Free Beauty and Sadness by Yasunari Kawabata Page A

all those rounded, rolling waves of fresh green began to stir, and finally it came out like this. It’s not abstract.”
    “But I should think a tea field would seem rather subdued, even when the new growth is sprouting.”
    “I never have learned how to be subdued! Not in art, nor in my emotions.”
    “Not even in your emotions?” As he turned toward her his shoulder touched the softness of her breast. His eyes stopped before one of her ears. “If you keep on at that rate, you may find yourself cutting off one of those pretty ears.”
    “I’m not a genius like Van Gogh! Someone will have to bite it off for me.”
    Startled, Oki twisted sharply around to her, and Keiko caught hold of him to steady herself.
    “I detest subdued emotions,” she said, not shifting her position. With the least pressure she would have collapsed helplessly into his arms, ready to be kissed.
    But he did not move. She remained motionless too.
    “Mr. Oki,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on him.
    “Your ears are lovely,” he said, “but there’s a kind of eerie beauty to your profile.”
    “I’m glad you think so!” Her slender neck flushed slightly. “I’ll never forget that, as long as I live. But how long will beauty last? A woman feels sad to think of that.”
    He had no reply.
    “It’s embarrassing to be stared at, but any woman would be delighted to seem beautiful to a man like you.”
    Oki was astonished at the warmth of her response. She might have been uttering words of love. “I’m delighted too,” he said gravely. “Though you must be beautiful in many ways I’ve never seen.”
    “Do you think so? I don’t know, I’m not a model, just someone who’s trying to paint.”
    “A painter has a right to use a model. Sometimes I envy that.”
    “If I’m any good to you …”
    “That’s very kind.”
    “I said I wouldn’t care what you wrote about me. I’m sorry I can’t equal the girl of your imagination, that’s all.”
    “Should I be realistic?”
    “Whatever you please.”
    “An artist’s model and a writer’s model are entirely different, you know.”
    “Of course.” Keiko blinked her rich eyelashes. “But my tea-field sketch isn’t just a scene from nature. It’s turned out to be about myself.”
    “All pictures are like that, aren’t they? Even abstractions. But a model has to be another live human being. Novels need human beings too, no matter how much you write about landscapes.”
    “Mr. Oki, I’m a human being!”
    “A beautiful one,” he said, helping her up. “But even a nude artist’s model only has to pose. That’s not quite enough for a novelist.”
    “I know.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yes.”
    Oki found the girl’s boldness inhibiting. “I suppose I could borrow your looks for a character in a novel.”
    “That doesn’t sound like much fun.” She seemed deliberately coquettish.
    “Women are odd,” he said, to extricate himself. “Two or three of them have told me they’re sure I modeled one of my characters on them. And they were complete strangers, women I’d had nothing to do with. What kind of delusion could that be?”
    “Lots of women are unhappy, so they console themselves with delusions.”
    “Isn’t there something wrong with them?”
    “It’s easy for a woman to go wrong. You can make a woman go wrong, can’t you?”
    Her question left him at a loss. “Do you just coldly wait for it to happen?”
    He tried to change the drift of the conversation. “Anyway, being a novelist’s model is different. It’s an unrewarded sacrifice.”
    “I love to sacrifice myself! Maybe that’s my reason for living.” Again she had astonished him.
    “In your case it’s willful, as if you’re demanding the other person’s sacrifice.”
    “That’s not true. Sacrifice comes from love. It’s from yearning.”
    “Are you sacrificing yourself to Otoko?”
    She did not answer.
    “That’s right, isn’t it?”
    “Maybe I was, but Otoko is a woman, after all.