The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

awareness, filled the black lenses in intricate detail. It
seemed strange to Honda that all he saw was himself
and the little garden behind him. If the sea and the
ships Tōru had seen all through the day and their
strong funnel marks were an intimate part of his
awareness, then behind the glasses and the eyes
moving whitely from time to time, the images must be
locked in forever. If for Honda and for everyone Tōru’s
inner workings had become forever a mystery, then it
need not surprise them that sea and ships and funnel
marks too were shut up within.
But if they belonged to a world outside of and
irrelevant to Tōru, they should be sketched in detail on
the lenses. Had Tōru perhaps completely merged the
outer world and the inner? A white butterfly flew
across the dark glass picture.
Tōru’s heels looked up from the skirt of his kimono.
They were white and wrinkled as those of a drowned
corpse, and patches of dirt were scattered like bits of
foil over them. The kimono had gone quite limp.
Sweat drew clusters of yellow clouds at the neckline.
Honda had for some time been aware of a strange
odor. He saw that the dirt and oil on the kimono had
mixed with the sweat into the smell as of a dank canal
that young men put out in the summer. Tōru had lost
his fastidiousness.