Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

About the same time, however, a bulky letter from Mrs. Kaburagi, bearing the return address of that nunnery, was delivered to Yuichi. He hefted the letter in his hand. It seemed to whisper in its weight: “Here I am.”

  The letter said that the plain view of such a frightful scene had weakened her hold on life. That scene, so disgusting to look at, not only made her tremble with fear and humiliation, it also made her feel that she had absolutely no power to intervene in human affairs. She was already accustomed to an unconventional way of life. She had lightly skipped across its chasms, but this time she had finally looked into one. Her legs were numb; she could not walk. Mrs. Kaburagi was contemplating suicide.

  She started off toward the suburbs of Kyoto, where it was still early for cherry blossoms, and took a long walk alone. She enjoyed seeing the great bamboo groves rustling in the wind of the early spring.

  How vain, how vexatious, these bamboos in their greatness! she thought. And then, what stillness!

  The greatest manifestation of her unhappiness lay in her conviction that if she was going to die, she should hot think too much about being dead. When people do this, they escape death. For suicide, whether a lofty thing or lowly, is rather a suicide of thought itself; in general a suicide in which the subject does not think too much does not exist.

  If it happened that she couldn’t die—her thoughts took the opposite tack—it would be because the very thing that once drove her to death was now coming to look like the only thing that would keep her alive. What charmed her now much more fiercely than Yuichi’s beauty was the ugliness of his action. As a result she had calmly reached the view that there was no greater meeting of minds than in the absolute, incontrovertible humiliation that lay in the identity of their feelings when she saw him and he was seen by her.

  Was the ugliness of that action his weak point? No. One must not think that a woman like Mrs. Kaburagi loved weakness. It was nothing more than the most extreme challenge to her sensibilities that his power could exert upon her. Thus she did not realize that what at first seemed a matter for her sentiments was, after various stem ordeals, becoming a problem of her will. There is not so much as a scintilla of gentleness in my love, she reflected, incongruously. As her steeled sensibilities saw him, the more monstrous Yuichi seemed, the more reason she had to love him.

  When he read the next passage, Yuichi smiled a bitter smile. How naive! While making me out to be beautiful, and she with her heart pure, now she tries to compete with me at being dirty, he thought to himself.

  Nowhere so much as in this interminable, whorish confession had Mrs. Kaburagi’s passion ever come so close to being maternal. In trying to equal Yuichi's sins, Mrs. Kaburagi laid bare all of her own sins. In order to mount to the height of Yuichi’s immorality, she laboriously piled up her own immorality. She produced evidence to show that she and he were blood relatives. She was like a mother gladly taking guilt on herself in order to protect her son. She laid her own misconduct bare. In her disregard of the effect her confession would have on the youth, moreover, she practically attained the egoism of maternity. Did she divine that this resolute baring of her soul, by rendering her completely unlovable, would provide the only means by which she could be loved? Frequently a mother-in-law is driven to be cruel to her daughter-in-law by a certain frantic impulse to make herself less lovable in the eyes of a son who already does not love her.

  Before the war Mrs. Kaburagi was only another commonplace lady of the nobility, a little promiscuous, but far purer than people thought. When her husband met Jackie and immersed himself quietly in the affairs of that street, and began neglecting his functions as a husband, she accepted a state of affairs that seemed not at all different from that of the normal couple. The war rescued them from boredom. They could take pride in the fact that they had had no children to bind them hand and foot.

  It became clear at this time that her husband not only recognized her waywardness but indeed incited it. Nevertheless, she found no joy in the two or three casual affairs she experienced. She tasted no new emotion. She came to consider herself as indifferent, and as she did so her husband’s insupportable attitude toward her became a source of annoyance. He interrogated her about it, point by point, and realized that the indifference he had nurtured in her over a long period of time was not wavering ever so slightly, and he rejoiced. There was no certificate of chastity like this stony indifference.

  At that time there was always a group of silly admirers around her. There were middle-aged gentlemen, businessmen types, artist types, younger-generation types—how ridiculous that phrase sounds!—like the types of women in a whorehouse. They were representative of the idle life at the height of the war, a life that knew no tomorrow.

  One day in summer a telegram came to the Shiga Heights Hotel, bringing one of her coterie his draft call. On the night before he departed, Mrs. Kaburagi yielded this youth something she had not yielded to the others. Not because she loved him. At this time she knew this young man needed not a particular woman but an unknown woman, woman in general. She had the confidence to play the part of that woman. In that respect she differed from ordinary women.

  The youth had to leave in the morning, on the first bus. They rose in the dawn. The youth was amazed at the sight of this woman busily packing his bags. I’ve never seen her act so much like a housewife, he thought. In one night, that’s how I changed her. That’s the feeling you get from conquest.

  One should not take too seriously a man’s feelings on the day he is being inducted. Beguiled by sentimentality and pathos, confident that whatever he did would be dismissed as harmless, he felt that any stupidity would be forgiven him. Youths who find themselves in this position are more complacent than middle-aged men.

  Room service came in with the coffee. Mrs. Kaburagi averted her gaze when she saw the utterly prodigal tip the young man gave.

  Then the youth said to her, “Oh, I forgot, ma’am, to ask for a picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “Yours, dear.”

  “Why?”

  “To take to the front with me.”

  Mrs. Kaburagi burst out laughing, in laughter that knew no control. While she laughed, she opened the french doors. The dawn fog whirled into the room.

  The soldier-to-be turned up the collar of his pajamas and sneezed.

  “It’s cold. Close the door.”

  The tone of command in which he concealed his resentment upset Mrs. Kaburagi. “Well, if that makes you cold— soldiers never have it that good!” she said. She made him put on his clothes and rushed him to the door. He didn’t get the picture. In fact, the tearful youth didn’t even get the good-bye kiss he requested from this so suddenly ill-tempered lady.

  “Well, I can write you, can’t I?” the youth, nervous about the other well-wishers, whispered in her ear as they were about to part. She smiled in silence.

  When the bus melted away into the fog, Mrs. Kaburagi, her shoes soaked through, followed a little path to the boat dock of Maruike Pond. One rotted boat was half-filled with water. There was about this place, too, the lonely neglect of a summer resort in wartime. In the fog, the reeds looked like the ghosts of reeds. In one place the fog, lighted faintly by the rays of morning, seemed to be a reflection of the surface of the water floating in the air.

  To give one’s body when one does not love, Mrs. Kaburagi thought, picking at the hair that had become twisted at her temples as she slept. What comes so easy to a man, why is it so difficult for a woman? Why is it only prostitutes are permitted to know about it?

  Oddly, she realized now that the vexation and the laughing disdain that had suddenly welled up in her for that young man were caused by his extravagant tip to the waitress. I gave my body—free. I had a little spirit left; I had my pride, she rationalized. If he had paid for my body with that money, I would certainly have been able to see him off with a freer spirit. Just like a whore at the front lines, I would have thrown open my body and my soul to a man’s last desires, with a free spiri
t, filled with conviction.

  She heard a faint sound at her ear. The mosquitoes that had been resting their wings at the tips of the reeds through the night buzzed by her head. There was something strange about the existence of mosquitoes here on the plateau. They were, however, light blue and delicate-seeming; it was hard to believe they would suck one’s blood. Soon a cloud of mosquitoes ascended softly into the morning fog. Mrs. Kaburagi realized that her white sandals were half-filled with water.

  In that time by the lakeside, the thoughts that flickered through her mind clung to her wartime existence. To be forced to think that a simple gift was mutual love was surely to commit an inevitable sacrilege against the pure act of giving. Every time she committed that offense she tasted the humiliation of it. War was a blighted gift. War was one blood-smeared sentimentality, a squandering of love—in short, a squandering of watchwords.

  From the bottom of her heart, she paid the whole noisy business a laugh of ridicule. Her flashy dress showed no concern for what people thought. Her character degenerated ever further. She went so far as to be seen kissing a blacklisted foreigner in the hallway of the Imperial Hotel, was questioned by the Military Police, and ended by getting her name in the newspapers. Anonymous letters never stopped coming to the Kaburagi family mailbox. The bulk of them were threats. Some called the countess a traitor; one of them, for instance, politely suggested that she commit suicide.

  Count Kaburagi’s guilt was not heavy. He was only a laggard. The time when Jackie was interrogated on suspicion of espionage was many times more upsetting to the count than the occasion of his wife’s investigation, but even this affair ended without any real ill effect on him. When he heard just a rumor of air raids, he fled with his wife to Karuizawa. There he made connections with an old admirer of his father’s, now the commander of the Nagano District Defense Forces, who was so good as to deliver them once each month an abundance of army rations.

  When the war ended, the count looked forward to limitless freedom. Moral disorder, to be inhaled easily as morning air! He was drunk with indiscipline. Now, however, economic troubles and the tightness of money stole the freedom from his hands.

  During the war Nobutaka had been elevated for no good reason to the chairmanship of the Federation of Marine Products Industries Associations. As one of the perquisites of his office he set up a small company selling bags made of moray leather, which fell outside the leather controls of the time. That was the Far East Marine Products Corporation. The moray has an eel’s body with no scales, and is yellowish brown in color with horizontal stripes. These strange fish, which grow to five feet in length, live among the reefs of nearby waters. When men come near them they stare with languid eyes and open wide their jaws, lined with sharp teeth. Guided by members of the Association, Nobutaka went one day to visit the seaside caves where the moray live in great numbers. For a long time he watched them from a little boat rocking in the waves. One of the creatures, slithering among the rocks, opened his mouth wide and menacingly at the count. This strange fish caught Nobutaka’s fancy.

  After the war, controls were suddenly lifted. Far East Marine Products business declined. The company altered its articles of incorporation and diversified to Hokkaido kelp, herring, Sanriku abalone, and other marine products. At the same time, it specialized in products that were used as Chinese foodstuffs and sold them to Chinese merchants in Japan as well as to smugglers in the China trade. Then assessment of the estate tax forced the sale of the Kaburagi mansion. Far East Marine Products, too, was low on funds.

  At this time, a man named Nozaki, who said that Nobutaka’s father had helped him long ago, appeared from nowhere and advanced him funds. Except that he was a former follower of Michiru Toyama in China and that Nobutaka’s father had put him up in his home during his student days, this man’s lineage and history were obscure. Some said that while the Chinese Revolution was going on, this man had gathered some former Japanese artillerymen and plunged into the revolution. He contracted for a certain amount per direct hit. Others said that after the war he loaded false-bottom suitcases with opium, smuggled them into Shanghai, and sold them through his followers.

  Nozaki appointed himself president. Nobutaka was installed as chairman of the board, and was given 100,000 yen a month to keep far away from the management of the business. From that time Far East Marine Products assumed a vague, amorphous character. Then Nobutaka took lessons from Nozaki in buying up dollars. Nozaki entered into agreements with the Army of Occupation on behalf of heating companies and packing companies. He lined his own purse with the commissions. Sometimes, in order to cheat on the bid price, he played two clients against each other, all the while skillfully making use of the organization of Far East Marine Products and the name of Nobutaka. At one time, when the families of the Army of Occupation were departing in great numbers, Nozaki’s efforts to secure a contract in favor of a certain packing company were balked by the veto of the colonel in authority. He decided to fall back on the social talents of the Kaburagis and invited the colonel and his wife to dinner. Nozaki and the Kaburagis went to meet them. The colonel’s wife was ill and did not appear.

  It was on the next day that Nozaki visited the Kaburagi home on what he said was a private matter and asked for Mrs. Kaburagi’s help. She told him she needed till the next day to make up her mind. “After I speak to my husband, I’ll give you our answer,” she said. The thunderstruck Nozaki leaped to a common-sense interpretation. The forwardness of his request had angered her. Still, she smiled.

  “Don’t give me that kind of answer. If it’s no, say no. If you’re angry, I apologize. Let’s forget the whole thing.” “I’ll talk to my husband. Our house is different from others, you see. My husband will say yes, I’m certain.” “Ha!”

  “Just leave it to me. Of course, instead,” Mrs. Kaburagi said in a businesslike and thus disrespectful tone, “—instead of that, if I throw in with you, and the contract is signed, how about giving me twenty per cent of the commission you get?”

  Nozaki’s eyes became round. He looked at her with confidence. Then, in Tokyo dialect that lacked a certain nuance and showed that the speaker had worked long elsewhere he said: “Right; you’re on.”

  That evening, in a tone she might have used while reading from a primer, Mrs. Kaburagi straightforwardly reported to Nobutaka that day’s business discussion. He listened with eyes half closed. Then he glanced at his wife and mumbled something. This inscrutable pusillanimity on his part angered her. He looked delightedly at his wife’s provoked face and said: “Are you getting angry because I’m not stopping you?”

  “What are you talking about now?”

  Mrs. Kaburagi knew very well that her husband would not interfere with her plan. And it was not true that she hoped somewhere in her heart that he would be upset with what she was doing and oppose it. The reason she was angry was only her husband’s abject supineness.

  Whether he stood in her way or did not stand in her way amounted to the same thing. Her own mind was made up. It was just that at this time she wished, with a humility that surprised her, to confirm the strange tie that kept her from breaking away from a husband in name only, the indefinable tie she felt inside herself. Nobutaka, who had trained himself to affect an indolent sensibility when he was in front of his wife, had overlooked this quite noble feature of hers. Never to believe in misery—in that characteristic nobility lies.

  Nobutaka Kaburagi was frightened. His wife reminded him of an explosive about to go off. He took the trouble to stand up and put his hand on her shoulders.

  “I apologize. Do as you wish. It’s all right.”

  From that time, Mrs. Kaburagi despised him.

  Two days later she drove to Hakone with the colonel. The contract was sealed.

  Perhaps because she had been caught in a trap unconsciously set by Nobutaka, contempt somehow set Mrs. Kaburagi up as her husband’s partner in crime. The two would now always work hand in glove. In order to catch unsuspecting pigeons they
set the snares of their blackmail arrangement. Shunsuke Hinoki was one of their victims.

  Men in high places in the Army of Occupation who had dealings with Nozaki one by one became Mrs. Kaburagi’s lovers. Replacements came from time to time. New faces were taken in quickly. Nozaki came to respect her more and more. ...

  “Since I met thee, however,” Mrs. Kaburagi wrote, “my world has changed completely. I thought my muscles were entirely voluntary, but I seem to have the involuntary ones everyone else does. Thou wert a wall—to barbarian armies a fortress thousands of miles long. Thou wert a lover who would never love me. For that reason, I adored thee; I still adore thee as then.

  “When I say this, I should say that besides thee I had another Great Wall—Kaburagi. When I saw that, I understood for the first time. That is certainly why I have not been able to leave him until now. But Kaburagi is different from thee. He is not beautiful.

  “Since I met thee, I have given up all my mock harlotries. That Nozaki and Kaburagi have coaxed and wheedled, striving to get me to alter my decision, thou canst well imagine. Just the same, until the other day, I got by without listening to them. Since Kaburagi’s value depended on me, Nozaki held up his monthly salary. Kaburagi pleaded with me. At last I gave in, vowing that this would be the last time, and I played the harlot again. If I say that I was a prophet, thou wilt laugh, I suppose. When I came back with the document I had garnered on that day, I happened to see that.

  “I got together just a few jewels and left for Kyoto. I will sell those jewels in order to live for the present, and will find myself a respectable job. Fortunately, my great-aunt has told me I can stay here as long as I like.

  “Without me, perhaps Kaburagi will lose his job. No man can live on the pittance he gets from that sewing school. .

  “For several nights in a row I have dreamed of thee. I would really like to see thee. For the time being, though, I had better not.

  “I don’t mean to say do this please or that please when thou readest this letter. I won’t say now go on loving Kaburagi, and I won’t say throw Kaburagi over and love me. I want thee to be free; thou must be free. How could I wish to make thee mine? It would be like wishing to own the blue sky. The only thing I can say is that I adore thee. If ever thou shouldst come to Kyoto, be sure to come to Shishigatani. The temple is just north of the tomb of the Emperor Reizei.”