The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

ground. One tree among the others seemed to have
gone mad. The two were like a pair of great birds
against the evening sky.
Momoko jumped from the tree first. But she did not
jump boldly enough, and her hair was entangled in
one of the lower branches. Tōru followed her and
sought to disentangle it.
“They’re in love.” Taeko, in tears, nodded again and
again.
But Tōru was taking too long. Honda knew
immediately that he was deliberately entangling the
hair more tightly. The delicately overdone efforts
brought a twinge of fear. Secure in these
ministrations, Momoko sought to pull away from the
branch. The pain was sharp. Pretending to make
matters unintentionally worse the more he tried, Tōru
mounted the low branch like a jockey. Momoko pulled
at the long rope of hair, her back to him. She was
weeping, and her hands were at her face.
From the third-floor window, across the wide
garden, it was like a scene in wax, a quiet little
pantomime. The grandeur was in the evening light, an
avalanche falling off to the sea, in the high glow of the
light glancing off toward the sea from the clouds,
relics of sun showers through the afternoon. Because
of the light, the trees and the islands in the bay, closer