Spring Snow (51 page)

Read Spring Snow Online

Authors: Yukio Mishima

“No.”
“Well, once you make the decision not to see him ever again in this world and so advance to initiation, any later regrets would indeed be bitter ones.”
“I will have no regrets. In this world I shall never set eyes on him again. As for parting, we’ve had farewells enough. So please . . .”
Her voice as she replied was clear and firm.
“Very well. Tomorrow morning, then, I will preside at the tonsure ceremony,” the Abbess replied, allowing one more day of grace.
Countess Ayakura did not return in the interval.
From that first morning at Gesshu, Satoko had plunged herself, of her own volition, into the disciplined routine of convent life. The distinctive character of Hosso Buddhism was in placing greater emphasis on the cultivation of the mind than the practice of religious austerities. Gesshu Temple, furthermore, was traditionally dedicated to praying for the welfare of the whole nation, and there were no households registered with it as parishioners. Sometimes the Abbess would observe with gentle humor that the “Grace of tears” was something never encountered in Hosso Buddhism, thus underlining the contrast with the more recently arisen Amida cult of Pure Land Buddhism, with its great stress on ecstatic prayers of gratitude.
Then, too, in Mahayana Buddhism in general, there were no precepts to speak of. But for the rules of its monastic life the precepts of Hinayana Buddhism were often borrowed. In convents such as Gesshu, however, the rule was the “Precepts of a Bodhisattva” contained in the
Brahamajala Sutra.
Its forty-eight prohibitions began with ten major injunctions against such sins as the taking of life, stealing, excess of any sort, and lying, and it concluded with an admonishment against destroying Buddhist teachings.
Far more severe than any commandment, however, was the monastic training. In the brief time she had been at Gesshu, Satoko had already memorized both the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart” and the “Thirty Verses” expounding the doctrine of
Yuishiki.
Each morning she got up early to sweep and dust the main hall of worship before the Abbess came for her morning devotions, in the course of which she then had an opportunity to practice the chanting of the sutras. She was no longer treated as a guest, and the senior nun, whom the Abbess had placed in charge of her, was now a changed woman in her severity of manner.
On the morning of the initiation ceremony, she carefully performed the prescribed ablutions before putting on the black robes of a nun. In the hall of worship, she sat with her string of beads wrapped around her hands, which she held clasped together in front of her. After the Abbess herself had first taken the razor and begun the tonsuring, the old nun in charge of her took over. And as she shaved steadily with a skilled hand, the Abbess began to chant the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart,” accompanied by the junior nun.
When she had consummated the works of perfection,
The Five Aggregates of living being became as
Things void before the Bohdisattva Kannon’s eyes,
And stricken from her was the yoke of human suffering.
Satoko, too, took up the chant, her eyes closed. And as she did so, her body became like a boat that is gradually lightened of all its cargo and freed of its anchor, and she felt herself being swept along on the deep swelling wave of chanting voices.
She kept her eyes shut. The main hall had the penetrating chill of an ice house. and so, although she herself was floating free, she imagined a vast expanse of pure ice gripping all the world about her. Suddenly the cry of a shrike came from the garden outside, and a crack raced across this icy plane with the swiftness of a jagged steak of lightning. But it sealed itself almost at once, and the ice became whole once more.
She felt the razor working its way with scrupulous care across her scalp. Sometimes she imagined the frenetic gnawing of a mouse’s tiny white incisors, sometimes the placid grinding of the molars of a horse or cow.
As lock after lock fell away, she felt her scalp begin to tingle with a refreshing coolness that was quite new to her. The razor was shearing off the black hair that had separated her from the world for so long, sultry and heavy with its sorry burden of desire; but her scalp was now being laid bare to a realm of purity whose chill freshness had not been violated by any man’s hand. As the expanse of shaved head broadened, she began to feel the skin coming more and more alive, just as if a cool solution of menthol was spreading over it.
She imagined that the chill must be like the surface of the moon, directly exposed to the vastness of the universe. The world she had known was falling away with each strand. And as it did so, she became infinitely removed from it.
In one sense, it seemed as though her hair were being harvested. Shorn black clumps, still saturated with the stifling brilliance of the summer sun, piled up on the floor around her. But it was a worthless crop, for the very instant that the luxuriant black handfuls ceased to be hers, the beauty of life went out of them, leaving only an ugly remnant. Something that had once been an intimate part of her, an aesthetic element of her innermost being, was now being relentlessly thrown aside. As irrevocable as the amputation of a limb, the ties that bound her to the world of transience were being severed.
When her scalp at last shone with a bluish glint, the Abbess addressed her gently.
“The most crucial renunciation is the one that comes after formal renunciation. I have the utmost trust in your present resolution. From this day on, if you seek constantly to purify your heart in the austerities of our life, I have no doubt that one day you will become the glory of our sisterhood.”
∗
This was how Satoko’s premature tonsuring came about. Neither Countess Ayakura nor Marquise Matsugae, however, was prepared to give up, no matter how shattered they were by Satoko’s transformation. After all, there remained the wig, a potent weapon still held in reserve.
47
 
C
OUNT
A
YAKURA ALONE
among the three visitors maintained an appearance of affability from first to last. He engaged the Abbess and Satoko in casual, unhurried conversation about the world in general, and at no time gave the slightest hint that he might want Satoko to change her mind.
A telegram arrived every day from Marquis Matsugae demanding a report on the situation to date. Finally the Countess broke down and wept as she pleaded with her daughter, but this gained her nothing, and so on the third day after their arrival, the Countess and the Marquise left for Tokyo, putting all their trust in the Count, who remained at Gesshu. The strain had worked such ravages in the Countess that she took to her bed as soon as she returned home.
As for the Count, he spent a week at Gesshu doing nothing at all. He was afraid to return to Tokyo. Since he had made no attempt whatever to persuade Satoko to return to secular life, the Abbess relaxed her guard and gave him and his daughter the chance to be alone together. The senior nun, however, kept a casual eye on them from a distance.
The two of them sat facing each other in silence on a veranda that caught some share of the winter sunshine. Beyond the dry tree branches, some scattered clouds reemphasized the blue of the sky. A flycatcher called timidly from a crape myrtle. They had been sitting without a word for a long time. Finally Count Ayakura spoke, with a hint of an ingratiating smile.
“I won’t be able to mix much in society from now on, because of you.”
“Be kind enough to forgive me,” Satoko answered calmly, without a trace of emotion.
“My, you have all sorts of birds in this garden, haven’t you?” he said after a few moments.
“Yes, we have all sorts.”
“I took a little stroll around this morning. By the time the persimmons here are ripe enough to fall, it looks as though the birds have already been at them. There seems to be no one to pick them up.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what happens.”
“I should think we’ll have some snow before too long,” he added, but there was no answer. And so the two of them sat in silence, gazing down at the garden.
The following morning Count Ayakura finally left Gesshu. And when he confronted Marquis Matsugae in Tokyo, having failed completely in his mission, he found that the Marquis was no longer angry.
It was already December 4, which left a mere week until the betrothal ceremony. The Marquis secretly summoned the superintendent-general of the metropolitan police to the Matsugae residence. His plan was to invoke the power of the police to effect Satoko’s forcible removal from the convent.
The superintendent-general sent a confidential order to the Nara police. Since this was a matter of setting foot in a convent whose Abbess was traditionally an imperial princess, however, the Nara police were afraid of incurring the wrath of the Imperial Household Ministry. As long as the temple was receiving assistance from imperial funds—be it only a thousand yen a year—the slightest violation of its autonomy was unthinkable. The superintendent-general himself therefore went down to Nara in private, accompanied by a trusted subordinate in civilian clothes. The Abbess did not show the slightest sign of alarm when the senior nun handed her his card.
After spending an hour chatting with the Abbess over tea, he finally had to withdraw, yielding to the force of her massive dignity.
The Marquis had played the last card in his hand, and had come to the realization that there was nothing else to do but to request the Toinnomiyas to accept Satoko’s withdrawal from the proposed marriage. In recent weeks, Prince Toin had sent an official to the Ayakuras several times, and was concerned over their strange behavior.
The Marquis summoned the Count to his home and told him that they had no choice but to accept the situation. Then he outlined the strategy they were to follow. They would present the Toinnomiyas with a certificate signed by a reputable doctor testifying that Satoko had been stricken by a severe nervous breakdown. The shared responsibility of preserving this secret might unite the Toinnomiyas with the Ayakuras and Matsugaes in mutual trust, and this might soften the Prince’s anger. As for the general public, all that need be done was to spread the rumor that the Toinnomiyas had released a curt, vaguely worded statement that the engagement was at an end and that Satoko had turned her back on the world and fled to a convent. As a result of this inversion of cause and effect, the Toinnomiyas, although obliged to some extent to play the villain, would nonetheless maintain face and prestige. And the Ayakuras, while incurring a measure of shame, would nevertheless benefit from public sympathy.
It would never do, however, to let things get out of hand. If that were to happen, altogether too much sympathy would accrue to the Ayakuras, and the Toinnomiyas, faced with the stirrings of unjustified hostility, would be compelled to clarify matters, and so have to make public Satoko’s medical certificate. It was essential to present the story to the newspaper reporters without making too much cause and effect out of the Toinnomiyas’ breaking of the engagement and Satoko’s becoming a nun. They must be presented as separate events—but their chronological sequence would have to be reversed. The reporters themselves, however, would hardly be content with such an explanation. Should this be the case, a bare hint would be dropped to them that there was indeed a causal relationship but the families involved requested that they refrain from disclosing this.
As soon as he obtained Count Ayakura’s agreement to this plan, the Marquis immediately put in a call to Dr. Ozu, the director of the Ozu Mental Clinic, and requested that he come to the Matsugae residence at once to conduct an examination in the strictest secrecy. The clinic had an excellent reputation for protecting the privacy of its eminent patients when emergencies of this sort arose. Dr. Ozu took a long time to arrive, however, and in the interval the Marquis was no longer able to hide his irritation from the Count, who was forced to wait for the doctor with him. But since it would have been improper in the circumstances to send a car from the Matsugae residence, the Marquis could do nothing but grit his teeth.
When the doctor arrived, he was brought to the small second-floor parlor of the Western-style house, where a fire was burning brightly in the fireplace. The Marquis introduced himself and the Count in turn and offered the doctor a cigar.

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