The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

walk on Komagoé Beach this morning. I picked some
beach lilies and then I went down to the water, and
was looking out to sea with nothing very much on my
mind.
“There aren’t many people on Hamagoé Beach,
and I do get tired of having people stare at me. I love
looking out to sea. I feel so relaxed. I sometimes think
that if I put my own beauty on one side of the scales
and the sea on the other they’d balance perfectly. So
it’s as if I’d turned my beauty over to the sea, and had
no worries left.
“There was no one there. Just two or three people
fishing. Maybe because he wasn’t catching anything,
one of them kept staring at me. I pretended not to
notice, but that stare was on my cheek like a fly.
“I doubt if you can understand how awful it makes
me feel. Here it is happening again, I say to myself.
My beauty taking off on its own, robbing me of my
freedom. It seems like something apart from me,
beyond my control. Here I am, bothering no one, just
wanting to be left alone, and it’s off making trouble. It’s
a sign of true beauty, I know. But beauty’s the worst
sort of nuisance when it’s off on its own.
“It’s excited a man again, I say to myself. I barely
have time to think how I hate it, and there it is, all busy
tying a man up again. He’s been an innocent