Free Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima Page A

nobody to teach them.
    Nobody knows anything, which is as it should be.
    But God is appearing now before all eyes,
    And teaching everybody there every single thing.
    “That was banned during the war,” Yakichi commented learnedly. “Those lines ‘I look upon the whole world stretched out in one line/ And not a soul among them there knows what’s going on’ sounded as though they included His Majesty. Logically, anyway. So the Intelligence Office banned it, I understand.”
    Nothing happened on that day—the day of that mountain journey—either.
    A week after that Saburo was given three days off, as he was every year, so that he could go to Tenri to march in the great April Twenty-sixth Festival. He would meet his mother at the National Church, stay over there, and worship at the Mother Temple.
    Etsuko had not yet been in Tenri. There was a magnificent temple there, built by the gifts of the faithful from all over the country and erected with their “ Hinoki faith” contributions, as they referred to their donated labor. In the very center of the temple was a “manna table.” She had heard stories of that table—on which on the last day manna would fall—and how, in the winter, through the roof, open like a skylight, snowflakes would come and dance in the wind.
    “ Hinoki faith”—there was in the term the smell of new wood and the sound of clear devotion and joyful labor. It told of old men who could no longer work and, just to be part of it, would scoop dirt into their handkerchiefs and help in construction.
    Well, enough of that . . . In those three short days of Saburo’s absence, the feeling that developed with his absence—whatever the feeling—was to me entirely new. As a gardener who, after long care and toil, holds in his hand a marvelous peach, hefts the weight of it, and feels the joy of it, so I felt the weight of his absence in my hand and reveled in it. It would not be true to say that those three days were lonely. To me his absence was a plump, fresh weight. That was joy! Everywhere in the house I perceived his absence—in the yard, in the workroom, in the kitchen, in his bedroom.
    Out of the bay window of his room, his quilts were hung to air. They were thin, rough, cotton quilts with dark blue stripes. Etsuko was on her way into the back field to pick some Chinese cabbage for the evening meal. Saburo’s room faced the southwest and received the sun in the afternoon. The sun lit up every corner of it, all the way to the torn partition far from the window.
    Etsuko had not come here to peer into his room. She had been drawn by the delicate fragrance floating in the western sun, the smell released by a young animal sprawled asleep in the sunlight. She stood a moment by the quilts, for just a moment by this frayed fabric with the smell and luster of leather. She pressed her finger against it out of curiosity, as if stroking something alive. A warm elasticity in the cotton, swelled in the sun, answered her touch. Etsuko departed and slowly descended the stone steps that ran under the oaks toward the back fields.
    And so Etsuko finally fell again into the slumber that had long eluded her.

3
    T  HE SWALLOW’S NEST was empty—since yesterday, it seemed.
    The second-floor room of Kensuke and his wife had windows on the south and east. In the summer, they enjoyed watching, out their east window, the swallows that nested under the eaves of the first-floor entranceway.
    Etsuko was returning a book she had borrowed from Kensuke and, as she stood leaning against the rail at the window of his room, said: “The swallows are gone, aren’t they?”
    “Yes, but while you’re there, notice that we can see Osaka Castle today. It’s so smoggy in the summer you can’t see it.”
    Kensuke was sprawled out reading a book, which he laid aside. Then he threw open the southern window and pointed to the horizon in the southwest.
    When one looked at the castle from here one could not see any part of it