The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

their liking. There were no tourists, the freezing
gondoliers had no business, bridges would emerge
one after another like ashes of ruined dreams. In
Venice was the end at its most beautiful, beauty being
gnawed to a skeleton by sea and factory. Honda
caught cold and ran a high fever. The swiftness with
which Keiko found a doctor who could speak English,
the thoroughness of her ministrations, made Honda
see that a companion in old age is a necessity.
On the morning his fever abated, his gratitude
found expression in boyish embarrassment. “All this
gentleness and maternal affection. I can see why the
girls love you.”
“The two are not the same at all.” In fine spirits,
Keiko feigned anger. “I am only kind to friends. To be
liked by women I have to be cruel. If the girl I liked best
were running a fever like this, I’d have to throw over all
my worries and run out on her. I’d rather die than have
the sort of arrangement most of them do, living
together as if they were husband and wife and taking
care of each other in old age. There are plenty of
haunted houses where mannish women are living with
shrinking maidens of dreadful fidelity. Mushrooms
grow in the dampness and that is what they feed on,
and they spin soft cobwebs and sleep in them in each
other’s arms. The mannish woman is always a