Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

  After Yuichi left, however, this middle-aged nobleman would be struck by mindless passion. He would pace the narrow room dressed only in his robe. Finally he would fall down on the rug and roll about. In a small voice he would call out Yuichi’s name hundreds of times. He would drink the wine Yuichi had left; he would light the cigarette butts Yuichi had left behind. He would beg Yuichi to leave his cakes in the plate half-eaten, with his tooth marks plain to see in the remnants.

  Yuichi’s mother was ready to believe that Nobutaka Kaburagi’s suggestion that her son be permitted to study the world was the very remedy needed to cure the boy’s dissolute ways. He was, after all, a student. It was not well to forget about the career he was to assume after he graduated.

  “There is the matter of Father Segawa’s department store,” she said, addressing Yuichi in tones designed for Nobutaka to hear. “Your father-in-law wishes to help you get an education. Before we can take this offer seriously we must confer with him.”

  He looked into his mother’s eyes, which had weakened with the years. This old person is making sure of the future! This old lady who might, for all we know, drop dead tomorrow! The one who, on the other hand, doesn’t find a thing sure about tomorrow is youth, thought Yuichi. In general, old people believe in the future through force of habit, but young people don’t have years of habit behind them. That’s the only difference between them.

  Yuichi lifted his beautiful brows. He set forth strong yet childish arguments: “It’s all right. After all, they didn’t adopt me.”

  Yasuko looked at Yuichi’s profile as he spoke these words. She wondered if he was being cruel to her because of his wounded pride. It was time for her to speak on his behalf.

  “I can tell my father anything. You do exactly as you please.”

  Yuichi then set forth what he and Nobutaka had agreed on earlier, how he might help out without interfering with his studies. His mother earnestly pleaded with Nobutaka in the matter of Yuichi’s development. These pleas were far too earnest, and would certainly have sounded strange to a bystander. Nobutaka, it seemed, was going to work a miraculous education upon this precious prodigal son.

  The talk had just about ended. Nobutaka Kaburagi invited everyone out to dinner. The mother declined at first, but gave in when she was told she would be taken and brought back by car. She got up to get ready. It was evening, and snow was falling again, so she put on a flannel stomach band and slipped a pocket heater inside it to protect her kidneys.

  The five of them went out in Nobutaka’s hired car to a restaurant in the Ginza. After dinner Nobutaka suggested they go to a dance hall. Even Yuichi’s mother was willing to go; she wanted to see the worst. She even wanted to see a strip show, but this evening there was none.

  She modestly admired the dancers* revealing costumes: “How pretty! Really becoming. That blue diagonal line is absolutely charming.”

  Yuichi felt a freedom in his whole body that he could not easily explain. He suddenly realized he had forgotten Shunsuke’s existence. He made up his mind that he would not tell Shunsuke about this new private-secretary arrangement nor about his relationship with Nobutaka. This small resolution cheered him. It made him ask Mrs. Kaburagi to dance. When she complied he asked: “What makes you so happy?” Then he added, looking deep in the woman’s eyes: “Don’t you even know?”

  In that moment Mrs. Kaburagi’s happiness barely left her free to breathe.

  Chapter 15 BLUE SUNDAY

  ON A SUNDAY long before spring, at eleven in the morning, Yuichi and Nobutaka Kaburagi, who had spent the night together, parted at the ticket gate of the Kanda Station.

  The night before they had had a little quarrel. Nobutaka had reserved a hotel room without consulting Yuichi, and Yuichi had angrily made him cancel it. Nobutaka strove to mollify him, and in the end they went to a Kanda neighborhood hotel and took whatever room was available. They hesitated at staying at any of the usual assignation houses.

  This was a miserable night. Since the regular rooms were taken, they were given a tasteless ten-mat room that was sometimes used for parties. There was no heat, and it was cold as a temple sanctuary. It was a run-down, ice-cold room in the middle of a concrete building. The two sat by a hibachi containing embers dim as fireflies and an ash tray filled with stale butts, their overcoats hanging from their shoulders as if they intended to stay here without seeing each other’s misery. They idly watched the fat legs of the unceremonious maid who came in kicking the dust and made up the bed.

  “My, you awful men. Don’t look at me, like that!” the maid said. Her hair was reddish and sparse.

  The hotel was called the Tourist Hoteru. If a guest opened the window, he had a view of the toilet and the dressing room in back of the dance hall next door. The windows appeared red and blue by the neon light. The night wind came sneaking through the cracks about the window of their room, congealed the air and fluttered the tom wallpaper. The sodden voices of two drunken women and a man in the next room sounded as if they were coming out of a drainpipe; they droned on till three in the morning. Dawn came early through their window, which had no storm shutter. There wasn’t even a waste basket. The only place to discard paper was on top of the six-foot-high room partition separating the main room from its foyer. It was piled high with rubbish.

  It was a cloudy morning, promising snow. Since ten o’clock a guitar could be heard strumming. Driven by the cold, Yuichi walked rapidly as he left the hotel. Nobutaka followed him, breathing hard.

  “Mr. Chairman”—when the youth addressed him thus it was more by way of contempt than respect—“I’m going home; if I don’t there’ll be trouble.”

  “But didn’t you say we were going to be together all day today?”

  Yuichi looked abstractedly out of his beautiful eyes and said, coldly: “If you don’t stop always wanting your own way, we’re not going to stay together very long.”

  When Pope spent the night with Yuichi, he could not get enough of looking at the beloved sleeping form. He hardly slept a wink. His color was not good that morning. Also, his cheeks were rather swollen. The blue-black face nodded reluctantly.

  When Nobutaka’s taxi drove off, Yuichi was left alone in the grimy throng. To go home all he had to do was go through the ticket gate. Instead he tore up the ticket he had purchased, turned about, and strode along a row of restaurants that stood adjacent to each other behind the station. The drinking places were silent, bearing “Closed Today” signs. At an inconspicuous door among them, Yuichi rapped. A voice sounded from inside.

  “It’s me,” Yuichi said.

  “Ah, Yuchan,” the voice said; the frosted-glass door slid open.

  In the narrow shop there were four or five men in a circle hunched over a gas stove. All turned and greeted Yuichi. There was, however, no note of surprise in their eyes. Yuichi was already one of them.

  The proprietor was a man of about forty, gaunt as wire. Around his neck he wore a checkered muffler. Beneath the coat he wore like a cloak, his pajama trousers could be seen. The employees were three young chattering men, each in a garish ski sweater. One customer was present— an old man in a Japanese overcoat.

  “Ooh, it’s cold. What a chilly day! And the sun shining like that.” With these words all looked toward the frosted-glass door through which the weak sun angled dispiritedly.

  “Yuchan, are you going skiing?” said one young fellow.

  “No, I’m not,” he replied.

  When Yuichi came in the door he was aware that these men had assembled here because they had no place to go on a Sunday. A homosexual’s Sunday is pitiful. On that day, all day, no territory is theirs. The daytime world, they feel, takes over completely.

  Go to the theater, go to a coffeehouse, go to the zoo, go to an amusement park, go to town, go out to the suburbs even; everywhere the principle of majority rule is lording about in pride. Old couples, middle-aged couples, young couples, lovers, families, children, children, children, children, children and, to top it off, thos
e blasted baby carriages—all of these things in procession, a cheering, advancing tide. It was easy for Yuichi, too, to imitate them and go out walking with Yasuko. But above his head, somewhere in the shining sky, was God’s eye, seeing through all sham.

  Yuichi thought: The only way I can be myself on a bright Sunday is to lock myself up in a smoked-glass jail like this.

  The men gathered here were already sick of each other’s company. Exercising care not to look at each other, they would do nothing but cling to the topics of long years past. The gossip about a Hollywood star, the report that a certain high dignitary was one of their kind, talk about one’s own amours, even more lewd funny stories from broad daylight—these were the topics.

  Yuichi had no wish to be here. But he didn’t want to be anywhere else. We human beings sometimes steer off in a direction in which we hope to find something a little bit better. With the satisfaction of that moment is combined a joy—“This is a little bit better”—that revives the impossible wild hopes we hold in our heart of hearts. For that reason, indeed, Yuichi had just given Nobutaka the slip so that he could be somewhere like this.

  If he went home, Yasuko’s lamb’s eyes would fasten upon his, as if in a refrain: “I love you, I love you.” Her morning sickness ended when January was over. Only a sharp pain in her breasts remained. With these sensitive, easily hurt, purple antennae, Yasuko reminded him on an insect maintaining contact with the outside world. That sharp pain in the breasts that without difficulty felt out all the doings ten miles around filled Yuichi with indefinable fear.

  Now, whenever Yasuko went downstairs rapidly, a sudden faint pulsation reached her breasts and she felt twinges of sharp pain. If her slip so much as touched her breasts, they hurt. One night when Yuichi tried to embrace her, she pleaded pain and pushed him away. This rejection was in truth unexpected even for Yasuko. It must have been that instinct had induced a subtle vengeance within her.

  Yuichi’s fear of Yasuko had gradually evolved into a complicated, paradoxical thing. Seen as a mere woman, his wife was much younger than Mrs. Kaburagi and Kyoko, and doubtless had much more sex appeal. Objectively considered, Yuichi’s fickleness was irrational. When Yasuko seemed too sure of herself, he became uncomfortable and sometimes deliberately and awkwardly hinted that he was having an affair with another woman. When Yasuko heard that, a smile that said “How ridiculous!” started at the corners of her mouth. Her composure deeply wounded Yuichi’s self-respect. At such times Yuichi was threatened by the fear and the unprotected feeling that if anyone knew he could not love women, Yasuko above all would be that person.

  With that, in strange cruelty, he evolved a selfish theory. If Yasuko came face to face with the truth that her husband did not love women altogether, and believed that she had been hoodwinked from the start, there was nothing he could do. However, there were many husbands around who were able to love anyone but their wives. In those cases the circumstance in which the wives were then not being loved was evidence working against the truth that at some time earlier they had been loved. It was essential that Yasuko learn that he could not love her—for the love of Yasuko. To achieve it, Yuichi must now indulge in a little more debauchery. He must act proud of his refusal to sleep with his wife, and he must do it without fear, if he could.

  At the same time, there was no doubt that Yuichi loved Yasuko. The young wife beside him usually fell asleep after her husband did, but on nights when she was unusually tired and the sound of her breathing came to him, Yuichi could relax and look at her beautiful sleeping face.

  At such times happiness in possessing such a lovely creature flooded his breast. It was a commendable possessiveness, accompanied by no wish to harm. He thought it strange that in this world he could never, under any circumstances, be forgiven.

  “What are you thinking about, Yuchan?” one of the employees asked. All three employees here had already had relations with Yuichi.

  “He’s probably thinking about last night’s sex,” remarked the oldest of the three, a man wearing a Japanese overcoat. He looked toward the door again. “He’s late—my sex. We’re not of an age, though, to give each other a hard time.”

  They all laughed, but Yuichi shivered. This man of sixty-plus had a lover of sixty-plus.

  Yuichi wanted to get away. If he went home, Yasuko might greet him with joy. If he called Kyoko on the phone, she would come flying anywhere. If he went to the Kaburagi home, an almost painful smile of pleasure would flood over Mrs. Kaburagi’s face. If he met Nobutaka again today, all day—just to give Yuichi joy he would stand on his head in the middle of the Ginza. If he called Shunsuke —that’s right, he hadn’t met this old man in a long time— his aged voice would rise in eagerness in the telephone receiver. Nevertheless, Yuichi could not help thinking that he had a certain virtuous duty to stay here, cut off from all else.

  “To become myself”—is that all? That beautiful thing that should be—is that all? Not fooling myself—but isn’t the self that fools me myself? Where is the basis of truth? Is it in the moment when Yuichi for the sake of his outward beauty, for the sake of the self that exists merely to be seen by people, forfeits everything that is his own? Or is it in the moments like this—isolated from everything, giving up nothing? In the moment he loves boys, he is close to the last. Right. He himself is a thing like the sea. The sea’s exact depth is the depth of the sea at what time? Had his identity sunk to its lowest tide there in the dawn at that gay party? Or at a time like this lazy high tide, asking for nothing, when anything is too much?

  Again he was seized by the wish to see Shunsuke. He wished to go now and tell that trusting old man the most barefaced lies; it no longer satisfied him to withhold only the story of Nobutaka.

  Shunsuke had spent the whole morning of this day reading. He read the Sokonshu and the Tale of Shotetsu. The authors, collectively called Shotetsu, were medieval priests who, tradition has it, were reincarnations of Teika Fujiwara. Of all the vast literature of the Middle Ages and the works that have attained world renown, Shunsuke found to his taste only two or three poets, two or three works. Scenic poems, from which mankind is completely absent, like that about the peaceful garden of the recluse of the Eifuku Gate, or the extraordinary tale of virtue about the prince who took on himself the guilt of the retainer Chuta and was beheaded by his own father—the fairy tale called “The Broken Inkstone”—once nourished Shunsuke’s poetic instincts.

  In the Tale of Shotetsu, Section 23 says that if someone asks where Mount Yoshino is, a person should answer that when one writes poems about cherry blossoms he recalls Mount Yoshino; if about maple leaves, the River Tatsuta; that’s all. Whether it’s in Ise or Hyuga, one doesn’t know. The information as to where it may be is useless to remember. Even though one makes no effort to remember, however, the fact keeps being remembered of itself that Yoshino was in Yamato. That’s what it says.

  When put into words, youth is a thing like that, the old man thought. For cherry blossoms, Yoshino; for maple leaves, Tatsuta—other than that can there be any definition of youth? The artist spends the half of his life after his youth is over searching for the meaning of youth. He explores the native land of youth. What does that amount to? Cognition has already ruptured the sensual harmony existing between cherry blossoms and Yoshino. Yoshino has lost it universal meaning. It has become a point on a map— or a period in past time: Yoshino, in Yamato, nothing more.

  While absorbed in these random reflections, no doubt Shunsuke without realizing it began to think about Yuichi. He read the tersely beautiful poem by Shotetsu:

  In that moment when the crowd on the riverbank sees the boat come in, and every heart among them beats with the same emotion.

  Shunsuke imagined that moment when the hearts of the crowd waiting for the boat to come in to the shore purely blended and crystallized, and he felt a strange palpitation.

  He expected four or five guests this Sunday. He had these guests in because he wished to demonstrate to himself that this amiabili
ty unsuited to his years was mixed with considerable contempt, but he also did it so that he could confirm the continuing youthfulness of his emotions. His complete works were coming off the press, in ever new editions. The disciples who were making revisions for him were coming in for conferences. And what did that amount to? What good did it do to edit slightly something that was one great error from beginning to end?

  Shunsuke wanted to take a trip. He found this piling up of blue Sundays hard to endure. Yuichi’s long silence had made him quite miserable. He thought he might take a trip alone to Kyoto. This very lyrical sadness, the frustrating sadness of having his writings interrupted by Yuichi’s silence, this groan over things unfinished, as it must be called, was something Shunsuke had completely forgotten since his days of literary apprenticeship over forty years earlier. This groan was a harking back to the most awkward part of youth, the most unpleasant, least valuable part. That was a fatalistic incompleteness going far beyond the usual interruption, a ridiculous incompleteness filled with humiliation. Every time one reached out one’s hand, all the branches and fruit would be carried high in the wind; no fruit ever reached the mouth of Tantalus. In this incompleteness his thirst was never assuaged. In that period, one day—that was now over thirty years in the past— the artist in Shunsuke was born. The disease of incompleteness left him. In its place, perfection came to threaten. Perfectionism became his chronic complaint. It was an illness that showed no wound. It was an illness with no affected part. It was an illness without bacteria, fever, accelerating pulse, headache or twitches. It was an illness like death, above all.

  He knew that nothing would cure this disease except death—unless his work died before his body did. The natural death of creativity paid a visit. He became moody. He was, to the same degree, cheerful. As he no longer turned out books, his forehead became carved with artistic wrinkles. His neuralgia seized his knee in romantic twinges.