Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

“This is living!” her giddy heart exulted. “This is really living! What thrills and what release! What a dangerous dream of adventure! What fulfillment for the imagination! Tonight in the taste of my husband’s kisses I shall be reminded of the lips of this youth! What safe and at the same time supremely adulterous joy! I can stop there. That far I’m in control. As for anything else, the best way. . . .”

  Kyoko called one of the waiters in scarlet uniform with gold buttons and asked him what time the floor show would start. Midnight, he told her.

  “We won’t be able to see the show here. I’ll have to leave at eleven thirty. We still have forty minutes.”

  At her urging, Yuichi danced with her again. The music stopped, and they went back to their table. The American band leader grasped the microphone with tremendous fingers, on one of which golden hair and a ring with a beryl glittered, and introduced himself in English. The foreigners laughed and applauded.

  The musicians broke into a fast rumba. The lights went off. Lights glowed on the dressing room door. Then the catlike forms of the rumba dancers, a man and a woman, glided out of the half-open door.

  Their silk costumes fluttered in great pleats. Countless tiny, embroidered, round metal scales shimmered, green, gold, and orange. The hips of the man and woman, shining in silk, were like lizards in the grass. They drew together. Then they separated.

  Kyoko rested her elbows on the tablecloth, held her throbbing temples with painted fingernails that seemed as if they would penetrate into her head, and watched. The pain caused by the fingernails was as pleasant as peppermint.

  Suddenly she looked at her watch.

  “We’ll have to be getting—” She became concerned and held the watch to her ear. “What happened? The show started an hour early or something.”

  She was distinctly alarmed. She bent over and looked at the wrist watch on Yuichi’s left hand resting on the table.

  “That’s strange. Same time.”

  Kyoko watched the dancers again. She stared at the male dancer, whose mouth was shaped in a sneer. She was trying with all her might to think of something. The music and the tapping of feet, however, interfered. She stood up, not knowing why. She staggered as she walked holding onto tables. Yuichi stood up and went with her. She stopped one of the waiters and asked him: “What time is it?”

  “Ten after twelve, ma’am.”

  Kyoko brought her face up close to Yuichi’s and said: “You set the watches back, didn’t you?” -

  A mischievous smile floated at the comers of Yuichi’s mouth: “Uh-huh.”

  Kyoko was not angry: “I can still make it. I must go.”

  Yuichi’s face became more serious: “Must you?”

  “Yes, I’m going.”

  At the checkroom she said, “My, I’m really tired today. I played tennis, walked, danced ...”

  Holding up her hair in back, Kyoko slipped into the coat Yuichi was holding. Once she had the coat on she tossed her hair again broadly and gently. Her agate earrings, of the same color as her clothing, waved wildly.

  Kyoko pulled herself together. In the cab with Yuichi she took the initiative and gave the driver the location of her house in Akasaka. While the cab was on its way, she recalled the streetwalkers spreading their nets to catch foreigners at the door of the club. She thought about it confusedly.

  Oh, my. That awful green suit! That painted brunette! That flat nose! To make matters worse, honest women can’t smoke cigarettes as if they enjoy them like that. How good those cigarettes seemed to be!

  The cab came closer to Akasaka. “Turn left there, please. That’s right. Straight ahead,” she said.

  At that point, Yuichi, who had been silent, pinioned her arms forcefully and, burying his face in her hair, kissed the back of her neck. Kyoko could smell again the scent of the same pomade that had perfumed her dreams so many times.

  “Now, at a time like this, I wish I could smoke,” she said to herself. “That would be really stylish.”

  Kyoko’s eyes were open. She looked at the lights outside the window; she looked at the cloudy night sky. Suddenly she had the strange power to see everything as worthless. Another day was ending without incident. Only capricious, dispirited memories—lackadaisical, intermittent, and perhaps based on nothing other than weakness of imagination —would be left. Only the daily routine of life, assuming some strange, blood-curdling shape, would be left. Her fingertips rubbed against the young man’s fresh-shaven nape. In the roughness and warmth of his skin there was a startling sensation.

  Kyoko closed her eyes. The shaking of the cab made one fancy that the wretched road ran endlessly over a succession of ruts.

  She opened her eyes and whispered in Yuichi’s ear with an all-surpassing gentleness: “All right, you win. We passed my house long ago.”

  Yuichi’s eyes gleamed with joy. “To Yanagibashi,” he said quickly to the driver. Kyoko heard the squeal of the wheels making a U-turn. It might best be called a regretfully joyful squeal.

  This imprudent decision had tired Kyoko considerably. Her fatigue and her drunkenness spun together about her. She had to struggle to keep from falling asleep. She used Yuichi’s shoulder as a pillow and, out of the necessity of forcing herself to feel charming, she imagined she was a linnet or some such small bird closing her eyes.

  At the entrance of an avec hotel bearing the name “Kichijo,” she said: “How do you know about such places as this, darling?”

  As she said it, she felt a numbness in her legs. She walked down the halls through which the maid conducted them with her face hidden against Yuichi’s back. They went along an endlessly long zigzag hall and up a staircase that suddenly towered around a corner. The cold of the night hallways against stockinged feet made her head ring. She could barely stand. She wished they would get to the room where she could crumple into a sitting posture.

  When they got to the room, Yuichi said: “We can see the Sumida River. That building over there is a beer company warehouse.”

  Kyoko didn’t dare to look at the riverscape. She wanted only that everything be done with as quickly as possible.

  Kyoko Hodaka woke up in complete darkness.

  She could see nothing. The storm shutters had been drawn over the windows. Not a crack of light filtered through anywhere. Her bare bosom was cold, making her think the weather was getting colder. She groped about and drew together the collar of her well-starched hotel nightrobe. She reached her hand down. She was wearing nothing under the robe. She could not recall when last she had taken off every stitch. She could not recall when she had put on this stiff robe.

  That was it! This room adjoined the room with the river view. She had surely come in here before Yuichi and undressed herself. Yuichi at that time had been on the other side of the partition. After a time, all the lights had been extinguished in the other room. Yuichi came from the dark room into the darker room. Kyoko kept her eyes closed tight. Then everything began marvelously and ended in dreams. Everything ended with indisputable perfection.

  What happened after the lights in the room went out— and Yuichi’s image—filled Kyoko’s thoughts as she lay with her eyes closed. Even now she did not have the courage to touch the real Yuichi. His form was the incarnation of joy. In it were indescribably blended greenness and wisdom, youth and mastery, love and scorn, piety and sacrilege. Even now not the slightest resentment or guilt sufficed to dull Kyoko’s joy; even her slight hangover could not alter it. After a time, her hand searched for Yuichi’s hand.

  Her hand touched that hand. It was cold. The bones protruded. It was dry like tree bark. The veins were hollow bulges and pulsed faintly. Kyoko shuddered and released the hand.

  He coughed suddenly in the darkness. It was a long, gloom-enshrouded cough. It was a painful cough, dragging a tangled, muddy tail. It was a cough like death. Kyoko was touched by that cold dry arm and almost screamed. She felt as if she were sleeping with a skeleton.

  She got up and felt about for the lamp that should have been by the
pillows. Her fingers slipped fruitlessly about on the cold tatami. There was a lamp with a Japanese lantern shade far from the pillows in one corner. She lit the lamp and discovered, resting on the pillow next to her vacant one, the face of an old man.

  Shunsuke’s cough, dragging tail and all, had stopped. He raised his eyes as if dazzled. He said: “Shut it off, won’t you? It’s too bright.” As he finished speaking, he closed his eyes again and turned his face away from the light.

  Kyoko couldn’t figure it all out; she stood up. She passed in back of Shunsuke’s pillow and searched out her clothes in the garment box. Until the woman had put on her clothes, the old man lay silent, cunningly feigning sleep.

  When she showed signs of leaving, he said: “Are you going?”

  The woman said nothing and started out.

  “Wait, huh?”

  Shunsuke got up.

  He started to throw his padded dressing gown over his shoulders to stop the woman. Kyoko stopped, but showed every intention of leaving immediately.

  “Wait, please. It’s too late to go now.”

  “I’m going. I’ll scream if you stop me.”

  “Go ahead. You don’t have the courage to scream.” Kyoko asked with her voice shaking: “Where is Yuchan?”

  “He went home long ago. He’s now probably sleeping snug as a bug beside his wife.”

  “Why have you done this? What have I done? What do you have against me? What do you hope to achieve? Have I done anything you hate me for?”

  Shunsuke did not answer. He turned on the light in the room with the view of the river. Kyoko sat down as if struck by that ray of light.

  “You don’t blame Yuichi at all, do you?”

  “How do I know? I don’t even know what’s going on.” Kyoko stretched out and burst into tears. Shunsuke let her cry. It was impossible to explain all, even if Shunsuke understood everything. Kyoko did not deserve this much humiliation.

  He waited for the woman to compose herself and then said: “For a long time I was in love with you, but you turned me down and laughed at me. Even you must admit that I could not have brought this about my ordinary means.”

  “Why did Yuchan do this?”

  “He likes you in his own unique way.”

  “You two were in cahoots, weren’t you?”

  “Not at all. I wrote the synopsis. Yuichi just lent a hand.”

  “Oh, how ugly—”

  “What’s ugly? You wanted something beautiful and you got it. I wanted something beautiful, too, and I got it; that’s all. Isn’t that right? We’re in the same line. When you talk about things being ugly, you’re falling into self contradiction.”

  “I don’t know whether I’m going to die or have you arrested.”

  “Terrific! If you can give out with words like those, we’ve made a lot of progress in one night. But please try to be more frank. The humiliation and the ugliness you’re thinking about are all imaginary. For surely we’ve seen something beautiful. It’s certain that we have, the two of us, seen something of the quality of a rainbow.”

  “Why isn’t Yuchan here?”

  “Yuichi isn’t here. He was here until a while ago, but he’s not here any more. There’s nothing mysterious about that. We have been left together, no one else.”

  Kyoko shuddered. This approach to existence was beyond her powers of comprehension. Shunsuke went on unconcernedly.

  “It’s over, and we are left behind. Even though Yuichi went to bed with you, the result is six of one and half a dozen of another.

  ‘This is the first time in my life I have ever seen people so despicable as you two.”

  “Now come, come. Why do you say ‘you two’? Yuichi is innocent. Today, for this one day, three people have done what they desired, that’s all. Yuichi loved you in his fashion; you loved him in your fashion; I loved you in my fashion, that’s all. Everybody loves in his own fashion; there’s no other way, is there?”

  “I can’t figure out what Yuichi has in mind. That fellow is a spook!”

  “You’re a spook. After all, you loved a spook. But Yuichi doesn’t hold the slightest particle of ill will toward you.”

  “How could he do such a horrible thing to a person he didn’t hold any ill will toward?”

  “Briefly, he knew full well you had done nothing to deserve this. Between a man bearing no ill will and a guiltless woman—who have not a thing to share with each other—if there is anything that might tie them together, it is ill will from the outside, guilt brought in from the outside, that’s all. In all the old tales that’s the very way it happens. As you know, I am a novelist.” Seized with the outright ridiculousness of it, he started to laugh by himself but then stopped.

  “Yuichi and I weren’t in cahoots or anything. That’s a figment of your imagination. We simply had no connection. Yuichi and I—well—” He smiled slowly. “We’re just friends. If you must hate someone, hate me, to your heart’s content.”

  “But—” Kyoko twisted her body modestly as she cried: “I don’t have any room for hate; right now I’m just horrified.”

  The whistle of a freight train crossing the nearby iron bridge reverberated in the night. It was an endless, monotonous, stumbling repetition. After a time, from the other side of the bridge it had just crossed, the train flashed a long whistle and then was silent.

  Truthfully, the one who really saw the “ugliness” was not Kyoko but Shunsuke. Even in the moment the woman raised her moan of pleasure, he did not forget his own ugliness.

  Shunsuke Hinoki had known many times this awful moment in which the existence of something unloved intrudes upon an existence that is loved. Woman subjugated —that is a superstition created by novels! Woman can never be subjugated. Never! Just as there are occasions in which men out of their reverence for women attempt to humiliate them, there are occasions in which women as a manifestation of supreme contempt give their bodies to men. Mrs. Kaburagi, of course, as well as every one of his three wives, had never once been conquered. Kyoko, anesthetized into giving her body to a vision of Yuichi, was no different—incontrovertibly. If one needs reasons, there is only one. It was because Shunsuke himself was convinced that no one could love him.

  These were strange intimacies. Shunsuke tortured Kyoko. He ruled now by a terrible power. But it added up to nothing more than the machinations of a person who was not loved. The conduct of Shunsuke, who from the beginning had had no hope, was marked by not the slightest mercy, by nothing of what society calls humanity.

  Kyoko was silent. She was sitting straight up, without making a sound. To this flighty female, such a long period of silence was something that had never occurred before. Once she had learned this quietness, perhaps it would become the way she naturally comported herself. Shunsuke, too, kept his mouth closed. They seemed to believe they could go on here until dawn without saying a word. When night came to an end she would take the little tools out of her bag, make herself up, and return to her husband’s house. It would be a long time, though, until the river whitened; the two people suspected this night would go on forever.

  Chapter 23 DAYS OF RIPENING

  HER HUSBAND’S BUSY LIFE, with its unknown motives, went on. When she thought he was at school, he would return home in the middle of the night; when she thought he was staying home, he would suddenly go out. Even though Yuichi was pursuing the daily existence of a “ne’er-do-well,” as his mother called him, Yasuko’s life was now truly serene, one might say almost happy. There were reasons for her peace. She was oblivious to everything but what was going on inside her.

  The comings and goings of spring excited in her not the slightest concern. Things outside her had no power. The sensation of little legs kicking within her, the sensation of nourishing tiny violence—it was all a continuing drunkenness that had started with her and would end with her. The so-called external world was possessed by her inner world; she embraced the world inside herself. The external world was simply superfluous.

  When she imagined
the small shiny ankles, and the small shiny soles covered with clean tiny wrinkles, thrust out of the deep night and kicking the darkness, she felt that her own existence had become nothing but the warm, blood-smeared, nourishing darkness itself. The feeling that she was being consumed, the feeling that her insides were being deeply violated, the feeling she was ill—above all, the feeling she was being deeply ravished: whatever the immoral desires or the indulgent sensations, they were ostentatiously pardoned there. Yasuko wore a smile of her very own, sent as from afar. Sometimes she laughed a transparent laugh; sometimes she did not laugh at all. Her smile was quite like a blind man’s smile, a smile barely alight on the face of a person straining his ears for a distant sound that only he could hear.

  If for just one day the child inside her did not move, her anxiety was more than she could stand. Surely it was dead! It pleased her sweet mother-in-law considerably to be told of these childish fears and to be importuned into detailed consultations.

  “It figures; Yuichi, too, is a boy who doesn’t let his feelings come to the surface,” she said to her daughter-in-law, with a comforting look on her face. “That must be why he goes out drinking. This baby coming must have him all mixed up, what with the joy of it and the anxiety of it.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Yasuko with conviction. For this self-sufficient spirit, comfort was unnecessary. “Instead of that, what bothers me most is not knowing yet whether the child I’m carrying is a girl or a boy. What if I’ve pretty much decided that it’s a boy, and am thinking of a child the image of Yuchan; what will I do if a girl just like me is born?”

  “Oh, my! I’m hoping for a girl. I’ve had my fill of boys. Nothing is that hard to raise.”

  Thus the two got along swimmingly. When Yasuko had things to do that would have taken her out of the house in all her embarrassing physical unshapeliness, her mother-in-law gladly went instead. But when this woman with her kidney ailment presented herself, escorted by Kiyo, the maid, few met her without rounding their eyes in surprise.