Runaway Horses Read online

  So be it then. The leaping, head-on attack! The body, bamboo stave held high, breaking through an invisible barrier all unaware and coming out on the other side. The quick and marvelous emotional abrasion gives off sparks. One’s enemy, as though of his own accord, presses heavily against the point of one’s sword and impales himself. Just as prickly seeds cling to the sleeves when a man makes his way through a thicket, so the assassin’s kimono becomes splotched with blood without his noticing it.

  Sawa pressed his right elbow against his lower side, and then, with his left hand pushing down upon his right wrist to prevent the blade from turning up, his icy blade seeming to spring directly from his fat body, he screamed: “Yaaah!” and struck the wall with full force, slashing through it.

  The following day Isao began to investigate the layout of the Shinkawa house. The house stood on a knoll and was surrounded by a high wall. Isao discovered, however, one place at the top of a slope behind the house where a portion of the upper wall had been cut out to accommodate an ancient pine in the garden, a branch of which curved out over the street. Here it would be easy to get a footing, climb up into the tree, and then slip down into the garden. The trunk had, of course, been surrounded with barbed wire as a guard against burglars, but, if one disregarded a few cuts, this was nothing to be concerned about.

  The Shinkawas often went away on the weekends, but would no doubt be found sleeping at home on Friday night. Since the Baron and his wife were so fond of English customs, perhaps they slept in a double bed; in any case, they surely shared the same bedroom. A mansion so large would have many bedrooms, but it seemed likely that the Shinkawas would naturally take advantage of the pleasant southern exposure. The view of the sea was from the east, however, and therefore Isao felt that their room would be in the southeast corner of the house, thus combining comfort with the beauty of the view.

  Trying to sketch the plan of the house, with its many wings, was no easy matter. By chance Isao happened to come across an old issue of the magazine Bungei Shunju in which an affected essay by Toru Shinkawa caught his eye. Shinkawa was one who had long prided himself on his literary ability, but phrases such as “my wife this,” “my wife that” were conspicuous in his style. Perhaps this was merely an unconscious affectation, but possibly he was insinuating a criticism of the Japanese custom of avoiding direct references to one’s spouse.

  The essay was entitled “Gibbon Through the Night,” and from it Isao was able to draw this essential portion:

  By any standard Gibbon’s work is a masterpiece. It goes without saying that I am far too deficient in scholarship and intellect to comprehend its wisdom, but I may safely contend that no Japanese translation can possibly convey the monumental significance of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The lavishly illustrated 1909 edition edited by Professor Bury, seven volumes, unabridged, is absolutely without peer. When I give myself over to the pleasure of reading Gibbon by the light afforded by my bedside lamp, the hour inevitably grows far advanced. The breathing of my sleeping wife beside me, the rustle of the pages of my Bury edition of Gibbon, and the ticking of the antique clock purchased from LeRoi’s of Paris become by and by the only sounds that occupy the silence of my bedroom, forming a kind of delicate nocturnal trio. And the small lamp that illumines Gibbon’s pages is, within the whole house, the last torch of the intellect to be extinguished each night.

  When he read this, Isao pictured to himself how, once he had slipped into the garden under cover of darkness, he could take up a position at the southeast corner of the mansion. Then if he saw a light shining through a window curtain, and if the light kept burning after all the others had gone out, he would be able to tell the Baron’s room. To accomplish this he would have to slip into the garden late in the evening and conceal himself there until the last light had disappeared. This kind of residence would no doubt have night watchmen patrolling its garden, but the shelter of the trees would certainly offer him ample place to hide.

  After having considered the problem up to this point, Isao experienced doubt from another quarter. How strange it was that the Baron, whom everyone knew to be in constant peril, should deliberately write in a public journal in a fashion to expose himself to further danger. Could it be possible that this essay was meant as a trap?

  29

  AS NOVEMBER was drawing to a close, Isao found himself fighting with the desire to say farewell to Makiko Kito in a way that would seem casual. He had neglected her recently. He had been busy, for one thing. The circumstances of his enterprise had been frequently altered, and he had been able to spare little time or feeling for anything else. And then there was something about saying farewell after making the decision to die that embarrassed him. Besides, he was afraid he might become so tense before Makiko that his powerful emotions would get the better of him.

  He felt that the most beautiful thing would be to die without seeing her, but, as the world viewed it, to do so would be a breach of etiquette. Furthermore, each of the young men would go to his death carrying a petal from the sacred lilies Makiko had given them. Makiko, then, was the miko who would preside over the divinely sanctioned conflict that was the War of the Lilies. How could it be otherwise, then, but that Isao, as the emissary of his comrades, go to Makiko to take an inconspicuous leave of her? This thought finally gave him courage.

  Isao shuddered at the possibility that he might not find her at home if he paid a sudden visit. Given his mood, he would hardly be able to force himself to come a second time to say farewell. She had to appear at the door that night to greet him, allowing him a last glimpse of that beautiful face.

  Though it was not in accordance with custom and though he realized that it violated the casualness he wanted, Isao ventured to telephone to make sure that Makiko was home. It happened that his family had received a gift of oysters that day, and he was able to say that he wanted to bring some of them over.

  One of his father’s old students, who lived in Hiroshima, sent oysters every year in season, and it would be only natural for his mother to have him take some of them to the Kitos, who had treated him with such kindness. The coincidence was fortunate.

  Dressed in his student uniform with his feet thrust into clogs, Isao left the house carrying a little keg of oysters. Since it was already long past the dinner hour, there was no reason to hurry.

  As one who was sworn to die and about to take an unspoken farewell, Isao resented the incongruity of his gift. The splashing sound that came from the keg as he walked was like low waves lapping at the base of a sheer cliff. He imagined the sea as crammed into that small dark space, its freshness giving way to pollution.

  Probably it was the last time he would follow this familiar path. It would also be his farewell to the thirty-six stone steps he knew so well. As he climbed them, the steps seemed to cascade down through the darkness like a waterfall. The cold of the night was bone-chilling even though there was no wind. Suddenly he had an odd feeling that he wanted to turn and look back at the way he had come. Two or three hemp palms grew on the slope on the south side of the house. The hairy fiber that covered their trunks seemed to entangle the stars in the winter sky. There were only a few lights in the houses below, but the eaves of the stores by the Hakusanmaé streetcar stop shone brightly. He saw no streetcar, but the scraping noise of one echoed in the night like an old drawer being pulled out.

  The scene was quite ordinary. There was nothing that had to do with death and the spilling of blood. Even the sight of the four or five bonsai in a neat row upon the drying frame outside a house whose shutters were already closed brought to his mind how life would go on along its ordinary course after his death. His death, he was sure, would ever be beyond the grasp of the people living in that house. The turmoil that he and his comrades stirred would not disturb their sleep.

  He entered the gate of the Kito home. He pressed the bell. Makiko slid open the door at once as though she had been lying in wait in the entrance hall.

  Any other time, he
would have slipped off his clogs and stepped up into the house, but he was afraid that if he talked to Makiko too long, his expression would betray his emotions. And so he merely handed her the small keg and said: “My mother asked me to bring you this. It’s a few of the oysters we received from Hiroshima.”

  “Thank you. This is certainly not an everyday present! Well then, do come in.”

  “Today I can’t. Please excuse me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got to study.”

  “What a fibber! When did you start grinding away so at your books?”

  Makiko insisted upon Isao’s staying and then disappeared into the house. He heard the General’s voice telling her to invite him in.

  Isao shut his eyes and gave himself over greedily to the image of Makiko before him a moment ago. Her beautiful smiling face with its fair skin—he wanted to store this image in his heart just as it was, unflawed. But if he were too eager, it would shatter like a mirror that has slipped from one’s grasp.

  What was best, he thought, was to leave at once. If he did so, the Kitos would, he was sure, take his abrupt departure as nothing more than a bit of boyish rudeness and would later perceive its true significance as his farewell. The dim light of the entrance hall served well to hide Isao’s expression.

  The whiteness of the flat stone where one removed one’s shoes stood out in the chill pool of darkness that pressed against the floor platform, which seemed to Isao like a quay where a ship might berth. He himself was a ship that was about to cast off. The floor’s edge, then, was the trim quay where people were finally received or denied, or bade farewell. And he was a ship loaded down with a full cargo of emotion, riding low in the dark winter sea of death.

  Isao turned to leave the entrance hall, just as Makiko reappeared. She cried out: “What’s this? Why are you going? After Father said to have you come in.”

  “Please excuse me,” answered Isao, pulling the sliding door shut behind him. His heart pounded as if he had accomplished something difficult. He felt like running, but then he reflected that to run would be unfitting and ruin everything. Departing by a different route would be enough. Instead of going back down the stone steps, he could turn toward the rear of the house, in the direction of Hakusan Shrine. He could return home by going through the shrine precincts. But as Isao was about to turn onto the path, deserted this late at night, that led through Hakusanmaé to the shrine itself, he caught a glimpse over his shoulder of Makiko’s white shawl. She was coming along behind him, not pursuing at all but keeping the same pace.

  Isao went on walking. He had made the decision never to see Makiko again. He was on a path along the edge of Hakusan Park, which was at the rear of the shrine. To pass through the shrine grounds he would have to stoop and go beneath an elevated passageway just ahead, that joined the forehall with the shrine office. Light shone faintly through the close-worked lattice of the passageway.

  Makiko finally called out. Isao had to stop. But he felt that if he looked back at her some ill-omened event might occur.

  Instead of answering her, Isao turned away and walked to the top of a small hill opposite the park. A flagpole stood on the crest. The front of the hill was a steep drop covered with a growth of trees and shrubbery.

  Finally he heard Makiko’s quiet voice at his shoulder.

  “Why are you angry?”

  Her voice hung in the darkness, charged with anxiety. Isao had to face her.

  Her silvery white shawl concealed her mouth. But the faint light coming from the distant shops revealed tears shining in her eyes. Isao felt as if he were choking.

  “I’m not angry at anything.”

  “You came to say farewell. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  Makiko pronounced this non sequitur with assurance, as though she were placing a white chess piece upon a new square.

  Isao said nothing as he kept his eyes upon the scene below. A tall, sinewy zelkova tree, its upper roots exposed, lifted its branches to spread a delicate tracery across the face of the night and dim the stars caught within its branches. Two or three persimmon trees stood on the edge of the cliff, their scanty leaves black against the sky. Beyond the valley the land rose again, and the brightness of the shopping district misted the eaves of the houses along the hilltop. From here, a good many lights still seemed to be burning, but the effect was not at all that of a bustling city. Rather, the bright points were like small stones lying at the bottom of a brook.

  “It’s true, isn’t it?” said Makiko once again.

  This time her voice was very close to him, inflaming his cheek. It was then that he felt Makiko’s hands pressing upon the back of his neck. Her cold fingers were like a sword blade against the close-cropped nape. When the time came to receive the finishing stroke, when his neck shivered in anticipation of the falling blade, no doubt he would feel a chill like this. Isao shuddered, but his eyes told him nothing.

  And yet for Makiko to have stretched out her arms and clasped his neck as she was doing, she had to be standing before him. This is what Isao had not perceived. Whether she had been incredibly quick or incredibly slow, she must have moved in front of him. And he did not see her.

  Makiko’s face was no more visible than before. What he could see was something blacker than the night, the rich abundance of her hair just at the level of his chest. She had buried her face there. The perfume that rose from her seemed to screen his vision. His senses were fully taken up with that scent. Isao’s feet trembled in his clogs and the thongs creaked faintly. His footing seemed to be giving way, and like a man seized by a drowning person, he reached out in self-protection and clasped Makiko in his arms.

  He embraced her, but what he felt beneath her light coat was no more than the firmness of her bulky, tight-wound obi with its padded layers and its huge bow. This was a substance that seemed to put him at a greater distance from Makiko than before he had embraced her. And yet what this sensation conveyed to Isao was the reality behind all his mental images of a woman’s body. No nakedness could seem so utterly naked.

  Here began his rapture. Suddenly it was like a runaway stallion breaking free of the yoke. A wild strength flowed into his arms as he held the woman. He clasped her tighter, feeling their two bodies shake like the mast of a plunging ship. The face that had been buried in his chest was lifted. Makiko had lifted her face! Her expression was just what he had dreamed night after night that it would be when he said his last farewell. Tears sparkled on that lovely white face that was without a trace of makeup. Her tight-shut eyes looked at Isao with a force stronger than that of vision. Her face was like a delicate bubble that now floated before his eyes after having risen from some unimaginable depth. In the darkness her lips trembled as she sighed again and again. Isao could not bear having her lips so close to his. To banish them, all he could do was touch his own lips to hers. As naturally as one leaf falls and comes to rest upon another, Isao came upon the first and final kiss of his life. Makiko’s lips reminded him of the red leaves of the cherry trees that he had seen in Yanagawa. He was startled by the sweetness that began to flow gently through him once their mouths were joined. The world trembled at the point of contact between their lips. From this point radiated a transformation that altered his very flesh. The sensation of being steeped in something indescribably warm and smooth reached a climax when he realized that he had drunk in some of Makiko’s saliva.

  When they finally drew their lips apart, they clung to each other and wept.

  “Tell me just one thing. When will it be? Tomorrow? The day after?”

  Because he realized that, were he in possession of himself, he would never answer such a question, Isao told her at once.

  “It’s December third.”

  “Only three days from now. Will I see you again?”

  “No. I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

  They began to walk in silence. Makiko chose a roundabout route, and Isao had to follow her through a small open space in Hakusan Park and down a da
rk path along the outbuildings where the shrine’s sacred palanquins were kept.

  “I know what I’ll do,” said Makiko in the darkness beside him. “I can take the train to Sakurai tomorrow and go to Omiwa Shrine. I’ll pray for your good fortune in battle at the Sai Shrine. I’ll bring back a talisman for each of you, and see that you have them by December second. How many should I get?”

  “Eleven. . . . No, there’re twelve of us.”

  A kind of shyness kept Isao from daring to tell Makiko that each man would undertake his mission with a petal of her lilies hidden upon him.

  The two of them entered the lighted area in front of the shrine, but there was no sign of anyone else being there. Since she did not want to cause any trouble at the Academy, Makiko asked him how to get to their hideaway, and he wrote the directions on a slip of paper and gave it to her.

  Such light as there was had only one source, a small night lantern donated by a Hakusanshito photo studio. It cast a feeble glow over the stone guardian dogs, the gold-lettered tablet, the embossed carving of a dragon breathing fire, and the wooden steps leading to the shrine. Only the white pendants that hung from the sacred ropes stood out with any clarity. Weak though the light was, it reached as far as the white wall of the shrine office, some twenty feet away. Shadows of sakaki leaves made a lovely pattern upon it.

  Each of them prayed silently. Then they passed beneath the torii and parted at the top of the long stone stairway.

  30

  ON THE MORNING of December first, Isao, pretending that he was off to school, went directly to the hideaway. Sawa had been sent on an errand by the headmaster and was unable to attend the meeting, but the other ten were all present. The action was now only two days away, and, though it was necessary to work out some details, the main purpose of the meeting was to renew everyone’s resolution to take his own life, whatever difficulty he might find himself in, immediately after the blow had been struck.