Free Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima

for any proper blossom viewing. Already farm families had taken up the area under each of the trees. They bowed cordially as the line of the Sugimoto family arrived. They did not, however, offer their places, as they were once wont to do.
    Kensuke and Chieko began whispering to each other about the other families. In accordance with Yakichi’s instructions, everyone spread their mats on a portion of the slope from which they could see the blossoms in something like a panorama. A farmer of their acquaintance—a man in his fifties wearing a pink necktie under a government-issue, checkered jacket—came over carrying a bottle and saké cup and offered them some holiday raw saké . Kensuke accepted a cup and blithely drained it.
    Now, why? thought Etsuko, rather disconnectedly, as she watched Kensuke. I wouldn’t have any . . . . Her thoughts were worth little: Now, there’s Kensuke accepting the saké cup—he with the cutting remarks still in his mouth. It would be all right if he really liked raw saké. But anyone can tell he has never cared for it. He’s doing it simply because he enjoys drinking saké given him by this man who is unaware that he has been ripped up the back. That small joy in rottenness. Joy in spite. Joy in the little laugh up one’s sleeve. . . . There are some people who are born for no other purpose. God seems to enjoy doing silly things like that .
    Then Chieko took the cup—only because her husband had.
    Etsuko refused. This gave all of them another reason to talk about her as a woman who did not conform.
    A certain order seemed to be forming within the family circle on this day, an occurrence Etsuko found no reason to resent. She was satisfied in the relationship between the two expressionless solidities made up of Yakichi’s expressionless good humor and, at his side, her own expressionless self. Next she was satisfied with Saburo—bored, with no one to talk to, not even a boy as silent as himself. She was satisfied with the dull motherliness of Asako, and even the hostility of Kensuke and his wife, hidden under the mantle of tolerance. It was an order created by Etsuko and no one else.
    Nobuko bent over Etsuko, holding a small wildflower. “What is it, Aunt Etsuko?” she asked. Etsuko didn’t know and asked Saburo.
    Saburo glanced at the flower and returned it to Etsuko. “It’s a murasuzume ,” he said.
    What surprised Etsuko was not the strange name of the flower, but the blinding speed of his hand as he returned it.
    Chieko, quick of hearing, caught the exchange and said: “This fellow acts as though he knows nothing, and he knows everything. Sing us a Tenri song. You’ll be amazed how much he knows.”
    Saburo looked down, his face red.
    “Please, sing. Don’t be embarrassed. Sing,” said Chieko, handing him a hardboiled egg. “See, I’ll give you this. Sing for us.”
    Saburo glanced at the egg between Chieko’s fingers, on one of which a ring with a cheap stone glittered. In his black puppy’s eye a tiny sharp gleam moved. He said: “Forget the egg. I’ll sing.” Then he smiled a little smile, seemingly of apology.
    Chieko said: “‘If the whole world in one line’—and something else.”
    “‘Lay before your eyes,’ it goes,” he said, his face serious. Then he turned his eyes toward the nearby village spread out before them and recited, as if repeating an imperial mandate. The village was in a small valley. In the war an army air force unit was billeted there. From its secluded recess officers commuted to Hotarugaike Air Base. Cherries grew along the creek over there. And an elementary school had a tiny yard with cherry trees in it, too. Two or three children were visible there, playing on an exercise bar built over sand. They looked like balls of lint blown in the wind.
    Saburo recited this text from Tenri litany:
    I look upon the whole world stretched out in one line,
    And not a soul among them there knows what’s going on.
    Of course, there is