The Sound Of The Waves by Yukio Mishima

Author:Yukio Mishima
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781407053851
Publisher: CCV Digital

10

SHINJI’S BROTHER returned home to the island. The mothers were waiting on the jetty to welcome their sons. There was a drizzling rain and the open sea was invisible. The ferryboat was only about a hundred yards from the jetty when its shape came into view through the mist.

In the same breath each mother called the name of her own son. Now they could plainly see the caps and handkerchiefs being waved from the deck.

The boat had arrived, but even when they were ashore, face to face with their mothers, these middle-school boys only smiled a little and went right on playing around among themselves. They all disliked showing affection for their mothers in each other’s presence.

Even after he was at his own home, Hiroshi was still too excited to settle down. About all he could tell of his trip were incidents such as the morning he had been so sleepy because one of his friends had been afraid to go to the toilet by himself the night before and had pounded Hiroshi awake in the middle of the night to go with him. But not a word did Hiroshi have for all the famous historic spots they had visited.

Certainly Hiroshi had brought back some deep impressions from his trip, but he did not know how to put them into words. He would try to think of something to say, and all he could recall would be something like the time, already a year or so ago, when he had had such fun waxing a spot on the corridor floor at school and seeing one of the women teachers slip on it and fall. Those gleaming streetcars and automobiles that had come upon him so suddenly, flashed by, and disappeared, those towering buildings and neon lights that had so amazed him—where were they now?

Here at home, looking just the same as they had before he had gone away, there were still the same old cupboard, wall clock, Buddhist altar, dining-table, dressing-table—and the same old mother. There were the cook-stove and the dirty straw mats. These things could understand him even without words. And yet all of them, including even his mother, were at him to tell them about his travels.

Hiroshi finally calmed down about the time Shinji came home from the day’s fishing. After supper he opened his travel diary and gave his mother and brother a perfunctory account of his trip. Satisfied, they ceased questioning him about the excursion.

Everything was back to normal. His became again an existence in which everything was understood without the need for words. The cupboard, the wall clock, his mother, his brother, the old sooty cookstove, the sea’s roaring … folded in these familiar arms, Hiroshi slept soundly.

Hiroshi’s summer vacation was nearing its end. So every day from the moment he got up until he went to bed he was playing with all his might.

The island abounded in places to play. Hiroshi and his friends had finally seen the Western movies that until that

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