Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima Read Free Book Online Page B

for clothing his wickedness in the fair name of revolt. Through his own experience he had discovered what a weakness boys have for the charms of revolt. In front of the drillmaster—this country bumpkin of a noncommissioned officer was a bosom friend of Omi's or, rather, it seemed, his henchman—he would deliberately take his time in wrapping his muffler about his neck and ostentatiously turning back the lapels of his gold-buttoned overcoat in the Napoleonic manner.
    As is ever the case, however, the revolt of the blind masses did not go beyond a niggardly imitation. Hoping to escape the dangers entailed and taste only the joys of revolt, we pirated nothing from Omi's daring example except his socks. And, in this instance, I too was one of the crowd.
    Arriving at school in the morning, we would chatter boisterously in the classroom before lessons began, not sitting in the seats, but on the tops of the desks. Anyone who came wearing gaudy socks with a novel pattern would make a great show of plucking up the creases of his trousers as he sat down on a desk. At once he would be rewarded with keen-eyed cries of admiration:
    "Oh! flashy socks!"
    Our vocabulary did not contain any tribute of praise surpassing the word flashy. Omi never put in an appearance until the last moment, just before class formation ; but the instant we said flashy, a mental picture of his haughty glance would rise before us all, speaker and hearer alike.
     
    One morning just after a snowfall I went to school very early. The evening before, a friend had telephoned saying there was going to be a snowfight the next morning. Being by nature given to wakefulness the night before any greatly anticipated event, I had no sooner opened my eyes too early the next morning than I set out for school, heedless of the time.
    The snow scarcely reached my shoetops. And later, as I looked down at the city from a window of the elevated train, the snow scene, not yet having caught the rays of the rising sun, looked more gloomy than beautiful. The snow seemed like a dirty bandage hiding the open wounds of the city, hiding those irregular gashes of haphazard streets and tortuous alleys, courtyards and occasional plots of bare ground, that form the only beauty to be found in the panorama of our cities.
    When the train, still almost empty, was nearing the station for my school, I saw the sun rise beyond the factory district. The scene suddenly became one of joy and light. Now the columns of ominously towering smokestacks and the somber rise and fall of the monotonous slate-colored roofs cowered behind the noisy laughter of the brightly shining snow mask. It is just such a snow-covered landscape that often becomes the tragic setting for riot or revolution. And even the faces of the passers-by, suspiciously wan in the reflection of the snow, reminded me somehow of conspirators.
    When I got off at the station in front of the school, the snow was already melting, and I could hear the water running off the roof of the forwarding company next door. I could not shake the illusion that it was the radiance which was splashing down. Bright and shining slivers of it were suicidally hurling themselves at the sham quagmire of the pavement, all smeared with the slush of passing shoes. As I walked under the eaves, one sliver hurled itself by mistake at the nape of my neck. . . .
    Inside the school gates there was not yet a single footprint in the snow. The locker room was still closed fast, but the other rooms were open.
    I opened a window of the second-year classroom, which was on the ground floor, and looked out at the snow in the grove behind the school. There in the path that came from the rear gate, up the slope of the grove, and led to the building I was in, I could see large footprints; they came up along the path and continued to a spot directly below the window from which I was looking. Then the footprints turned back and disappeared behind the science building, which could be seen on