The Frolic of the Beasts Read online

  “Well? You haven’t changed one little bit, have you?” Yūko’s bare white arm snaked out through the patchy sunlight filtering through the trees and snatched the compact away from Kōji’s hand.

  * * *

  —

  The drone of the machine saws had stopped, apparently for the lunch break. The surrounding area had become extremely quiet, save for the insistent wing beat of a greenbottle flying low around the convolvulus flower. Likely as not it had hatched from a discarded rotten fish on the beach, and having eaten its fill and become fat, it was now flying about in something of a faithless manner. It was a splendid combination of silver and dirt, and of cold metallic brilliance and warm putrefaction. Kōji imagined that before long he would probably become fond of entomology, although there was once a time as a young man when he never so much as looked at an insect.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to visit even once. I often explained the reason why in my postcards, but it’s the truth, believe me. I can’t even leave the house for a night. It’s his condition, you see. When you see him, I’m sure you will understand, too. He’d be in a real fix if I wasn’t there all the time.”

  “You must be content,” answered Kōji, offhandedly.

  Yūko’s reaction, however, was remarkable. Her richly proportioned face reddened, and from between her impatiently twitching thin lips came forth a torrent of confused words, like the discordant hammering of piano keys.

  “Is that what you wanted to say? The first thing you wanted to say when you came out was that? Oh, it’s awful. That’s an awful way of putting it. If you say it like that, then it ruins everything. It gets to the point where I can’t trust anything in this world. Promise you won’t say it like that again—promise?”

  Kōji inclined himself obliquely on the grass and regarded this beautiful woman’s anger. It came from within and pushed her body around, and her large eyes no longer had the courage to look in his direction. He watched quietly. And as he did so, the serious implication of his words began to penetrate his extremities, like water gradually seeping into sandy ground. The truth was that they were not yet accustomed to one another. It was a dangerous situation, for although one would expect more of a false intimacy when man and beast conversed, the two of them were testing each other, sniffing one another—like two animals on their first encounter. They played as if fighting and fought as if playing. All the same, it was Kōji who was seized with fear, and despite her anger, Yūko remained undaunted. As if to prove as much, she smoothly changed the topic of conversation and began to tell him how she had closed down the Tokyo shop a year or so ago, moved to Iro Village, and started running the Kusakado greenhouse.

  “Anyway, we need a man’s helping hand around here. It means a lot of study and a lot of work for you. We’ve gained a pretty good reputation from our first batch of flowers produced this spring. Oh, and we’ve also started foliage plants from this May. The temperature regulation is a bit of a nuisance, but I think you will come to like this job. I think you…Yes, you’ve definitely got a peace-loving face now.”

  Having finished their lunch, they returned to the port, skirting around the bay. Once there they carried on through the center of the village, cut across the prefectural highway, and followed the road up to the Kusakado house. A number of villagers greeted Yūko, and passersby looked on with interest. Doubtless rumors would spread through the whole village by sundown. And naturally, while Yūko was prepared to cover for him and say that Kōji was a relative, the villagers would be sure to discover the truth of the matter quicker than an ant tracking down sugar.

  “Try not to walk with your head hanging down like that,” said Yūko, cautioning him in an emphatically candid manner.

  “I can’t help it,” answered Kōji, still with downcast eyes, and he watched the slightly distorted shadow of Yūko’s parasol as it passed lightly over bus and truck tire marks impressed on the highway in the noon heat.

  Moving directly east from the highway, if one turns left after passing the post office, the road gently winds its way in front of the gate of Taisenji temple and up the slope to the few scattered houses at the back of the hillside.

  The Kusakado house was a single isolated building that showed off its unconstrained tiled roof from the highest point of the mountain. Its capacious gardens were buried in greenhouses.

  At the top of the slope in front of the gate to the house stood a figure dressed in white clothes that were billowing in the wind. Yūko had recently erected a white painted wooden fence, twined with roses, where no gate had stood before, on the front of which she secured a large nameplate bearing the inscription “Kusakado Greenhouse.” The white bundle of clothing belonging to the figure was undoubtedly a yukata, though due to the wind and also the slovenly way in which it had been thrown on, the hem flared out like a skirt, and the ramrod-straight figure appeared as unnatural as if it had been encased in a plaster cast.

  Owing to the weight of the case he held at his side and the ascent of the gentle slope, Kōji’s brows were moist with sweat. Yūko’s fingertips lightly touched his side and held him back. Looking up for the first time, he was seized with fear—as though the prison chaplain himself was waiting there to receive him again.

  It was Ippei; the first time Kōji had seen him since that day. The high-noon sun cast dark shadows over a corner of Ippei’s face, making it appear as though he was welcoming his guest with a harsh, defiant grin.

  Chapter 2

  Yūko knew full well just how much of a fun-loving, hotheaded youth Kōji had been two years earlier. Ippei had a Western ceramics shop in Ginza and during the busy seasons such as the summer holidays and year-end he hired students from his alma mater to work on a temporary basis. Kōji had measured up to Ippei’s requirements, and he was able to continue the side job out of season, as well as being welcome at Ippei’s residence in Shibashirogane.

  Ippei had graduated with a degree in German literature, and after working for a while as a lecturer at another private university he inherited his parents’ Ginza shop, where he continued to write highbrow literary critiques, for which he had acquired something of a reputation. His works were extremely few in number, but he had an avid following among his readers and his older books, which had since gone out of print, commanded high prices. He produced translations and commentaries on the works of authors like Hofmannsthal and Stefan George, and he had also written a critical biography of Li He. His literary style was exquisitely refined and displayed none of the businesslike aspects inherent to his ceramics trading, but instead was brimming with the cool eccentricity and embellishment characterizing a lover of art.

  As a consequence of halfheartedly dabbling in spiritual matters, this kind of person tends unwittingly to acquire the privilege of contempt for the generality of spiritual activities otherwise unknown to the average human and becomes a strangely vacant and sensual being.

  Right from the start of his side job, Kōji was astonished at how busy Ippei was with his love affairs. Of course, Kōji remained detached from these matters, which had nothing whatsoever to do with him. On one occasion, as he was about to finish work and go home, Ippei had been extremely friendly, calling him back and suggesting they go for a drink together. As soon as they were settled in the bar, Ippei began to talk.

  “You haven’t got any ties at all. I’m really quite envious. No parents, no brothers and sisters, nor relatives. Not even a wife and child. I detest people with splendid families and splendid guarantors. And tell me, I’ll wager you have only enough money to get by on, don’t you?”

  “I think I can make do somehow until I graduate on the money my old man left me. But that on its own isn’t enough.”

  “That’s okay, isn’t it? You can use what you earn in my shop as spending money.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  After a moment’s silence, Ippei sipped his drink and said, “I heard you were involved
in a fight a couple of days ago.”

  Surprised, Kōji stammered slightly: “H-how did you know that?”

  “A store assistant heard the story from one of your colleagues; he thought it amusing and came to tell me.”

  Kōji scratched his head like an embarrassed schoolboy. Ippei demanded a full explanation, and so Kōji related how that night, after the shop had shut, he and a fellow part-time employee had gone for a drink at a whiskey bar in Shinjuku. As they left a fight began, and having quickly settled the matter, they made off. Ippei was much more interested in Kōji’s state of mind than in the incident itself.

  “Is it because you were annoyed? Did you do it because you were angry about something?”

  “I don’t really know why. I just lost my temper all of a sudden.” Having never been questioned like this before, Kōji was at a loss to explain.

  “You’re twenty-one years old, all alone, so lighthearted, and so quarrelsome. Do you sometimes think yourself extremely romantic?”

  Kōji pursed his lips and remained silent, sensing that he was being either ridiculed or afforded praise he didn’t deserve.

  “It’s a good thing to be able to fight and express your anger. The future of the world is all but in your hands. After that, ‘old age is all that awaits you.’ There is nothing other than that.”

  This obscure quote from ancient poetry sounded terribly affected to Kōji. Ippei posed another question: “I suppose you never feel like the world sometimes slips out of your grasp and escapes from between your fingers like sand, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. And when that happens I start to get angry.”

  “Yes, but don’t you see? That’s one of your merits. For so long I have given in to that escaping sand.”

  Kōji resented being lectured on his senior’s adulation of life and philosophical sentiments.

  “In other words, what you’re trying to say is that I’m just like everyone else?”

  He drew a cynical conclusion in an attempt to bring the conversation to an end, and having done so, he glanced sideways at the face of this near forty-year-old wealthy man as it loomed up at him out of the dim light of the bar. Ippei, who had two suits made each month, was dressed in a sober necktie and a pale Italian silk shirt. In every respect he brought to mind the elegant appearance of the man in the French novel L’homme couvert de femmes. He went to a high-class hair salon; though he could afford to pay anytime, he held an account with a first-rate tailor, and out of a sudden fancy, he had obtained a pair of English-made spats, which he had grown tired of wearing almost immediately.

  Ippei had everything. At least from Kōji’s point of view, what he didn’t possess wasn’t worth mentioning. And while he may have lost his youth, he made use of the youth of others without reserve, greedily sucking on Kōji, doglike, until the very marrow of the bones had gone. Despite Ippei’s largesse, Kōji didn’t feel inclined to be his characteristic cheerful self. Kōji’s cheerfulness was his well-oiled, well-maintained skates, the means by which he was able to glide along on the surface of life. With friends of the same age, he could ingratiate himself without anxiety. He enjoyed joining in with the families of such friends where compassion would be shown for his orphan status, where he could eat to his heart’s content, and, above all, where he could behave in a slightly egotistical but nevertheless ebullient manner.

  Society heaps praise upon those individuals who refuse to be prejudiced against the unfair treatment life has dealt them. Indeed, it is deeply touched by the natural attitude to life displayed by these unnatural individuals. For Kōji, even a fight represented a semi-artificial impulse designed to elicit such praise. It was the expression of an attempt to behave normally in society, although he didn’t consider it necessary to confide such secrets to Ippei. Indeed, was it necessary to impart more than he had already to Ippei? Ippei, who had everything.

  On that particular night, Ippei and Kōji drank at the counter. A girl drew near like a shadow but left again, having been ignored by Ippei. The bartender attempted to strike up a friendly conversation, but Ippei didn’t reply and so he moved off to chat with another customer. Dozens of liquor bottles lined up against the wall, cigarette smoke lingered like clouds, the soot-covered ceiling, the fragrance of perfume as girls moved to and fro in the narrow bar…A girl staggered over, on the point of collapse, gripped the far edge of the counter with her hands, and then proceeded to order another scotch soda for her customer in a slovenly tone of voice. Kōji was surprised by the warmth of her arm as it came into contact with his hand. The girl laid her cheek against her exposed forearm and gazed up at him out of drunken eyes.

  “Pretending to do gymnastics, huh?” said Kōji.

  “Ha, calisthenics more like.”

  The girl’s hands were finely strained as they gripped the opposite side of the counter, her silver nails hooked firmly into the thick decorative padding on its side. She repeatedly bumped her large, white, pallid breasts forcibly against the counter’s side.

  “I feel really good,” she said.

  Kōji scanned her quickly pulsating body, her wholeheartedly debauched appearance, and her apparent enthusiastic embrace of alcoholic intoxication. It was all terrifying. She was laughing with large, expressionless eyes. Then suddenly she straightened herself, banged into Kōji’s arm with her shoulder, and, seemingly transformed, walked away with a steady gait. In the space vacated by the girl, there lingered a kind of depression in the air created by her warm, generous body. It was like a wheel rut—utterly inflexible and everlasting…

  “Now take my wife,” Ippei said, as he deliberately drew the stem of his cocktail glass through his fingers. “She’s a real odd case. I’ve yet to meet a stranger girl.”

  “Everyone at work says how pretty your wife is. But I’ve never seen her in the store.”

  Confronted by such flattery, Ippei gave the youngster an affected and supercilious look of contempt.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere, my boy, at your age. I’m telling you she is odd. She’s frightfully tolerant, and to this day has not once exhibited any jealousy. A wife, that is to say, if she is a normal type of girl, is jealous every time her husband breathes. You’ll find out, too, when you get one yourself. But mine isn’t like that. I’ve tried to scare her often enough. But she doesn’t frighten at all. You could fire a pistol right in front of her eyes and she would probably just delicately turn her face aside. You may have heard it from the others, I’ve tried to make her jealous, I’ve tried everything, really I have.”

  “Maybe your wife is good at hiding her emotions. Maybe she has a strong sense of self-esteem, and…”

  “How perceptive of you. A splendid analysis,” said Ippei, attempting to thrust his extended index finger at the bridge of Kōji’s nose. “Likely as not you’ve hit the nail on the head. But she hides it so cleverly, so perfectly. So you see, you would be grossly mistaken in thinking that she doesn’t love me, because she does. She loves me terribly. She loves me with more than a wife’s usual moderation. It’s always the same gloomy, overly serious, stubborn frontal attack, always in that precise order. It’s her army of love. A solemn army. And she always makes sure that I clearly see it march past, and then feigns indifference. I don’t hate my wife. It’s rather an embarrassing confession: I don’t hate any woman who will love me. Even supposing it’s my wife, do you see? I get awfully tired sometimes. This is all I wanted to tell you.”

  Ippei struck a match and lit an English cigarette with the deliberate composure of one who has just finished confessing all to one whose worth he values very little. There was something condescendingly tolerant about the way he struck the match, and Kōji hated it.

  It is true to say that Kōji, who had yet to meet Yūko, fell in love with her that same night. And in all probability that, too, was a part of Ippei’s plan. Kōji was clearly jealous of Ippei’s corrupt heart. Notwithstanding this, his fi
rst impression of Ippei, having spent an evening with him in leisurely conversation, can only be described as insubstantial. Ippei was nothing more than a worthless, boring, middle-aged well-to-do playboy of the sort that can be found in any large city, and he had merely devised a slightly eccentric pretext for his dissipated lifestyle.

  Early one particular afternoon close to Christmas, however, Kōji was surprised to find that the impression he had formed of Ippei during the latter’s confession in the bar that night was belied by what he now saw. For Ippei, dressed in a good-quality suit, received his valued clients with cups of coffee, conversing with them as he nimbly went back and forth between shop front and office.

  “If it were a gift of slightly higher quality, I could show you a Meissen plate or perhaps a Sèvres vase. Admittedly it’s a little on the expensive side, but I’m sure if it is your good self, sir, you could manage it if you abstained from your customary drink for one night.” Or, alternatively, “Ah, yes, a sixty-piece coffee set for a year-end gift, wasn’t it? May I recommend our own gift paper? I guarantee, wrapped in this the item will appear at least three times its price…”

  Kōji thought, How on earth can someone possessing several volumes of his own literary work bring himself to say such a thing?

  Moreover, Ippei knew how to manipulate the provincial millionaires, using his reprimanding, pedantic tone to force purchases that exceeded the customer’s expectations.

  Kōji hadn’t the faintest idea of the complex sequence of events behind Ippei’s sometimes childlike, sometimes adult character—the injured self-pride (notwithstanding the way he spoke to his customers), which he always gloomily clung to, and which he believed, by some strangely fixed notion, would only be salved by Yūko’s jealousy; his wife’s refusal to cooperate in this, and her rejections; and his numerous, hysterical love affairs. Nor did Kōji understand the strange passion that tore Ippei between the servility of the dealer and the superiority of the intellectual while working to further the irreparable ruptures occurring in every aspect of his personal life and in his state of mind.