Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

  “Let’s go to Kyoto right after the two of them,” Nobutaka said. Oddly enough, his wife had felt that he would say such a thing. Early the next morning they departed.

  Thus the Kaburagis ran into Shunsuke and Yuichi in the lobby of the Rakuyo Hotel.

  Yuichi saw a servile look gleaming in Nobutaka’s eyes. Thanks to this first impression, Nobutaka’s reprimand had no authority.

  “What kind of private secretary are you? Who ever heard of a company where the private secretary goes off and the chairman of the board and his wife have to pursue him? Better watch out!” Nobutaka abruptly shifted his gaze to Shunsuke and with an inoffensive smile, full of social banter, he added: “Mr. Hinoki must really be captivating!”

  Mrs. Kaburagi and Shunsuke each defended Yuichi, but he made no apology, and simply cast a cool glance toward Nobutaka, filling that poor man with anger and chagrin that left him speechless.

  It was time for supper. Nobutaka wanted to go out to eat, but everyone was tired and did not relish traipsing about the frigid street; so they went to the restaurant on the sixth floor and huddled around a single table. Mrs. Kaburagi’s stylish checkered suit, of fabric designed for men, fitted her well, and the slight fatigue of the trip made her somehow extremely attractive. Her color, however, was rather poor. Her skin had the whiteness of a gardenia. Happiness is the feeling of being slightly drunk, slightly ill. Nobutaka knew that was what gave his wife’s face its lyrical shading.

  Yuichi could not help being aware that these three mature adults could blithely veer from the beaten path of common sense on his account, and in doing so act completely in disregard of him. There was Shunsuke, for instance, who had abruptly carried him off on a Journey away from his job. There were the Kaburagis, who had followed them to Kyoto as if it happened every day. Each attempted to palliate his own conduct by pushing it off on another. Nobutaka, for instance, offered the pretext that he had come only to please his wife. The reasons each gave for coming would be shown up in all their unnaturalness if examined coldly. At this dining table it was hard not to feel that each of the four was supporting one of the comers of a single fragile spider’s web.

  They drank Cointreau and got a little high. Yuichi was repelled by Nobutaka’s pose as the man of magnanimity and good will. He was repelled by the childish vanity with which Kaburagi advertised over and over to Shunsuke his deference to his wife—how he had made Yuichi private secretary at his wife’s behest, and how he had taken this trip also on her account.

  In Shunsuke’s eyes, however, this wild avowal seemed plausible. It was entirely plausible to him that a frigid marriage might have been rejuvenated by the wiles of a wayward wife.

  Mrs. Kaburagi had been pleased by the call Yuichi had made the night before. She believed that the cause of his compulsive flight to Kyoto was not so much to get away from her as to get away from Nobutaka. Somehow I can’t get hold of what this young man is thinking. That’s why he always seems so refreshing. Whenever I look at his eyes they are so beautiful. How youthful his smile!

  On different soil, she found that gazing at Yuichi had new charm. Her poetic spirit was firmly struck by this tiny bit of inspiration. Oddly, it gave her more of a lift to look at Yuichi in her husband’s presence. Lately she hadn’t been particularly titillated by talking to him alone. At such times she had only become ill at ease and irritated.

  This hotel was used exclusively by foreign buyers and therefore had comfortable central heating. They sat by the window and talked while looking down at the lighted activity of Kyoto Station across the way. Shunsuke behaved as if he didn’t see Mrs. Kaburagi, who had noticed that Yuichi’s cigarette case was empty and took a pack out of her bag and slipped it into his pocket.

  “My dear wife, it doesn’t pay to bribe my secretary.” Nobutaka watched his wife’s every move and wished to make that public. His ostentatiousness about it seemed ridiculous to Shunsuke.

  “I think trips for no reason at all are a good idea,” said Mrs. Kaburagi. “Where shall we all go tomorrow?”

  Shunsuke looked *at her hard as she spoke. She was beautiful, but quite deficient in appeal.

  He had loved her and been blackmailed for it by her husband, but what he loved her for was her lack of spirituality. Now, however, in contrast to that earlier time, she had entirely forgotten about her own beauty. Shunsuke watched her smoking. She lit a cigarette, took two or three puffs from it and laid it in the ash tray. Then, forgetting the cigarette she had started smoking, she took out a fresh one and lit it. Yuichi held out his lighter and lighted each of them.

  This woman is as clumsy as an ugly old maid, Shunsuke thought. His revenge was already complete.

  By all rights they should all have gone to bed early, tired as they were from traveling. A little thing happened, though, that served to bring them all wide awake. It was caused by Nobutaka, who was suspicious about what was going on between Yuichi and Shunsuke. He suggested that this evening they divide up so that he and Shunsuke shared one room, while Yuichi and his wife shared the other.

  Nobutaka’s effrontery in proposing this cynical scheme reminded Shunsuke of the man’s past trickery. He did it out of the innocence that belonged to his unscrupulous, noble person and out of his ability to be brutally insensitive to another’s feelings. It was courtly cruelty at its worst. The Kaburagi family was very high in the nobility.

  “I haven’t talked to you in a long time and would enjoy it,” Nobutaka said. “I would hate to go to sleep at once. You’re accustomed to staying up pretty late, I suppose, sir. The bar is going to close right away, so how about it? Let’s have some drinks brought to our room and sit awhile.” He looked at his wife. “You and Mr. Minami look sleepy. Don’t fret; go on to bed. It’s all right if Minami sleeps in my room. I’ll just go to Mr. Hinoki’s room and talk for a while. I might even ask him if I can stay over in his room, so don’t worry about me, and sleep well.”

  Yuichi naturally demurred. Shunsuke was simply shocked. The youth enlisted Shunsuke’s aid with his eyes. This filled the keen-sighted Nobutaka with jealousy.

  As for Mrs. Kaburagi, she was accustomed to treatment of this sort from her husband. This time, however, the problem was different. The man was her dearly beloved Yuichi. She almost voiced her resentment of her husband’s rudeness, but the temptation that she might secure what she wished all day, every day, placed anger out of the question.

  She was tortured by the hope that Yuichi would not hold her in contempt. The power of that lofty emotion had led her to this point, but now for the first time she had the opportunity of separating herself from it. If she did not, she might not be able by her own efforts alone to devise a second opportunity. This inward battle only raged for a few seconds in time, but the unwillingness and yet the joy in the feeling which accompanied her decision seemed like the result of a battle that took years. She turned to the youth she loved and smiled as gently as a whore.

  In Yuichi’s eyes, however, Mrs. Kaburagi had never looked so gentle and so maternal as now. He listened while she said: “All right, you old men enjoy yourselves. If I have another day without enough sleep, I’ll get bags under my eyes. Those who can’t possibly get any more wrinkles can sit up all night, or whatever they like.”

  She looked at Yuichi and said: “Yuchan, don’t you think it’s time to go to sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  Yuichi immediately made a great show of being overcome by sleepiness. Mrs. Kaburagi was fascinated by the crudeness of the performance.

  This went on with a naturalness that filled Shunsuke with dismay, but he found no opening by which to thwart them. He just couldn’t figure out what Nobutaka had in mind. The tone of these proceedings seemed to be entirely concerned with arranging something between Yuichi and Mrs. Kaburagi. He could not fathom what made Nobutaka countenance this.

  Shunsuke also did not know how Yuichi felt about it, so his ready wit was hindered. There in the soft chairs by the bar he racked his brains for something harmless to say to Nobutaka.
At last he said: “Mr. Kaburagi, do you happen to know the meaning of the name Chuta?”

  As he brought this out he recalled the content of the mystic book, and said nothing more. This topic could cause trouble for Yuichi.

  “Chuta?” Nobutaka asked sleepily. “Is that a man’s name?” He had drunk more than he could hold and was already far gone: “Chuta? Chuta? Oh, that’s my alias.”

  The reply made Shunsuke’s eyes open wide.

  After a time the four got up and took the elevator down to the third floor.

  The two rooms were three rooms apart. Yuichi and Mrs. Kaburagi went into the one farther back, 315. They said nothing. She got up and locked the door.

  Yuichi took off his jacket, which only increased his embarrassment. He walked about the room like an animal pacing a cage. He opened the empty drawers one by one. Mrs. Kaburagi asked him if he wanted to bathe. He told her to go first.

  While she was in the tub, someone knocked at the door. Yuichi opened it, and Shunsuke entered.

  “May I use your bath? Ours is out of order.”

  “Surely.”

  Shunsuke took Yuichi by the arm and said: “Are you interested in this at all?”

  “I can’t stand it.”

  The liquid voice of Mrs. Kaburagi came from the bathroom clear and hollow as it echoed from the ceiling: “Yuchan? Would you like to get in with me?”

  “Oh?”

  “I left the door open.”

  Shunsuke pushed past Yuichi and turned the doorknob. He passed through the dressing room and opened the inner door a crack. Mrs. Kaburagi’s face went white.

  “At your age?” she said, lightly touching the surface of the water.

  “A long time ago your husband came into our bedroom in just this way,” Shunsuke said.

  Chapter 17 ONE’S HEART’S DESIRE

  MRS. KABURAGI was not a woman to be overly shaken by happenings. Rising from the soap bubbles in the bathtub, she stood erect. She looked at Shunsuke without wavering. “If you wish to come in, please do.”

  That naked body, deterred by not a trace of shyness, treated the old man standing there as if he were little more than a stone by the roadside. The wet breasts glowed, for all the world unmoved. Shunsuke’s eyes were assaulted for a moment by the beauty of the body that had filled out and ripened with the years, but then, coming back to himself, he thought of the dumb humiliation he himself was experiencing, and all his desire to look further fled. The naked woman was serene; the old man before whom she stood exposed was the one to blush in embarrassment. For a moment Shunsuke felt as if he understood Yuichi’s pain.

  “I just don’t seem to have the capacity for revenge. My potency for revenge, too, is gone.”

  After this blinding confrontation, Shunsuke silently drew back and closed the bathroom door. Yuichi, of course, had not entered. Shunsuke found himself alone in the little dressing room with the light out. He closed his eyes and saw a bright vision—a vision evoked by the sound of hot water.

  Shunsuke was tired of standing, yet too embarrassed to return to Yuichi. He sank into a squat, grumbling in reasonless discontent. Mrs. Kaburagi gave no sign of getting out of her bath.

  After a time Shunsuke heard her rising from the water. The door opened roughly. A wet hand turned on the light in the dressing room. Mrs. Kaburagi looked at Shunsuke, who had risen suddenly from the doglike crouch he had assumed. She said, with no surprise in her voice: “Are you still there?” She was wearing a slip. Shunsuke helped her like a lackey.

  When the two came out into the room, Yuichi was quietly smoking a cigarette and looking out of the window into the night. He turned to ask: “Have you finished with your bath, sir?”

  “Yes, he has,” said Mrs. Kaburagi, answering for him.

  “You were pretty fast!”

  “You go now,” she said brusquely. “We’ll be in the other room.”

  Yuichi went to take his turn in the bath, and Mrs. Kaburagi hurried Shunsuke to his own room, where Nobutaka was waiting.

  “You didn’t have to act so short with Yuichi,” Shunsuke said in the hall.

  “You two had it all worked out, didn’t you?” she replied. She did not realize that he had come to Yuichi’s rescue.

  Kaburagi had passed the time playing solitaire. Seeing his wife enter, he said, absolutely without feeling: “You’re back, eh?”

  The three played poker listlessly. Yuichi came back from his bath. His skin, refreshed from the bath, glowed with youthful loveliness. His cheeks were flushed like a boy’s. He smiled at Mrs. Kaburagi. Teased by his innocent grin, the comers of her mouth arched. She nudged her husband, who stood up.

  “It’s your turn to bathe. We’ll sleep over in that room. Mr. Hinoki and Yuchan will stay here.”

  Perhaps because this announcement sounded so decisive, Nobutaka did not demur. Good nights were exchanged all around. Mrs. Kaburagi went two or three steps and then turned and, as if to apologize for her earlier brusqueness, squeezed Yuichi’s hand tenderly. Her rejection, she felt, had taught him enough of a lesson.

  Thus, in the end, only Shunsuke had made a bad draw: only he had not taken a bath.

  He and Yuichi got into their beds and turned off the lights.

  In a somewhat jesting tone, Yuichi spoke in the darkness: “Thanks for what you did.”

  Shunsuke turned over contentedly. A recollection of friendship in his youth, a memory of his dormitory life in high school, came back to him. It had been a time when Shunsuke was writing poetry. His vices had managed to go no further.

  Regret was in his voice as he spoke in the darkness: “Yuchan, I have lost the power to avenge myself. Only you can get revenge against that woman.”

  The voice, filled with the tension of youth, came back from the dark: “She certainly got short-tempered fast, didn’t she?”

  “Never mind. Her eyes flatly contradict her coldness. It’s really a good opportunity. All you have to do is give her a jumbled childish explanation and she’ll sweeten up. She’ll be dreaming about you more than ever. Tell her this: ‘Even though that old man introduced us, he became fiendishly jealous when we got attached to each other. The bathroom incident was caused by his jealousy entirely!’ Tell her that, and everything will fit together.”

  “All right.”

  The extreme docility in his voice made Shunsuke feel that the arrogant Yuichi he had met after so long had changed since yesterday to the Yuichi of old. He decided to use the momentum he had gained and said: “How’s Kyoko doing lately, do you know?”

  “No.”

  “Lazy! My, you’re a peck of trouble. Kyoko has gone right off and found herself another lover. I hear she tells everybody she meets that she’s forgotten Yuchan exists. It’s gotten so bad, there are rumors she’s separating from her husband so she can go off with this fellow.”

  Shunsuke stopped talking, alert to the effect his words would have. The effect was pronounced. Yuichi’s conceit was pierced. The blood ran.

  His murmured response after a moment, however, couched words that did not come from a young man’s heart: “Fine, if that makes her happy.”

  As he said these words, the youth, in honesty to himself, could not help recalling his manly vow when he met Kyoko in the door of the shoe store: “All right. I’ll really make that woman unhappy.”

  This paradox of a knight was repenting for neglecting the mission in which he was to lay down his life for the unhappiness of womankind. Another anxiety, half superstition, nagged at him. Whenever a woman treated him coldly he could not help wondering if she had discovered his distaste for her sex.

  Shunsuke detected a cold ferocity in Yuichi’s voice, and he breathed easier. Then he casually said: “As far as I have observed, though, the only thing wrong with her is that she can’t forget you. Several things make me believe that. So when you get back to Tokyo, why don’t you call Kyoko up? It certainly won’t lower you in her estimation.” Yuichi did not reply. Shunsuke felt the youth would certainly call Kyoko when he returned
to Tokyo.

  The two were silent. Yuichi seemed to have dropped off to sleep. Shunsuke did not know quite how best to show the fullness of his heart, and turned over again. The bed creaked; the warmth was exactly right; all was right with the world. He had come to realize how mad it would be to make a trial of what had occurred to him in a daring moment: “I shall let Yuichi know that I love him.” Was anything more required between them?

  Someone knocked at the door. After two or three raps, Shunsuke called: “Who is it?”

  “Kaburagi.”

  “Come in.”

  Shunsuke and Yuichi turned on the lights at their pillows. Nobutaka entered, in a white shirt and dark-brown trousers. With forced cheerfulness he said: “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I left my cigarette case behind.”

  Shunsuke sat up. He told Nobutaka where the room light was. Nobutaka switched it on. The plain hotel room, with its two beds, a night table, a vanity, two or three chairs, and other furnishings sprang into light. Nobutaka crossed the room with the ostentatious gait of a juggler.

  He picked up a tortoise-shell cigarette case from the table, opened it, and arranged its contents. Then he went to the mirror, and pulled down one lower eyelid as if to see whether his eye was bloodshot.

  “There. Excuse me. Good night.”

  He turned off the light and departed.