The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

moved the unresting bustle of the harbor. Each time a
little tug with old black tires hanging at its side or a
white streamlined pilot boat moved past, it would
leave a smooth track in its wake, and the dark
irritability would for a time be soothed.
Tōru thought of Shimizu as he had studied it alone
on holidays. Something was wrested from his heart
each time, he would feel something like a sigh from
the great lungs of the harbor, and as he covered his
ears against the shouting and roaring and grating, he
would taste simultaneously of oppression and
liberation, and be filled with a sweet emptiness. It was
the same today, though his father had an inhibiting
effect.
“I think it was a good thing,” said Honda, “that we
broke off with the Hamanaka girl early in the spring. I
can talk to you now that you have gotten over it and
seem so lost in your studies.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Annoyed, Tōru put a touch of
boyish melancholy and gallantry into his words. They
were not enough to stop Honda. Honda’s real
purpose lay not in apology but in the question he had
long been wanting to ask.
“But that letter. Doesn’t it strike you as altogether
too stupid? Wasn’t it really too much to have a young
girl speak openly of what we had been perfectly