The Temple Of Dawn Part 12

30.

THAT EVENING they had dinner at the Imperial Hotel. It had been devastated. The Occupation Forces had claimed to understand the creative genius of Frank Lloyd Wright, but they had not hesitated to cover the stone lantern in the garden with white paint. The pseudo-Gothic ceiling of the dining hall was even more gloomy and in worse repair than ever. The only patches of freshness were provided by the white linen cloths that glistened ostentatiously on the rows of dining tables.

When Honda had ordered, he immediately drew from an inner pocket the small box and placed it directly in front of Ying Chan. She opened it and cried out.

"It was inevitable that the ring should be returned to you." Speaking in the simplest language, Honda told her its history. The smile that flickered over her features as she listened did not always coincide with his narration, and it occurred to him that she might not be comprehending all he was saying.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, visible above the level of the table, were, quite unlike her face which was childish, magnificently developed, like those of a figurehead on a s.h.i.+p. He knew without seeing that the body of one of the G.o.ddesses in the Ajanta murals lay beneath the simple student's blouse across from him.

The deceptively light but solid flesh seemed to have the weightiness of some dark fruit . . . the almost stifling black hair and the ambiguous, wistful lines from the slightly flared nostrils down to the upper lip . . . She seemed to be just as casually oblivious to the words that her body spoke as she was when she listened to Honda's recital. Her enormous, jet-black eyes transcended intelligence, and they somehow gave her the appearance of being blind. What mystery of forms! That Ying Chan should present to him a body that one sensed was overly fragrant was due to the spell of the distant jungle which reached as far as j.a.pan. Honda felt that what people called blood lineage was perhaps a deep, formless voice that pursued one eternally. Sometimes a pa.s.sionate whisper, sometimes a hoa.r.s.e cry, it was the very origin of all beautiful physical forms and the wellspring of the charm they emitted.

When he placed the dark green emerald ring on Ying Chan's finger, he had the sensation that he was witness to the moment when the deep, far-off voice and the girl's physical being were at long last perfectly fused.

"Thank you," said Ying Chan with a fawning smile that might have marred her dignity. Honda realized that it was the expression that always appeared when she felt sure that her selfish feelings were understood. But no sooner did he try to capture it than the smile was already gone like a swiftly withdrawing wave.

"When you were a child you claimed to be the reincarnation of a j.a.panese boy I knew very well; you annoyed everyone by insisting that j.a.pan was your real home and that you wanted to return. Now that you are here and that ring is on your finger, it means that for you too a great circle has been joined."

"I don't really understand," answered Ying Chan with not a trace of emotion. "I don't remember anything of my childhood. I really don't. They all tease me about having been slightly mad and laugh at me when they tell what you've just been saying. But I've completely forgotten everything. I went to Switzerland as soon as the war broke out and stayed there until the end, and the only thing I remember about j.a.pan is that I used to love a j.a.panese doll someone gave me."

Honda felt an urge to tell her that it had been sent by him, but checked himself.

"My father told me that j.a.panese schools were good, so I came here to study. Recently I've had the idea that perhaps when I was a child I was like a mirror reflecting everything in people's minds, and I simply said what occurred to me. For instance, if you had an idea, it might have been reflected in me. That was probably what happened, I imagine. What do you think?"

Ying Chan had the habit of terminating a question with an English rising inflection. Her ultimas reminded Honda of the sharply curling tails of the golden serpents at the tips of the red Chinese-tile roofs of Thai temples reaching into the blue sky.

Honda was suddenly aware of a family at a nearby table. The head, probably some businessman, his wife and their grown sons were having dinner. Their fine clothes notwithstanding, he could discern something vulgar in their faces. He surmised that they had become wealthy through the Korean War. The faces of the sons were particularly flabby, like that of a dog that has just been awakened, and their lips and eyes reflected a complete lack of breeding. They were all noisily sipping their soup.

From time to time, the sons would nudge each other and steal a glance at Honda's table. Their eyes were mocking: an old man having dinner with a concubine that looked like a schoolgirl. Their eyes seemed to have nothing better to say. Honda could not but recall Imanis.h.i.+'s exasperating inadequacy that midnight in Ninooka and compare it to himself.

There are rules more severe in this world than those of morality, Honda felt at such moments. Unsuitable lovers were punished by the fact that they would never be the source of dreams, but merely evoke disgust in others. The people of those times when one knew nothing of humanism were surely much more cruel to all ugly creatures than modern man.

After dinner Ying Chan excused herself to go to the powder room, and Honda remained alone in the lobby. He suddenly felt relaxed. From that moment on, he could enjoy Ying Chan's absence without compunction.

A question sprang to his mind: he had not yet learned where Ying Chan had stayed the night before the house-warming.

She did not return to the lobby for some time. He remembered the occasion when the little girl had relieved herself at Bang Pa In surrounded by her ladies. Then he recalled the naked Princess bathing in the brown river along which coiled the roots of mangroves. No matter how hard he had stared, he had not been able to make out the three black moles he had expected to find on her left side.

Honda's wants were quite simple, and it would have been incorrect to label his emotion "love." He wished only to look at the completely naked form of the Princess, aware that the once flat b.r.e.a.s.t.s had ripened, thrusting out like the heads of fledglings peeping from their nest; to see how the pink nipples pouted discontentedly and how the brown underarms lay in faint shadow; to watch the manner in which the underside of her arms carried wave patterns like a sensitive, sandy sh.o.r.e; to be aware of how every step toward maturity progressed in the dusky light; and then to quiver in the presence of that body, comparing it to that of the little girl. That was all. In her belly, floating in pure softness, the navel would be deep-set like a small coral atoll. Protected by thick hair instead of yakshas, that which once had been sober, hard silence would now be turned into constant, moist smiles. The way her beautiful toes would open up one by one, the way her thighs would s.h.i.+ne, and the way her mature legs would extend to support earnestly the discipline and dreams of the dance of life. He wanted to compare all of those with her figure as a little girl. This was to know time, to know what time had wrought, what time had ripened. If those moles were not to be found on her left side after careful inspection, he would then fall in love with her completely and finally. Transmigration stood barring the way to his love, and samsara held his pa.s.sion in check.

Awakened from his dreams by Ying Chan's return to the lobby, Honda suddenly voiced what was occupying his thoughts. Despite everything, his words were sharp with the pangs of jealousy.

"I forgot to ask. I heard that you stayed out all night before the party at Gotemba without reporting in at the Foreign Student Center. Was it at a j.a.panese house?"

"Yes, it was," Ying Chan responded without hesitation, sitting in the armchair next to Honda's, hunching her back a little and scrutinizing her beautiful legs that she held neatly together. "A Thai friend is staying there. The family all insisted I spend the night, so I did."

"It must be an entertaining household with a lot of young people."

"Not exactly. The two sons, the daughter, my Thai friend, and I all played charades. The father heads a big business concern in Southeast Asia, so they're very kind to Southeast Asians."

"Is your Thai friend a boy?"

"No, a girl. Why?"

Again Ying Chan abruptly raised the last syllable of her question.

Then Honda expressed disapproval that she had made so few j.a.panese friends. He warned her that living abroad made no sense unless she cultivated a variety of people in the country where she was studying. As she might possibly be uncomfortable having dinner with him alone, he offered to bring some young friends along the next time, unconsciously scheming for another opportunity to see her. He extracted from her a promise that at the same day the following week she would come to the lobby of the Imperial at seven o'clock. The thought of Rie made him hesitant to invite her to his own house.

31.

HE RETURNED HOME He got out of the car and felt the drizzle moisten his temples. The houseboy met him in the vestibule and informed him that Mrs. Honda was tired and had retired early. He also reported that a persistent guest had insisted on waiting more than an hour and was in the small living room to which the houseboy had been obliged to usher him. Did he recognize the name Iinuma? asked the youth. At once Honda surmised that the man had come to ask for money.

It was four years since Honda had last seen Iinuma at the fifteenth anniversary memorial service for Isao. At that time it was obvious that Iinuma was quite without funds after the war. Yet he had been favorably impressed by the tasteful, simple memorial service held at a shrine.

Honda had at once thought it was about money, for recently people who had not visited him for years would turn up for no other reason than to ask him for funds. Unsuccessful lawyers, former attorneys who had become vagrants, unsuccessful court reporters-all came flocking. Each had heard of Honda's good fortune and each seemed to think he had some right to a share, since Honda had come into the money by sheer luck. He responded only to the requests of the truly humble.

When he entered the reception room, Iinuma rose from the chair and made a deep obeisance, showing the back of his wilted suit up to the nape of his gray-haired neck. Playing the role of a poor man suited him more than poverty itself. Honda urged him to sit down and ordered the house-boy to bring whiskey.

Iinuma offered an obvious lie, saying that he had been just pa.s.sing by and could not resist the urge to see Honda. One gla.s.s and he pretended to be drunk. As Honda started to pour another drink, he held the gla.s.s with his right hand and respectfully supported the bottom with the left. This struck Honda unpleasantly. A rat often held his loot in just such a fas.h.i.+on. Then Iinuma found a cue to start his harangue.

"Well, it seems to me that 'following the reverse course' has come to be the cliche of the day. But the government will start revising the const.i.tution by next year at the latest, I think. The reason everybody's talking about the revival of conscription is because there are really grounds for it. But the infuriating thing is that the foundation can't be brought out in the open and is still underground. By contrast, how do you like how powerful the Reds are getting? How about the disorders in the anti-draft demonstration in Kobe the other day? They called it an 'anti-draft youth rally,' but the strange thing was that a lot of Koreans took part. They fought against the police with not only rocks, but hot pepper, Molotov c.o.c.ktails, bamboo lances, and everything else. I heard that some three hundred students, children, and Koreans invaded Hyogo Police Station and demanded the release of the ones who had been arrested."

He wants money, Honda thought, paying little attention to what Iinuma was saying. But, he deliberated, he must let Iinuma know that no matter how the New Dealers controlled things with their socialistic policies, no matter how much noise the Reds made, the basis of the private property system would never be shaken. The drizzle outside the window seemed to thicken as though a multilayered curtain of rain was enveloping the house. He had seen Ying Chan off to the Foreign Student Center in a taxi. Since then the thought had not left his mind that this spring rain must have seeped into her simple room in the students' quarters and made it damp. What sort of subtle effect would the humidity have on the girl's body that had matured in the tropics? How did she sleep? Facing the ceiling and breathing hard? Or coiled up with a smile on her lips? Or on her side like the golden reclining figure of Shakyamuni in the Nirvana Hall, arm under head, supine, showing the brilliant soles of her feet?

"The General Rally for the Banishment of Oppressive Laws by the Kyoto Branch of the General Council of j.a.panese Labor Unions has got violent too," continued Iinuma. "At this rate, May Day this year isn't going to be any too peaceful; you just can't predict how much violence will break out. Red students take over school buildings in the universities and have confrontations with the police. And this, sir, right after the signing of the j.a.panese-American Peace Treaty and the Mutual Security Pact. How ironic."

He wants money, thought Honda.

"I'm all in favor of Prime Minister Yos.h.i.+da's idea about declaring the Communist Party illegal," Iinuma went on. "j.a.pan's in turmoil again. If we let things go on, now that the Peace Treaty is signed, we're going to be thrown headlong into a Communist revolution. Most of the American troops will be gone, and how are you going to control a general strike? I lose a lot of sleep over j.a.pan's future. What's learned in the cradle is carried to the grave is true even now."

He wants money, Honda kept thinking. But even after several more drinks Iinuma still did not bring the subject up.

He talked briefly about his divorce two years ago, then suddenly changed the subject to bygone days, and started on a dogged confession how he would never in his life forget the obligation he felt toward Honda, who had given up his judges.h.i.+p and volunteered to conduct Isao's defense without remuneration. Honda could not bear the thought of Iinuma talking about Isao and he hurriedly interrupted.

Iinuma suddenly took off his jacket. The room was not warm enough to be uncomfortable, but Honda presumed that he was drunk. He took off his necktie next and unb.u.t.toned his white s.h.i.+rt, unfastening even his unders.h.i.+rt to expose a chest which had turned red from the alcohol. Honda could see the almost completely white hairs scattering the light like so many needles.

"To be honest with you, I came to show you this. I have no greater shame. If I could, I would have preferred to hide it from you all my life, but I have been thinking for some time that I would reveal it only to you and let you have a good laugh. I thought only you would really understand me, even my failures. You would know what kind of man I am. I'm honestly and truly ashamed, when I compare myself to my dead son who died so n.o.bly. I have no words to express adequately the depth of my shame at still being alive like this."

Tears ran down his cheeks, and his words came pell-mell: "This is the scar from when I tried to commit suicide right after the war. My mistake was thinking I might not succeed in committing seppuku, so instead I plunged a dagger into my chest, but missed my heart. I bled like a pig, but I didn't die."

As though showing off, Iinuma caressed the scar that glistened a purplish blue. As a matter of fact, even Honda could see that something had been irreversibly terminated. Iinuma's ruddy, coa.r.s.e skin had puckered, surrounding the wound and closing it clumsily, underscoring the unsuccessfulness of the attempt.

However, Iinuma's obdurate chest, now covered with white hair, still was proud of what it had once been. Honda finally realized that it was not at all money for which he had come, still he did not feel ashamed for having misjudged his purpose. Iinuma had not changed. Honda found it understandable that even such a man as he should be compelled to distill and crystallize a desperate, soiled, and humiliating deed, that he should strive by so doing to trans.m.u.te shame into a rare gem, and that he should gradually be overcome by the desire, the need to display it to a trustworthy witness. Whether he was serious or merely pretending, the fact remained that the purple scar on his chest was in the final a.n.a.lysis the only precious thing that remained in his life. Honda had been selected for the unwelcome honor of being witness to this n.o.ble action of many years ago.

Iinuma, seeming to have rapidly sobered, put on his clothes, apologized for having overstayed, and extended thanks for the drinks. He was about to leave when Honda stopped him. Wrapping up some fifty thousand yen in bills, he thrust the packet into the pocket of Iinuma's seedy coat despite the protestations of his visitor.

"In that case," said Iinuma finally, thanking Honda with extreme formality, "I accept your kindness with grat.i.tude. It will be a privilege to use it to help revive the Seiken School."

Honda accompanied him to the entrance in the rain. Iinuma's silhouette disappeared through the side gate beneath the pomegranate leaves. It reminded him, for some reason, of one of those countless nocturnal islands that dot the gloomy waters around j.a.pan. An outlying island with no water except the rain-mad, wild, starving.

32.

FAR FROM THE PEACE he had expected on placing the ring on Ying Chan's finger, Honda was filled with fear.

He was concerned with the difficult question of how to conceal himself to view her nude. How wonderful it would be if, unaware of him, she would move about full of life or take her self-indulgent ease, revealing every secret in her heart, being completely natural. How wonderful to observe like a biologist every detail. But should his presence be known, then everything would at once collapse.

A perfect crystal of quartz, a gla.s.s bowl in which nothing exists but the free play of lovely, subjective being. Ying Chan should be in just such a bowl.

Honda was certain that he had played a part in the crystallization of Kiyoaki's and Isao's transparent lives. In them he had been the extended helping hand, even though it had proven ineffectual and useless. The important thing was that Honda himself had been unaware of his role; he had played his part quite naturally, as a matter of fact quite idiotically, though he himself was convinced that he had been intelligent about it. But after he had become aware! After a torrid India had unsparingly taught him, what help could he have rendered to life? What kind of intervention, what engagement could there be?

Furthermore, Ying Chan was a woman. Hers was a body which filled the cup to its very brim with the unknown darkness of charm. It seduced him. It attracted him constantly toward life. For what purpose? he wondered. He did not know, but one of the reasons was probably that the life to which he was attracted was destined to involve others through the charm it exuded; it was fated to destroy its own roots. Another reason was that he was obliged to realize completely this time the impossibility of involvement in another's life.

Of course Honda was convinced that having Ying Chan in a transparent crystal would const.i.tute the core of his pleasure, but he could not separate that from his innate desire for investigation. Was there no way by which he could harmoniously reconcile these two contradictory tastes and overcome Ying Chan, this black lotus that had bloomed from the mud of life's flow?

In this respect, it would have been better if she had shown some clear sign of being the transmigration of Isao and Kiyoaki. Then Honda's pa.s.sion would be cooled. Yet on the other hand, had she simply been a girl who had nothing to do with the mystery of rebirth Honda had witnessed, he would not have been so strongly attracted to her. Perhaps the origin of that strength which sternly held his pa.s.sion in check and that of the extraordinarily powerful attraction existed together in the same samsara. The source of awakening and the origin of samsara and delusion were both samsara.

As he thought of it, Honda strongly wished that he were a man approaching the end of life, someone propertied and totally complacent. Honda knew a number of such people. Many were discernment itself in turning a profit and rising in the world or in struggling for power; they were adept in grasping the psychology of formidable compet.i.tors. Yet when it came to women they were completely ignorant, even though they had slept with several hundreds. Such men were satisfied to surround themselves with the screens of women and flatterers whom they bought with their money and power. Like loons, the women would sit around, showing only one side of their faces. Such men are not free; they're in a cage! thought Honda. They sit in cages made of things that only their eyes can see, that void the world and shut it out.

Other men are somewhat wiser. They are rich, powerful, and more aware of human nature. They can know everything about a man, they can penetrate to the core of things by interpreting the slightest surface indication. Super-psychologists who master the taste of life by the bitterness of smartweed vinegar. Whenever they wish they can order the trees and rocks and shrubs s.h.i.+fted in their beautiful little yards, they possess diminutive, refined gardens made of well-organized and well-arranged extractions of the world and life: gardens of real connoisseurs. Such precincts consist of rocks of deception, c.r.a.pe myrtle of coquetry, horsetails of guileness, washbasins of flattery, small waterfalls of loyalty, and the craggy rocks of countless betrayals. They sit the whole day before such allegorical plots, soaking themselves in the quiet pleasure of having disarmed the world and life of all resistance. Yet like a pricelessly rare teacup filled with foaming light green tea they firmly grasp in their hands the bitterness and superiority of cognizant men. Honda was not such a man. He was neither self-satisfied nor secure. And yet he was no longer ignorant either. He had seen only the borderline between the knowable and the unknowable; still it was enough to make him aware. And uncertainty was an incomparable treasure that man could steal from youth. Honda had already taken part in the lives of Kiyoaki and Isao, and had seen forms of fate where it was completely meaningless to extend his hand. It was as if he had been deceived. From the standpoint of fate, living was like being swindled. And human existence . . . signified nothing but the lack of fulfillment, and that he had thoroughly mastered in India.

Nevertheless, the absolutely pa.s.sive life or life's ultimately ontological form which is not commonly revealed had attracted Honda too much. And he was tainted by the extravagant concept that without such forms there was no life. He quite lacked the qualifications of a seducer. For seducing and deceiving were futile from the standpoint of fate, and "the will to seduce" was itself futile. When one recognized that there was no other form of living except to be naively deceived by fate alone, how was it possible to interfere? How could one even glimpse the pure form of such existence? For the moment, one could conceive of such a being only in its absence. Ying Chan, who was self-sufficient in her universe, she who was a universe in herself, must be isolated from him. At times, she was a kind of optical illusion, a corporeal rainbow. Her face was red and her neck orange, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were yellow and she had a green stomach, blue thighs, indigo calves, and violet toes. Above her head was an invisible infrared heart, and below her firmly planted feet were the invisible ultraviolet footprints of memory. The extremity of the rainbow had fused with the heaven of death. She was a rainbow bridging the firmament of death. If "not knowing" was the first factor in eroticism, the ultimate had to be the eternally unknowable . . . death.

When the unexpected amount of money came into his possession, Honda thought like everyone else that he would spend it for his own gratification, but such money was useless for his most essential pleasure. Partic.i.p.ation, caring, protection, possession, monopoly-all these things required money, and money had its use; but Honda's pleasure rejected all of them.

He knew that in inexpensive joys lurked thrilling pleasure. The feel of wet moss on the tree trunks in the grove where he had hidden himself, the subtle scent of dead leaves on the ground where he had knelt on a May night of the previous year in the park. The fragrance of young leaves was pungent and lovers lay disheveled on the gra.s.s. Auto headlights came and went ruthlessly on the road around the grove. Their beams illuminated the coniferous trees that were like the columns of some shrine and then would tragically and swiftly sweep down the shadowy shafts one after the other; he had shuddered as the light swept over the gra.s.s. Momentarily it picked out the almost cruelly sacred beauty of white turned-up underclothes. Only once Honda saw a ray of light pa.s.s directly across a woman's face with dreamy eyes. As he had glimpsed the reflection of a speck of light, they must surely have been open, if only partially. It was a ghastly moment when the darkness of human existence was abruptly unveiled, and he had inadvertently seen what he should not have.

To match his tremors with those of the lovers, to synchronize his palpitations with theirs, to share their fear, and at the end of such uniting, to remain an outsider who saw but was not seen. Celebrants of this furtive spying lurked here and there under the trees and in the bushes like crickets. Honda was one of these nameless men.

Young men and women . . . bodies entwined . . . white lower parts exposed. Tenderness of hands moving where the shadows were deepest. White b.u.t.tocks of men moving like Ping-Pong b.a.l.l.s. The almost legal authenticity of their sighs.

Yes, when the headlights momentarily peeled off the darkness of existence, the woman's face had been unexpectedly illuminated. But it was not the ones being observed who were startled, but those who watched behind the trees. When the distant and lyrical siren of a patrol car resounded far outside the night park, where the reflections of neon signs glowed like embers, the watched women did not leave off their debauchery, and their men infallibly raised their virile torsos like young wolves.

On one occasion Honda had lunched with an experienced lawyer, who pa.s.sed on a bit of gossip he had overheard at some police station. The nasty scandal had never appeared in the papers. It concerned a highly respected man prominent in legal circles, who enjoyed the prestige and respect due his eminent position. He had become an habitual voyeur and had been apprehended by the police. He was sixty-four years old. A young policeman asked for his personal card, ruthlessly demanding an account of the old man's offenses. The hapless lawyer was literally shaking with shame as he was forced to reconstruct in detail the setting of his voyeurism. During this time he was sternly lectured by the officer. As soon as the young policeman learned of the offender's high social status, he ridiculed the poor man for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, emphasizing the incredible gap between the prestige he enjoyed and the sordidness of his crime. He was fully aware that it was humanly impossible to bridge such a chasm, and yet he had tortured the man. Under the upbraiding by someone young enough to be his grandson, the old man had become obsequious, hanging his head and incessantly wiping his sweaty forehead. After being stuffed with mud slung by one so low in the governmental bureaucracy, he was finally discharged. Two years later he died of cancer.

How would he have behaved? Honda wondered.

Honda was supposed to know all about the secret of how to bridge such a hopeless abyss. The secret formula from India should have proven effective.

Why hadn't the old judge been able to explain the nature of his pleasure by using legal jargon?-a pleasure so strong that it brought tears to the eyes, the most modest pleasure in life. But even though Honda pretended to listen casually and to regard it as a piece of amusing gossip, he could not help wondering throughout the meal whether there were not some deeper motivation behind the subject his colleague had brought up. He took care to smile contemptuously at the critical points just like the narrator, but he was confused by the cruel contrast between the solemnity of the pleasure produced and the misery it evoked. Such an act was as worthless to the world as a worn-out pair of straw sandals; yet solemnity was concealed in its very core, and that was true of any kind of pleasure. As a result of that hour-long ordeal, he had completely renounced the thrill of his habit. Fortunately, that side of him was known to no one.

It could not be that he was oblivious to danger, because he had overtly humiliated his own reason. The real adventure of a dangerous action is reason, and courage too came from that.

If money could not guarantee security and purchase for him real thrills, then what could he do to grasp fresh life at his age? And yet his hunger for living seemed never to decrease but rather to sharpen with age.

Thus, though he did not wish it, it would be necessary for him to use some sort of intermediary. Even if Ying Chan should by some chance sleep with him, as long as what he really wanted was something she could never show him, then it would be imperative that he employ some roundabout, artificial method to obtain what he needed so much.

Tortured by these thoughts and unable to sleep, he would take out the Sutra of the Great Golden Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King, which had for some time remained undisturbed, acc.u.mulating dust on his bookshelf.

At times he murmured the mantra that stood for the achievement of the peac.o.c.k: ma yu kitsu ra tei sha ka.

It was merely a game of conundrums. If he had survived the war because of this sutra, then life sustained by such means seemed all the more worthless.

33.

KEIKO SHOWED great interest in the story of the Sutra of the Peac.o.c.k Wisdom King.

"You say that it's efficacious against snakebite? Then I'd love to learn it. There are lots of snakes in my garden at Gotemba."

"I remember just a little of the opening pa.s.sage. It goes: ta do ya ta icchi mitchi chiri mitchi chiribiri mitchi."

Keiko laughed. "Sounds like the song 'Chiribiribin'."

Honda felt a childish vexation at her flippant reaction and fell silent.

Keiko had brought along a student from Keio University whom she introduced as her nephew. He was wearing an imported suit and an expensive imported wrist.w.a.tch. He had narrow eyebrows and thin lips. Honda was startled to realize that his own eyes, when looking at this frivolous modern young man, had involuntarily taken on the censorious stare typical of the members of the old kendo team.

Keiko maintained her self-composure at all times. She gave directions to everyone in regal, placid tones. Any request made of her was followed by elaborate instructions.

Honda had found this out two days before when he had taken her to lunch at the Tokyo Kaikan to celebrate her return to the city. He mentioned his wish to introduce Ying Chan to some suitable boy, "aggressive" if possible. The one word gave the whole ploy away to Keiko.

"I see," she said. "It's inconvenient for you that she's a virgin. I'll bring you my incorrigible nephew the next time we meet. You won't have to worry about any aftermath with that boy. Later you'll be able to play the role of the gentle, sweet, overly kind confidant and enjoy her at your leisure . . . what a wonderful plan!"

When Keiko said "wonderful," the wonderfulness always seemed to vanish. In pleasure she completely lacked emotion-had she been a prost.i.tute she would have had to pretend. She was too methodical.

Keiko embarked upon an explanation of her nephew's modishness-his name was Katsumi s.h.i.+mura. She told Honda that he sent his measurements to New York and through an American friend of his father's ordered Brooks Brothers suits for every season of the year. This anecdote alone told much about the young man.

While the story of the Sutra of the Peac.o.c.k King was being retold, Katsumi gazed off into the distance, obviously bored. The lobby of the Imperial Hotel was like the entrance to a tomb with low projecting rocks cutting off the mezzanine; in the shop occupying a corner of the lobby gaudily colored American magazines and paperbacks bloomed in disarray like withered flowers left in a graveyard.