Free Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima Page B

I’ve seen of him, he’s quite superior to Kiyoaki Matsugae.”
    “Judge Honda, you’re being too polite.”
    “Well, consider Isao’s physical fitness. Kiyoaki neglected his body completely.” Honda felt the excitement rising within him as he tried to lead Iinuma to the crucial point of the mystery. “It’s no wonder he died so early from pneumonia—he was handsome, but he had no strength. But you were with him ever since he was a child. You must have been thoroughly familiar with his body.”
    “By no means!” Iinuma hastily protested. “I never so much as washed the young master’s back.”
    “Why not?”
    Embarrassment contorted Iinuma’s blunt features, and the blood rushed to his swarthy cheeks.
    “When the young master was undressed, I could never bring myself to look at him directly.”
    After Isao’s return from the post office, it was soon time to leave. Honda, whose profession had not equipped him to deal with the young, realized that he had yet to exchange a word with Isao.
    “What sort of books do you like to read?” he asked, rather awkwardly.
    “Let me show you, sir.” Isao, who was just putting something into his suitcase, took out a thin paperbound book and showed it to him. “I bought this last month after a friend recommended it, and I’ve already read it three times. I’ve never been so moved by a book. Have you read it, Your Honor?”
    Honda looked at the title and author’s name printed in old-style characters on the plain cover: The League of the Divine Wind by Tsunanori Yamao. He turned over the small book, hardly more than a pamphlet, and noted that even the publisher was unfamiliar. He was about to give it back without a word when he found his hand checked by Isao’s strong hand, callused from the kendo stave.
    “If Your Honor is interested, please read it. It’s a splendid book. I’ll lend it to you. You may send it back later.”
    His father had just gone out to the lavatory, or he would have scolded him for his presumption. As Honda looked at the flashing eyes of the enthusiastic young man, he saw at once that Isao believed that lending his favorite book was the only way he could express his gratitude for Honda’s kindness. Honda accepted the book, and thanked him for it.
    “It’s good of you to part with a book that means so much to you.”
    “No, no, I’m delighted to have Your Honor read it. I’m sure, sir, that you too will be moved by it.”
    The force of Isao’s answer gave Honda a glimpse into a world where the pursuit of idealism was easy, where youthful enthusiasms were readily shared—a world as simple as the endlessly repeated pattern of white splashes on the coarse blue kimono of his student days. He felt a twinge of envy.
    One of Rié’s merits was that she never gave a critique of guests immediately after their departure. Though not in the least credulous, she had a kind of languid, bovine steadiness. Still, even two or three months after the visit of a particular guest, she would sometimes surprise Honda with a casual allusion to a shortcoming she had noted.
    Honda was extremely fond of Rié, but she was not the sort of woman to whom he could pour out his fantasies and dreams. No doubt she would be delighted if he did. Certainly she would not ridicule them, but neither would she believe in them.
    Honda made it a rule never to discuss professional matters with his wife, and he had no difficulty being just as secretive about the products of his by no means fertile imagination. As for the events that had so bewildered him since the day before, he intended to keep them as hidden as Kiyoaki’s dream journal at the back of his desk drawer.
    Honda entered his study to confront the work that had to be done before morning, but the stack of thick Mino paper on which the court proceedings had been recorded in hard-to-read brush strokes gave such a severe check to his sense of duty that he was unable to begin.
    He reached out absently, picked up the