Free Temple Of Dawn by Yukio Mishima Page A

late-afternoon sky. A leper was sitting in front of a tin can containing a few coppers; his one eye was red and festered and his fingerless hands like the stumps of felled mulberry trees were raised to the evening sky.
    There was deformity of every kind. Dwarfs were running about, and bodies were arranged like some undeciphered ancient writing, lacking any common symbol. They appeared deformed not because of corruption or dissipation, but because the wretched, twisted shapes themselves, with freshness and feverishness, spewed out a repulsive holiness. Blood and pus were carried like pollen by thousands of fat, shiny, green-gold flies.
    On the right-hand side of the slope that led down to the river, a colorful tent with holy insignia on it had been pitched, and cloth-wrapped corpses had been deposited beside the crowd listening to a sermon by some priest.
    Everything was afloat. Under the sun lay exposed multitudes of the most ugly realities of human flesh with their excrement, stench, germs, and poisons. Everything hovered in the air like steam evaporating from ordinary reality. Benares. A piece of carpet, hideous to the point of brilliance. A riotous carpet joyously hoisted day and night by temples and people and children—fifteen hundred temples, temples of love with red pillars and black ebony reliefs illustrating all the possible positions of sexual intercourse, the House of Widows whose inmates earnestly await death, loudly chanting sutras night and day . . . inhabitants, visitors, the quick, the dead, children covered with pox, dying children clinging to their mother’s breast . . .
    The square sloped down to the river, leading visitors naturally to the most important ghat: the Dasasvamedha, the “Sacrifice of Ten Horses.” Tradition has it that the creator Brahma once made a sacrifice of ten horses at this spot.
    The river with its opulent ochre waters was the Ganges! The precious holy water which filled the small brass kettles to be poured on the foreheads of devotees and sacrificial victims in Calcutta was now flowing down the vast river before Honda’s eyes. An unbelievably generous feast of holiness.
    It was only reasonable that here the sick, the healthy, the deformed, the dying should all be equally filled with golden joy. It was only reasonable that the flies and vermin should be plump and besmeared with bliss; that the characteristically dignified and suggestive facial expression of the Indians here should be so filled with reverence as to verge on blankness. Honda wondered how he could fuse his reason with the blazing evening sun, the unbearable odor, with the river breezes like faint swamp vapors. It was doubtful he could immerse himself in the evening air which was everywhere like some thick woolen fabric woven with chanting voices, tolling bells, the sound of beggars, and the moaning of the sick. He was afraid his reason might, like the sharp edge of some knife he alone concealed in his jacket, slash this perfect fabric.
    The important thing was to discard it. The edge of the knife of reason, which he had regarded as his weapon since youth, had barely been preserved, considering the nicks already inflicted on it by each substantiation of transmigration. Now he had no choice but to abandon it unperceived in the perspiring crowds covered with germs and dust.
    Numerous mushroomlike umbrellas for bathers stood on the ghat, but for the most part they were unoccupied now that evening sunbeams darted deep beneath them. It was long after bathing time, which had reached its peak at sunrise. The guide went down to the shore and started to negotiate with a boatman. Honda could do nothing but wait to one side throughout the interminably long dickering, feeling the hot iron of the evening sun scorching his back.
    Finally the boat carrying Honda and his guide put out from the shore. The Dasasvamedha was located approximately in the center of the many ghats along the western bank of the Ganges. Sightseeing