

  “My kimono?”

  “Yes, your kimono, and your obi, and …” Your hair and your face too, he wanted to say.

  “In the summer I feel cooler if I wear a proper kimono, with the obi snug. I don’t like loose-fitting clothing when it’s hot.”