Read Online After the Banquet by Yukio Mishima - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Yukio Mishima
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mud, and Kazu, in order to protect her footing a little, clung to the railing. She turned her head and threw a smile at Noguchi, but his face was enveloped in the darkness. High above his head loomed the majestic balustrade of the platform and the swelling curves of the projecting eaves. The under parts of the eaves were mysteriously luminous. Clusters of stars were shining between the towering cedars around the hall.
Now the “Sevenfold Messages” were beginning. The chief votary, holding aloft a blazing brand, ran up and down the stone steps again and again, a bold figure in his girded-up robes. The stentorian voice proclaiming each of the “messages”—the offering of incense, the business of the ritual, the attendance at the worship, and the rest—combined with the dripping of the flames from the torches to complete the aura of solemnity. To these spectators who knew nothing of the ancient traditions of esoteric Buddhism or Dual Shinto, the somehow significant presence of the chief votary, his distracted bearing, his intent movements, all seemed like portents of a great calamity about to begin. Then, when the votary was gone and the torchlight no longer illuminated the stone steps, the utter desolation suggested that something would surely occur at any moment on the emptiness of the steps. Kazu was not especially devout and was seldom moved by anything she could not see with her own eyes, but as she stood there, clutching the bamboo railing, and looked up the stairs rising chilly and faintly white in the darkness, her eyes following them to the temple and platform above, she felt as if soon her heart would also mount the stone steps and share in some momentous happening in an invisible world.
Kazu, for all her good cheer and optimism, from time to time worried about what would happen to her after she died. She invariably linked such thoughts directly to her sins. Now, as she felt the warmth of Noguchi’s overcoat pressing on her back and side, all the past love affairs which she had never before remembered in Noguchi’s presence returned to life. Men had killed themselves for Kazu when she was young. Some had lost their wealth and position, and others had sunk to the lowest depths of society, all because of her. Strangely enough, Kazu had never known love for her to ennoble a man or help him to success. Through no evil design on Kazu’s part, men generally went down in the world once they met her.
Kazu’s eyes were still on the stone staircase rising into the darkness as her thoughts turned to death. The past piece by piece crumbled away under her feet, and she was left with nothing to support her. If she went on in this way, there would probably not be a single person to mourn her when she died. Reflections on death convinced her that she must find someone she could depend on, have a family, lead a normal life. But the only way to do this was to go through with the formalities of love. She could not help tremble at the thought of still further sins. Only very recently—last autumn, it was—she had in the course of her promenade each morning at the Setsugoan looked at the world and at people with the same clarity as she surveyed the garden. She was absolutely convinced that nothing could disturb her anymore. But now she wondered if that transparency itself were not a portent of hell . . . The priest with them had explained that the Omizutori ceremony was from beginning to end a disciplinary rite of penitence and atonement. Kazu felt a personal awareness of what this meant.
The murmur arose around her that the torches were about to move out. The twelve immense torches had already been prepared and arranged beside the temple bathhouse. Each consisted of a huge bamboo, roots and all, some as big as a foot or more in circumference and twenty-five feet long. To the end of the bamboo trunk was fixed the torch itself, a circular crate over four feet in diameter.
Several priests in gold brocade copes with high
Now the “Sevenfold Messages” were beginning. The chief votary, holding aloft a blazing brand, ran up and down the stone steps again and again, a bold figure in his girded-up robes. The stentorian voice proclaiming each of the “messages”—the offering of incense, the business of the ritual, the attendance at the worship, and the rest—combined with the dripping of the flames from the torches to complete the aura of solemnity. To these spectators who knew nothing of the ancient traditions of esoteric Buddhism or Dual Shinto, the somehow significant presence of the chief votary, his distracted bearing, his intent movements, all seemed like portents of a great calamity about to begin. Then, when the votary was gone and the torchlight no longer illuminated the stone steps, the utter desolation suggested that something would surely occur at any moment on the emptiness of the steps. Kazu was not especially devout and was seldom moved by anything she could not see with her own eyes, but as she stood there, clutching the bamboo railing, and looked up the stairs rising chilly and faintly white in the darkness, her eyes following them to the temple and platform above, she felt as if soon her heart would also mount the stone steps and share in some momentous happening in an invisible world.
Kazu, for all her good cheer and optimism, from time to time worried about what would happen to her after she died. She invariably linked such thoughts directly to her sins. Now, as she felt the warmth of Noguchi’s overcoat pressing on her back and side, all the past love affairs which she had never before remembered in Noguchi’s presence returned to life. Men had killed themselves for Kazu when she was young. Some had lost their wealth and position, and others had sunk to the lowest depths of society, all because of her. Strangely enough, Kazu had never known love for her to ennoble a man or help him to success. Through no evil design on Kazu’s part, men generally went down in the world once they met her.
Kazu’s eyes were still on the stone staircase rising into the darkness as her thoughts turned to death. The past piece by piece crumbled away under her feet, and she was left with nothing to support her. If she went on in this way, there would probably not be a single person to mourn her when she died. Reflections on death convinced her that she must find someone she could depend on, have a family, lead a normal life. But the only way to do this was to go through with the formalities of love. She could not help tremble at the thought of still further sins. Only very recently—last autumn, it was—she had in the course of her promenade each morning at the Setsugoan looked at the world and at people with the same clarity as she surveyed the garden. She was absolutely convinced that nothing could disturb her anymore. But now she wondered if that transparency itself were not a portent of hell . . . The priest with them had explained that the Omizutori ceremony was from beginning to end a disciplinary rite of penitence and atonement. Kazu felt a personal awareness of what this meant.
The murmur arose around her that the torches were about to move out. The twelve immense torches had already been prepared and arranged beside the temple bathhouse. Each consisted of a huge bamboo, roots and all, some as big as a foot or more in circumference and twenty-five feet long. To the end of the bamboo trunk was fixed the torch itself, a circular crate over four feet in diameter.
Several priests in gold brocade copes with high
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