The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

30
THEY COULD perfectly well drive to the
mountain gate, a considerable distance up the hill,
altogether too far for an old man to walk, said the
driver, looking up at the yet fiercer sun in the cloudless
sky; but Honda refused, and told him to wait at the
lower gate. He had to know for himself Kiyoaki’s
sufferings of sixty years before.
Leaning on his stick, he looked down from the gate,
his back to the shade that invited from within.
Songs of cicadas and crickets filled the air. Into
such quietness was woven the roar of automobiles on
the Tenri Highway, beyond the fields. There were no
automobiles on the road before him. White gravel
delicately lined the shoulders of the road.
The serenity of the Yamato Plain was as it had
always been. It lay flat as the world of man. Obitoké
shone in the distance, its roofs like little shellfish. A
trace of smoke hung over it. Perhaps it now had small
factories. The inn where Kiyoaki had lain ill was at the
foot of a flagstone slope such as was probably to be
found in the village even now; but he thought it would
be useless to look for the inn itself.