Forbidden Colors

by Yukio Mishima

  For these reasons the Minami family had no opportunity to take summer vacations after the war. An invitation from Yasuko’s family, who had a cottage at Karuizawa, to spend the summer there made Yuichi’s mother happy, but fear of leaving Tokyo and her attending physician even for a day stifled her joy. She told the young couple: “Why don’t you take the baby and go?” This suggestion was made, however, so glumly that Yasuko considerately announced that it would not do for her to leave her sick mother-in-law alone. That reply was just what the mother-in-law wished; it made the old lady very happy.

  When guests came, Yasuko greeted them with fans, cold towels, and cold drinks. Her mother-in-law praised highly the filial devotion of her daughter-in-law, which made Yasuko blush. It was enough to make Yasuko fear that guests would think these goings-on a mere manifestation of her mother-in-law’s egoism. She fabricated irrational explanations, such as that she was really trying to get the newborn baby acclimated to the hot Tokyo summer. Keiko perspired and developed prickly heat, so she was always sprinkled with talcum powder, which made her look like candy dusted with confectioners’ sugar.

  Yuichi’s free and independent spirit hated favors from his in-laws, and opposed accepting the offer of a summer vacation. Yasuko was schooled in the gentle art of politics and concealed her sympathy with her husband’s feelings behind the facade of filial piety toward her mother-in-law.

  The family passed the summer days peacefully; Keiko’s presence made them forget the heat. She still did not know how to smile, though, and never once broke her earnest, animal expression. She had begun to show an interest in the turning movements and the rattling noise of her windmill at about the time she was first taken to the shrine. Among her presents there was also a music box, which came in handy.

  The music box came from Holland, a model of an oldtime farmhouse with a front yard filled with flowering tulips. When you opened the front door a woman in Dutch dress, wearing a white apron and holding a watering can, came out and stood in the doorway. While the door was open thus, the music box played. The tune seemed to be a strange, countrified, Dutch folksong.

  Yasuko liked to play the music box for Keiko on the pleasantly breezy second floor. On summer afternoons, her husband, weary with homework that dragged on and on, would join in playing with his wife and child. At such times the breeze coming through the garden trees and blowing through the room toward the northeast seemed even cooler.

  “She understands, doesn’t she? Look, she’s listening!” Yasuko said.

  Yuichi studied the infant’s expression. This baby has only insides, he thought. To her the outside world hardly exists. To her the outside world is her mother’s nipple in her mouth when her stomach is empty, the vague alternations of light between night and day, the beautiful movements of the windmill, or the soft monotone of her rattle and the music box; nothing else. When it comes to her insides, though, well now! The instincts, the history, and the heredity of the first woman are combined in her, and later she will only have to spread them like a water flower in its wet environment. Only the task of making a flower bloom will remain. I shall bring her up as a woman among women, a beauty among beauties.

  The scientific method of raising children, with its fixed feeding times, was going out now, so when Keiko became peevish and cried, Yasuko soon gave her the breast. Her breasts, naked and exposed in the bodice of her thin summer dress, were very beautiful. The blue line of the veins ran clear in a circle about the delicate, white skin. When bare, however, her breasts were always perspiring, like fruit ripening in a hothouse. Before she cleaned the nipples with a piece of gauze soaked in boric acid solution, Yasuko always had to wipe away the perspiration with a towel. Before the child’s lips could reach out for them her breasts were already dripping. They were always hurting from being overfull.

  Yuichi looked at those breasts. He looked at the summer clouds floating by the window. The cicadas buzzed incessantly, so that at times the listening ear forgot the racket. When Keiko had finished nursing, she slept under her mosquito netting. Yuichi and Yasuko looked at each other and smiled.

  Suddenly Yuichi was struck by a jarring sensation. Was not this what we call happiness? Or was it nothing more than the helpless relief of seeing what you have feared come to pass, before your eyes—fulfilled. He felt the shock and sat as if stunned. He was amazed at the certainty to all outward appearances that all the end results were before his eyes—at the innocence of it.

  A few days later, his mother suffered a sudden setback. To make matters worse, she, who usually would have sent at once for the doctor, now stubbornly refused treatment. That this talkative old widow should go all day without opening her mouth was strange, one had to admit. That evening, Yuichi ate dinner at home. When he saw the color of his mother’s skin, her twitching expression when she tried to smile, and her almost complete lack of appetite, he postponed his departure.

  “Why aren’t you going out this evening?” she said with studied pleasantness to her son, who seemed to be lingering around the house forever. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not sick. If you need proof of it, I’m the one who knows best about my own condition. If I don’t feel right, I’ll call the doctor. I’m not afraid to bother anybody.”

  Yuichi, however, made no move to go, so the next morning the sagacious woman changed her tactics. From morning on, she was in high spirits.

  “What about yesterday?” she said to Kiyo in a loud voice. “Yesterday, for all I know, was proof that I haven’t graduated from the menopause yet.”

  The night before she had slept almost not at all, but the state of excitement brought about by lack of sleep, and the fact that her mind had churned all night long, showed this great act of hers to good advantage. After supper Yuichi went out free of worry.

  “Call me a taxi, please,” she said to Kiyo. “I’ll tell him where I want to go when I get in the car.”

  Kiyo started to get ready to go with her, but the old lady restrained her, saying: “I don’t need anyone with me. I’m going alone.”

  “But, ma’am—” Kiyo was thunderstruck. Since Yuichi’s mother had become ill, she had almost never gone out alone.

  “Is my going out alone so strange? Don’t take me for the Empress Dowager, now, please! Didn’t I go to the hospital alone the other day when Yasuko had the baby? It didn’t matter then.”

  “Yes, but then there was nobody but me to mind the house. And don’t you remember that you promised me yourself that you would never go out alone again?”

  Yasuko listened to this argument between mistress and servant and went to her mother-in-law’s room with an anxious look on her face.

  “Mother, I’ll go with you if you think it isn’t convenient for Kiyo to go along.”

  “It’s all right, Yasuko; don’t worry”—her voice was gentle, yet tinged with feeling. It was almost as if she were talking to her own daughter: “It’s a matter of my husband’s estate, and there’s someone I must see a little while. I don’t like to talk to Yuichi about things like this. If he comes home before I do, please tell him that an old friend came by to meet me in his car. If, on the other hand, he comes home after I do, I won’t say anything, and you and Kiyo please be sure not. to say anything either. Promise me that. I’ve worked out my own way of dealing with this.”

  After she had enjoined them to silence, she hurriedly went out to her taxi and departed. After two hours, she returned in the same cab. She went to bed, seemingly exhausted. Yuichi came home very late.

  “How is Mother?” he asked.

  “Very well. She went to bed much earlier than usual— about nine o’clock,” Yasuko, faithful to her mother-in-law, answered.

  The next evening when Yuichi went out, his mother once more hired a car and prepared to go out. On this second night, she stubbornly and silently went through it all again. Kiyo brought in her Kanze sashpin and flinched as her mistress seized it from her hand. The old lady’s eyes, however, aglow with a threatening fever, did not so much as notice Kiyo�
��s existence.

  For two successive nights she went to Rudon’s in Yurakucho, on the watch for Yuichi as her one and only piece of evidence. The frightful anonymous letter she had received the day before yesterday had encouraged her to go herself to the mysterious restaurant indicated on the enclosed map. She must see with her own eyes the person in question, as evidence that its information was not false. She decided to go alone. No matter how deep the root of the unfortunate thing that was undermining this family, it was a matter for the mother and her child to resolve. Yasuko must not be brought into it.

  Rudon’s was amazed at having this peculiar guest for two consecutive nights. In the Edo period, the male prostitutes, while they usually served homosexuals, were commonly patronized by widows. Nowadays, however, that custom was forgotten.

  The letter told about the strange customs and the argot of this place. The widow Minami exerted herself to the utmost, and succeeded miraculously from the first in acting like a person who knew her way around. Without in the slightest betraying her amazement, she mixed sociably. The Master, who came over to greet her, was charmed by the presence of this refined old woman and her uninhibited discourse. He could not help trusting her. Then too, above all, this woman did not seem reluctant about parting with her money.

  “That’s a curious customer,” said Rudy to his boys. “Look how old she is; she knows everything. She doesn’t seem to be a person you need to be wary about; the other guests can enjoy themselves without worrying about her.”

  The second floor of Rudon’s was at first a bar employing women, but Rudy changed his policy and fired the women. Now, beginning early in the evening, men danced together on the second floor and watched dances by half-clad boys in women’s clothing.

  On the first night, Yuichi did not appear. His mother was determined to wait there on the second evening until he showed up. She did not like sake, but she offered it unstintingly to the two or three boys waiting on her table, besides whatever else they liked. After thirty or forty minutes, there was still no sign of Yuichi. Then something one of the boys was saying made her prick up her ears.

  The boy said to his friend: “What’s up? Yuchan hasn’t been around for two or three days.”

  “What are you so worried about?” asked the boy he had spoken to.

  “I’m not worried. There’s nothing between me and Yuchan.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  The widow asked casually: “Yuchan must be famous around here. He’s a very handsome fellow, isn’t he?”

  “I’ve got his picture. I’ll show it to you,” said the boy who had spoken first.

  It took considerable time for him to produce the picture. From the inside pocket of his waiter’s coat he took a dusty, dirty packet. It was a jumbled bundle of calling cards, ragged folded slips of paper, several one-yen notes, and even a movie program. The boy approached a floor lamp and carefully inspected the articles one by one. The unlucky mother, who did not have the courage to go over them minutely, closed her eyes.

  “Let it be a man who is not at all like Yuichi,” she prayed in her heart. “Then there will still be some room for doubt. I will have a happy moment of stalling for time. Then I can end up believing that every line of that awful letter—there being no evidence—was an outright lie. Let that picture be of a man I have never seen.”

  “Here it is! Here it is!” the boy shouted.

  The widow Minami held her presbyopic eyes at a distance and looked at the calling-card-size photograph in the light of the standing lamp. The surface of the picture shone in the light and was hard to see. Finally, at an angle the face of a smiling young man in a white polo shirt was clearly visible. It was Yuichi.

  That was truly a moment to take her breath away, and Mrs. Minami completely lost all heart to confront her son. The indomitable will power she had maintained until then was broken. Distracted, she handed the photograph back. Her ability to laugh, to speak, had vanished.

  On the stairs there was a sound of footsteps. A new guest was coming up. Two boy friends who were necking in one of the booths sprang apart when they saw that the guest was a young woman. The woman noticed Yuichi’s mother and went in her direction, approaching with serious countenance.

  “Mother,” she said.

  Mrs. Minami’s face went white. She looked up. It was Yasuko.

  The rapid conversation that passed between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law was pitiful to hear. “What are you doing in a place like this?” the mother asked. Yasuko did not reply. She only tugged at her to go home.

  “But who would think of meeting you in a place like this?”

  “Mother, let’s go home. I came to get you.”

  “How did you know where I went?”

  “I’ll tell you later. But now let’s go home.”

  The two quickly paid the check, left the place, and got into the mother’s waiting car.

  The widow leaned back on the seat and closed her eyes. The car started off. Yasuko sat on the edge of the seat and solicitously watched her.

  “You’re drenched in perspiration,” said Yasuko, wiping her mother-in-law’s forehead with a handkerchief.

  After a time the widow opened her eyes and said: “I know: you’ve read my mail.”

  “I wouldn’t do anything of the sort. I got a thick letter, too—this morning. Then I knew where you went last night, Mother. I knew you wouldn’t take me with you tonight either, so I started after you left.”

  “You got the same letter!”

  The widow whimpered like a person in torture. “Yasuko, I beg your pardon,” she said, weeping. Her reasonless apologies and sobs moved Yasuko and made her cry too. Until the car reached their home, the two sympathized with each other in tears. Yet they exchanged not a word about the real issue.

  When they got home, Yuichi had not yet returned. The widow’s motive for striving to settle the matter alone had not been based so much on a heroic resolution to spare Yasuko anguish as on a sense of humiliation that made her unable to face her daughter-in-law. Once, therefore, this humiliation had dissolved in tears, her only confidante, Yasuko, became at the same time her indispensable aid. The two quickly started comparing the letters in a room far away from Kiyo. Not enough time had gone by to allow the women to begin to harbor hatred toward the mean-spirited, unnamed person who had written them.

  Both letters were in the same hand. The contents were identical. There were many miswritten characters; the sentences were clumsy. Here and there were evidences that the writer had deliberately distorted his handwriting.

  The letters were written as if a sense of duty had made this report on Yuichi’s conduct necessary. Yuichi was an “absolute phony” of a husband; he was “absolutely incapable of loving women.” Yuichi was “bilking his family, pulling the wool over the world’s eyes.” Not only that, he paid no heed to the happy arrangements entered into by other people. Although a man, he had become the plaything of men. He had once been the favorite of former Count Kaburagi, and now he was the pet of the president of Kawada Motors. Moreover, this beautiful spoiled child had been continually betraying the patronage of these older lovers. He had loved and left an unbelievable number of young lovers—more than a hundred of them, no less. “It should be pointed out” that the younger lovers were all of the same sex.

  In the meantime Yuichi had come to take delight in stealing what belonged to others. Because of him, an old man whose boy lover he had taken away committed suicide. The writer of this letter was a person who had suffered from the same offense. He pleaded that it be understood that the feeling with which he had sent this letter was one that could not be side-stepped.

  “If this letter calls up any doubts, if there should be any qualms over the definiteness of the evidence, I wish you to visit the following restaurant after supper and see with your own eyes the truth of what I say. Yuichi will be in this place at one time or another. If you meet him there you will find the above report verified.”

  This was the essence
of the letter. The drafting of the detailed map showing the location of Rudon’s, with exact information about the persons who visited there, was the same in both letters.

  “Did you meet him, Mother?” asked Yasuko.

  The widow had earlier intended to say nothing about the picture, but without realizing it she blurted out everything: “I didn’t meet him, but I saw a picture. It was a picture of Yuichi that a very lowbrow waiter there was guarding with his life.” Saying this, she was stricken with remorse, and added: “But regardless, that’s not the same as having met him. We still haven’t proved that the letter isn’t a hoax.”

  As she said these words her haggard eyes contradicted her words. They seemed to say that in her heart she did not believe that the letter was in the slightest degree a hoax.

  The widow Minami suddenly realized that Yasuko’s face, so close to her, bore no trace of agitation: “Why, you seem to be perfectly calm! That’s strange. You, who are Yuichi’s wife!”

  Yasuko was apologetic. She was afraid that her outward composure might be causing her mother-in-law pain. The widow went on: “I see no reason to believe that this letter is not entirely false. What if it were true? Could you still be calm?”

  To this contradictory question she offered an extraordinary answer: “Yes. Somehow, that’s the way I would react.”

  The widow was silent for a time. After a while she said, with eyes lowered: “That’s because you don’t love Yuichi, I guess. The saddest part of it is that no one would have any cause to blame you for it. It is, rather, a fortunate thing in the midst of misfortune, I cannot help but feel.”

  “No!” said Yasuko in a tone almost joyous in its determination. “That is not so, Mother. It’s quite the opposite. That’s the very reason why ...”

  The widow trembled before her young daughter-in-law.

  Keiko was crying; her voice came from the bedroom through the reed screens. Yasuko got up to nurse her. Yuichi’s mother was left alone in the eight-mat annex. The smell of mosquito incense deepened her uneasiness. If Yuichi came home, his mother felt she would have no place to go. This same mother who had gone to Rudon’s, intent on meeting her son, now feared nothing more than meeting him. “If he stays away tonight, however filthy the accommodations, how happy I will be,” she prayed.