Free The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima Page B

bad!… It’s bad for a girl to do that before she’s married.”
    “You really think it’s so bad?” the crestfallen boy asked, without any conviction.
    “It’s bad.” As the girl’s eyes were closed, she could speak without hesitation, in a tone of voice that seemed to be both reproving and placating. “It’s bad for now . Because I’ve decided it’s you I’m going to marry, and until I do, it’s really bad.”
    Shinji had a sort of haphazard respect for moral things. And even more because he had never yet known a woman, he believed he had now penetrated to the moralistic core of woman’s being. He insisted no further.
    The boy’s arms were still embracing the girl. They could hear each other’s naked throbbing. A long kiss tortured the unsatisfied boy, but then at a certain instant this pain was transformed into a strange elation.
    From time to time the dying fire crackled a little. They heard this sound and the whistling of the storm as it swept past the high windows, all mixed with the beating of their hearts. To Shinji it seemed as though this unceasing feeling of intoxication, and the confused booming of the sea outside, and the noise of the storm among the treetops were all beating with nature’s violent rhythm. And as part of his emotion there was the feeling, forever and ever, of pure and holy happiness.
    He moved his body away from hers. Then he spoke in a manly, composed tone of voice:
    “Today on the beach I found a pretty shell and brought it for you.”
    “Oh, thanks—let me see it.”
    Getting up, Shinji went to where his clothes had fallenand began putting them on. At the same time Hatsue softly pulled on her chemise and then put on the rest of her clothes.
    After they were both fully dressed, the boy brought the shell to where the girl was sitting.
    “My, it is pretty.” Delighted, the girl mirrored the flames in the smooth face of the shell. Then she held it up against her hair and said:
    “It looks like coral, doesn’t it? Wonder if it wouldn’t even make a pretty hair ornament?”
    Shinji sat down on the floor close beside the girl.
    Now that they were dressed, they could kiss in comfort.…
    When they started back, the storm still had not abated, so this time Shinji did not part from her above the lighthouse, did not take a different path out of deference to what the people in the lighthouse might think. Instead, together they followed the slightly easier path that led down past the rear of the lighthouse. Then, arm in arm, they descended the stone stairs leading from the lighthouse past the residence.
    Chiyoko had come home, and by the next day was overcome with boredom. Not even Shinji came to see her. Finally a regular meeting of the etiquette class brought the village girls to the house.
    There was an unfamiliar face among them. Chiyoko realized this must be the Hatsue of whom Yasuo had spoken, and she found Hatsue’s rustic features even more beautiful than the islanders said they were. This was an odd virtue of Chiyoko’s: although a woman with the slightest degree of self-confidence will never cease pointingout another woman’s defects, Chiyoko was even more honest than a man in always recognizing anything beautiful about any woman except herself.
    With nothing better to do, Chiyoko had begun studying her history of English literature. Knowing not a single one of their works, she memorized the names of a group of Victorian lady poets—Christina Georgina Rossetti, Adelaide Anne Procter, Jean Ingelow, Augusta Webster—exactly as though she were memorizing Buddhist scriptures. Rote memorization was Chiyoko’s forte; even the professor’s sneezes were recorded in her notes.
    Her mother was constantly at her side, eager to gain new knowledge from her daughter. Going to the university had been Chiyoko’s idea in the first place, but it had been her mother’s enthusiastic support that had overcome her father’s reluctance.
    Her thirst for knowledge whetted by a life