Free Temple Of Dawn by Yukio Mishima Page B

boats for the most part went downstream to the south to see the other ghats, then turned upstream to reach those north of the Dasasvamedha.
    Whereas the western shore was considered to be holy, the eastern bank was sorely neglected. It was said that people who lived there would transmigrate into the body of an ass, and therefore all avoided that side. There was not so much as the shadow of a house, just the low jungle green in the distance.
    Once the boat started downstream, the bright evening sun was at once cut off by buildings and provided only a brilliant halo for the magnificent view formed by the many imposing ghats with their columns at the back and the mansions supported by pillars. Only the Dasasvamedha ghat, backed by the square, allowed the setting sun its way. The evening sky was already casting its gentle rose color over the river; passing sails dropped dusky shadows on the water.
    It was a time of opulent, mysterious luminescence before the dusk of evening. A time controlled by light, when the contours of all things were perfect, every dove painted in detail, when everything was dyed a faded yellow-rose, when a languid harmony reigned with the exquisiteness of an etching between the reflection on the river and the glow in the sky.
    The ghats are great architectural structures suitable precisely to this sort of light. They consist of colossal staircases, like those of palaces or great cathedrals, that lead down to the water, and behind each one stands a great monolithic wall. The columns and arches forming the background for the ghats are only pilasters, and the arcades have blind windows. The staircase alone has the dignity of a sacred place. Some capitals are Corinthian in style, others are quite syncretic in the Near Eastern fashion. On the pillars white lines are drawn as high as forty feet, the heights reached in the yearly flood disasters, especially the notorious ones of 1928 or 1936. Above the staggeringly lofty pilasters, cantilevered arcades jut out for the people who live at the top of the walls, and rows of pigeons perch on the stone balustrades. Over the rooftops a halo of evening sun paused, gradually fading in brilliance.
    Honda’s boat was nearing one of the ghats called Kedar. There a man was fishing with a net near his boat. Kedar ghat was quiet, and the thin, ebony bathers as well as the spectators on the steps were all lost in prayer and meditation.
    Honda’s attention was caught by a man who had come down the center of the great staircase and was about to bathe. Behind him stood a line of magnificent ochre columns, and in the fading glow everything was clear and distinct, even to the ornamented crannies in the capitals. He was standing in the midst of holiness, yet it was questionable whether he could be called a man at all, so great was the contrast of his skin with that of the black bodies of the tonsured priests about him. A tall, stately old man, he alone was a radiant pink.
    He wore a small topknot of white hair on his head, and with his left hand he held a heavy scarlet loincloth around his hips. The rest was an ample expanse of slightly slackened pink nudity. His eyes were rapturously transfixed, as though no one existed about him, and he gazed vacuously at the sky above the opposite bank. His right hand slowly stretched heavenward in adoration. The skin of the face, chest, and abdomen was a fresh pinkish white in the evening light, and his nobility completely removed him from his surroundings. But remnants of the black skin of this world remained here and there on the upper half of his arms, on the backs of his hands, or on his thighs, almost peeling off, but still forming blotches, marks, and stripes. These remnants made his glowing pink body appear even more sublime. He was a white leper.
    A multitude of pigeons took flight.
    As the boat started upstream, the movement of one startled bird was instantly transmitted to the others, and the sudden flutter of many wings took Honda by