Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima Read Free Book Online Page A

been referring to the offer of marriage then pending. At the time she had been inclined to accept but had dropped her hint out of concern for Kiyoaki’s reaction. Now, ten days later, it would appear from his mother that she had formally refused. And her reason for doing this was clear to him. She had done so because she was in love with Kiyoaki.
    And with that the clouds faded from his horizon. He was no longer beset by anxieties. The water in the glass was clear once again. For ten days he had been excluded from the small, peaceful sanctuary that was his only refuge. But now he could return to it and breathe easy.
    Kiyoaki was enjoying a rare moment of acute happiness, a happiness that without question sprang from his regaining his clarity of vision. The card that had been deliberately concealed had reappeared in his hand. The deck was complete. And so once more it became a mere pack of cards. His happiness shone clear and unmarred. For a moment at least, Kiyoaki had succeeded in breaking the grip of his emotions.
    The Marquis and Marquise Matsugae, however, were still looking at one another across the table, their insensitivity blinding them even to something as obvious as their son’s sudden rush of happiness. The Marquis confronted the classic melancholy of his wife’s face, and she, in turn, the coarseness of his. Features proper to a man of action had become blurred by the ravages of indolent living that spread beneath his skin.
    Despite the seemingly erratic course charted in his parents’ conversation, Kiyoaki had always been aware of adherence to a definite ritual; it was as set as the Shinto ceremony of offering the gods a branch of the sacred sakaki tree, a ceremony in which each syllable of the incantation is meticulously pronounced and each lustrous branch carefully selected.
    Kiyoaki had observed the ritual countless times since early childhood. No burning crises. No storms of passion. His mother knew exactly what was coming next. The Marquis knew that his wife knew. Their expressions blank, innocent of foreknowledge, they glided downstream like twigs hand in hand on clear waters mirroring blue sky and clouds, to take the inevitable plunge over the crest of the falls.
    Just as predictably, the Marquis left his after-dinner coffee unfinished and turned to his son. “Now, Kiyoaki, what do you say to a game of billiards?”
    “Well, then, please excuse me,” said the Marquise.
    Kiyoaki was so happy tonight, however, that this kind of charade did not grate on him in the least. His mother returned to the main house and he went with his father into the billiard room. With its English-style oak paneling, its portrait of Kiyoaki’s grandfather, and its large map done in oils depicting the naval battles of the Russo-Japanese War, this room was much admired by visitors. One of the disciples of Sir John Millais, famous for his portrait of Gladstone, had done the huge likeness of Kiyoaki’s grandfather during his stay in Japan. And now his grandfather’s figure loomed in ceremonial attire from the shadows.
    The composition was simple, but the artist had evinced a high degree of skill in his judicious blending of idealization and realistic sternness to achieve a likeness that expressed not only the indomitable air expected of a Restoration peer but also those more personal traits dear to his family, down to the warts on his cheek. According to household custom, whenever a new maid came from the ancestral province of Kagoshima, she was taken before the portrait to pay reverence. Some hours before his grandfather’s death, though the billiard room was empty and it was unlikely that the picture cord could have become so worn, the portrait fell to the floor with a crash that echoed throughout the house.
    The room contained three billiard tables covered with layers of Italian marble. Though the three-ball game had been introduced at the time of the war with China, no one ever played it in the Matsugae billiard room;