The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

10
WAS THERE nothing more to see, was there
nothing more to see, asked Keiko. Though
exhausted, Honda ordered the driver to go back to
Shizuoka by way of Mount Kuno. They stopped before
the signal station Honda had seen some days earlier.
“Doesn’t it strike you as a rather interesting
building?” Honda looked up from the profusion of
portulaca at the stone base.
“I think I see a pair of binoculars. What’s it for?”
“It keeps watch on ship movements. Shall we look
inside?”
Though curious, neither had quite the courage to
knock.
They had climbed the stone steps that encircled the
base and were at the foot of the iron stairway when a
girl brushed past them with a clanging of iron, so near
a miss that one of them called out a warning. Kicking
up her skirts like a yellow tornado, she passed so
quickly that they did not see her face; but she left all
the same an impression as of a fleeting distillation of
ugliness.
It was not that she had a bad eye or an