Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

  Kyoko had reason to find the name Yuchan more appealing than Yuichi. Not only that, she had come to love this name, as she had built it up in her fancy since Reiko’s death.

  Listening to her, Yuichi toyed with his silver-plated spoon. Her revelation stirred him. He was learning for the first time that his bedridden cousin, ten years his senior, had loved him. Also, he was amazed at how far mistaken her idea of him had been. At the time he had been groaning under the weight of aimless, abnormal sexual desire.

  He almost envied his cousin her then not very distant death.

  I had no reason at that time to pull the wool over Reiko’s eyes, Yuichi thought. It just happened because I hated to lay my heart bare. Reiko, furthermore, had the mistaken notion I was a simple uncomplicated boy; and I, for my part, was quite unaware of Reiko’s love. I suppose everybody finds in a mistaken notion about another person his one reason for living. In short, this youth, permeated with the virtue of pride, was trying to persuade himself that his dallying with Kyoko was sincerity itself.

  Kyoko sat back and observed Yuichi. She was already in love with him. The motivation of her shallow heart sprang from, one might almost say, a faint mistrust of her own passions. When, therefore, she had before her a witness to the passion of the dead Reiko, she was able to affirm the validity of her own passion.

  Besides, Kyoko miscalculated. She felt that Yuichi’s heart had been inclined toward her from the beginning. She had therefore only to come half a step.

  “I wish we could find a place to talk quietly. Is it all right if I call you?”

  Yuichi, however, was usually not at home at any definite hour. He suggested he do the calling, but Kyoko informed him that she herself was seldom at home. She was therefore delighted to find that they must arrange for their next meeting then and there.

  Kyoko took out her appointment book and grasped the delicate pencil fastened to it by a silk cord. She had many appointments. It filled her with secret pleasure to cancel the one that was most difficult to break. Across the date of a reception for a certain international figure which required her attendance at the Foreign Office with her husband, she lightly drew the point of her pencil. It would provide the very secrecy and excitement her next meeting with Yuichi would require.

  Yuichi agreed. The woman grew bolder; she suggested he see her home this evening. The youth hesitated, and she told him that she only said it to see the troubled look on his face. Then she gazed at his shoulders, much as one would gaze at a mountain peak. Hoping he would speak, she kept quiet for a time; then she started chattering again. She went so far as to demean herself by saying: “Your wife is lucky. You’re really considerate of her.”

  Having said this, she slumped in her chair as if worn out completely.

  Suddenly a thrill went through Kyoko. She had guests coming to the house this evening! They were waiting for her. She decided not to meet them. She got up to telephone an excuse.

  The call went right through, but the voice came from far away. She could not hear the maid’s words distinctly. Interfering with their exchange was a sound in the phone like that of falling rain. She looked out of the great plate-glass window. It was raining. Unfortunately she had not brought any rain gear with her. She felt very daring.

  On the way back to her place, she saw a middle-aged woman sitting beside Yuichi. Kyoko drew her chair away as she sat down. Yuichi introduced the woman: “This is Mrs. Kaburagi.”

  Each woman perceived the hostility of the other at a glance. This accidental meeting was something Shunsuke had not reckoned with; Mrs. Kaburagi had, in fact, been watching the two from a distant comer for some time.

  “I came a little early for our appointment. I didn’t want to interfere until you’d finished with your business. I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Kaburagi said. In that instant, in the act of telling that little-girl fib, Mrs. Kaburagi showed her age as infallibly as did her too youthful makeup. Kyoko saw the ugliness of those years with relief. Convinced of her advantage, she saw through the lie. She smiled in Yuichi’s direction, with a wink to indicate that she understood. .

  What prevented Mrs. Kaburagi’s noticing the contemptuous wink of the younger woman was the fact that jealousy had robbed her of pride. Kyoko said: “I must beg your pardon for having kept you waiting with my ceaseless chatter. Well, I must be going now. Would you get me a cab, Yuchan? It’s raining.”

  “Raining?” Embarrassed at being addressed as Yuchan, he pretended to be astonished by the rain, as if it were a momentous event.

  As soon as Yuichi was outside the door, a cruising cab drove up. He signaled toward the restaurant. Kyoko said good-bye to Mrs. Kaburagi and arose. Yuichi saw her off, waving his hand in the rain. Without a word, she departed.

  Yuichi returned to Mrs. Kaburagi and sat down. His wet hair clung to his brow like seaweed. Then he saw that Kyoko had left a package behind in her chair. Swiftly he picked it up and started to run outside. He had forgotten that the cab had departed. This concern he was showing for someone else filled Mrs. Kaburagi with dismay.

  “Did she-forget something?” she asked, forcing a smile.

  “Yes, her new shoes.”

  Both believed that Kyoko had forgotten no more than a pair of shoes. Actually she had left behind something that, until she met Yuichi today, had been the sole concern of this day in her life.

  “It might be a good idea to go after her. You might still overtake her.” Mrs. Kaburagi said this with a bitter smile, obviously to annoy him.

  Yuichi made no reply. The woman said nothing more, but over her silence the flag of defeat fluttered plainly. Her voice rose in excitement, almost tearfully. “I’ve made you angry, haven’t I? I’m sorry. I have a bad habit of doing mean things like that.” While she spoke, she kept thinking that the next day Yuichi would deliver the shoes to Kyoko and would explain Mrs. Kaburagi’s lie.

  “No, I’m not angry at all.”

  Yuichi’s smile was like a patch of blue sky on a cloudy day. He could not have imagined how much strength Mrs. Kaburagi derived from that smile. Drawn by that youthful smile, so like a sunflower, she was buoyed to the peak of happiness.

  “I’d like to give you something to show you how sorry I am. Can we leave?”

  “Never mind being sorry. Anyway, it’s raining.”

  It was an intermittent shower. Since it was night, they couldn’t tell whether it had cleared. A slightly intoxicated man happened to leave just then; he called out near the doorway: “Oh, it’s stopped. It’s stopped raining.” Patrons who had come in to seek shelter from the rain hurried out again into the clear night air. Urged by Mrs. Kaburagi, Yuichi picked up Kyoko’s package and followed her, turning up the collar of his navy-blue trench coat.

  Now, Mrs. Kaburagi’s mind busied itself blowing up out of all proportion the bit of luck that had led her to this happy encounter. Since that last time she had struggled with jealousy. Her self-restraint was stronger than that of most men, and it gave her the power to keep her resolve not to make advances to him. She started going out for walks all alone. She went to the movies alone. She ate her meals alone. She had tea alone. She was alone, but, paradoxically, she felt that she was gaining freedom from her emotions.

  Nevertheless, wherever she went, Mrs. Kaburagi felt the gaze of Yuichi’s proud contempt following her. That gaze would say: “Get on your knees. At once—down on your knees before me!”

  One day she went to the theater—alone. During the intermission she witnessed the awful crowding in front of the mirror in the ladies’ room. The ladies’ faces were almost in collision—every woman for herself; they pushed out their cheeks, they pouted their lips, they protruded their foreheads, they stroked out their eyebrows—so as to apply their rouge, their lipstick, their eyebrow pencil, to rearrange a stray hair, to make sure that the curls so carefully rolled this morning had not committed the unspeakable sin of coming undone. One woman had shamelessly taken out her teeth. Another, choking on powder, was making a terrible face. If one were to put t
hat mirror in a painting, he would certainly hear the dying screams of slaughtered women coming from the canvas. Mrs. Kaburagi saw that in all this pitiable turmoil, her face alone was cool, white, and composed. “Get on your knees! Down on your knees!”—blood gushed from her pride’s wounds.

  Now, however, drunk with the nectar of submission— pathetically going so far as to believe that this sweetness was the boon of her own cunning—she cut into the rain-wet tracks of the automobiles and across the street. A broad, yellow leaf fallen from one of the trees along the street clung to the trunk and fluttered like a moth. A wind had sprung up. Silent, as she had been on the evening she first met Yuichi at the Hinoki home, she led him into a certain tailor’s. The clerks in the store treated Mrs. Kaburagi with deference. She had them bring out winter materials and placed them over Yuichi’s shoulders. Thus she was able to inspect him with care.

  “It’s uncanny. Any pattern goes well with you,” she said, holding piece after piece of material across his chest. Yuichi was in despair, imagining that the store clerks thought him a complete fool. Mrs. Kaburagi chose one pattern, and had them take his measurements. The old and experienced owner of the firm was amazed at the youth’s ideal measurements.

  Yuichi thought uneasily of Shunsuke. The old man was surely still in that tea shop, patiently waiting. Just the same it would not be good policy to have Mrs. Kaburagi run across Shunsuke this evening. One could not say, furthermore, where Mrs. Kaburagi might still want to go. Yuichi was gradually coming to need Shunsuke’s help less and less, and, like a schoolboy developing an interest in detested, enforced homework, he was becoming infatuated with the excitement of this inhuman comedy with womankind as antagonist.

  In short, the Trojan horse in which Shunsuke had imprisoned this youth, this replica of the violent power of nature itself, this fearful mechanism, was miraculously beginning to move. Whether the fire that had been building up between the two women would become hotter or cooler was entirely a matter for Yuichi’s pride to decide. His cold rage had begun to assert itself. He was possessed of a self-confidence completely devoid of compassion. He looked at this woman who, having just ordered a new suit of clothes for him, was now drunk in her small and conventional joy of giving, and thought how like a monkey she was. Truthfully, this young man found it impossible to see any beautiful person, so long as she was a woman, as more than a monkey.

  Mrs. Kaburagi would laugh and be defeated, keep quiet and be defeated, chatter and be defeated, give things away and be defeated, from time to time look at his profile as if stealing and be defeated, act cheerful and be defeated, pretend despair and be defeated. Before long this woman who never cried would even be defeated in tears, of this there was no doubt.

  Yuichi flung his coat on roughly; the comb fell out of his pocket. Before Yuichi or the tailors could retrieve it, Mrs. Kaburagi nimbly stooped for it. She herself was amazed at her own condescension.

  “Thank you.”

  “My, it’s a big comb! It looks as if it does the job.” Before she returned it to its owner, she passed it quickly through her hair a couple of times. The pulling of the hair in.the comb made her eyes twitch a little and brought moisture to the tense outer comers.

  After parting from Mrs. Kaburagi at a bar, Yuichi went to the restaurant where Shunsuke had been waiting, but it was closed. Rudon’s stayed open until the last trolley, so he went there, and Shunsuke was waiting. Yuichi told all that had happened. Shunsuke laughed aloud.

  “It’s probably best for you to take the shoes home and act as if you don’t know anything about them until you hear from her. Kyoko will probably call your house and leave word at least by tomorrow. Now your date with Kyoko is for October twenty-ninth, isn’t it? That’s still a week off. Before that you’d better see her again, return the shoes, and explain what happened this evening. Kyoko is a clever girl, and she undoubtedly saw through Mrs. Ka-buragi’s story right away. After that...”

  Shunsuke paused. He took a calling card from his case and wrote a simple note of introduction. There was a slight tremor in his hand. Yuichi looked at that hand, wasted by age, and associated with it the pale, somewhat swollen hand of his mother. These two hands and nothing else had awakened in him a passion for forced marriages, vice, phoniness and falsehood, and had induced him to embrace them. These two hands were close to death, had formed a secret alliance with death. Yuichi suspected that the power that had taken possession of him was the power of the nether world.

  “On the third floor of the N-Building, in Kyobashi,”

  Shunsuke said, handing over the card, “is an establishment that sells stylish imported women’s handkerchiefs. If you show this card they will sell to Japanese. Buy a half dozen matching handkerchiefs. All right? Give two of them to Kyoko as a token of apology. The other four give to Mrs. Kaburagi the next time you see her. Since coincidences like today’s don’t happen often, I’ll have to arrange for you and Kyoko and Mrs. Kaburagi to get together. Then those handkerchiefs will really have a part to play.

  “Next, I have a pair of agate earrings at home that belonged to my dead wife. I’ll give those to you. Then I’ll show you how we’ll use them. Now, just wait and see. Each of the women will come to think you’re intimate with the other and that she is being left out. Let’s add a handkerchief for your wife. She’ll think you’re carrying on with these two women. That’s just what we want. Your freedom in real life will then be a clear road before you.”

  At this time at Rudon’s the activity seemed to be at its height. The youths at the rear tables were laughing over their endless dirty stories. If the topic happened to come around to women, however, the listeners all knitted their brows and looked askance. Rudy, unable to wait until 11 p.m., when his young lover arrived every other day, stifled a yawn and glanced intermittently toward the door. Shun-suke yawned in sympathy. His yawn was clearly different from Rudy’s—a rather sickly yawn. When he closed his mouth, his false teeth clashed. This sound echoing within the core of his body frightened him terribly. He felt as if he was hearing from his insides the unhappy sound of the violation of his flesh by matter. Flesh is at heart matter. The sound of his false teeth clashing was nothing more than a clear revelation of the real nature of his flesh.

  It’s my body, but I’m already somebody else, Shunsuke thought.

  More important, my soul is somebody else. He stole a look at the beautiful face of Yuichi. The form of my soul, at least, is as beautiful as this.

  Yuichi came home late so frequently that Yasuko exhausted herself working up all kinds of suspicions about her husband. She finally decided simply to believe him, but that decision was of late causing her undeniable pain.

  In the character of Yuichi, Yasuko saw a nameless riddle. That riddle, rather involved with the side of him that seemed easy to understand, was somehow not easy to solve. One morning he saw a cartoon in the newspaper and burst out laughing, but Yasuko, who came over to look, couldn’t figure out what he saw that was humorous in that not-at-all-funny cartoon. He started to explain, blurting out: “The day before yesterday—” and closed his mouth. He had thoughtlessly started to mention one of the topics of conversation at Rudy’s.

  At times Yuichi seemed quite frustrated, filled with pain. Yasuko would wish to find out the reasons for his pain, but the next moment Yuichi would explain that he had eaten too much cake and his stomach ached.

  Her husband’s eyes seemed constantly to be yearning for something. Yasuko went so far as to believe that it was his poetic nature. He was morbidly fastidious about the rumors and gossip of society at large. Belying the good opinion of her parents, he seemed to have a strange prejudice against society. A thinking man seems to be a mysterious thing in a woman’s eyes. Woman can face death refusing to say anything like, “I adore snakes.”

  One day the following happened: Yuichi was away at school. His mother was taking a nap; Kiyo had gone shopping. Yasuko was at the end of the veranda, knitting. She was knitting a winter jacket for Yuichi.

  T
he front door bell rang. Yasuko got up, went down to the entrance, and unlocked the door, kneeling to greet the visitor. A student carrying a Boston bag entered. She did not know him. He smiled affably and bowed; then he closed the door behind him. He said: “I go to the same school as your husband and I’m working my way. How would you like some very nice imported soap?”

  “Soap? We have enough right now.”

  “Don’t say that until you’ve seen this. Once you see it, you’ll surely want it.”

  The student turned his back and, without a by-your-leave, sat down on the step leading into the house. The black serge of his back and the seat of his trousers shone with age. He opened his bag and took out a sample of soap in a gaudy wrapper.

  Yasuko said again she didn’t need any, that he would have to wait until her husband came home. The student laughed as if there were something funny about that. He handed the sample to Yasuko to smell. Yasuko took it and the student grasped her hand. About to cry out, Yasuko looked the youth in the eye. He laughed, undaunted. She started to scream, but he covered her mouth. Yasuko struggled fiercely.

  As luck would have it, Yuichi appeared. His lecture had been canceled. As he was about to ring the bell, he sensed that something was wrong. His eyes were accustomed to the light outside, and for a moment he did not discern in the half darkness a writhing, obscure shape. There was one point of light—the wide-open eye of Yasuko resisting, straining every muscle to free herself, yet joyfully welcoming her husband’s return. Heartened, she sprang to her feet. The student also got up.