[Yukio Mishima] Death in Midsum

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.They could see no more than twenty people the whole length of the bathing beach, which began from just beyond the rock.They stood silently at the edge of the water.There were grand clusters of clouds again today, piled one upon another.It seemed strange that a mass so heavy with light could be borne in the air.Above the packed clouds at the horizon, light clouds trailed away as though left behind in the blue by a broom.The clouds below seemed to be enduring something, holding out against something.Excesses of light and shade cloaked in form, a dark, inchoate passion shaped by a will radiant and architectural, as in music.From beneath the clouds, the sea came towards them, far wider and more changeless than the land.The land never seems to take the sea, even its inlets.Particularly along a wide bow of coast, the sea sweeps in from everywhere.The waves came up, broke, fell back.Their thunder was like the intense quiet of the summer sun, hardly a noise at all.Rather an ear-splitting silence.A lyrical transformation of the waves, not waves, but rather ripples one might call the light, derisive laughter of the waves at themselves - ripples came up to their feet, and retreated again.Masaru glanced sideways at his wife.She was gazing out to sea.Her hair blew in the sea breeze, and she seemed undismayed at the sun.Her eyes were moist and almost regal.Her mouth was closed tight.In her arms she held one-year-old Mokomo, who wore a little straw hat.Masaru had seen that face before.Since the tragedy, Tomoko's face had often worn that expression, as if she had 37forgotten herself, and as if she were waiting for something.,'What are you waiting for?' he wanted to ask lightly.But the words did not come.He thought he knew without asking.He clutched tighter at Katsuo's hand.Translated and abridged by Edward G.Seidensticker Three Million YenWe're to meet her at nine?' asked Kenzo.'At nine, she said, in the toy department on the ground floor,'replied Kiyoko.'But it's too noisy to talk there, and I told her about the coffee shop on the third floor instead.'That was a good idea.'The young husband and wife looked up at the neon pagoda atop the New World Building, which they were approaching from the rear.It was a cloudy, muggy night, of a sort common in the early-summer rainy season.Neon lights painted the low sky in rich colours: The delicate pagoda, flashing on and off in the softer of neon tones, was very beautiful indeed.It was particularly beautiful when, after all the flashing neon tubes had gone out together, they suddenly flashed on again, so soon that the after-image had scarcely disappeared.To be seen from all over Asakusa, the pagoda had replaced Gourd Pond, now filled in, as the main landmark of the Asakusa night.To Kenzo and Kiyoko the pagoda seemed to encompass in all its purity some grand, inaccessible dream of life.Leaning against the rail of the parking lot, they looked absently up at it for a time.Kenzo was in an undershirt, cheap trousers, and wooden clogs.His skin was fair but the lines of the shoulders and chest were powerful, and bushes of black hair showed between the mounds of muscle at the armpits.Kiyoko, in a sleeveless dress, always had her own armpits carefully shaved.Kenzo was very fussy.Because they hurt when the hair began to grow again, she had become almost obsessive about keeping them shaved, and there was a faint flush on the white skin.She had a round little face, the pretty features as though 39woven of cloth.It reminded one of some earnest, unsmiling little animal.It was a face which a person trusted immediately, but not one on which to read thoughts.On her arm she had a large pink plastic handbag and Kenzo's pale blue sports shirt.Kenzo liked to be empty-handed.From her modest coiffure and make-up one sensed the fru-gality of their life.Her eyes were clear and had no time for other men.They crossed the dark road in front of the parking lot and went into the New World.The big market on the ground floor was filled with myriad-coloured mountains of splendid, gleaming, cheap wares, and salesgirls peeped from crevices in the mountains.Cool fluorescent lighting poured over the scene.Behind a grove of antimony models of the Tokyo Tower was a row of mirrors painted with Tokyo scenes, and in them, as the two passed, were rippling, waving images of the mountain of ties and summer shirts opposite.'I couldn't stand living in a place with so many mirrors,' said Kiyoko.'I'd be embarrassed.''Nothing to be embarrassed about.' Though his manner was gruff, Kenzo was not one to ignore what his wife said, and his answers were generally perceptive.The two had come to the toy department.'She knows how you love the toy department.That's why she said to meet her here.'Kenzo laughed.He was fond of the trains and automobiles and space missiles, and he always embarrassed Kiyoko, getting an explanation for each one and trying each one out, but never buying.She took his arm and steered him some distance from the counter.'It's easy to see that you want a boy.Look at the toys you pick.''I don't care whether it's a boy or a girl.I just wish it would come soon.''Another two years, that's all.''Everything according to plan.'They had divided the savings account they were so assiduously building up into several parts, labelled Plan X and Plan Y40and Plan Z and the like.Children must come strictly according to plan.However much they might want a child now, it would have to wait until sufficient money for Plan X had accumulated.Seeing the inadvisability, for numerous reasons, of hire-purchase, they waited until the money for Plan A or Plan B or Plan C had accumulated, and then paid cash for an electric washing machine or refrigerator or a television set.Plan A and Han B had already been carried out.Plan D required little money, but since it had as its object a low-priority wardrobe, it was always being pushed back.Neither of them was much interested in clothes.What they had they could hang in the cloak-room, and all they really needed was enough to keep them warm in the winter.They were very cautious when making a large purchase.They collected catalogues and looked at various possibilities and asked the advice of people who had already made the purchase, and, when the time for buying finally came, went off to a wholesaler in Okachimachi.A child was still more serious.First there had to be a secure livelihood and enough money, more than enough money, to see that the child had surroundings of which a parent need not be ashamed, if not, perhaps, enough to see it all the way to adulthood.Kenzo had already made thorough inquiries with friends who had children, and knew what expenditures for powdered milk could be considered reasonable.With their own plans so nicely formed, the two had nothing but contempt for the thoughtless, floundering ways of the poor.Children were to be produced according to plan in surroundings ideal for rearing them, and the best days were waiting after a child had arrived.Yet they were sensible enough not to pursue their dreams too far.They kept their eyes on the light immediately before them.There was nothing that enraged Kenzo more than the view of the young that life in contemporary Japan was without hope.He was not a person given to deep thinking, but he had an almost religious faith that if a man respected nature and was obedient to it, and if he but made an effort for himself, the way would somehow open.The first thing was reverence for nature, 41founded on connubial affection.The greatest antidote for despair was the faith of a man and woman in each other [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Pokrewne