The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

Author:Yukio Mishima
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
ISBN: 978-4-8053-0637-6
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing

Once again my solitude had started. I did not see the girl from the lodging-house again and my relations with Kashiwagi became less friendly than before. Kashiwagi's way of life still exerted a powerful fascination on me, but I felt that I would be carrying out my final service to Tsurukawa if I made some slight effort to resist this fascination and tried, however unwillingly, to keep my distance. I wrote my mother clearly that she should not come to visit me again until I had attained my independence. I had already told her this verbally, but I did not feel that I could rest easy until I had committed it to writing in the strongest terms. Her answer was couched in awkward phrases. She told me about how hard she was working at Uncle's farm and followed this by a few sentences that smacked of elementary admonitions. Then she had appended the following sentence: “I don't want to die until I have seen you with my own eyes as a priest in the Golden Temple.” I hated this part of the letter and for some days after it made me feel uneasy.

Even during the summer I did not once visit the place where Mother was making her home. Due to the poor food at the temple, the summer heat was a great strain on me. In the middle of September there was a report of a possible typhoon. Someone had to stand night watch and I volunteered for the job.

I think that it was about this rime that a delicate change started in my feelings concerning the Golden Temple. It was not hatred, but a premonition that at some time or other a situation would inevitably arise in which the thing that was slowly germinating within me would be utterly incompatible with the Golden Temple. This feeling had been emerging ever since that incident at Kameyama Park, but I had been afraid to put a name to it. Yet I was happy to know that during this one night's watch the temple would be entrusted to me and I did not conceal my pleasure.

I was given the key to the Kukyocho. This third story of the temple was regarded as especially valuable. A few feet above the floor an impressive tablet inscribed by the Emperor Go-Komatsu was hanging against one of the beams.

The wireless was reporting that the typhoon would be with us momentarily, but there was still not a sign of it. It had been raining intermittently during the afternoon, but now it had cleared up and a bright full moon appeared in the night sky. The various inmates of the temple had strolled into the garden and were examining the sky. I heard someone say that this was the quiet before the storm.

The temple fell asleep. Now I was alone in the Golden Temple. When I wandered into a part of the building where the light of the moon could not enter, I was entranced at the thought that the heavy, luxurious darkness of the temple was enveloping me.

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