It is night. Outside the earthen walls of the palace, Moritō gazes at the rising moon, brooding to himself as he tramps his way through fallen leaves.
His soliloquy:
“So the moon is out. There was a time when I could not wait for it to appear, but now this very brightness has become a dread omen. I tremble at the thought that this night I shall lose my soul, that tomorrow I shall be a common murderer. How rightly the mind’s eye sees my hands already crimson with blood! How damned I shall soon seem even to myself! It would cause me no such anguish if I were to kill a detested foe. Yet tonight I must take the life of a man I do not hate.
“I know him by appearance, though his name, Wataru Saemonno-jō, I learned only recently. When, I wonder, did I first see his fair complexion, a face which, for that of a man, is much too delicate. I confess to having felt pangs of jealousy on being told that this was Kesa’s husband. Yet now every trace of such has vanished, so that though he might be my rival in love, I neither loathe nor resent him. Indeed, I could even say that I feel a degree of empathy. When Lady Koromogawa recounted to me how ardently Wataru had courted her niece, I went so far as to feel genuine fondness for him. Why, it seems that in his desire to make her his wife he even took lessons in writing verse. As I contemplate how this deeply earnest samurai composed and sent love poems to her, I sense a smile stealing over my lips—and by no means one of scorn. I am moved to think that he would do so much for a woman. Perhaps it is the knowledge of the passion that drove him to woo her that gives me, her paramour, a sense of satisfaction.
“Still I wonder: Do I truly love Kesa? My longing for her falls into two phases: past and present. I was already in love with her before she was wed to Wataru—or at least I thought I was. On reflection I now realize that there was much in my feelings for her that was sordid. What did I want of her? Having never had carnal knowledge of a woman, I clearly desired her body. If I may exaggerate, my love for her was, in fact, nothing more than a sentimental frame of mind, embellishing ordinary lust. I submit that though indeed during the three years in which all ties were lost, I never forgot her, the question remains whether, had I once possessed her, I would have remained as steadfast in my infatuation. I confess with shame that I lack the courage to offer an acknowledgment.
“Thus, my attachment to that woman was in no small measure mixed with regret at never having embraced her. It was in that anguished state that I entered into the liaison that I at once both feared and desired. But now? Once again I pose the question: Do I really love Kesa?
“Before answering, I must recall, however painfully, a series of events. After meeting her by chance, for the first time in all those three years, at the dedication of the Watanabe Bridge, I spent the next six months scheming and contriving to meet her in secret. In this I succeeded—and in more. I was able to fulfill my dream of making her mine.
“Yet what possessed me was not merely my previously stated regret at not having had her in my arms. As I sat on a mat in the same room with her in the house of Lady Koromogawa, I was aware of how that feeling had diminished. This may have been in part because I had come to know women. The principal reason was, however, that her beauty had faded; she was no longer the Kesa I had last seen three years before. Her skin had quite lost its luster, and her eyes were encircled by dark rings. The abundant flesh of her cheeks and chin had vanished as though it had never been. All that remained unchanged was the fresh and spirited look of those same jet-black eyes.
“The alteration clearly dealt a terrible blow to my desire for her. Brought together with her again for the first time, I felt compelled to look away. Even now I vividly remember it all.
“How is it then that, my longing having so receded, I came to be involved with her? First there was a bizarre desire for conquest. Sitting across from me, Kesa had poured out her love for Wataru with deliberate exaggeration; it only struck me as hollow. I thought to myself that she had quite a vain opinion of her husband, though it also occurred to me that she might be trying to ward off any pity or compassion on my part. I became increasingly desirous to lay bare her lies. Should anyone ask me why I thought it deception or suggest that such might have been simply my own conceit, I could not refute the charge, though this was my belief then, as it is even now.
“But it was not merely the urge for conquest that ruled me; it was—and I blush red to confess it—something more: sheer lust. It was not even regret at not having made her flesh mine; rather it was something far baser, something for which she was not even required. It was lust for its own sake. A man procuring the favors of a harlot could not, I suppose, be as coarse and common as was I.
“With such muddled motives, I came at last to make love to her—or rather to bring shame upon her. And so I return once more to the question—do I truly love Kesa?—and find that it is one that I need not direct to myself after all. There are times when I even hate her. Especially when the ultimate act was completed and I forcibly lifted her up from where she had lain weeping, she struck me as an even more shameless creature than I. There was nothing—whether her tangled hair or the paint and powder on her perspiring face—that did not suggest a hideousness of both body and spirit. If I had ever had any love for her, it was extinguished forever on that day. And if, in fact, I never loved her, then I may freely say that henceforth there was in my heart a new sense of loathing. And now tonight, for the sake of this woman I do not love, I am setting forth to put to the sword a man I do not hate!
“That too is no one’s sin but my own, for it was I myself who brazenly put the words in Kesa’s ear: ‘Shall we not kill Wataru?’ When I contemplate what I whispered, I wonder whether I was not already quite mad. But the words were nonetheless mine. I told myself that I would say no such thing but then, through clenched teeth, did so nonetheless.
“The why of it is to me, now in retrospect, utterly incomprehensible. Forcing myself to explain it, I might suppose that the more I despised and loathed her, the more eagerly I sought her further humiliation and disgrace. Nothing could better serve that purpose than to propose killing Wataru Saemon-no-jō, the imperial guard, the husband for whom she has made such a display of her love, and coerce consent to my plan. And so I found myself, like a man driven by a nightmare, persuading her to assist in a murder I myself did not want to commit. If my motive is not sufficiently clear, then all that remains by way of explanation is a power unknown to mortals—or, if one prefers, a demon bent on subverting my will and leading me down the path of evil. In any case, I persistently whispered the same words again and again into Kesa’s ear.
“At last she suddenly raised her face to mine and gave her docile assent. The ease of her answer was more than surprising. As I looked into her face, I saw in her eyes a strange light I had never seen before: adulteress! A feeling close to despair instantly unfurled before my own eyes the full horror of what I intended. How her wanton, withered features tormented me I need not say. If it had been within my power, I would have renounced our pact then and there and sent the lascivious creature plunging into the very depths of disgrace. Though I had made her my plaything, my conscience might at least then have been able to take refuge in righteous indignation. And yet such leeway was not to be mine, for now, with an abruptly altered expression, her eyes were fixed on me as though penetrating my innermost thoughts . . . I confess that I fell into this conspiracy, setting the day and hour of Wataru’s murder out of fear that should I make the slightest attempt to extricate myself from it, I would be at the mercy of her vengeance. Even now I am held firmly in the grip of terror. Those who would despise me for cowardice may do so, but then they will not be such who have known Kesa as I saw her then. As I watched her weep without tears, I thought despairingly that if I were now to refuse to kill him, she would not fail to kill me, even if not by her own hand.
“I would therefore carry out the deed. Even as I swore to her, did I not see on her pale face, to confirm my fears, the dimple of a smile? Oh, because of this cursed oath, I shall add to all my other sins the crime of murder. If I could but evade the impending doom to which I am committed this very night! But I cannot. Fealty to my own oath and fear of her revenge conspire against me.
“All this is certainly true, but there is more to it. What might it be? It is something that drives even a coward such as me to murder. What overwhelming power is it? I do not know. And yet . . . But no . . . I despise, fear, and hate her. And yet perhaps it is also out of love . . .”
Moritō wanders on aimlessly but says no more. From somewhere the sound of a chant is heard:
Truly is the heart of man no other than an endless night,
His life a raging, death-doomed fire of envy, lust, and spite.
It is night. Kesa sits outside her bed curtains, her back to an oil lamp. Clenching a sleeve in her mouth, she is lost in thought.
Her soliloquy:
“Will he come or will he not? It is scarcely possible that he should not, and yet the moon is sinking, and still I hear no footsteps. Has he suddenly changed his mind? Oh, if he comes not, I must, like a harlot, raise my shameful face once more to the morning sun. How could I do anything so brazen, so wicked? I should be like a corpse abandoned at the side of the road, disgraced, trampled upon, and then brutally exposed to the light of day. And yet I would mutely endure it all, and were such to happen, not even death would bring an end to it. No, no, he surely will come. Looking into his eyes when we recently parted, I could not help but know that he would. He fears me. Even as he hates and despises me, that fear remains. In fact, if I were relying merely on myself, I could not say so, but on him I can rely, on his egotism, or rather on the ignoble fear that springs from it. Thus, I can be sure that he will indeed steal into this chamber.
“Yet what a wretched creature I am, not to be able to depend upon myself! Until at least three years ago I could count both on myself and on my beauty, perhaps until much more recently, indeed until that fateful day, when in that room in my aunt’s house I met him and saw at a glance how my ugliness was reflected in his mind’s eye. He acted as though it were nothing and even flattered me with kind words. But how can a woman’s heart be consoled once her own repulsiveness has been revealed to her? I felt chagrin, fear, and sadness. I remembered as a child being seized with horror when, held in my nurse’s arms, I saw an eclipse of the moon. Yet this was immeasurably worse. In an instant, all the fond illusions I had ever cherished were gone. I was enveloped in loneliness as bleak as a rainy dawn and thus, trembling in forlorn despair, yielded my body to a man I do not love, to a lecher who loathes and despises me.
“Was it that I had been unable to bear the desolation of having seen my unsightly appearance revealed? In pressing my face to his breast, was I attempting in one moment of heated frenzy to dull the pain of it all? If not, was I, like him, simply driven by lewd desire? The mere thought fills me with shame, with shame, with shame! What wretchedness I felt when, having been released from his arms, I was once again mistress of my own body!
“As much as I wanted not to weep, bitterness and loneliness brought an unending flood of tears to my eyes. Yet the cause of my misery was not merely my infidelity; above all, it was the disdain he heaped upon me in committing the act, quite as though I were a leprous dog, to be loathed and abused.
“What I did next I can now only recall as a dim memory, as though from the distant past. Yet I know that, as I was sobbing, I felt the whiskers on his upper lip touching my ear and his hot breath whispering in a low voice: ‘Let us kill Wataru.’
“Hearing his words, I felt strangely, radiantly alive, in a manner I had never known before. Alive? If moonlight may be said to be bright, then such indeed was my state of mind, though a luminous moon would still be altogether different. Yet did not his terrible words bring comfort to me? Oh, can I, a woman, rejoice at being loved by a man, though such should mean her husband’s murder?
“In this moonlight state of mind, forlorn and yet euphoric, I went on weeping. But then? Then? When did I at last agree to have him strike my husband dead? It was only in that moment that I first remembered him. Yes, I must honestly say, only then, for I had been thinking solely and entirely of my own disgrace. Now I thought of him, of my reserved and diffident husband, and yet not of him: what I saw clearly before my eyes was rather his smiling face when he speaks to me. And it was perhaps precisely then, as I remembered that face, that my plan came to me: as of that very moment I knew I was determined to die. The mere fact of having made so firm a resolution filled me with joy.
“But as I ceased my weeping, looked up into his face, and saw my ugliness reflected in his heart, that same joy instantly vanished, and I remembered the darkness of the eclipsed moon that I had seen with my nurse. It was as though, for all my exaltation, a host of demons had been hiding beneath and were now released.
“By dying in my husband’s place, am I really doing so out of love for him? No, no. Behind that convenient façade lies my desire to atone for the sin of yielding my body to that man. I lack the courage to die by my own hand; in this way, I shall at least show myself to the world in a better light. It is admittedly a petty motive, but for that I might be pardoned. And yet I have been a far more miserable and monstrous creature than that. Is it not that I am feigning to die in my husband’s place, so that I may take revenge on the man who has hated and scorned me and turned me into the object of his evil lust?
“I need no more proof than the loss, as I looked into his face, of that strange moonlight euphoria as my heart was instantly frozen in grief. It is for myself and not for my husband that I intend to die, for the pain of a wounded heart, for the chagrin of a body defiled. Ah, I have not only lived a useless life; I shall now die a useless death!
“Yet how much better to choose this useless death than to prolong my life! Forcing myself to smile despite my sorrow, I promised again and again that I would conspire with him. He is quick-witted enough to surmise with dread certainty the measures I will take if he should break his word. He solemnly swore an oath to me, and so indeed he will steal his way in to where I lie.
“Is that the sound of the wind? When I think that all my woe since that fateful day is now at last to end this night, I feel my anguished spirit ease. The morrow’s sun will cast its chill rays on my headless corpse, and when my husband sees . . . No, I must not think of him. He loves me, but I have no strength to return that love. From long ago I have been capable of loving only one man, and that man will come tonight to kill me—me, for whom, tormented to the very end by my lover, even the glow of the lamp is now too bright.”
Kesa extinguishes her lamp. Presently the opening of a latticed shutter is faintly heard, as pale moonlight breaks into the room.