The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

Sometimes he almost thought, after having been
away from her for so long, that she was beautiful. And
immediately he would laugh. Yet he was coming to
see what the mad girl had meant to him.
He needed lunacy to dim his own clarity. He had to
have someone beside him who would see as
something quite different all the things he saw with
such clarity, clouds or ships or the gloomy old hallway
of the Honda house, or the schedule of all his lessons
until examination day posted on the wall of his room.
Tōru sometimes longed for liberation. The direction
was clear. It must be the direction of uncertainty, the
realm behind this clearly defined world, a realm
whose phenomena were flowing over a waterfall.
Kinué unconsciously played the role of the gentle
guest who brought freedom into the cage.
Nor was that all.
She brought balm for certain itches within him. He
itched to do injury. His heart was a sharp drill
protruding from a sack, itching to cut someone.
Having cut down Furusawa, it was looking for
someone else. Its cleanness, free of the least speck
of rust, must sooner or later turn savage. Tōru saw
that he could do something other than observe. The
awareness brought tension, and Kinué’s letters
brought rest from it. Because of her madness she