Yukio Mishima - Confessions of a Mask

Contrary to my expectations, that everyday life which I feared showed not the slightest sign of beginning. Instead, it felt as though the country were engaged in a sort of civil war, and people seemed to be giving even less thought to "tomorrow" than they had during the real war.

The schoolmate who had lent me his university uniform was discharged from the army, and I returned his uniform to him. Then for a time I had the illusion that I had been liberated from memories, from memories of all my past.

My sister died. I derived a superficial peace-of-mind from the discovery that even I could shed tears.

Sonoko became formally engaged and was married shortly after my sister's death. My reaction to this eventwould I be right in describing it as the feeling of having had a burden lifted from my shoulders? I pretended to myself that I was pleased. I boasted to myself that this was only natural since it was I who had done the jilting and not she.

I had long insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism.

I passed the next year with vague and optimistic feelings. There were my law studies, perfunctorily performed, and my automatic goings and comings between university and home.... I was not paying attention to anything, nor was anything paying attention to me. I had acquired a worldly-wise smile like that of a young priest. I had the feeling of being neither alive nor dead. It seemed that my former desire for the natural and spontaneous suicide of death in war had been completely eradicated, and forgotten.

True pain can only come gradually. It is exactly like tuberculosis in that the disease has already progressed to a critical stage before the patient becomes aware of its symptoms.One day I stopped in a bookstore, where new publications were gradually beginning to reappear, and happened to take down a translation in a crude paper binding. It was a collection of wordy essays by a French writer. I opened the book at random and one line on the page burned itself into my eyes. An acute feeling of uneasiness forced me to close the book and return it to the shelf.

On my way to school the next morning something suddenly possessed me to stop by the same bookstore, which was near the main gate of the university, and buy the book I had looked at the day before. During a lecture on the Civil Code, I took the book out stealthily and, laying it beside my open notebook, hunted up the same line. It now gave me an even more vivid feeling of unease than it had the day before:

... The measure of a woman's power is the degree of suffering with which she can punish her lover....

I had one friend at the university with whom I was on familiar terms. His family owned a long-established confectioner's shop. At first glance, he appeared to be an uninteresting, diligent student; the cynical tone of voice he used toward people and life, together with the fact that he had a frail build similar to mine, aroused a sympathetic attraction in me. But while my cynicism came from a desire for creating an impression and for self-defense, the same attitude in him seemed to be rooted in some firmer feeling of self-confidence. I wondered where he got his confidence. After a tim e he guessed that I was still a virgin and, speaking with a mixture of overwhelming superiority and self-contempt, confessed that he had been visiting brothels. Then he sounded out my feelings on the subject.

"... So if you'd like to go sometime, just give me a call. I'll take you any time."

"H'm. If I want to go, all right.... Maybe.... I'll make up my mind soon," I answered.

He seemed abashed, and yet triumphant. His expression reflected my own feeling of shame; it was as though he thought he completely understood my present state of mind and was being reminded of the time when he himself had experienced exactly the same feelings. I felt harassed. It was that restless feeling, already well-established in me, of wanting actually to have the feelings with which I was credited.

Prudery is a form of selfishness, a means of self-protection made necessary by the strength of one's own desires. But my true desires were so secret that they did not allow even this form of self-indulgence. And at the same time any imaginary desiresthat is, my simple and abstract curiosity concerning womenallowed me such a cold freedom that there was almost no room for this selfishness in them either. There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might even be the most immoral desire a man can possess.I devised a pathetic secret exercise. It consisted of testing my desire by staring fixedly at pictures of naked women.... As may be easily imagined, my desire answered neither yes or no. Upon indulging in that bad habit of mine, I would try to discipline my desire, first by refraining from my usual daydreams, and later by forcibly calling up mental images of women in the most obscene poses. At times it seemed my efforts were successful. But there was a falseness about this success that seemed to grind my heart into powder.

At last I decided it was sink or swim. I telephoned my friend and asked him to meet me one Sunday afternoon at five o'clock at a certain teashop. This was toward the middle of January in the second year after the end of the war.

"So you finally made up your mind?" He laughed delightedly over the telephone. "All right, I'll be there. And listenI'll be there for sure. I won't forgive you if you don't come."...

After I had hung up, his laughing voice still echoed in my ears. I was aware that I had been able to counter his laughter with nothing better than an invisible, twisted smile. And yet I felt a ray of hope or, better said, a superstitious belief. It was a dangerous superstitution. Only vanity makes people take risks. In my case it was the commonplace vanity of not wanting to be known as a virgin at the age of twenty-two.Now that I think of it, it was on my birthday that I thus steeled myself for the test....

We stared at each other as though each was trying to probe the other's mind. Today my friend too realized that either a serious face or a broad grin would look equally absurd, and he exhaled cigarette smoke rapidly from his expressionless lips. After a few words of greeting he began talking impersonally about the poor quality of the confections served at this shop. I was scarcely listening to him and broke into his remarks:

I wonder if you've made up your mind also. I wonder if a fellow who takes someone to such a place for the first time becomes a lifelong friend or a lifelong enemy."

"Don't scare me. You know what a coward I am. I wouldn't know how to play the part of a lifelong enemy."

"It's good that you know even that much about yourself." I deliberately talked down to him, making a show of bravado.

"Well, then," he said, looking as grave as a committee chairman, "we ought to go somewhere and have something to drink. It's a little too much for a beginner if he's sober."

"No, I don't want to drink." I felt my cheeks grow cold. "I'm going without taking a single drink. I have nerve enough without it."In quick succession there came a ride on a gloomy streetcar and a gloomy elevated, an unfamiliar station, an unfamiliar street, a corner where shabby tenements stood in rows, and purple and red lights under which the women's faces looked swollen. The customers walked along the clammy, thawing street, passing each other in silence, their footfalls as hushed as though they were barefoot. I felt not the slightest desire. It was nothing but my feeling of uneasiness that goaded me on, exactly as though I were a child pleading for a midafternoon snack.