Temple Of Dawn
Page 2
Honda, ensconced in a rattan chair, listened to Hishikawa’s words with detached amusement.
Itsui Products Limited had sent this encyclopedic but somewhat strange and seedy character—doubtless a onetime artist—to serve as interpreter and guide for Honda. Already at forty-six, the latter considered it a kind of courtesy to himself to leave things to others, especially in such a sweltering country as this.
He had come to Bangkok at the request of Itsui Products. If a business transaction based on Japanese law has been closed in Japan and a dispute with a buyer arises abroad, even though the suit is brought before a foreign court, it is settled according to international civil law. Furthermore, foreign lawyers are invariably ignorant of Japanese law. In such cases, some eminent Japanese counselor is invited to explain Japanese legal intricacies to the native lawyers and thus to help settle the suit.
Itsui Products had exported one hundred thousand cases of Calos antifever pills to Thailand in January. Of them thirty thousand had been damaged by damp and had been discolored, thereby losing their effectiveness. The cases were dated, indicating a reduction in potency after a given time limit, but that served no purpose now that they were spoiled. Such civil problems should have been solved by reference to the law concerning default of obligation, but the buyers had brought charges of criminal fraud. According to article 715 of the Civil Code, Itsui Products should, of course, have assumed responsibility for indemnifying a non-negligence default for any flaw in merchandise issued by a subcontracting drug company. But they could do nothing without the assistance of a capable Japanese lawyer like Honda in matters of this nature which involved international civil law.
Honda had been assigned a room in the Oriental Hotel—the natives pronounced it Orienten Hoten—with a lovely view of the Menam River. The room was ventilated by a large white ceiling fan, but at nightfall it was better to go out to the garden along the river and enjoy the slightly cooler breezes there. As he sipped his aperitif with Hishikawa, who had come to guide him for the evening, he let his companion take over the conversation. Honda was overcome with weariness; even the spoon felt too heavy for his fingers to raise, and conversing was even more burdensome than a silverplated spoon.
On the opposite bank, the sun was sinking behind Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn. An all-pervading evening glow filled the vast sky over the flat vista of the Thon Buri jungle, broken only by two or three spires silhouetted against the horizon. Like cotton the green of the forest absorbed the glow, changing it to a truly emerald hue. Sampans passed by, crows gathered in great numbers, and a soiled rose color lingered in the river water.
“All art is like the evening glow,” said Hishikawa, watching as he always did when he was preparing to express an opinion, for the effect his words would have on his listener. Honda felt annoyed by these points of silence even more than by Hishikawa’s continuous chatter.
Hishikawa’s profile with its cheeks of Siamese swarthiness and the non-Siamese pasty, taut skin gleamed in the last rays of the sun that came from the opposite bank.
“Art is a colossal evening glow,” he repeated. “It’s the burnt offering of all the best things of an era. Even the clearest logic that has long thrived in daylight is completely destroyed by the meaningless lavish explosion of color in the evening sky; even history, apparently destined to endure forever, is abruptly made aware of its own end. Beauty stands before everyone; it renders human endeavor completely futile. Before the brilliance of evening, before the surging evening clouds, all rot about some ‘better future’ immediately fades away. The present moment is all; the air is filled with a poison of color. What’s beginning? Nothing. Everything is ending.
“There’s nothing of substance in it. Of course, night has its own intrinsic nature: the cosmic essence of death and inorganic existence. Day too has its own entity; everything human belongs to the day.
“But there’s no substance in the evening glow. It’s nothing but a joke, a meaningless, but impressive joke of form and light and color. Look . . . look at the purple clouds. Nature seldom offers a banquet of such a lavish color as purple. Evening clouds are an insult to anything symmetric, but such destruction of order is closely connected with the breakup of something much more fundamental. If the serene white daytime cloud may be compared to moral exaltation, then these riotous colors have nothing to do with morality.
“The arts predict the greatest vision of the end; before anything else they prepare for and embody the end. Gourmets and good wines, beautiful forms and sumptuous clothes—every extravagance human beings can dream up in one era is crammed into the arts. All such things have been awaiting form. Some form with which to pillage and destroy in the shortest time all of human living. And that is the evening glow. And to what purpose? Indeed, for nothing.
“The most delicate thing, the most fastidious aesthetic judgment of the minutest detail—I refer to the indescribably subtle contours of one of those orange-colored clouds—is related to the universality of the vast firmament; its innermost aspects are expressed in color, and uniting with external aspects, they become the evening glow.
“In other words, evening glow is expression. And expression alone is the function of the evening glow.
“In it, the slightest human shyness, joy, anger, displeasure is expressed on a heavenly scale. In this great operation the colors of human intestines, ordinarily invisible, are externalized and spread over the entire sky. The most subtle tenderness and gallantry are joined with Weltschmerz, and ultimately affliction is transformed into a short-lived orgy. The numerous bits of logic which people have so stubbornly cherished during the day are all drawn into the vast emotional explosion of the heavens and the spectacular release of passions, and people realize the futility of all systems. In other words, everything is expressed for at most ten or fifteen minutes and then it’s all over.
“The evening glow is swift and possesses the characteristics of flight. It constitutes perhaps the wings of the world. Like the wings of a hummingbird which change into rainbow colors as it flutters about sucking the honey from flowers, the world shows us a brief glimpse of its potentiality for soaring; all things in the evening glow fly rapturous and ecstatic . . . and then in the end fall to the ground and die.”
As Honda listened desultorily to Hishikawa’s words, the sky above the opposite bank was already slowly sinking into dusk, leaving a faint gleam on the horizon.
Had he claimed that all art was evening glow? Yet there stood the Temple of Dawn!
Honda had crossed over to the other bank on a hired boat early the previous morning and visited the Temple of Dawn.
He had done this precisely at sunrise, a most fitting time. It was still darkish, and only the very tip of the pagoda caught the first rays of the rising sun. The Thon Buri jungle beyond was filled with the piercing cries of birds.
As he approached, he realized that the pagoda was all inlaid with countless fragments of Chinese porcelain of either red or blue glaze. Each tier was marked by a balustrade; the one on the first story was brown, on the second green, and on the third a purplish blue. Countless porcelain dishes that had been placed there formed flowers: yellow ones represented the cores from which extended petals of plates. Some had a core of inverted lavender wine cups and here colorful golden dishes formed the petals. Chains of such flowers ascended to the summit. The leaves were all tile; and from the top, four white elephant trunks hung down at the four cardinal points.
The repetitiveness and the sumptuousness of the pagoda were almost suffocating. The tower with its color and brilliance, adorned in many layers and graduated toward the peak, gave one the impression of so many strata of dream sequences hovering overhead. The plinths of the extremely steep stairs were also heavily festooned and each tier was supported by a bas-relief of birds with human faces. They formed a multicolored pagoda whose every level was crushed with layers of dreams, expectations, prayers, each being further weighted down with still other stories, pyramid-like, progressing skyward.
The pagoda had long served as a morning bell tolled by its rich hues, resonant colors responding to the dawn. They were created so as to evoke a beauty, a power, an explosiveness like the dawn itself.
In the eerie, yellowish brown morning light reflecting ruddily in the Menam River, the pagoda cast its shining reflection, presaging the coming of still another sweltering day.
“I’m sure you’ve had enough of temples. Tonight I’ll take you someplace amusing,” said Hishikawa. Honda was gazing absently at the Temple of Dawn, now completely enveloped in darkness.
“You’ve seen Wat Po and Wat Phra Keo. And when you went to the Marble Temple, you were lucky enough to see the Regent’s visit. And yesterday morning you saw the Temple of Dawn. There’s no end to temple-visiting if you’ve got a mind for it, but I think you’ve had enough.”
“Hm. I suppose I have,” Honda replied vaguely, reluctant to let the thoughts in which he was so deeply absorbed be interrupted.
He had been musing about Kiyoaki’s old Dream Diary, which he had not glanced at for so long, but which he had brought along in the bottom of his suitcase, thinking he might read it again to help pass time during his journey. Because of the intolerable heat and his weariness, he had not had the opportunity to do so until now. But the brilliant tropical colors in the description of a dream about which he had read long ago were still vivid in his mind.
Indeed, being so busy, Honda had not accepted the trip to Thailand for purely business reasons. In his school days, at a most sensitive age, he had, through Kiyoaki, become acquainted with two Siamese princes and had witnessed the pathetic end of Chantrapa’s love story and the loss of Prince Pattanadid’s emerald ring. Because of the overwhelming realization that he was destined to be an observer, the hazy picture in his memory had been ultimately preserved in a strong and solid frame. Long ago he had firmly resolved that he must visit Siam one day.
Yet on the other hand, Honda at forty-six had become most wary of his slightest emotions; unconsciously he had fallen into the habit of detecting deceit and exaggeration in them. He mused that his last passion had been for saving Isao, the boy whom he had discovered to be the reincarnation of Kiyoaki. He had even given up his judgeship. It had led to naught, and he had experienced only a shattering failure that had borne home to him the total futility of altruism.
Having abandoned altruistic ideals, he had become a much better lawyer. No longer having any passions, he was successful in saving others in one case after the other. He accepted no assignment unless the client was wealthy, no matter whether the case was civil or criminal. The Honda family prospered far more than in his father’s time.
Poor lawyers who acted as though they were the natural representatives of social justice and advertised themselves as such were ludicrous. Honda was well aware of the limitations of law as far as saving people was concerned. To put it candidly, those who could not afford to engage lawyers were not qualified to break the law, but most people made mistakes and violated the law out of sheer necessity or stupidity.
There were times when it seemed to Honda that giving legal standards to the vast majority of people was probably the most arrogant game mankind had thought up. If crimes were often committed out of necessity or stupidity, could one not perhaps claim that the mores and customs upon which such laws were based were also idiotic?
After the incident with the League of the Divine Wind in the Showa period that ended in Isao’s death, many similar events had taken place, but internal turmoil in Japan had stopped with the events of February 26, 1936. The China Incident, which had begun shortly thereafter, remained inconclusive even after five years of fighting. And now the pact binding Japan, Germany, and Italy had provided a strong stimulus; and the danger of war between Japan and the United States had become a frequent topic of discussion.
But as Honda was no longer interested in the passage of time, political battles, or the imminence of war, he no longer felt any emotion about them. Something had collapsed in the innermost recess of his heart. He knew that he was powerless to arrest events which went storming on like rain squalls, drenching every insignificant person, beating indiscriminately upon the individual pebbles of fortune. But it was not clear to him whether all fortunes were ultimately pathetic. It was history’s wont to progress by granting the wishes of some and by denying those of others. No matter how distressing the future might prove to be, it did not necessarily disappoint everyone.
However, one must not suppose that Honda had become a complete nihilist and cynic. Compared to the past he was quite cheerful and gay. His manner of speech, which he had been so careful of throughout the period of his judgeship, had changed considerably; and his taste in clothes was more liberal. He even wore a checkered hound’s-tooth sports jacket and had begun telling jokes and acting more magnanimously. But since he had come to this sweltering country pleasantries no longer came readily to his lips.
His face now displayed a grave dignity suited to his years. He had long since lost the clean-cut profile of his youth, and his skin, once as plain as washed-out cotton, having known the taste of luxury, had taken on the texture of satin damask. As he was well aware that he had never been handsome, he was not altogether displeased with the opaque veil age had imposed.
Furthermore, he now possessed his future much more surely than any youth could. The reason why young men patter on about the future so was simply that they didn’t yet have it. Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.
Just as Kiyoaki had not influenced the times in which he had lived, Honda too did not affect his. In place of the era when Kiyoaki had perished on the battlefield of romantic emotions, a new period was coming when young men would die on real battlefields. Its forerunner was the death of Isao. In other words, Kiyoaki and his reincarnation, Isao, had died contrasting deaths on contrasting battlefields.
And Honda? There was no sign of death in him! He had never desired death passionately, nor had he ever tried to evade its onslaught. However, now that he had suddenly become the target of the fiery shafts of the tropical sun that poured down on him the livelong day, the beautiful, dense, luxuriant greenery all about seemed possibly the stunning luxuriance of death itself. “A long time ago, perhaps twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, when two Siamese princes came to Japan to study, I was privileged to know them for some time. One was the younger brother of Rama VI, Prince Pattanadid; and the other was Prince Kridsada, his cousin, a grandson of Rama IV. I wonder what they’re doing now. I had hoped to see them when I got to Bangkok, but it seems presumptuous to impose myself on people who have surely forgotten me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?” said the omniscient Hishikawa, hastening to reproach Honda’s reserve. “Whatever you ask, I can find a solution.”
“Well, then, do you think I might be able to see the two princes?”
“I shouldn’t go so far as to say that. Rama VIII, their uncle, depends very much on them, and they are both in Lausanne with him now. Most of the important members of the royal family have gone to Switzerland and the palace is empty.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“But there’s a possibility of seeing a member of Prince Pattanadid’s family. It’s a strange story. His Royal Highness’s youngest daughter, a little girl about seven, is staying in Bangkok alone with her ladies-in-waiting. The poor thing is practically a prisoner in a small mansion they call the Rosette Palace.
“Why is that?”
“It would be an embarrassment to the family if they took her abroad; she’s thought to be retarded. Ever since the Princess was able to talk, she’s been saying: ‘I’m not really a Siamese princess. I’m the reincarnation of a Japanese, and my real home is in Japan.’ She won’t change her story no matter what people say. If an
yone objects, she throws a tantrum. So the rumor is that all her attendants have gone along with her delusion and brought her up to believe whatever she wishes. An audience is rather difficult, but since you have relations with the royal princes, I think I can do something—depending on how I approach those responsible for her.”
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HAVING HEARD the story of the poor little mad Princess, Honda was not at once moved to seek an audience.
He knew that she would be within his reach like some brilliant, little golden temple. And just as temples never fly away, he felt that the Princess too would always be there. Madness in this country would surely be like its architecture or its monotonous, elegant dances that went on and on in their eternal splendor. Another day, he thought, when his mood had changed, he would request an audience.
Perhaps this procrastination came in part from the listlessness one experienced in the tropics and in part from his advancing years. His hair was turning gray, and his sight would have been growing less acute too were it not, fortunately, that he had been slightly nearsighted since childhood. He still managed well without the assistance of an old man’s spectacles.
His age enabled him to use the laws taught him by experience as measurements, and he could foretell the outcome of most situations. Actually, except for natural calamities, historical events occurred, no matter how unexpected they might seem, only after long maturation. History is as hesitant as a young maiden before a romantic proposal. For Honda there was always a hint of the artificial in any event that corresponded precisely to his own wishes and that approached at a pleasing speed. Therefore, if he wanted to entrust his actions to the laws of history it was always best for him to adopt a reserved attitude toward everything. He had seen too many instances where one could get nothing one wanted and where determination had ultimately been quite futile. Even things which one should have been able to obtain if one had not craved them managed to slip away simply because they had been coveted too much. Suicide seemed so completely dependent on one’s own desire and resolve, yet Isao had had to spend a whole year in prison in order to carry it out successfully.