Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

Yuichi was by the wall, smoking a cigarette while he waited for the boy to finish the dance. With the fingers of one hand, he drummed delicately on the wall. Nobutaka watched him out of the comer of his eye; he was struck by the fresh beauty of the body of this young man waiting for the signal to spring.

  The dance had ended. Ryosuke came over toward Yuichi planning to make some excuse. Yuichi, who did not sense that, threw away his cigarette, turned his back to the other and went ahead. Ryosuke followed him; Nobutaka followed Ryosuke. While they climbed the stairs, Yuichi placed his hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder. The boy’s position was gradually becoming more difficult. As Yuichi opened the door of one of the rooms on the second floor, Nobutaka suddenly grasped the boy by the arm. Yuichi turned about in surprise. Nobutaka and the boy were silent; Yuichi’s eyes colored with youthful anger.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m first, am I not?”

  “Rightfully, this boy is mine first.” Yuichi inclined his head and laughed a forced laugh. “Quit the kidding.”

  “If you think it’s a joke, ask the boy and see whose claim he wants to honor first.”

  Yuichi placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The shoulder trembled. Attempting to compensate for the ugliness of the moment, the boy glared at Yuichi with eyes that were hooded with hostility, though he spoke gently: “It’s all right, isn’t it? Later?”

  Yuichi was about to strike the boy. Nobutaka intervened.

  “Now, now; let’s not have any rough stuff. We have lots of time to talk it over.”

  Nobutaka put his arm around Yuichi’s shoulders and led him into the room. When Ryochan attempted to enter behind them, Nobutaka slammed the door in his face. His remonstrations could be heard through the door. Nobutaka quickly latched it. He placed Yuichi on the divan by the window and lit a cigarette for both of them. Meanwhile, outside, the boy kept banging on the door. He gave it one more kick and then resignedly left.

  The atmosphere of the room suited the occasion. On the wall there hung a picture of Endymion asleep in meadow grass and flowers and bathed in moonbeams. The electric space heater was turned on, and on the table was a bottle of cognac, a water pitcher, and a record player. On party nights the foreigner who occupied this room usually made it available to visitors.

  Nobutaka turned on the record player, designed to play ten records in succession, then with deliberation poured two glasses of cognac. Yuichi suddenly got up, meaning to leave the room. Pope headed him off, fixing the youth with a deep, gentle stare. There was unusual power in his look. Yuichi, bound by a mysterious curiosity, sat down again.

  “Relax. I don’t give a hoot about that child. I gave him some money with the understanding he would back out on you. If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have been able to talk to you at leisure. Since there’s money involved, he’ll wait for you.”

  It must be said in all honesty that Yuichi’s desire had swiftly abated since the time when he had wanted to strike the boy. He was far, however, from admitting this to Nobutaka. He sat silently, like a captured spy.

  “I said I wanted to talk,” Pope went on. “Not a particularly formal conversation—I just thought I’d like to have one heart-to-heart talk with you. You’ll listen, won’t you? I still remember the day I first saw you at your wedding.”

  It would be tiresome to go into all of the long monologue that Nobutaka Kaburagi indulged in presently. It continued to the tune of ten dance records, both sides. Nobutaka knew well the telling effect of his own words. Before the caress of the hand comes the caress of words. He transformed himself into a mirror that reflected Yuichi. Behind that mirror he managed to conceal Nobutaka himself, his age, his desire, his complexity, and his ingenuity.

  While Nobutaka’s monologue droned on—without Yuichi’s consent in the first place—Yuichi heard from time to time, in soothing tones: “Are you tired of this?” or, “If you’re bored, tell me, and I’ll stop,” or, “Does this conversation annoy you?” all inserted like interludes. The first time the question came like a timorous entreaty; the second time it was hopelessly overbearing; the third time it was full of confidence, as if sure that Yuichi would smile and shake his head when the question came.

  Yuichi wasn’t bored. Far from it. Why? Because Nobutaka’s monologue was about Yuichi and nothing else: “Your eyebrows are so cold and clear. Your eyebrows are—how shall I put it—they exhibit pure youthful will.” When he ran out of comparisons, he stared silently for a time at Yuichi’s brows. It was a hypnotic technique. “Not only that, there is an exquisite harmony between those brows and these deep, sad eyes. The eyes show your fate. The eyebrows show your will. What lies between those two is struggle. It is the fight that must be fought by every youth. Your brows and your eyes are the eyes and brows of the most beautiful young officer on the battlefield. His name is youth.

  “The only hat to match these eyebrows and those eyes is the Grecian helmet. How many times I have seen your beauty in dreams! How many times I have wished to speak to you! Nevertheless, when I meet you, the words stick in my throat like a boy’s. I am convinced that of all the young men I have seen in the past thirty years you are the most beautiful. There are none to be compared with you. How can you take it into your head to love someone like Ryochan? Take a good look in a mirror. The beauty you discover in other men comes entirely from your own ignorance and self-delusion. The beauty you think you have found in other men is already possessed in its entirety by you; there is no more beauty anywhere to discover. When you ‘love’ another man, you are only too ignorant about yourself—you who were born on the pinnacle of perfection.”

  Nobutaka’s face came slowly closer and closer to Yuichi. His high-flown words charmed the ears like slander. In fact, no ordinary flattery could compare with them.

  “You don’t need a name,” he continued. “Indeed, beauty with a name doesn’t count at all. Illusions of beauty that must have a name like Yuichi or Taro or Jiro won’t fool me any more. You don’t need a name to carry out your human function. You are a type. You are on the stage. Your stage name is ‘Young Man.’ There are no actors anywhere who can bear this title. All of them depend on a personality, a character, or a name. All they can portray to the best of their ability is Ichiro Young Man, John Young Man, Johannes Young Man. You, however, in your being are the animated universal name, ‘Young Man.’ You’ are the representative of the visible ‘Young Man’ that has appeared in the myths, the histories, the societies and the Zeitgeist of all the countries of the world. You personify all. If you did not exist, the youth of all the young men would suffer nothing less than a burial without ever being seen. In your brows the brows of millions of young men are prefigured. Your lips comprise the burgeoning design of millions of young lips. Your chest, your arms . . .” Nobutaka rubbed the youth’s arms, encased in the sleeves of his winter suit. “Your thighs, your palms . . He pressed his shoulder harder against Yuichi’s shoulder. He fixed the profile of the youth firmly in his gaze. Then he reached out one hand and turned off the lamp on the table.

  “Sit still. Please, I beg you, don’t move. What beauty! The night is breaking. The sky is growing white. Surely you feel that faint, random indication of dawn there on your cheek. This cheek, though, is still in night. Your consummate profile floats on the boundary between night and dawn. Sit still, I beg you.”

  Nobutaka saw the youth’s profile in miraculous relief in the pure hour that bounded day and night. This momentary carving had become an eternal thing. That profile brought external form into time, and by fixing one consummate beauty in time became itself an imperishable thing.

  The window curtains had been open. The glass panes let in the whitening seascape. This little room offered an unobstructed view of the sea. The beacon blinked drowsily. Above the sea, muddy-white rays supported deep banks of clouds in the dawning-dark sky. The wintry stands of trees in rows in the garden, like flotsam washed up by the morning tide, vaguely mingled their branches.

  Yuichi was overcome by a
deep lassitude, a sudden sensation of sleepiness and intoxication. The portrait painted by Nobutaka’s words stole out of the mirror and gradually bore down upon Yuichi. Yuichi’s hair, pressing against the back of the sofa, seemed to become heavier and heavier.

  Desire mingled with desire; desire redoubled desire. This dreamlike sensation is not easy to explain. Spirit dozed above spirit. Without any help from desire, Yuichi’s spirit was coupled with the spirit of another Yuichi which was already mingling with it. Yuichi’s forehead touched Yuichi’s forehead; beautiful eyebrows touched beautiful eyebrows. This dreamy youth’s half-open lips were stopped by the beautiful lips of the self that he had dreamed up.

  The first flicker of dawn came through the clouds. Nobutaka released Yuichi’s cheeks, which he had been holding in both hands. His coat now lay on the chair at the side. His empty hands quickly released his suspenders from his shoulders. Again he took Yuichi’s face in his hands. His smug lips again pressed Yuichi’s lips.

  The next morning at ten o’clock, Jackie sadly handed his treasured cat’s-eye ring to Nobutaka.

  Chapter 14 ALONE AND INDEPENDENT

  THE YEAR changed. Yuichi turned twenty-three, according to the calendar. Yasuko turned twenty.

  The new year was celebrated by the Minami household in the family circle. It was essentially a season for festivity. First, there was Yasuko’s pregnancy. Second, Yuichi’s mother, unexpectedly in good health, had lived to greet the new year. There was, however, something darkly foreboding about the occasion. The seed, clearly, had been planted by Yuichi.

  His frequent overnight absences and, worse, his increasing dereliction of connubial duty, Yasuko at times could, on reflection, ascribe to her own possessiveness, but just the same they tortured her. From what was said in the homes of her friends or her relatives, many a wife returned to her family when her husband stayed out only one night. Yuichi, furthermore, seemed to have lost somewhere the gentleness of spirit that was his nature, and though he stayed away overnight repeatedly without notice, he paid no heed to his mother’s advice or the appeals of Yasuko. He was becoming more and more silent; his white teeth were seldom shown.

  It would not do, however, to imagine that Yuichi’s pride was a Byronic isolation. It was not an act of contemplation; his pride was a veritable necessity, springing from his way of life. He was no different from the incompetent captain who silently affects a scowl as he watches the destruction of the ship in which he is sailing. At the same time, the speed of this shipwreck was too orderly; the culprit, Yuichi, was not entirely to blame—it was a case that must be considered as nothing more than the simple action of self-disintegration.

  After the holidays, Yuichi suddenly announced that he was becoming private secretary to the chairman of the board of a nameless company. Neither his mother nor Yasuko took him seriously until he mentioned that the chairman and his wife were coming to visit. This threw his mother into a panic. Yuichi had mischievously kept silent the name of the chairman, so when his mother saw none other than the Kaburagis standing in the doorway that day, she was doubly surprised.

  That morning a light snow had fallen, and the afternoon was cloudy and extremely cold. The former count sat with his legs crossed in front of the living-room gas heater, hands held up before it, as if he were about to engage it in conversation. His wife was ebullient. The couple had never gotten along so well. When a funny story was told they both looked at each other and laughed.

  Yasuko heard the lady’s somewhat shrill laughter when she was in the hall on her way to greet the guests in the living room. Her intuitions had told her long ago that this woman was among those in love with Yuichi, but unnatural and uncanny insights engendered by her pregnancy, if nothing else, told her that the person driving Yuichi to exhaustion was neither Mrs. Kaburagi nor Kyoko. It was without doubt someone she had not yet seen. Whenever she tried to imagine the woman Yuichi was hiding, Yasuko felt, aside from jealousy, a mysterious fear. So when Mrs. Kaburagi’s high-pitched laughter struck her ears, she felt not the least jealousy; in fact, her composure was hardly disturbed.

  Worn out with anxiety, Yasuko had reached a point where she was inured to the habitude of pain and became like a shrewd small animal, its ears up and alert. Although she was aware that Yuichi’s future depended on the good offices of her parents, Yasuko had not said a word to them about her difficulties. Yuichi’s mother was filled with admiration at this demonstration of a forbearance beyond her years. The admirable courage of this so-young wife gave her the status of the old-fashioned model of womanly virtue, yet it must be said that Yasuko at some time had come to love the melancholy that Yuichi kept concealed behind his facade of pride.

  Surely there are many who would doubt that such magnanimity could be acquired by a young wife of twenty or so. As time went by, however, she had come to realize her husband’s unhappiness and at the same time was struck with the notion that she would be committing a crime against him if she allowed herself to admit her inability to cure it. In the conclusion that her husband’s dissipation gave him no pleasure, in the conclusion that it was nothing but a manifestation of his indefinable suffering—in these maternal conclusions there was a misapprehension born of a pretense at adult sentimentality. It was close to moral torture, this childish fancy, this refusal, on grounds of unsuitability, to attach the word “pleasure” to Yuichi’s suffering. She felt, however, that if she were a man philandering in the manner of the run of the world’s youths, then that man she would be would enjoy informing his wife about it.

  Something incomprehensible is eating at him, she thought. Surely he’s not plotting a revolution or anything. If he loved someone else and was untrue to me, that deep despair would not be playing about his features all the time. Yuchan does not love anything at all; I know this from wifely instinct.”

  Yasuko was partly right. She was not able to say that Yuichi loved boys.

  The family chatted busily in the living room; the convenient cordiality of the Kaburagis had an unexpected effect on Yuichi and his wife. They laughed and talked quite like a couple who had nothing to hide from each other.

  By mistake Yuichi drank Yasuko’s cup of tea. Everyone was lost in a dream of conversation, and the blunder seemed not worth noticing. In fact, Yuichi had drunk it without immediately realizing it himself. Only Yasuko saw it and nudged his leg. Silently she pointed to his teacup on the table and smiled. In reply, he scratched his head boyishly.

  This pantomime did not escape the alert eyes of Mrs. Kaburagi. Her cheerfulness on this day centered about the happy anticipation that Yuichi was to become her husband’s private secretary; it had its source further back in the tender appreciation she felt toward her husband for having some days before showed an interest in bringing this auspicious plan into reality. When Yuichi became the private secretary, how frequently she would be able to see his face! Her husband certainly had some calculation in mind when he entered into her plan, but she managed not to think about that.

  When Mrs. Kaburagi saw this smiling intimacy between Yasuko and Yuichi, even though it was insignificant and barely discernible, the hopelessness of her own love flashed upon her. The two were young and beautiful; even the problem of Kyoko seemed to her Yuichi’s one little escapade when she looked at this loving young couple. And her own position, gifted with fewer alluring qualities than Kyoko possessed, she had not a bit of courage to contemplate.

  Her appearance here in close though forced company with her husband had for Mrs. Kaburagi another, quite different, design. She thought it would make Yuichi jealous. This notion, of course, had its fanciful elements, but she wished to get back at him for the pain he had caused her by his appearance with Kyoko, while at the same time she feared out of love for him that if she appeared somewhere before him with a young man in tow she would somehow wound Yuichi’s pride.

  She noticed a loose thread on her husband’s shoulder and removed it. Nobutaka stared and said: “What are you doing?” When he realized what she was doing, he was
shocked. His wife was not a woman who did such things.

  In his company, the Utsubo Far East Marine Products, Nobutaka had used an old-time steward as his private secretary. This useful old man had called him “My lord,” never “Mr. Chairman.” Two months ago he had died of a cerebral hemorrhage. A new private secretary was needed. When Nobutaka’s wife suggested Yuichi for the job, he replied vaguely, “Fine; it’s only a light part-time job.” He judged from her look of indifference that she was concerned indeed.

  Unexpectedly, however, this overture served neatly to disguise Nobutaka’s own proposal a month later. When, soon after New Year’s, he himself got the idea of making Yuichi his private secretary, he gave his wife credit for the scheme and affecting her own practical way of talking, added his own praises of Yuichi’s business acumen.

  “That young man is just the sort that job needs,” he said. “The other day I met Mr. Kuwahara at the Otomo Bank; he’s a graduate of Yuichi’s college. Far East Marine Products managed to get an illegal loan through Mr. Kuwahara, but anyway, he had a lot to say in praise of Yuichi. It’s quite a thing for a man his age to be involved as he is with difficult property management.”

  “Then let’s hire him as private secretary,” suggested his wife. “In case he hesitates, let’s go to visit his mother, whom we haven’t seen in a long time, and go to work on it together.”

  Nobutaka had forgotten his long-standing habit of fluttering lightly as a butterfly around matters of the heart. He had not been able to live without Yuichi since the night at Jackie’s party. Since then Yuichi had complied with his demands on two occasions, but in general he gave no sign that he loved Nobutaka. Nobutaka, though, thought more and more about him. Yuichi did not like to sleep away from home, and so the two had secretly gone to a hotel in the suburbs. The elaborate precautions astonished Yuichi. In order to meet him, Nobutaka would make a reservation for one or two days for himself. Yuichi would happen to call “on business,” and_would leave late at night. Nobutaka would needlessly stay on afterward.