The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

by Yukio Mishima

  In the reflection of the snow, the girl's face was terribly pale. On the white skin, which showed hardly the slightest trace of color, the crimson of her lipstick stood out harshly. As soon as she stepped on the ground, the girl sneezed; tiny wrinkles gathered about the slender bridge of her nose, and her tired, drunken eyes gazed into the distance for a moment, before sinking back into a deep, leaden look. Then she called the man's name.

  "Jaak, Jaak!” she said. "Tsū kōrudo, tsū kōrudo!" The girl's voice wandered sadly across the snow, as she announced how cold she was. The man did not reply.

  This was the first time that I had found a professional woman like this to be actually beautiful. It was not because she looked like Uiko. She was like a portrait that had been drawn with the greatest care so as not to resemble Uiko in any single feature. This girl partook of a fresh, defiant beauty that somehow seemed to have come into being as a reaction to my memory of Uiko. And there was something flattering in this resistance to those carnal feelings of mine that were the aftermath of my very first experience of beauty.

  She had only one point in common with Uiko. This was that she did not so much as glance at me as I stood there. I had left my clerical robes behind, and was wearing a dirty sweater and rubber boots.

  Everyone in the temple had been out since early in the morning shoveling snow, but they had only just managed to clear the visitors' path. Even now it would have been difficult if an entire party of visitors had come, but there was enough room for a small number to walk along in single file. I walked ahead of the American soldier and the girl.

  When the American reached the pond and the view opened before him, he held up his hands and yelled out a cheer in words that I could not understand. Then he shook the girl violently. The girl knitted her eyebrows and simply repeated: “O Jaak, tsū kōrudo!"

  The American asked me about the shiny red aoki berries that one could sec behind the heavily snow-laden leaves, but I could think of nothing to say except "Aoki." Perhaps a lyrical poet lurked within that huge body of his, but I felt that there was cruelty in his clear, blue eyes. The Western nursery-rhyme “Mother Goose” refers to black eyes as being cruel and malicious; the fact is that when people imagine cruelty, they normally assign some foreign character to it.

  I started explaining the Golden Temple according to the standard guide's formula. The soldier was still terribly drunk and he was very unsteady on his feet. With my benumbed fingers I extracted from my pocket the English text about the Golden Temple that I usually read on these occasions. But the American snatched the book from me and began reading in a comic tone. I could see that my explanations were no longer required.

  I leaned against the railing of the Hosui-in and looked at the fantastically glittering surface of the pond. Never had the interior of the Golden Temple been exposed like this to the light-so brilliantly that it made one uneasy.

  When I looked up, I noticed that a quarrel had started between the man and the woman, who were now walking towards the Sosei. The quarrel gradually became fiercer, but I could not catch a single word. The girl answered something in a harsh tone; I had no idea whether she was speaking English or Japanese. The two of them walked back to the Hosui-in, still quarreling. They seemed to have forgotten about my existence.

  The American thrust his face up to the girl and began abusing her. She slapped his cheek with all her strength. Then she turned round and ran away in her high heels towards the visitors' entrance. I did not understand what was happening, but I, too, left the Golden Temple and began running along the edge of the pond. When I reached the girl, the long-legged American had already caught up with her and was grasping her by the lapels of her red overcoat.

  As he stood there holding her, the young man glanced at me. He loosened his grip on the girl's flaming-red lapel. There must have been some fantastic strength in that hand of his; for, when he released it, the girl fell gently backwards on the snow. The bottom of her red coat opened and her bare white thighs were spread out on the snow.

  The girl did not even try to stand up. From where she lay she was glaring up into the eyes of the giant who towered high above her. I could hardly avoid kneeling down and helping her to her feet. As I was about to do so, the American shouted: ‘‘Hey!” I turned round. There he stood above me, with his legs spread wide apart. He made a sign to me with his fingers. Then in a completely changed voice-a warm, sweet voice-he said in English: “Step on her, will you! Try and step on her!”

  I could not understand what he meant. But there was an expression of command in his blue eyes as he looked down on me from his height. Behind his broad shoulders, I could see the snow-covcred Goiaen Temple glittering under the dull-blue, washed-out winter sky. There was not the slightest cruelty in his blue eyes. I do not know why, but at that moment I felt that they were exceedingly lyrical.

  His great hand descended, seized me by the scruff of my neck and pulled me to my feet. But the tone in which he commanded me was still warm and gentle. "Step on her!” he said. “You must step on her!” Unable to oppose him, I raised my booted foot. The American clapped me on the shoulder. My foot descended and I stepped on something as soft as springtime mud. It was the girl's stomach. The girl shut her eyes and groaned. "Keep on stepping on her! Keep it up!” I lowered my foot onto the girl. The sense of discord that I had felt when I first stepped on her gave way now to a sort of bubbling joy. “This is a woman's stomach,” I thought. “This is her breast.” I had never imagined that another person's flesh could respond like this with such faithful resilience.

  "That's enough," said the American distinctly. Then he courteously lifted the girl to her feet, wiped the mud and snow from her clothes, and helped her back to the jeep. He walked ahead of me, without looking in my direction; the girl herself had not once turned her eyes on me. When they reached the jeep, he let the girl get in first. The effects of the whisky seemed to have worn off; the American turned to me and with a solemn expression said: "Thank you." He wanted to give me some money but I refused. He then took two cartons of American cigarettes from the scat of the jeep and pressed them on me.

  With burning cheeks I stood at the entrance in the strong reflection of the snow. The jeep jogged steadily into the distance, raising a cloud of snow, and disappeared from sight. My body was throbbing with excitement.

  When eventually the excitement subsided, I thought of a scheme that would allow a delightful exercise of hypocrisy. The Superior loved cigarettes. How pleased he would be to receive this present! Remaining utterly ignorant.

  There was no need for me to confess anything that had happened. I had only acted as I had because I was ordered and constrained. If I had opposed the American, I do not know what plight I might not have suffered myself.

  I went to the Superior's office in the Great Library. He was having his head shaved by the Deacon, who was very adept at such things. I waited at the edge of the veranda, where the morning sun was shining with full strength. In the garden the snow was piled up on the sailboat Pine Tree and glittered brilliantly; it looked exactly like a brand-new folded satl.

  The Superior kept his eyes closed while he was being shaved. He held a piece of paper to catch the hair that fell off his head. The raw, animalian outline of the Superior's head emerged more and more distinctly as the Deacon continued his shaving. When he had finished, the Deacon wrapped the head in a hot towel. After a while he removed it and there emerged a glowing, newborn head, which looked as if it had been boiled.

  I managed to deliver my message and handed over the two cartons of Chesterfields with a bow.

  "Ha!" said the Superior, "Thank you for your pains.”

  He smiled slightly, as if he were laughing with only the extremity of his face. That was all. Then in a businesslike way the Superior took the two cartons and placed them at random on his desk, which was piled high with papers and letters of every description. As the Deacon now started to massage his shoulders, the Superior once more closed his eyes.

  I had no
choice but to retire. My body was hot from dissatisfaction. The mysterious, evil action that I had committed, the cigarettes that I had received as a reward, the Superior receiving them in ignorance of why I had obtained them—all this should have added up to something more dramatic and violent. That a man of the Superior's stature should have been utterly unaware of what had happened became a further important reason for me to despise him.

  Just as I was about to leave the room, the Superior stopped me.

  “Look here!" he said. "I'm planning to send you to Otani University as soon as you graduate from school. Now you must study hard, my boy, so that you'll have a good record when it comes to matriculating. That's what your late father would have wanted. He'd be worrying to see that you got good marks at school."

  This piece of news was immediately spread through the temple by the Deacon. For an acolyte to have a university course recommended for him by his Superior proved that he must be quite a promising lad. It frequently happened in former times that an acolyte would go night after night to his Superior's room to massage his shoulders, all in the hope of being recommended for a university education, and in many cases these ambitions were realized. Tsurukawa, who was expected to enter Otani University at his parents' expense, slapped my shoulder with delight when he heard the news. Another of the acolytes, however, to whom the Superior had said nothing about entering the university, would not speak to me after this.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN THE SPRING of 1947, the time came for me to start on the preparatory course in Otani University. But my entry into the university was no triumphant event attended only by the unswerving affection of the Superior and by the envy of my colleagues at the temple. From the outside it may have appeared to be a proud event for mc, but in fact my advancement into the university was beclouded by a circumstance that it was hateful even to think about.

  One day when I returned from school, about a week after that snowy morning on which the Superior had given me permission to go to the university, I saw that other acolyte who had not received any word about attending university looking at me with an extremely happy expression. Until then, this young man had not said a word to me. The attitudes of the Sexton and the Deacon also seemed somehow to have changed. I gathered, however, that in their outer manner towards me they were pretending not to be different from before.

  That evening I went to Tsurukawa's room and complained about the change that had come over people's attitude to me in the temple. At first he cocked his head to one side and tried to make me believe that nothing was wrong; but he was no good at concealing his feelings and before long he was gazing at me with a guilty expression.

  "I heard about it from that other boy," he said, naming our fellow acolyte, "and he only knows about it from hearsay, because he also was at school when it happened. Anyhow, it seems that something strange happened while you were away"

  I felt a vague apprehension and pursued my inquiry. Tsurukawa made me promise to keep the story secret. Looking fixedly into my eyes, he began to talk.

  On the afternoon of the day in question, a girl had visited the temple and asked to speak to the Superior. She was wearing a red overcoat and was clearly a prostitute who catered to foreigners. The Deacon came to see her at the entrance in place of the Superior. The girl had abused the Deacon and told him that he'd better let her sec the Superior if he knew what was good for him. At the moment the Superior unfortunately happened to be coming along the corridor. Noticing the girl, he came out to the entrance. The girl told him that about a week before, on the morning after it had been snowing, she had visited the temple with a foreign soldier. The soldier had knocked her down and one of the temple acolytes had tried to curry favor with him by trampling on her stomach. That evening she had a miscarriage. Under the circumstances, she felt justified in demanding some money from the temple. If they wouldn't give her any, she was going to expose the misconduct that had taken place in the Rokuonji and would make her claim publicly.

  The Superior gave her some money, without saying a word, and had her go home. Everyone knew that it was I who had acted as guide that day, but the Superior said that since there were no witnesses in the temple who had seen my misconduct, the matter should never be mentioned to me. He himself intended to shut his eyes to it all. But everyone else in the temple immediately suspected that I was the culprit when they heard the story from the Deacon.

  Tsurukawa took my hand. I could see that he was almost in tears. He gazed at me with his clear eyes and appealed to me with his forthright, boyish voice: “Did you really do a thing like that?”

  I confronted my own gloomy sentiments. Tsurukawa had made me confront them by pressing this question on me. Why did he ask me that? Was it out of friendship? Did he realize that by asking me such a question he was abandoning his true duty? Did he know that by this question he was betraying me in the deepest part of my being?

  I must already have said it again and again: Tsurukawa was my positive picture. If Tsurukawa had fulfilled his duty faithfully, he would have pressed no questions on me, he would have asked me nothing, but would, instead, have taken my gloomy sentiments exactly as they were and translated them into cheerful sentiments. Then the lie would have become truth, and the truth a lie. If Tsurukawa had followed his characteristic method-his method of turning all shadows into light, all nights into days, all moonlight into sunlight, all the dampness of the night moss into the daytime rustling of shiny young leaves—then I myself might well have stuttered out a confession. But on just this occasion he did not do so. Accordingly, my gloomy sentiments gained in strength.

  I laughed ambiguously. Deep night in the firelcss temple. Cold knees. The great ancient pillars of the temple towered round us as we sat there huddled in our secret conversation.

  I was dressed in nothing but my night clothes and perhaps it was because of the cold that I was shivering. But the pleasure of lying openly to my friend for the first time was quite sufficient to make my knees tremble.

  "I didn't do anything," I said.

  “Really?” said Tsurukawa. "So that girl was lying. Damn her! To think that even the Deacon believed it!”

  Tsurukawa's righteous indignation grew apace, until he declared that he was definitely going to speak to the Superior for me the next day and explain what had happened. At that moment the image flashed through my mind of the Superior's shaven pate that had looked like some boiled vegetable. Then I saw his pink, nonresistant cheeks. For some reason I was suddenly overcome by extreme repugnance for this image.

  It was essential that I bury Tsurukawa's righteous indignation in the earth before it came to light.

  "But do you really think the Superior believes that I did it?” I asked.

  "Well,” said Tsurukawa, immediately perplexed by this new idea.

  “The others can speak badly about me behind my back as much as they want. So long as the Superior sees through the story, I feel perfectly at ease. That's how I think about it.”

  Thus I succeeded in making Tsurukawa believe that by trying to vindicate me he would, in fact, only be making people more suspicious than they already were. It was, I said, precisely because the Superior believed in my innocence, that he had chosen to remain quiet and to ignore the entire affair. As I spoke, joy rose in my heart, and gradually this joy took firm root within me. It was a joy that said: "There is no eyewitness. No one can be called in evidence against you.”

  I did not for a moment believe that only the Superior trusted my innocence. Rather, it was the other way round: it was he alone who was absolutely certain of my guilt. The fact of his choosing to ignore the matter was in itself evidence of this presumption. Perhaps he had already seen through it all when I Had handed him those two cartons of Chesterfields. Perhaps the reason that he had passed things over in silence was that he was waiting quietly in the distance for me to come and make my confession to him voluntarily. Not only that. Perhaps his recommending me for a university course was simply a bait to extract my confession:
if I did not confess, he would withdraw his recommendation as a punishment for my dishonesty; if I did confess) however, and it he was convinced that I had truly repented, he might well be intending, as a special mark of favor, to continue recommending me for entrance.

  The greatest trap of all lay in the fact that the Superior had told the Deacon not to mention the matter to me. If I were really innocent, I could then live serenely day after day, without knowing or feeling that anything particular had happened. If, on the other hand, I had committed the crime, I should (assuming that I had my wits about me) be able to make a good pretence of living in a state of peaceful purity that bespeaks innocence—the state, in other words, of someone who has nothing to confess. Well, I had better make the pretence. That was the best method for me, that was the only way in which I could establish my innocence. The Superior was hinting as much. This was the trap that he had prepared for me. At this thought, I was seized with rage. For it was not as though I had no excuse for my actions. If I had not stepped on that girl, the American might well have reached for his revolver and threatened me. After all, one could not resist the Occupation forces. What I had done, I had been forced to do.

  But the feel of the girl's stomach against the sole of my rubber boot; the feci of her body that seemed to flatter me with its resilience; its groans; the way in which it felt like a crushed flower of flesh that is coming into bloom; that certain reeling or staggering of my senses; the sensation which passed at that moment like some mysterious lightning from the girl's body into my own—I cannot pretend that it was compulsion that had made me enjoy all these things. I still cannot forget the sweetness of that moment. And the Superior knew what I felt to the very core; he knew that sweetness to the core!