The Frolic of the Beasts by Yukio Mishima

Author:Yukio Mishima
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

The cat played around Kōji’s feet. From time to time, it extended the claws of its forepaws slightly and raked playfully at his insteps where they were exposed between the thongs of his geta. Since it was summer, it didn’t come onto the customers’ knees, preferring instead to lie with its stomach on the cool concrete floor. The cat liked Kōji, but Kōji disliked this strange, unaccountable fondness. With the tip of his toe he lightly kicked the cat away. But it soon came back again. At the Kusakado greenhouse, they would sometimes use bonito stock as well as chemical fertilizer. But it didn’t make Kōji reek of fish any more than the fishermen.

Kimi strummed her ukulele and sang a Hawaiian song she had picked up in the women’s dormitory at the Hamamatsu factory.

She was wearing a black, sleeveless beach dress with a sunflower pattern. A shadow was cast vertically into the cleavage of her voluptuous breasts, incongruous against her small stature. On a mere whim, she had clean-shaven one of her armpits, but left some stubble on the other. Her slightly stern face wore a frown, her mouth was like a beautiful half-open sea cucumber, and her dark skin was deeply reddened—maybe from the drink or perhaps from the lighting in the bar.

Kiyoshi was listening intensely to her, his bright, round face nestled in the turned-up collar of his white aloha shirt. Matsukichi, who was wearing a cotton waistband rolled up above his chest, rested his elbow on the tabletop, his chin on his hand.

Kōji sat across the table gazing intently at this stiflingly hot, still scene, as if looking through a picture frame.

He thought about Yūko and suddenly felt choked with emotion. I have repented, I have…He hadn’t realized before now just how much he was in love with her. If he were honest about it, he had to admit that he hadn’t wielded that wrench for her. However, he was sure he was in love now.

The bitter taste of contrition heightened the sweetness of his desire, and his longing for Yūko made its presence known here and there on the most unexpected and delicate of occasions. Kōji now felt constantly afraid of being ambushed by such desires. Yūko’s trifling gestures—the way she would raise her upper arm when she put a hand to her hair; the line of her skirt as she descended, in a stooped manner, the greenhouse steps; the fragrance of her face powder as it began to yield a little to the perspiration beneath…When these gestures suddenly shook him to his very foundations, he felt as though he had been waylaid by his own desires—stabbing him sharply in the back.

But the impossibility of the situation was even more apparent than before. Like living in a house built above a river with the constant clamor of water below, every inch of Kōji’s desire was directly linked to the noise of a culvert flowing through the memory of that dark jail. I have repented, I have…Whenever his desire for something arose, it inevitably revived his crime.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.