Confessions of a Mask

by Yukio Mishima

  Even more than before I was overcome with a feeling of humbleness. I was a person who could not help becoming serious whenever I let my guard down, but I was not afraid to do so before her. Had I forgotten my act? Had I forgotten that I was determined to fall utterly in love like any other person? However that may be, I had not the slightest feeling of being in love with this refreshing girl. And yet I felt at ease with her.

  The shower stopped and the setting sun shone into the room. Sonoko's eyes and lips gleamed. Her beauty depressed me, making me remember my own feeling of helplessness. This painful feeling made Sonoko seem all the more ephemeral.

  "As for us," I blurted out, "who knows how long we'll live? Suppose there were an air raid at this minute. Probably one of the bombs would fall directly on us."

  "Wouldn't that be wonderful!" She was serious. She had been toying with the pleats of her Scotch-plaid skirt, folding them back and forth, but as she said this she lifted her face and the light caught a sparkle of faint down on her cheeks. "Oh—if only a plane would come silently and make a direct hit on us while we're here like this—Don't you think so?" She did not realize that she was making a confession of love.

  "H'm. . . . Yes, that'd be fine," I replied in a conversational tone. Sonoko could not possibly have realized how deeply my answer was rooted in my secret desire. When I think back over it now, this dialogue strikes me as highly humorous. It was a conversation that, in peacetime, could have taken place only between two persons who were deeply in love."I'm really fed up with being separated by death and lifelong partings," I said, adopting a cynical tone to cover my embarrassment. "Don't you sometimes feel that, in times like these, to separate is normal and to meet is the miracle . . . that, when you think of it, even our being able to meet and talk together like this for a time is probably quite a miraculous thing? . . ."

  "Yes, I also . . ." She started speaking with some hesitation. Then she went on with an earnest but agreeable serenity. "But here when I was thinking we'd just begun meeting already we're to be separated. Grandmother is in a hurry to leave. As soon as we came home the other day, she sent a telegram to my aunt at N Village in N Prefecture, asking her to find a house for us. This morning my aunt called by long distance and said there're no houses to be had, no matter how you search. So she asked us to come and stay at her house. She said she'd be happy to have us because we'd make her house livelier. Grandmother made her mind up on the spot and said we'd come within two or three days."

  I could not make a casual reply. The pain I felt in my heart was so piercing that it surprised even me. The feeling of ease I felt with Sonoko had given me an illusion, a belief that all our days would be spent together and that everything would remain just as it was now. In a deeper sense it was a twofold illusion: the words with which she passed the sentence of separation upon us proclaimed the meaninglessness of our present meeting and revealed that my present feeling was only a passing happiness, and at the same time as they destroyed the childish illusion of believing this would last forever, they also opened my eyes to the fact that, even if there were no parting, no relationship between a boy and girl could ever remain just as it was.

  It was a painful awakening. Why were things wrong just as they were? The questions which I had asked myself numberless times since boyhood rose again to my lips. Why are we all burdened with the duty to destroy everything, change everything, entrust everything to impermanency? Is it this unpleasant duty that the world calls life? Or am I the only one for whom it is a duty? At least there was no doubt that I was alone in regarding the duty as a heavy burden.

  At last I spoke:

  "So, you're leaving. . . . But of course even if you were here, I myself would have to be going away before long. . . ."

  "Where're you going?"

  "They've decided to send us to live and work at some factory again beginning this month or in April."

  "But a factory—that'll be dangerous, with the air raids and all."

  "Yes, it'll be dangerous," I answered despairfully. I took my leave as quickly as possible. . . .

  All the following day I was in a carefree mood inspired by the thought of having already been relieved of the obligation to love her. I was cheerful, singing in a loud voice, kicking aside the disgusting Compendium of Laws.

  This curiously sanguine state of mind lasted the entire day. That night I fell asleep like a child. Then suddenly was awakened by the sound of sirens blowing far and wide in the middle of the night. All the household went to the air-raid shelter grouchily, but no planes appeared and soon the all-clear siren sounded. Having dozed off in the shelter, I was the last to emerge above ground, my steel helmet and canteen dangling from my shoulder.

  The winter of 1945 had been a persistent one. Although spring had already arrived, coming with the stealthy footsteps of a leopard, winter still stood like a cage about it, blocking its way with gray stubbornness. Ice still glittered under the starlight.

  Through the foliage of an evergreen tree my wakeful eyes picked out several stars, which looked warmly blurred. The sharp night air mingled with my breathing. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by the idea that I was in love with Sonoko and that a world in which Sonoko and I both did not live was not worth a penny to me. Something inside told me that if I could forget her I'd better do so. And immediately, as though it had been lying in wait, that grief which undermined the foundations of my existence flooded over me again, just as it had that day when I saw Sonoko coming down the steps onto the platform.The grief was unendurable. I stamped the ground. Nevertheless I held out one more day.

  Then I could stand it no longer and went to see her. The packers were at work just outside the front door. There on the gravel they were tying straw ropes around something like an oblong chest, wrapped in straw matting. The sight filled me with uneasiness.

  It was the grandmother who came to meet me in the entryway. Behind her I could see piles of goods that had already been packed and were waiting to be carried out. The hallway was full of waste straw. Noticing the grandmother's slightly embarrassed expression, I decided to leave at once without seeing Sonoko.

  "Please give these books to Miss Sonoko." Like an errand boy from a book shop I again held out several sugary novels.

  "Thank you so much for all you've done," the grandmother said, making no move to call Sonoko. "We've decided to leave for N Village tomorrow evening. Everything has worked out without a bit of trouble and so we can leave earlier than we'd planned. Mr. T has rented this house as a dormitory for his employees. Truly it is sad to say good-bye. All the children were so happy knowing you, so please come to visit us at N Village too. We'll send you word when we're settled, so be sure and come to see us."

  It was pleasant to hear the grandmother's precise and sociable way of speaking. But, just like her too-wellshaped false teeth, her words were nothing but a perfect alignment of some sort of inorganic matter.

  "I hope all of you stay well" was all I could say. I could not bring myself to speak Sonoko's name.

  Then, as though summoned by my hesitation, Sonoko appeared in the hail at the foot of the stairs. She was carrying a large cardboard hatbox in one hand and several books in the other. Her hair was ablaze in the light that entered from an overhead window. Seeing me, she cried out, startling her grandmother:

  "Please wait a minute."

  She raced back upstairs, her footsteps sounding boisterously. I was elated by the sight of the grandmother's astonishment, as it made me realize how much Sonoko must love me. The old lady apologized, saying the entire house was in a mess and there was no room in which to receive me. Then she disappeared busily into the interior.

  Soon Sonoko came running back down. Her face was very red. She put on her shoes without saying a word, while I stood petrified in one corner of the entryway. Then she stood up and said she would accompany me as far as the station. There was a strength in the commandingly high pitch of her voice that moved me. Although I continued gazing at her and turning my uniform cap round and
round in my hands with a naïve gesture, within my heart there was a feeling as though everything had suddenly become motionless. Keeping close together, we went out the door and walked silently along the gravel path to the gate.

  Suddenly Sonoko stopped to retie a shoelace. She seemed to be taking a curiously long time about it, so I walked on to the gate and waited, looking out at the street. I did not yet realize that she had wanted me to walk on a little ahead of her and had employed this charming technique of an eighteen-year-old girl for just that purpose.

  Suddenly, from behind me, her hand plucked at the sleeve of my uniform. The shock I felt was like being hit by an automobile while walking along absentmindedly.

  ".. . Please . . . this . ."

  The corner of a stiff foreign-style envelope touched my palm. I closed my hand upon it so quickly that I all but crushed it, just as one might strangle a baby bird. Somehow I could not believe my senses as I felt the weight of the envelope in my hand. But there it was, an envelope of the kind favored by schoolgirls, held tightly in my own hand; I blinked at it as though it were something a person ought not to look at.

  "Not now—read it after you're home," she whispered in a voice that was small and choking, as though she had been tickled.

  "Where shall I send a reply?" I asked.

  "I wrote it—it's inside—the address in N Village. Write me there?'It is an amusing thing, but suddenly, parting became a delight for me. It was like the pleasure of that moment in a game of hide-and-seek when the person who is "it" counts and everyone runs to hide, each in the direction that pleases him. I had an odd ability to enjoy everything in this way. Because of this perverse talent my cowardice was often mistaken, even in my own eyes, for courage.

  We parted at the ticket gate of the station, not even shaking hands.

  I was in ecstasy over having received the first love letter of my life. I could not wait until I was home to read it, and I opened the envelope there in the elevated car, heedless of all eyes. As I did so the contents all but spilled out. There were several silhouette-cards and a sheaf of those imported colored postcards that seem to be the delight of mission-school students. Among them was a doublefold of blue notepaper, decorated with a Disney cartoon of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. Under the cartoon her note was written in neat characters that smacked of painstaking penmanship:

  "I was truly overwhelmed with gratitude for your kindness in lending me the books. Thanks to you, I have been able to read them with very profound interest. I pray with all my heart that you will be well even during the air raids. When I have reached my destination and settled down I shall write you again. My address there is given below. The enclosures are trifling things, but please accept them as tokens of my gratitude." . .

  What a magnificent love letter! It pierced the bubble of my ecstasy. I became deathly pale and burst out laughing. Who would answer such a letter as this, I asked myself. It would be as stupid as acknowledging a printed letter of thanks.

  However, from the beginning I had felt a desire to send a reply, and now, during the thirty or forty minutes that yet remained before arriving home, this desire gradually arose to the defense of the first "state of ecstasy" I had ever had. The training she receives at home, I immediately told myself, is scarcely the kind to make her proficient in the writing of love letters. Because it's only natural that her hand should be cramped by all sorts of doubts and hesitations and shyness when writing her first letter to a boy. Because every movement she made this afternoon revealed a truer story than any word in this empty letter.

  Arriving home, I was suddenly seized with anger from a different quarter. Again I snarled at the Compendium of Laws and hurled it against the wall of my room. What a sluggard you are, I reproached myself. When you're face to face with a girl of eighteen you wait covetously for her to fall in love with you. Why wasn't it you who took the offensive? I know you hesitate because of that queer uneasiness of yours, which comes from you don't know where. But if that's the case, why did you ever visit her again? Think back! —when you were about fourteen you were a boy like other boys. And even at sixteen you were keeping up with them on the whole. But how about now, when you're twenty? That friend of yours said you'd die when you were nineteen, but his prediction didn't come true, and then you even lost your desire to die on a battlefield. Now that you're twenty you're at your wit's end with calf love for an eighteen-year-old girl who knows absolutely nothing. Phew! what splendid progress! At the age of twenty you're planning to exchange love letters for the first time—haven't you maybe made a mistake in counting your age? And isn't it also true that you've never even yet kissed a girl? What a sad specimen you are!

  Then again a different voice mocked me, secret and persistent. This voice was filled with an almost feverish honesty, a human feeling I had never experienced before. It bombarded me with questions in quick succession: Is it love you feel? If so, all right. But do you have a desire for women? Aren't you deceiving yourself when you say that it's toward her alone that you have never had a "lustful desire"? Aren't you trying to hide from yourself the fact that actually you've never had a "lustful desire" for any woman? What right on earth do you have to use the word "lustful"? Have you ever had the slightest desire to see a woman naked? Have you ever once imagined Sonoko naked? You, with your special knack at drawing analogies—surely you must have guessed a thing as obvious as the fact that a boy your age is never able to look at a young girl without imagining how she'd look naked. Ask yourself honestly why I tell you this. Go ahead, use your analogies—you'll have to change only one small detail to understand how other boys feel. Just last night didn't you indulge in your little habit before you went to sleep? Call it something like praying if you want. Say it's just a tiny pagan ceremony that everybody performs—all right. Even a substitute is not unpleasant once you get used to it, especially when you find it to be such an instantly effective sleeping draught. But remember that it wasn't a picture of Sonoko that arose in your mind last night. Whatever it was, your fantasy was strange and unnatural enough to amaze even me who have become so accustomed to watching by your side.

  During the day you walk down the street and see no one but the sailors and soldiers. They're the youths for you—just the age you like, well tanned by the sun, unsophisticated lips, and not a trace of the intellectual about them. Whenever you see one you immediately take his measure with your eye. Apparently you intend to become something like a tailor when you graduate from law school—is that it? You have a great fondness for the lithe body of a simple young man of around twenty, a body like that of a lion cub, don't you? How many such young men didn't you mentally strip of their clothes yesterday? Your imagination is like one of those kits used for collecting plant specimens. Into it you gather the naked bodies of all these ephebes seen during the day, and then when you're home and in bed you select from your collection the ritual sacrifice for your pagan ceremony, singling out one who has caught your particular fancy. What follows then is thoroughly disgusting:

  You lead your victim to a curious hexagonal pillar, hiding a rope behind you. Then you bind his naked body to the pillar with the rope, stretching his arms above his head. You insist that he put up plenty of resistance and scream loudly. You give the victim an elaborate description of his approaching death, and all the while a strange, innocent smile plays about your lips. Taking a sharp knife from your pocket, you press close to him and tickle the skin of his straining chest with the point of the knife, lightly and caressingly. He gives a despairing cry, twisting his body in an effort to escape the knife; his breath roars with terrified panting; his legs tremble and his knees knock together with a clatter. Slowly the knife is driven into the side of his chest. (That's the outrageous thing you did!) The victim arches his body, giving a lonely, piteous shriek, and there is a spasm in the muscles around the wound. The knife has been buried in the rippling flesh as calmly as though being inserted in a scabbard. A fountain of blood bubbles up, pours out, and goes flowing down toward his smooth th
ighs.

  The pleasure you experience at this moment is a genuine human feeling. I say so because at this precise moment you possess the normality that is your obsession. Whatever the form of your fantasy, you are sexually excited to the very depths of your physical being, and such excitement is entirely normal, differing not a jot from that of other men. Your mind quivers under the rush of primitive, mysterious excitement. The deep joy of a savage is reborn in your breast. Your eyes shine, the blood blazes up throughout your body, and you overflow with that manifestation of life worshiped by savage tribes. Even after ejaculation a fevered, savage chant of exultation remains in your body; you are not attacked by that sadness which follows intercourse with a woman. You glitter with debauched loneliness. For a little while you are floating in the memory of a huge, ancient river. Perhaps by some chance the memory of the deepest emotion in the life force of your savage ancestors has taken utter possession of your sexual functions and pleasures. But you're too busy with your pretending to notice, aren't you? I cannot understand why you, who can thus sometimes feel the deep pleasure of human existence, find it necessary to utter such drivel about love and soul.

  I tell you what—how about this idea? What if you were to present your magnum opus of a quaint doctoral thesis in the presence of Sonoko? It's a profound dissertation entitled "Concerning the Functional Relationships between an Ephebe's Torso-Curves and Rate of flood Flow." In short, the torso you select for your daydream is one that is smooth and supple and solid, above all a young torso on which the blood will trace the most subtle curves as it flows from the knife wound. Isn't that right? Don't you select the torso that will produce the most beautiful and natural patterns in the flowing blood, patterns like those made by a meandering stream which flows across a plain, or like the grain in a cross section of an ancient tree? Can you deny this . . .