The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima Read Free Book Online Page A

back from visiting petty officers, sailors, marines, and arsenal workers stationed in Maizuru.
    I looked out of the window at the cloudy, leaden spring sky. I looked at the robe that Father wore over his civilian uniform, and at the breast of a ruddy young petty officer, which seemed to leap up along his row of gilt buttons. I felt as if I were situated between the two men. Soon, when I reached the proper age, I would be called into the forces. Yet I was not sure that even when I was called up, I would be able to live faithfully by my duty, like that petty officer in front of me. In any case, for the present I was situated squarely between two worlds. Although I was still so young, I was conscious, under my ugly, stubborn forehead, that the world of death which my father ruled and the world of life occupied by young people were being brought together by the mediation of war. I myself would probably become an intermediary. When I was killed in the war, it would be clear that it had not made the slightest difference which path I had chosen of the two that now lay before my eyes.
    I tried to look after my father when he coughed. Now and then I caught sight of the Hozu River outside the window. It was a dark-blue, almost heavy color, like the copper sulfate used in chemistry experiments. Each time that the train emerged from a tunnel, the Hozu Ravine would appear either some considerable distance from the tracks or unexpectedly close at hand. Surrounded by the smooth rocks, it turned its dark-blue lathe round and round.
    Father had some pure white rice balls in his lunch box and he felt ashamed of opening it in front of the other people in the carriage.
    "It's not black-market rice," he announced. "It comes from the good hearts of my parishioners. I can eat it with joy and gratitude."
    He spoke so that everyone in the carriage could hear him, but when he actually began eating, he was barely able to fihish one rather small rice ball.
    I did not feel that this ancient sooty train was really bound for the city. I felt that it was headed for the station of death. Once this thought had come into my mind, the smoke that filled our carriage each time that we passed through a tunnel had the smell of the crematorium.
    Despite it all, when finally I stood before the Somon Gate of the Rokuonji, my heart was throbbing. Now I was to see one of the most beautiful things in the world.
    The sun was beginning to go down and the hills were veiled in mist. Several other visitors were passing through the gate at about the same time as Father and I. On the left of the gate stood the belfry, surrounded by a cluster of plum trees, which were still in bloom.
    A great oak tree grew in front of the Main Hall. Father stood in the entrance and asked for admission. The Superior sent a message that he was busy with a visitor and asked us if we would wait for a while.
    "Let's use this time to go round and look at the Golden Temple,” said Father.
    Father evidently wanted to show me that he exerted some influence in this place and he tried to go through the visitors' entrance without paying the admission fee. But both the man who sold tickets and religious charms and the ticket collector at the gate had changed since the time, some ten years earlier, when Father used to come often to the temple.
    "Next time I come,” said Father with a chilly expression, “I suppose they'll have changed again."
    But I felt that Father no longer really believed in this "next time"
    I hurried ahead of Father, almost running. I was deliberately acting like a cheerful young boy. (It was only at such times-only when I put on a deliberate performance-that there was anything boyish about me.) Then the Golden Temple, about which I had dreamed so much, displayed its entire form to me most disappointingly.
    I stood by the edge of the Kyoko Pond, and on the other side of the water the Golden Temple revealed its fagade in the declining sun. The Sosei was half hidden farther to