The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

the body floating there. We all know why the cat goes
off without eating the mouse. Because it’s not
something for a cat to eat.
“That’s what I’m talking about. The mouse commits
suicide to establish itself. It doesn’t of course make
the cat recognize it as a cat, and it didn’t think when it
killed itself that it would. But it was brave and
perceptive and filled with self-respect. It saw that there
are two parts to mouseness. First is that it is a mouse
in every physical detail. Second is that it is, for a cat,
worth eating. Those two. It has long ago given up in
the first matter, but in the second there is still hope. It
dies in front of the cat without being eaten, and it
establishes itself as something that cats don’t eat. In
those two respects it has proved it wasn’t a mouse.
That much. To prove besides that it was a cat is
simple. If something that had the form of a mouse
wasn’t a mouse, then it can be anything else. And so
the suicide is a success. The mouse has established
itself. What do you think?”
Tōru was weighing the parable. He had no doubt
that Furusawa had polished it by telling and retelling it
to himself. He had long been aware of the disjuncture
between Furusawa’s genial appearance and his inner
workings.
If only Furusawa himself was concerned, there was