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I have stayed away from Kawabata until now, out of some misguided belief that he is too gloomy, too downbeat, even suicidal. I am glad to be proven wrong, and to add another literary master to my future reading plans. I started with this novella both because it is a teaser / sampler of his style and because the synopsis sounded like a good companion piece to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Memories of My Melancholy Whores .

The thematic is indeed similar: old men searching for the company of young women in bawdy houses, an occasion for reminiscing about past loves and about the coming of the final sleep. I love though how the personality of each writer and their cultural background are reflected in their respective prose. Marquez protagonist is earthy, passionate, even lubric in his eroticism, still bubbling with life at the age of 90. Old Eguchi, as he is described throughout the novella, is 'only' 67, is much more conscious of the approaching finnish line, not obsessed, but definitely preoccupied with thoughts of death. He is also restrained, analytical, introverted. Maybe contemplative is the closest atribute that defines him, a favorite pastime in Japan. Instead of Zen gardens with raked white sand, picturescue stones and bubbling brooks, Old Eguchi meditations are initiated by the proximity of bare naked young virgins, put to sleep for the convenience of old geezers with money to pay for the privilege.

Because the girl would not awaken, the aged guests need not feel the shame of their years. They were quite free to indulge in unlimited dreams and memories of woman. Was that not why they felt no hesitation at paying more than for woman awake?

I asked myself what I would do if I were offered a treat like that, and my instincts tell me I wouldn't go for it. Consensual relationship are still the norm in my book. But I'm not Japanese, and I don't really know if I would feel the same 20 years from now. In the meantime, I extend to Old Eguchi the benefit of doubt before condemning his lecherous ways, and follow his stream of conscience musings about women and love, youth and loneliness.

They were a strange light at the bottom of a deep darkness.

Eguchi is alone now, but as he gazes at, fondles and smells the young bodies beside him, we find out he has had a full life, with wife, grown up children, lovers and even casual sex encounters. He looks at his past with some regrets about 'the ones that got away' but without bitterness. Nostalgia and resignation are the major tonalities of his account, spiced with his own brand of fascination for the carnal aspects of love. Each girl he meets in the little room draped in crimson velvet curtains and bathed in moonlight, is different from the previous one, uniquely attractive, each triggering a different kind of memory. (view spoiler)[ I wonder: did anyone else believed that the girls were faking being asleep? Not that it mattered much in the end, but this was my expectation. (hide spoiler)] The novella becomes in this more of a celebration of beauty and womanhood than a sexploitation piece:

For Eguchi when he came to this house, there was nothing more beautiful than a young face in dreamless sleep. Might it be called the sweetest consolation to be found in this world?

The French say : Vive la difference! . Old Eguchi becomes aware than in his long life he has barely begun to understand women, and his regrets issue more from an awareness of the little time he has now left to continue his study:

Woman is infinite, thought the older man, with a touch of sadness.

There is no plot and precious little dialogue. But the prose is exquisite in its studied simplicity and in its elegance. I wish I was more familiar with symbols and metaphors specific to the Japanese culture, because I feel every gust of wind, every crashing of waves on the shore, every fallen petal from a blooming magnolia tree, every hand gesture from a sleeping girl, is a code for an emotion or a literary reference. I get a similar feeling from looking at albums of old Chinese and Japanese woodcut prints and from watching a movie by Yasusiro Ozu. I mentioned him because my favorite flashback scene is between Old Eguchi and his youngest, most dearly loved daughter. In an echo of the Late Spring script, the father has to give his young girl in marriage and takes a last trip with her to the temples in Kyoto, where they meditate in silence in front of a four hundred years old flowering tree. Are their thought in tune or at cross-currents? We don't know. The only certainty is the loneliness of the old man left behind:

Although she lived in Tokyo, the daughter seldom came to see them after she was married.
"How are you?"
"How am I? Happy, I suppose."

Despite the shortness of the text, I am left with a lot of emotions to sift through and some moral dillemas to chew on. Mission accomplished for mr. Kawabata, who will probably see me again strolling through his lonely landscapes of mountain, sea, temple, moonlight. And even if the novella turned out to be morbid after all, I have come out of it with a more hopeful message than I expected:

The aged have death, and the young have love, and death comes once, and love comes over and over again.

Live goes on, with or without us.