The rock was cold. We had to hurry. There was only a half hour till closing time.
It was a walk as irritating as a hangnail. The quiet beauty of the garden was caught up in the restlessness of sunset. The waterfowl on the pond were astir, the pink of the bush clover beside the wasted iris had faded.
The closing hour was our pretext for hurrying, but it was not our only reason. We were afraid of the mood of the autumn garden, sinking into our hearts; and we wanted the swiftness of our pace to turn up voices inside us more shrilly, like a record that is revolving too fast.
We stood on a bridge along the circular path. There was no one else in sight. Our shadows stretched out over the moving carp, with the shadow of the bridge. We turned our backs to the pond, out of distaste for the huge patent-medicine sign beyond. We were facing a little round artificial hillock tangled with dwarf bamboo, and the net flung by the setting sun upon the groves beyond. I felt like the last fish resisting the violent light and refusing to be caught in the net.
Perhaps I was dreaming of another world. I felt as if a moment containing death had brushed past the two of us, high-school students in pale sweaters on a bridge. The sexual fullness of love suicide crossed my heart. I am not one to call for help, but if help were to come, I thought, it would come only with the end of consciousness. There would be joy in the rotting of consciousness there in the evening light.
The little pond to the west was choked with lotuses.
Like jellyfish in the evening breeze, the lotus pads blocked off the water. Covered with a powder, the green leathery pads buried the valley below the hillock. They softened the light radically, catching the light of other pads, the delicate shadow of a maple branch. They wavered uncertainly, competing for the evening light. It was as if I could hear them in faint chorus.
I saw how complicated their movements were. The wind might come from one direction, but they did not bow obediently in the other. One spot was forever in motion, another obstinately still. One pad would show its underside, but the others would not imitate it. They bowed sluggishly, painfully, to the left and right. Winds that brushed the surfaces and winds that loitered along the stems produced immense disorder. I was beginning to find the evening breeze chilly.
Most of the pads were fresh at their centers but eaten by rust at the edges. The decay seemed to spread from the spots of rust. There had been no rain for two days, and there were brown water stains at the concave centers. Or dead maple leaves.
The sun was still bright, but from somewhere darkness pressed in. We exchanged brief remarks. Though our faces were near, it was as if we were calling out to each other from far off in an inferno.
“What is that?” As if in fright, Momoko pointed to a cluster at the foot of the hillock, a tangle of rich red threads.
It was a cluster of shining spider lilies, a powerful red.
“It’s closing time,” said the old attendant. “Hurry up, please.”
Our afternoon at the Kōrakuen brought me to a decision.
It was a trivial decision. If I was to wound Momoko not in the flesh but in the spirit, then there was an urgent need for another woman.
To make Momoko taboo was at the same time a responsibility and a logical contradiction. And if my carnal interest in her was the hidden source of my rational interest, then my dignity was left with nothing to stand on. I must wound her with the shining scepter of “love that is free.”
To have another woman did not seem difficult. I went to a go-go hall on my way home from school. All I had to do was dance as I had learned to at the houses of friends, whether skillfully or not did not matter. I had several friends who had a healthy routine. Each day after school they would spend an hour or so alone at a go-go house before settling down after dinner to studies for entrance examinations. I went with one of them, and persevered over Coca-Cola after the hour had passed. A countrified girl with thick makeup spoke to me, and I danced with her. She was not, however, what I was after.
I had heard from my friend that there were certain to be “chastity eaters” at such a place. One would imagine rather older women, but such is– not always the case. Women are sometimes interested in education even when they are young. A surprising number of them are good-looking. Their pride dictates against submitting to a sexual virtuoso. They prefer to become tutors and leave a lasting impression on young hearts. The interest in young male purity derives from the pleasure of leading into temptation; and yet, because it is quite clear that the women themselves have no sense of guilt, the pleasure must derive from leaving the man with the guilt which has carefully been nurtured elsewhere. Some are bright and happy, others of a melancholy turn. There is no standard, but they are all like hens warming eggs of sin. They are less interested in hatching the eggs than in cracking the heads of young roosters.
In the course of the evening I made the acquaintance of one of them, a rather well-dressed girl of twenty-five or twenty-six. She said I must call her Nagisa, “Miss Brink,” and did not tell me her real name.
Her eyes were almost uncomfortably large, and she had thin, malicious lips. Yet there was in her face a warm richness as of a rustic orange. Her bosom was a startling white and she had good legs.
“Really!” That was her favorite expression. She was not at all reluctant to ask questions herself, but she greeted every question in return with a “Really!”
Since I had told Father that I would be home at nine, there was only time for dinner. She drew a map and gave me a telephone number and said that since she lived alone there was no need for shyness.
I want to be as precise as possible about what happened when, some days later, I went calling. Because the event itself is so filled with sensual exaggeration and imaginings and disappointments and the events are so distorted, a person departs from the truth in the very effort to be cool and objective; and if he seeks to portray the intoxication, he falls into conceptualizing. I must take up all three, sexual pleasure and the trembling curiosity of a new experience and an oppressive disharmony that could be either sensual or rational. I must cleanly separate them, allowing none to encroach upon the others, and I must transplant them, perfect and undamaged. The task will not be an easy one.
She seemed at first to have overestimated my shyness. She reassured herself repeatedly of the fact that I was “new to the experience.” I did not want to appear under false colors, nor, on the other hand, did I want to be one of those young men who seek to attract a certain sort of woman with their inexperience—not after all a very attractive trait. And so I assumed a delicate arrogance, which was nothing but shyness cloaking itself in vanity.
The woman seemed torn between a desire to put me at my ease and a desire to excite me; but she was really thinking of herself. She knew from experience that over-ardent instruction can make the young person stumble. That was the reason for her sweet reserve. It was the perfume with which she had carefully touched herself. I could see a little gauge wavering in her eyes.
Since it was quite obvious that she was using my eagerness and curiosity to arouse herself, I was reluctant to have her look at me. It was not that I was feeling particularly shy; but I made the gesture as I brushed her eyes shut seem like a demand of shyness. I suppose that thus rolling in the dark a woman feels only the wheel that runs over her.
It goes without saying that my feelings of pleasure were over as soon as they began. I was much relieved. Only with the third try did I feel anything like real pleasure.
And so I saw: pleasure has an intellectual element in it from the start.