Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

  Nevertheless, once when he was in the locker room and a lowerclassman came in and took off his sweaty shirt, the odor of young body distressed him. He ran outside and threw himself down on the darkening field and pressed his face into the firm summer grass. There he waited for desire to pass. The dry sound of bat on ball where baseball^ practice was still going on echoed off the colorless evening sky and came to him from the ground. Yuichi felt something strike his bare shoulder. It was a towel. The white, rough, thorny threads bit into his flesh.

  “What are you doing? You’ll catch cold.”

  Yuichi lifted his head. It was the same lowerclassman, now in his school clothes, standing there smiling out from under the visor of his cap.

  Yuichi stood up, snapping out a “Thank you.” With the towel flung over his shoulder, he returned to the locker room, conscious of the eyes of the lowerclassman following him. He did not, however, turn around. He had recognized that the boy loved him; consequently, by all the logic of purity, he had decided that he could not love the boy.

  If I, who, though I cannot love women wish only to love women, loved the boy—after all a man—would he not become transformed into some unspeakably ugly, womanlike creature? Love brings about all kinds of unwished for changes in the one who is loved, does it not?

  In these confessions of Yuichi a desire that was not yet real came out of his phrases to nibble away at what was real. Would he and reality someday meet? In the place where he and reality might come together, not only would these harbingers of his desire already in existence eat away at reality, reality itself would eternally bring forth fictional forms dictated by his desire. He would never find what he wanted. Everywhere he went he would meet only his desire. Even in this abortive confession of those three nights of pain, Shunsuke could, as it were, hear the gears of this youth’s desire turning.

  Was not this, however, the epitome of art, the very model of the reality of artistic creation? In order for Yuichi’s desire to come into reality, either his desire or his concept of what was real must perish. In this world it is believed art and reality live quietly side by side; but art must dare to break the laws of reality. Why? In order that it alone may exist.

  It is a shame, but the Complete Works of Shunsuke Hinokiy from their first lines, renounced war against reality. As a result his works were not real. His passions simply brushed against reality and, repelled by its ugliness, shut themselves up in his works. Thus his incessant foolishness moved to and fro between his passions and reality like a dishonest courier. His style, peerlessly ornate in its decorativeness, was, after all, no more than a design for reality; it was no more than a curious, worm-eaten figure of speech in which reality had consumed passion. With all frankness one may say in conclusion that his art, his thrice-published complete works, did not exist. Why? Because not once did they break the laws of reality.

  . This old writer had already lost all the muscles necessary for creation; he had tired of the labors of careful craftsmanship. Now, left only with the task of interpreting esthetically his past productions, what an irony it was that a youth like Yuichi should appear before him at this time!

  Yuichi had all the gifts of youth the old writer lacked, but at the same time he had that supreme good fortune the artist had always hypothesized as the object of his heart’s desire. In short, he had never loved a woman. This prefiguration of a paradoxical ideal: in the life of Shunsuke the desirable qualifications of youth without the awful chain of tragedies caused by love and woman; an existence somehow merged in the mind of Shunsuke with the inescapable conviction that he had been unlucky; an existence in which the blood of the dreams of his youth mixed with the disappointment of his old age. This was Yuichi! If Shunsuki had been like Yuichi in his youth, what joy there would have been in his love of women. And if like Yuichi he had not loved a woman—suppose, better yet, he had come to live without women—what a happy life his would have been! In this way Yuichi became transformed into Shunsuke’s idea, his work of art.

  All style, it is said, ages beginning with the adjectives. In short, adjectives are flesh. They are youth. Yuichi is an adjective; that’s what, Shunsuke went so far as to think.

  With a thin smile playing on his lips as if he were a detective in the middle of an investigation, he propped his elbows on the table, raised one knee under his bathrobe, and listened to Yuichi’s confession. When it was over he insensitively said again: “Fine. Get married!”

  “But how can someone get married if he doesn’t want to?”

  “I’m not joking. Men marry logs; they can even marry ice boxes. Marriage is man’s own invention. It is something he can do; desire isn’t necessary. At least in the past one hundred years, mankind has forgotten how to act with passion. Just make believe she’s a bundle of sticks, a cushion, a side of beef hanging from a beam in the butcher shop. You’ll surely be able to conjure up a counterfeit passion to excite her and make her happy. Nevertheless, as I told you before, to teach a woman pleasure is to incur a hundred liabilities and not one asset. The only thing to be careful about is never to acknowledge at any time that she has a soul. Even the dregs of a soul are out of the question here.

  “All right? Never think of her as anything but inanimate matter. From my long and painful experience, let me tell you, as you take your wrist watch off when you take your bath, get rid of your soul when you come near a woman. If you don’t it will soon become so rusty you won’t be able to use it. I didn’t, and I lost countless watches. I was driven to making the manufacturing of watches my life’s work. I’ve collected twenty rusty watches and have just brought them out under the title Collected Works. Have you read them?”

  “No, not yet.” The youth’s face grew red. “But what you are saying makes sense, sir. I’m thinking it all over. About why I have never once desired a woman. Whenever I have thought I might be counterfeiting this spiritual love of mine, I have leaned toward believing that spirit itself is counterfeit. Even now it’s always on my mind. Why am I not like everybody else? Why do none of my friends separate the flesh and the spirit the way I do?”

  “Everybody’s the same. People are all the same.” Shun-suke raised his voice: “But it’s the prerogative of youth to think it’s not so.”

  “Just the same, I’m the only one who’s different.”

  “All right. I’m catching hold of your conviction and becoming young again,” said the old man slyly.

  As far as Yuichi was concerned, he was puzzled by the fact that Shunsuke was interested in, in fact envious of, his secret tendencies, the tendencies that had tortured him with their ugliness. However, Yuichi was exhilarated by a sense of self-betrayal after this first confession of his life, this turning over to another of all his secrets. He felt the joy of one who, driven by a hated master to sell seedlings, happens to meet a customer he likes and betrays his master by selling all the seedlings he has at a bargain price.

  Briefly he explained his relationship with Yasuko.

  Yuichi’s father had been an old friend of Yasuko’s father. He had studied engineering, had gone to work as a: technician, had become a director, finally the head of a subsidiary of Kikui Zaibatsu, and had then died. That was in the summer of 1944.

  Yasuko’s father had graduated from a business course and gone to work for a well-known department store, where he was now an executive. Thanks to an agreement made by the fathers, Yuichi and Yasuko were betrothed at the beginning of this year, when he became twenty-two.

  Yuichi’s coldness filled Yasuko with yearning. Her periodic visits to Shunsuke’s home were made at times when she had failed to induce the youth to respond to her advances. Finally, this summer, she got him to go with her on this trip to K-.

  Yasuko suspected he was interested in someone else and suffered as any girl her age might. There was something ominous about such a suspicion harbored against a fiancée, but the fact was Yuichi loved no one else.

  He was now commuting to a certain private college. He lived with his mother, invalided wi
th chronic nephritis, and their maidservant in a once-sound household now bankrupt in which his shy filial affection was a source of torment to his parent. Although there were plenty of girls besides his financee who, she knew, were attracted to this handsome young man, his mother believed that his failure to commit even one indiscretion was based on financial concern and devotion to her in her illness.

  “I never planned to make you into such a penny-pincher,” she said candidly. “If your father were living, how he would grieve about it! From the time your father was in college he ran after women constantly. Thanks to that, when he matured he settled down and with my help lived peacefully.

  “You are so sober in your youth that I worry about the plight of Yasuko in her mature years. I never expected that of you, who inherited your father’s face, so attractive to women. The only gift your mother wants to see is a grandchild someday soon, and if you don’t like Yasuko we’ll break that engagement in a hurry and even let you pick out someone you like and bring her home. Providing you don’t make a fool of yourself, I don’t mind if you play around with ten or twenty girls before you decide.

  “The only problem is that your mother doesn’t know how long she’ll last with this illness, so let’s have a wedding soon, can’t we? A man needs to look his best, you know, and if you need some money, we’re poor, but at least we eat. I will give you double your allowance this month, but don’t spend it on books.”

  He had used the money for dance lessons. He had become a good dancer needlessly. Yet his dancing, which was artistic in comparison with the modem utilitarian dance—nothing but calisthenics for the development of lust—took on the loneliness of a smooth machine in operation. His figure, emotions held quietly in check, made observers feel that within his beauty his energies were constantly being crushed to death. He entered a dance contest and took third place.

  The third prize was two thousand yen. He decided to deposit it in his mother’s bank account. When he looked at the bankbook, however, he discovered that a terrible error must have been made in the computation of the balance, which he had been told by his mother amounted to 700.000 yen.

  Since the time when deposits of albumin in her urine had forced her periodically to take to her bed, his mother had turned the responsibilities of the bankbook over to their maid, kind old Kiyo. Whenever his mother asked her for the balance, this faithful spinster would bring out her abacus, deliberately total up the two columns in the book, and announce the result. Somehow, since they had been given a new bankbook, their balance had remained at 700.000 yen no matter how much they withdrew. Yuichi checked further and found that it was now down to 350,000.

  Securities were bringing them in about 20,000 yen a month, but they were having a depression, and this income could not be depended on. Living costs, his school expenses, his mother’s doctor bills and hospital bills were quickly making it necessary to sell their home.

  This discovery, however, oddly enough delighted Yuichi. The marriage he had felt he must go through with no matter what could now be evaded, if it became necessary to move to a house big enough for only three. He decided to take over the management of their finances.

  It grieved Yuichi’s mother to see her son stick his nose into the household account book as if he enjoyed it; besides, as he said lightly, it was a practical application of his schoolwork in economics. In truth, it appeared to her that his present activity was somehow brought on by hex earlier frank discussion with him, and fearing that he was taking her words to mean something she had not wished to suggest, she said to him once, apparently for no good reason, “It seems to me that there’s something abnormal about a student’s developing an interest in the household account book.”

  Yuichi grimaced fiercely. His mother was content that her words of vexation had roused her son and evoked a reaction, but she did not know which of her words had cut him so. Anger, however, had set Yuichi free from his usual sense of decorum. He felt that the time had come to blast some of the idle romantic fancies his mother cherished on his behalf. They were fancies completely without hope, so far as he could see. Her hopes were an affront to his despair.

  “Marriage is out of the question. We have to sell the house,” he told her. Out of consideration for his mother he had hidden from her his discovery about their financial straits.

  “You’re joking. We still have seven hundred thousand yen in the bank.”

  “You’re off by three hundred and fifty thousand yen.”

  “You must have figured wrong—either that or you’ve embezzled it.”

  Her disease was slowly introducing albumin into her reason. Yuichi’s disclosure had the uncalculated effect of propelling her feverishly into fantastic scheming. In expectation of Yashuko’s marriage portion and what income Yuichi would get from the job he had been promised in her father’s department store, he should get married quickly and at the same time somehow manage matters so that he could hold on to this house. She had long dreamed that her son and his wife would come to live here.

  The more the gentle Yuichi thought about this the more he felt trapped into getting married. Then his conscience came to his rescue. Supposing he did marry Yasuko (when he grudgingly went along with this supposition he always exaggerated his misfortune), surely it would become known soon that her marriage portion had saved his home. People would think he married not for love but out of vulgar self-interest. This young man of integrity, who pardoned not the slightest meanness in himself, was willing to marry out of filial piety, but he feared that his action would not be completely pure where love was concerned.

  “Let’s consider together how we can best realize what you want,” Shunsuke said. “I maintain that marriage has no meaning. Therefore you can get married without a sense of responsibility, or even soul-searching. For your sick mother’s sake, it seems advisable. As for the money, however—”

  “Oh, I wasn’t talking to you with that in mind.”

  “But I heard it this way. The reason you’re afraid of a marriage for money is that you have no confidence that you can divert your wife from the conviction that your love for her is sullied by ulterior considerations. You hope things work out so that you can betray this marriage you have entered less than wholeheartedly. In general, young people insist on believing that love can vindicate self interest. Now, there is something you can depend on in the integrity of a mercenary man like me. Your squeamishness comes from some fuzziness in your- own integrity. Take the marriage portion and save it for alimony. That money doesn’t obligate you. From what you said before, if you had four or five hundred thousand, you could keep your present house and bring your bride home there. Forgive me for suggesting that you let me handle that matter. Better keep it a secret from your mother, though.”

  It happened that there was a black mirror stand opposite Yuichi. The round mirror had been knocked askew by the robe of someone walking past it, but there on its back, as it were, it reflected full in the face of Yuichi. While they talked, Yuichi felt as if his own face stared at him from time to time.

  Shunsuke strung his words together impatiently.

  “As you know, I am not a rich man who can afford to throw four or five hundred thousand yen to every fellow that passes, as if in drunken spree. I want to give it to you for a very simple reason. In fact, for two reasons—”

  He hesitated, as if embarrassed.

  “First, you are the most beautiful youth in the world. When I was young, I always wanted to be what you are. Second, you do not love women. I still wish I could be that way, but that’s beyond remedy. You have been a revelation to me. Please. Live my youth again in another way. In short, be my son and avenge me. You’re an only son and you cannot take my name, but I would like you to become my son in spirit. (Ah! That was a forbidden word!)

  “For countless foolish actions—my lost children—mourn for me. For this I will spend any amount of money. I didn’t save it up so that I might be happy in my old age, by any stretch of the imagination. In return for it, pl
ease don’t tell anyone else your secret. When I ask you to make the acquaintance of some woman, do it. If ever there breathes a woman who won’t fall in love with you at first sight, I’d like to see her. You can’t feel desire for a woman, desire behaves. I will teach you the coldness of a man who, I will teach you, point by point, how a man who has felt while he desires a woman, lets her die yearning for him.

  “At any rate, let’s proceed according to orders. Will somebody see that you can’t love women? Leave it to me. I will use all kinds of tricks to prevent anyone from finding you out. And lest by some mischance you settle down in a peaceful married existence, I wish you would look into the practice of masculine love. In that I shall provide opportunities for you to the very best of my small ability.

  “Don’t, however, give it away in the world of women. Don’t confuse the stage with the dressing room. I shall introduce you to the world of women. I shall bring you before the sets freshly made up with cosmetics and eau de cologne, sets before which I have always performed my mimicries. You will play the part of a Don Juan who never touches a woman. From time immemorial even the worst Don Juans don’t get into bed on stage. Don’t worry. I have served an apprenticeship in backstage machinations.”

  The old man had just come to his real intention. He was outlining the plot of a novel he had not yet written. At the same time he was hiding the embarrassment he felt in his heart’s core. This mad charity performance costing 500,000 yen was a memorial service held on behalf of what was perhaps his last love; the love that had propelled this home-loving old man down to the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula at the height of summer; the love which again out of sad foolishness had ended in pitiful disappointment; his tenth stupid lyric of a love affair.

  He had loved Yasuko without intending to. In return for leading him into this blunder, for causing him to taste this affront, Yasuko must somehow become the loving wife of an unloving husband. Her marrying Yuichi sprang from a kind of ferocious logic that trapped Shunsuke’s will. They had to marry.