The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

worker, and so there they are cheek to cheek, figuring
out their taxes. No, it’s not the sort of romance I want
to be part of.”
Thanks to the ugliness of masculine old age, Honda
was an amply qualified sacrifice to this dauntless
resolution. Such are the unexpected blessings of old
age.
By way of recompense, perhaps, Keiko poked fun
at Honda because he carried with him a small
wooden cenotaph in Rié’s memory. He had kept it
secret; but when his fever went over a hundred he
began leaving final instructions, sure that he was in
the last throes of pneumonia. One was that she take
the cenotaph back to Japan.
“That sort of love makes a person’s flesh crawl,”
said Keiko, not at all gently. “She didn’t want to come,
and so you dragged her along against her will.”
On the morning of his recovery Honda found the
clear sky pleasant, and the tongue-lashing an added
pleasure.
It was not clear to him, even after Keiko’s ungentle
remarks, what he was asking of Rié. She had been a
chaste wife to the end, of that he had no doubt; but
there were thorns in all the hollows and on all the
corners of the chastity. The sterile Rié made always
manifest the reservations Honda himself had about