There Yuichi beheld the conclusion of the fate that had been first recorded for him. He saw precisely, in concrete form, the complete truth of that fate. Eichan’s lips and teeth were as beautiful as ever. His smudged face was indescribably endearing. But from his beauty all abstractness had disappeared. His slim hips twisted under a hairy hand. Yuichi averted his eyes impassively.
On the sofa and on the divan that ringed the fireplace, drunks and lovers were stretched out, uttering languid noises and giggles of delight. About seven or eight men .were in close embrace, rubbing against various parts of each other’s bodies. Two were joined at the shoulders, giving their backs to the caresses of another. Another man had his leg locked over that of the man beside him; at the same time his left hand was deep in the pit of the stomach of the man at his left. Like the evening haze, the sound of low, sweetly murmured caresses wafted. A dignified gentleman on the rug beneath their feet, solid gold cufflinks protruding from his sleeves, had removed the sock from a boy’s foot—the boy was meanwhile being squeezed by three men on the divan—and was holding the foot to his lips. When the sole of his foot was kissed, the boy suddenly emitted a giggle of delight, and the impetus of his body being shoved backward affected those behind him. The others, however, seemed hardly to move at all. Like creatures native to the depths of the sea, they settled sluggishly.
Jackie came to Yuichi’s side and gave him a cocktail.
“It’s a swinging party; I can’t say how happy I am about it,” he said. Even in his choice of words, there was the trace of youth. “Oh, Yuchan, tonight somebody’s coming who really wants to meet you. He’s an old friend, so don’t be too cruel to him. He has the Prince Genji name of Pope.” Saying this, he looked toward the entrance, and his eyes lit up.
“Oh, here he is!”
An affected-looking individual appeared in the dark doorway. One hand fumbling with the buttons on his overcoat showed white in the gloom. In mechanical gait that said, “Screw one loose; then take a step,” he approached Jackie and Yuichi. A dancing couple passed close by; he made a wry face and averted his glance.
“Alias Mr. Pope—Yuichi.”
In response to Jackie’s introduction, Pope held out a white hand to Yuichi.
“Cheers!”
Yuichi looked hard at that face bathed in unpleasant light. It was Count Kaburagi.
Chapter 13 COURTESY
POPE, the name by which Nobutaka Kaburagi had come to be called by men ignorant of its origin, was a nom de guerre he had taken from Alexander Pope, whose poetry he enjoyed. Kaburagi was an old friend of Jackie’s. They had met ten years ago or more in the Oriental Hotel in Kobe, where they stayed together two or three times.
Yuichi had had much practice in the intricacies of meeting people unexpectedly at parties like this without being at all surprised. This society had broken up the discipline of the society outside; it had scrambled the alphabet of the outside and then rearranged it strangely—like CXMQA, for instance—changing the order and changing the grouping and demonstrating the virtuosity of the magician.
Count Kaburagi’s metamorphosis, however, had caught Yuichi completely by surprise. For a moment he found it difficult to take the hand that Pope held out to him. Kaburagi’s amazement was even greater. As a drunk stares fixedly at something, so he stared at Yuichi, saying: “It’s you! It’s you!”
Then he looked at Jackie again and said, “Me, of all people—for the first time in all these years this fellow has succeeded in conning me. In the first place, he’s a very young married man. I first met him at the speaker’s table at his wedding reception. To think that Yuichi is the famous Yuchan!”
“Yuchan has a wife!” said Jackie, evincing surprise in the manner of a foreigner. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Thus one of Yuichi’s secrets was quickly out. It wouldn’t take ten days, certainly, for the news to leak out to the fellowship. Soon, he feared, all his secrets, in both his worlds, withheld from each other till now, would be violated one by one.
In search for a means of escaping these fears, he now' turned to the task of regarding the former Count Kaburagi as “Pope.”
That restless, craving look, he now understood, was caused by the desperate urge continually to seek out beautiful fellows. That disgusting something that hung about Kaburagi’s features, like a stain in a garment that refuses to come out; that nameless, unpleasant mixture of effeminacy and impudence; that absurd, forced, squeezed voice; that ever so carefully planned naturalness: all were the seal of the fellowship and its compensatory endeavors. All the fragmentary impressions remaining in Yuichi’s memory thus suddenly formed themselves along a single thread, a definite pattern. Of the two methods peculiar to this society—analysis and synthesis—he had worked the latter out completely. Just as a wanted man might alter his looks by surgery, Nobutaka Kaburagi had learned to conceal under his public face a portrait that he did not want seen. The nobility, especially, excel at concealment. A penchant for hiding vice comes before a penchant for committing vicious acts. It may therefore be said that Nobutaka Kaburagi had discovered the joy of being a nobleman.
He nudged Yuichi’s back. Jackie led them to a sofa.
Five boys in white made their way through the crowd, bearing glasses of wine and plates of canapes. All five were Jackie’s lovers. It was uncanny. Each was in some way like Jackie. They all looked like brothers. One had Jackie’s eyes; another one had his nose. One had his lips; another looked like Jackie from behind. The last had inherited his forehead. Put together, they formed a matchless likeness of Jackie in his younger days.
His portrait hung above the mantel, adorned by the gift flowers and holly leaves and a pair of candles. It was bordered by a splendid gold frame and, due to dingy pigments, exhibited a highly sensual olive-colored nude figure. It was the spring of Jackie’s nineteenth year. Using him as a model, an Englishman who worshipped Jackie had painted this. It was a young Bacchus holding high a glass of champagne and smiling mischievously. On his brow he bore ivy; on his bare neck a tie was loosely draped. His left arm lithely supported the golden weight of the drunken boat of his body on the table on which he was half-sitting. His hand, like an oar, pressed back the waves made by the light pressure of his hips against the white tablecloth.
Just then the record changed to a samba. The dancers withdrew to the sides; a light went on behind the wine-colored brocade curtain over the doorway to the stairs. The curtain shook energetically. Suddenly a half-naked boy appeared, dressed as a Spanish dancer. He was a small, narrow-hipped, charming boy of eighteen or so, wearing a scarlet turban; a gold-embroidered scarlet brassiere covered his breast.
He danced. His limpid sexuality differed from the dark, indecisive hesitancy of a woman. It held a litheness rich with precise lines and glints that captured the hearts of the audience. Dancing, the boy threw back his head. When he brought it forward again he gave a clear look of desire in Yuichi’s direction. Yuichi responded by closing one eye. A silent pact had been sealed.
Kaburagi did not miss the wink. Since he had earlier come to recognize Yuichi for what he was, his heart was filled with Yuichi. Pope was concerned about public opinion, so he never showed his face in the places in the Ginza district. Recently he had heard the name Yuchan everywhere, but imagined it meant no more than that an extraordinary person had taken his place among the garden-variety of beautiful boys. Half out of curiosity he had asked Jackie to introduce him. It turned out to be Yuichi.
Nobutaka Kaburagi was a master of seduction. Until today, in his forty-third year, he had been intimate with about a thousand boys. What was it that attracted him? It cannot be said that it was beauty that excited him and drove him to debauchery. Rather, it was fear—trembling fear—that held him captive. In the pleasures of that street, everywhere a kind of sweet corruption followed one. As Saikaku said so eloquently: “Making love to boys is like the sleep of a wolf under a flower whose petals are falling.” That is the charm of it. Nobutaka searched constantly
for new thrills. Only new things excited him. He had no sense that would have permitted him to compare beauties precisely, to rank them. He never tried to compare the charms of the individual before him now with the charms of the individual he had just loved. Like a ray of light, passion illuminated one time, one space. Now Nobutaka felt like a suicide lured to the precipice. A fresh rent in the continuous exterior of our fixed lives was beckoning him, who had so little resistance.
Watch out this time, his heart soliloquized. Until just now** I had seen Yuichi as nothing more than a young husband infatuated with my wife, a runaway colt galloping in the dawn down the normal paths of life. I looked at his beauty but kept calm. I never thought I could recklessly drag that runaway down my own little lane. When I then suddenly perceived Yuichi in this little lane, my heart was troubled. He’s dangerous as lightning! I remember that long ago when I saw a young fellow just entering this street the same lightning lit my heart up brightly. I fell head over heels in love. I know the signs when it is going to happen. Since then twenty years have gone by, and the lightning has not struck again with the same force until today. Compared with this the lightning I felt for the other thousand was a child’s sparkler. With the first throb, the first thrill, the issue was decided. Somehow I must get to sleep with this youth right away.
Even though he was in love, he excelled in techniques of observation and his glance had the power of making things transparent. In his words the power of mental telepathy lay concealed. From the moment he saw Yuichi, Nobutaka perceived the intellectual poison corroding this beautiful young person. Ah, already this youth has been rendered weak by his own beauty. His weakness is his beauty. He has recognized the power of his beauty, and the prints of the leaves are still on his back. That’s what I’ll aim at.
Nobutaka stood up and approached the terrace where Jackie was sobering up. As he did so, the blond foreigner who had come over with Yuichi asked Yuichi to dance. Another foreigner made the same request at almost the same moment.
Nobutaka motioned to Jackie, who then came in. The cold air struck Nobutaka’s neck.
Jackie took his old friend to the bar on the mezzanine that looked out to the sea. In a corner, a bar had been set up where there were no windows, and there a faithful waiter whom Jackie had discovered in the Ginza was working with rolled-up sleeves as bartender. On the distant point at the left the flashing light was visible. The branches of the bare trees in the garden embraced the seascape and the starry sky. Caught between the cold air and the heat, the windows had been wiped and clouded over again. Playfully, the two men ordered a woman’s cocktail, an angel’s tip, and drank.
“Well? Terrific, eh?”
“A pretty boy. I’ve never seen anything quite like him.” “The foreigners are all amazed by him. And not one of them has had him. He seems to dislike foreigners particularly. He’s had about ten or twenty fellows, but they’re all younger than he.”
“The tougher they are, the more exciting they are. The boys nowadays are pushovers.”
“Well, go ahead and see. At any rate, the veterans have done all they can, but now they’re all played out. Now’s the time for Pope to show his hand.”
“What I want to know is . . said the former count, transferring his cocktail to the palm of his left hand and staring fixedly at it. Whenever he looked at something, he put on an air of being observed. In short, he continually played the dual role of actor and audience. “How shall I say it? I wonder if the kid has ever given himself to someone he doesn’t desire. Whether, how shall I say it, he has given himself completely to his own beauty. If there is ever so little of love and desire for one’s lover in the affair, then it can by no means be called giving oneself purely to one’s own beauty. From what you say he doesn’t seem to have had such an experience, despite his good looks.” “That’s what I hear; although if he’s married he must be sleeping with his wife mostly out of a sense of duty.” Nobutaka dropped his eyes. He groped for the implications hidden in his old friend’s words. When Kaburagi thought about something, he always acted as if people were staring hard at him, studying the tailoring of his ideas. The tipsy Jackie urged him to try what he had in mind. If by ten o’clock the next morning Nobutaka was successful, Jackie wagered, he would win the magnificent ring on his finger. Against it Pope wagered the early Muromachi makie-lacquered writing box in the Kaburagi family storehouse. The beauty of that high-relief makie work had set Jackie pining incurably to possess it when he had first seen it in the Kaburagi home.
From the mezzanine they descended again to the ballroom. Before anyone knew it, Yuichi had started dancing with the one who had performed earlier. The boy had already changed to a suit. At his throat a lovely bow tie was knotted. Nobutaka knew his age. The homosexual’s hell and the woman’s hell are the same—namely, old age. Nobutaka knew for certain that he could never hope for the divine miracle that the beautiful youth would fall in love with him. The very impossibility of it brought his passion close to that of the idealist who knows from the beginning his ideals will never be realized. He who loves ideals hopes to be loved by ideals in turn.
In the middle of the number, Yuichi and the boy abruptly stopped dancing. The two disappeared from sight behind the wine-colored curtain. With a sigh, Pope said, “Well, they’ve gone to the second floor.”
On the floor above, there were three or four little rooms that could be used at any time, all furnished casually with sleeping alcoves and couches.
“You’ll have to allow him one or two lovers, Pope. When you’re young as he is, it doesn’t make any difference.” Jackie said it in a comforting tone. He was looking over the shelves in the corner, deciding where to put the writing box he would get from Nobutaka.
Nobutaka was waiting. Even after Yuichi reappeared in an hour, his opportunity didn’t come. Night was deepening. People were losing interest in dancing. Like alternately dying and reviving embers, however, several couples were continually exchanging partners and dancing on. Against the wall in a little chair, one of Jackie’s favorites, his face innocent in slumber, was taking a nap. One of the foreigners winked at Jackie. Ever the generous host, he smiled and nodded. The foreigner grasped the sleeping boy very lightly. He carried him to a sofa on the other side of the curtain leading to the mezzanine. The boy’s lips were slightly open as he slept. His eyes, hidden by long lashes, trembled as, out of curiosity, he stealthily looked at the breast of the husky person carrying him. He saw the golden hair of the man’s chest protruding from a gap in his shirt and felt as if he were being embraced by a great hornet.
Nobutaka awaited his chance. The men there were mainly old acquaintances, and they had all sorts of things to talk about. Nobutaka, however, wanted Yuichi. All kinds of sweet and lewd imaginings tortured him. He was confident, moreover, that no expression of his would betray so much as a particle of his emotions.
Yuichi’s eyes happened to fall on a new arrival. It was a boy who had arrived at two in the morning with four or five foreigners from Yokohama. From the collar of his two-tone coat hung a scarlet-and-black-striped muffler. When he laughed, his teeth shone in strong, gleaming rows. His hair was cut square. It went well with his deep-cut full face. On his fingers, in which he clumsily held a cigarette, he wore a garish, initialed gold ring. In this wild boy there seemed to be something worthy of Yuichi’s languid sexuality. If Yuichi could be called a superb sculpture, this boy would be a botched piece of work by comparison. Besides, to the extent that one would consider him an imitation, to that same extent one would have to admit he was much like Yuichi. Thanks to his extraordinary pride, Narcissus sometimes loves a bad mirror. A bad mirror saves one from jealousy, if nothing else.
The newcomers exchanged courtesies with those who had arrived before them. Yuichi and the boy sat together. Their young eyes sought each other. An understanding had already been formed.
When the two men attempted to rise from their places, hand in hand, however, one of the foreigners asked Yuichi to dance. Yuichi did not refuse. N
obutaka Kaburagi did not let the opportunity go by; he came up to the boy and asked him to dance. While they danced, he said, “Have you forgotten me, Ryochan?”
“Could I forget you, Pope?”
“Have I ever asked you to do anything for nothing?”
“I’m indebted to you for your generosity. Everyone loves you for it.”
“How about tonight? Can you help me?”
“No reason why not, for you.”
“Right now.”
“Right now?” the boy’s eyes clouded. “But, there’s—”
“I’ll give you twice as much as the last time.”
“Yes, but how about later? There’s plenty of time before morning.”
“Later’s no good; right now!”
“First come, first served.”
“But the first one doesn’t have a cent to his name, does he?”
“For someone I love, I don’t mind sacrificing my fortune.”
“Your whole fortune! You talk as if you were rich. All right, I’ll lay out three times the money plus a thousand yen—ten thousand yen. I’ll pay you afterward.”
“Ten thousand yen?” The boy’s eyes blinked. “Was I that good last time?”
“Right.”
The boy raised his voice as he bluffed: “You’re drunk, aren’t you, Pope? I find what you say too good to believe.”
“You don’t value yourself highly enough, unfortunately. Have a little more pride. Here’s four thousand down. The other six I’ll give you later.”
The boy calculated. Four thousand yen ... if worst comes to worst, and the other six thousand yen goes sour, it’s still not a bad deal, he told himself. How will I get around putting Yuichi off?
Forbidden Colors Page 18