Thirst for Love

by Yukio Mishima

  Yakichi won. The old man turned away and resumed his patter with the children around him. Childishly drunk with victory, Yakichi passed through a torii and started up the stone steps.

  To be sure, Maidemmura’s prices were higher than those of Osaka. They only bought in Maidemmura what was absolutely necessary. Take the night soil for instance. “Osaka honey has a good price,” the saying went, and in winter it sold for two thousand yen a cartload. Farmers went to Osaka and purchased it, and Yakichi bought it with a sour face. In the materials that went into it alone, he said, Osaka’s night soil was better than what was produced here.

  As they started up the stairs a sound like thundering surf descended upon them. The sky above the stairway filled with dancing sparks; the sound of splitting bamboo mixed with shouts of wonder beat upon their eardrums. The limbs of an old cypress tree stood out naked in the cruel light of blazing bonfires.

  “If we start up from here, I don’t think we’ll ever get to the shrine,” said Kensuke.

  With that their column swung away from the stairway, which they had climbed halfway, and took the path that wound its way to the back of the main shrine. It was Miyo and not Yakichi who was out of breath when they reached their objective. With her big hands she uneasily rubbed her colorless cheeks.

  The front of the shrine sanctuary was like the bridge of a battleship directing its bow into a roaring swirl of fire and tumult. The women, who dared not enter the swirl, stood above and looked down on the pandemonium in the courtyard, from which the stone staircase and wall barely protected them. They were silent with good reason, for over their heads, and over the stairs, and over their hands that gripped the stone barrier, the shadows cast by the fire and the shadows of the men that stood between them and the fire swung madly about.

  At times the bonfires would pick up force tremendously; the flames would seem to be infusing themselves with energy. The faces of the women spectators—joined by this time by the Sugimoto family—would be etched in stark reflections; the cord that ran to the bell-pull hanging from the eaves of the shrine would shine as red as if struck by the setting sun. Then the shadows would leap as if dancing, licking up that moment’s brightness, leaving the group on the top of the stairs black, silent, and peevish.

  “Surely they’ve gone mad, and Saburo right along with them,” said Kensuke as if to himself, staring down at the writhing mass below them. He glanced toward Etsuko, beside him, and noticed that the side of her haori was ripped, a fact she seemed unaware of. She seemed to him strangely appealing this evening.

  “Oh, Etsuko, your haori is ripped,” he called. He had a penchant for saying what didn’t need saying.

  At this moment a new note came into the shouting. The useless message from Kensuke never reached Etsuko’s ear. In the harsh glare of the bonfires her profile seemed slightly sterner than usual, slightly more majestic, and slightly crueler.

  The mob in the courtyard was constantly rushing to one or another of the three torii and jamming together there. Their movements, which at first glance seemed to have no special order, were directed by a great lion’s head held high over them. Opening and closing his jaws, his green mane streaming behind, the lion’s head floated about as if cleaving the waves. It was manipulated at different times by three young men clad in cotton kimonos, forced to give way to each other after only short stints, so overwhelming was the perspiration induced by the chore.

  Over a hundred young men followed the lion, each carrying a white paper lantern. They would crowd around the lion and jostle against each other, striking their lanterns together. After a time the lion, as if carried away by rage, would break free and rush toward another torii. Again the young men would follow, and again they would hold up their lanterns, some miraculously still alight, their owners frequently unaware that all had been broken save the handle. And all the while they shouted at the top of their lungs.

  In the center of the courtyard bamboo poles had been erected. When the base of each pole was lighted, the entire pole quickly ignited and exploded. As each blazing pole fell, another was erected in its place. Compared with these mad torches, the bonfires at the four corners of the courtyard were fairly tranquil exercises in pyrotechnics.

  These village dwellers, who on an ordinary day would have nothing to do with danger, were here braving the flying sparks and crowding about tirelessly, watching the extraordinary impulsive movements of the massed young men following the lion. Outwardly the spectators were calm, but in their ranks a certain undulant cohesion seethed, creating collisions that threatened at any moment to catapult the front row of viewers into the turbulent sea of young men. Older men carrying fans, who were responsible for keeping everything within bounds, moved between the young men and the spectators, shouting themselves hoarse, alternately inciting the one group and restraining the other.

  The whole scene, as viewed from the top of the stone steps of the sanctuary, seemed like the form of a great dusky snake, writhing about the flaming poles, throwing off phosphorescence in all directions.

  Etsuko’s eyes were riveted to the area where the paper lanterns crashed together so fiercely. In her mind, Yakichi, Kensuke, and even Miyo no longer existed. The embodiment of this outcry, this frenzy, this completely demented demonstration—in the hazy drunkenness of Etsuko’s perceptions—was Saburo. It had to be Saburo, she thought.

  This swirling, needless waste of life’s energies seemed to Etsuko virtually a shining thing; her consciousness seemed to float on this perilous confusion, melting like a piece of ice on a baking pan. She could feel her face light up every once in a while in the glare of the flaming poles and the bonfires. She irrelevantly recalled the profusion of November sunshine that fell on her like an avalanche as they opened the door to carry out her husband’s coffin.

  Chieko realized that Etsuko was looking for Saburo. It would never have occurred to her that her sister-in-law might be looking for something more. Out of her native kindness, Chieko said: “My, it’s exciting. But I’d like to go down there. Here you can’t really feel how savage a country festival can be.”

  Kensuke caught his wife’s wink and along with it the motive behind her suggestion. He knew too that Yakichi dared not come along. That provided him with a second motive, that of staging a small vendetta against his father.

  “All right. Get set! Let’s go! Do you want to go, Etsuko? You’re young enough.”

  Yakichi put on his usual sour face. It was the proud, sour face of a man accustomed to manipulating others with just a slight change of expression. There had been a time when just one such look would have been enough to make an executive tender his resignation. Etsuko, however, didn’t look at him, and quickly said: “All right. I’ll go along.”

  “Father?” asked Chieko. Yakichi didn’t answer and turned his sour look on Miyo, making it clear to her that she was to remain here with her employer.

  “I’ll wait here; come back soon,” he said to Etsuko, without looking at her.

  Etsuko, Kensuke, and Chieko linked hands, descended the stone stairs, and walked into the noisy throng as if wading into the surf. The spectators down here moved about more easily than they had seemed to when viewed from above. One had no trouble cutting past all the spiritless, gaping faces and moving to the front.

  Etsuko heard the bamboo exploding at her side and felt refreshed. Any unpleasant sound would have come pleasantly to her ears now. These delicate ears of hers, no longer moved by trifles, asking only for the risk of being strained to bursting, must really have been listening intently to the rhythm of some emotion dwelling deep inside her.

  Suddenly, above their heads, its mane streaming, went the lion’s head, its golden teeth exposed, moving toward another torii. Pandemonium ensued, as human beings flowed in waves to right and left. Something dazzling cut across Etsuko’s line of vision. It was a band of half-naked young men moving as one in the glare of the flames. Some wore their hair loose and disheveled; some wore white headbands tied so the ends streamed behind.
Emitting animal-like shouts, they churned past Etsuko, filling the breeze with musky odor. As they passed, the dark reverberation of hard flesh striking hard flesh, the bright squeal of sweaty skin clinging to and breaking away from sweaty skin filled the air. So entangled were their legs in the darkness that they looked like some meaninglessly entangled mass of inhuman creatures. It seemed as if not one of them could know which legs were his own.

  “I wonder where Saburo is,” said Kensuke. “When they’re naked, you can’t tell one from the other.”

  He was taking no chances on losing one of the women, and had his arm around each of them. Etsuko’s slippery shoulder threatened at any moment to slide from his grasp.

  “It’s true,” he said, agreeing with himself. “When people are naked you can really understand why human individuality is such a fragile thing. And when it comes to thinking, there are just four kinds; that’s all: the thinking of a fat man, the thinking of a skinny man, the thinking of a tall, gangly man, and the thinking of a little man. When it comes to faces, now—whatever ones you look at—they never have more than two eyes, one nose, and one mouth apiece. You don’t see anyone with one eye.

  “Take even the most individualistic face—all it’s good for is to symbolize the difference between its owner and other people. What’s love? Nothing more than symbol falling for symbol. And when it comes to sex—that’s anonymity falling for anonymity. Chaos and chaos, the unisexual mating of depersonalization with depersonalization. Masculinity? Femininity? You can’t tell the difference. See, Chieko?”

  Even Chieko looked bored; she grunted agreement.

  Etsuko couldn’t help laughing. This man’s thinking—constantly, almost incontinently, mumbling in the ear. That’s it! It’s “cerebral incontinence!” What pitiful pants-wetting! This man’s thoughts are as ridiculous as his backside.

  The real absurdity, though, is that what he is saying is so out of tempo with all the shouting, all the excitement, all the smells, all the activity, all the life around him here. If he were a musician, no conductor would have him in his orchestra. But what can you do with a country orchestra except recognize it’s out of tune and make do?”

  Etsuko opened her eyes wide. Her shoulder slid ever so gently out of Kensuke’s sticky hand. She had found Saburo. His usually taciturn lips were open wide—shouting. His sharp teeth showed white and shining, sparkling in the light of the bonfires.

  In his eyes—never turned toward her—Etsuko saw another glowing resplendent bonfire.

  Again the lion’s head stood out above the crowd, seeming to survey the entire scene. Then it capriciously changed direction and headed straight into the spectators, green mane floating proudly, moving toward the main torii at the front of the shrine. A band of half-naked young men thundered behind.

  Etsuko relinquished all power over her legs and followed the procession. Behind her she could hear Kensuke call, “Etsuko! Etsuko!” and the shrill laughter of Chieko. She did not look back. Something inside her seemed to stand forth out of a vague, mushy quagmire and to flash forward with almost herculean, physical power.

  On certain occasions human beings are imbued with the belief that they can accomplish anything. In such moments they seem to glimpse much that is normally invisible to human eyes. Then, later, even after they have sunk to the bottom of memory’s well, these moments sometimes revive and again suggest to men the miraculous plenitude of the world’s pains and joys. None can avoid these moments of destiny; nor can anyone—no matter who he is—avoid the misfortune of seeing more than his eyes can take in.

  Etsuko now felt she could do anything. Her cheeks burned like fire. Jostled by the expressionless throng, she sped, half-stumbling, toward the front torii. The fan of a marshal struck her on the breast, but she did not feel the blow. She was caught in a fierce clash of torpor and frenzy.

  Saburo was not conscious of her proximity. His marvelously fleshed, lightly tanned back was turned to the pushing spectators. His face was turned toward the lion in the center, shouting at it, challenging it. He held his lantern, no longer lighted though unmarred by the rents and punctures that disfigured the others, high with his lithe arm. The ceaselessly twisting lower half of his body was lost in darkness, but his barely moving back was given over to a mad kaleidoscope of flame and shadow. The movements of the flesh around his shoving shoulder bones seemed like the exertions of the wings of a powerful bird in flight.

  Etsuko longed to touch him with her fingers. What kind of desire this was she did not know. That back was to her metaphorically a bottomless ocean depth; she longed to throw herself into it. Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death so much as what comes after the drowning—something different from what he had before, at the least a different world.

  Another strong, wavelike motion in the throng impelled everyone forward. The half-naked youths moved counter to this, backing up in concert with the capricious lion’s head. Etsuko stumbled forward, pushed by the throng, and collided with a bare back, warm as fire, coming from the opposite direction. She reached out her hands and held it off. It was Saburo’s back. She savored the touch of his flesh. She savored the majestic warmth of him.

  The mob behind her pushed again, causing her fingernails to gouge into Saburo’s back. He did not even feel it. In all the mad pushing and shoving he had no idea what woman was pressing against his back. Etsuko felt his blood dripping between her fingers.

  The marshals didn’t seem to have the crowd very much under control. The mad young men banded together in one mass and, shouting all the while, moved close to one brightly blazing bamboo pole. Embers fell before their feet and were trampled upon. The barefoot men were past feeling the heat of them. The pole stood wrapped in fire, lighting up the limbs of the old cypress tree with flame and scarlet smoke. The burning bamboo leaves were yellow, as if caught by sunlight. The slim fiery pillar shook and exploded, then dipped deep from side to side like a sailboat mast, and suddenly toppled into the middle of the jostling crowd.

  Etsuko thought she saw a woman with her hair afire laughing loudly. That was about all she remembered with any clarity. Somehow she got away, and found herself standing by the stone steps in front of the shrine. She later recalled a moment when all the sky she could see was filled with sparks. Yet she felt no sense of horror. The young men were struggling again to plunge toward another torii. The spectators seemed to have forgotten their fear of a few minutes ago and were streaming after them as before. Nothing had happened.

  Etsuko wasn’t sure how she had found her way here. She stood in the courtyard of the shrine, staring vacantly at the diagonal pattern thrown on the ground by the flames and the human shadows. Then she felt a rough blow at her shoulder. It was Kensuke’s sticky hand.

  “Here you are, Etsuko. We were worried sick about you.”

  Etsuko looked at him silently, showing no emotion. He, however, went on breathlessly: “Something’s happened. Come with me.”

  “Is anything wrong?”

  “Never mind. Come with me.”

  Kensuke took her hand and mounted the staircase with great strides. There was a circle of people around the spot where they had left Yakichi and Miyo. Kensuke elbowed people aside and conducted Etsuko into the circle.

  Miyo was lying face-up on two benches that had been brought together. Chieko was leaning over her, trying to loosen her sash. Yakichi was standing by awkwardly. So carelessly was Miyo dressed that the skin of her bosom showed through her loosened clothing. She lay unconscious, her mouth slightly opened. Her hand hung down, seemingly twisted, her fingernails striking the paving stones.

  “What happened?”

  “She just fainted. It looks like cerebral ischemia, or something. Maybe it’s an epileptic fit.”

  “We’d better call a doctor.”

  “Tanaka just called one. He’s coming with a stretcher.”

  “Should we let Saburo know?”

  “It’s all right. It doesn’t seem
to be serious.”

  Kensuke could not bear to look at Miyo’s face, green as grass, but directed his eyes in the opposite direction. He was one of those men who, as they say, can’t kill a flea.

  The stretcher arrived shortly and was picked up by Tanaka and one of the members of the Young Men’s League. Kensuke led the way slowly down the perilous stone stairway, lighting the way around the twists and turns with his flashlight. In the illumination of the flashlight Miyo’s face, with its tightly closed eyes, looked like a noh mask, making the children who came up alongside scream in mock fright.

  Yakichi followed the stretcher mumbling something under his breath: “How humiliating! Who knows what people will say. She has to go and get sick right in the middle of the festival . . .”

  Fortunately they didn’t have to pass the street shops to get to the hospital. They carried the stretcher through a torii, traversed a dark twisting street, and entered the hospital. Even after the patient and her attendants had passed inside, however, a knot of the curious remained outside. The festival with its endless repetitions had begun to bore them; they wished to find out now how this new event would come out. Kicking the gravel, exchanging rumors, they waited happily for this not unusual by-product of the festival. It would fill the next ten days with entertaining conversation.

  A young doctor had recently inherited the hospital. This arrogant boy genius found the country origins of his dead father and his entire line ridiculous, and villa dwellers like the Sugimotos made him uneasy. When they met on the street he would greet them with a solicitude seasoned with discomfiture—a discomfiture based on his fear they would see through the city-slicker patina he wore.

  The patient was carried into the examination room. Yakichi, Etsuko, Kensuke, and Chieko were conducted into the parlor that faced the garden. They said little. Yakichi kept twitching his thick eyebrows as if to chase away a fly or blowing noisily into a cavity in one of his back teeth. He had lost his head, and he regretted it. If he hadn’t called for Tanaka, all the fuss wouldn’t have happened; they wouldn’t have had to carry her on a stretcher, only the people nearby would have noticed, and that would have been that.