Death in Midsummer & Other Stories by Yukio Mishima Read Free Book Online

suddenly flashed on again, so soon that the after-image had scarcely disappeared. To be seen from all over Asakusa, the pagoda had replaced Gourd Pond, now filled in, as the main landmark of the Asakusa night.
    To Kenzo and Kiyoko the pagoda seemed to encompass in all its purity some grand, inaccessible dream of life. Leaning against the rail of the parking lot, they looked absently up at it for a time.
    Kenzo was in an undershirt, cheap trousers, and wooden clogs. His skin was fair but the lines of the shoulders and chest were powerful, and bushes of black hair showed between the mounds of muscle at the armpits. Kiyoko, in a sleeveless dress, always had her own armpits carefully shaved. Kenzo was very fussy. Because they hurt when the hair began to grow again, she had become almost obsessive about keeping them shaved, and there was a faint flush on the white skin.
    She had a round little face, the pretty features as though 39

    woven of cloth. It reminded one of some earnest, unsmiling little animal. It was a face which a person trusted immediately, but not one on which to read thoughts. On her arm she had a large pink plastic handbag and Kenzo's pale blue sports shirt.
    Kenzo liked to be empty-handed.
    From her modest coiffure and make-up one sensed the fru-gality of their life. Her eyes were clear and had no time for other men.
    They crossed the dark road in front of the parking lot and went into the New World. The big market on the ground floor was filled with myriad-coloured mountains of splendid, gleaming, cheap wares, and salesgirls peeped from crevices in the mountains. Cool fluorescent lighting poured over the scene.
    Behind a grove of antimony models of the Tokyo Tower was a row of mirrors painted with Tokyo scenes, and in them, as the two passed, were rippling, waving images of the mountain of ties and summer shirts opposite.
    'I couldn't stand living in a place with so many mirrors,' said Kiyoko. 'I'd be embarrassed.'
    'Nothing to be embarrassed about.' Though his manner was gruff, Kenzo was not one to ignore what his wife said, and his answers were generally perceptive. The two had come to the toy department.
    'She knows how you love the toy department. That's why she said to meet her here.'
    Kenzo laughed. He was fond of the trains and automobiles and space missiles, and he always embarrassed Kiyoko, getting an explanation for each one and trying each one out, but never buying. She took his arm and steered him some distance from the counter.
    'It's easy to see that you want a boy. Look at the toys you pick.'
    'I don't care whether it's a boy or a girl. I just wish it would come soon.'
    'Another two years, that's all.'
    'Everything according to plan.'
    They had divided the savings account they were so assiduously building up into several parts, labelled Plan X and Plan Y
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    and Plan Z and the like. Children must come strictly according to plan. However much they might want a child now, it would have to wait until sufficient money for Plan X had accumulated.
    Seeing the inadvisability, for numerous reasons, of hire-purchase, they waited until the money for Plan A or Plan B or Plan C had accumulated, and then paid cash for an electric washing machine or refrigerator or a television set. Plan A and Han B had already been carried out. Plan D required little money, but since it had as its object a low-priority wardrobe, it was always being pushed back. Neither of them was much interested in clothes. What they had they could hang in the cloak-room, and all they really needed was enough to keep them warm in the winter.
    They were very cautious when making a large purchase.
    They collected catalogues and looked at various possibilities and asked the advice of people who had already made the purchase, and, when the time for buying finally came, went off to a wholesaler in Okachimachi.
    A child was still more serious. First there had to be a secure livelihood and enough money, more than enough money, to see that the