Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima Read Free Book Online Page B

preserve us!” She might even go so far as to cross herself! This foreigner’s concubine! What was she waiting for? Etsuko amiably opened the door. The woman’s startled reaction pleased Etsuko. She moved the chair at her husband’s bedside even closer to him.
    The woman had no choice but to move cautiously into the room. Etsuko took boundless pleasure in having her husband see the woman’s trepidation.
    The woman took off her cape but didn’t know what to do with it. Any place where bacteria might adhere was out of the question. Even Etsuko’s hand was suspect, for she certainly emptied her husband’s bedpans. It seemed wisest to keep it on. She slipped her shoulders into it again. Then she dragged the chair back several feet and sat down.
    Etsuko relayed the name on the calling card to her husband. Ryosuke shot a look at the woman but said nothing. The woman crossed her legs. She sat pale and silent.
    Etsuko stood as if she were a nurse behind the visitor and watched her husband’s expression. A sudden anxious thought took her breath away: What if my husband doesn’t love this woman at all? What then? Then all my suffering has no basis, and my husband and I have been torturing each other in a ridiculous charade; my recent past is nothing more than a meaningless performance of shadow-boxing. Now I must find in my husband’s eyes some infinitesimal sign of love for this woman, or I won’t be able to go on. If he loves neither her nor the three other women whom I did not allow in to see him, how, after all that has happened, can I hear it?
    Ryosuke, still looking toward the ceiling, moved under his quilt, which was already somewhat askew. He raised his knees; the quilt began to slide to the floor. The woman shrank back somewhat. She did not so much as extend her hand. Etsuko ran to set the bed in order.
    In that space of a few seconds, Ryosuke turned his face toward his visitor. Involved as she was with the quilt, Etsuko couldn’t see them. Her intuition told her, however, that in those moments her husband and the woman had exchanged winks, two winks that denigrated her. This man with a fever raging had smiled and winked at this woman.
    It was not really intuition. It was surmise, rather, based on a movement she perceived in her husband’s cheek. She surmised it and thus experienced a sense of relief barred to those who judge by ordinary powers of understanding.
    “You’ll have no trouble recovering from this. It can’t really hurt somebody with your nerve.” The woman’s tone had suddenly lost its reserve.
    A gentle smile played over Ryosuke’s unshaved features—had he ever turned this smile on Etsuko? Then he said, his voice lilting: “It’s too bad I can’t give this illness to you. You’d outlast it.”
    “Why, how dare you?” She laughed, looking at Etsuko for the first time.
    “I can’t outlast it,” Ryosuke persisted. There was an awkward silence. The woman suddenly laughed a chirping laugh.
    A few minutes later she left.
    That night brain fever set in. The typhoid bacillus had attacked Ryosuke’s brain.
    The radio in the downstairs waiting room blared noisy jazz. “I can’t stand it,” Ryosuke moaned as his head throbbed violently. “I’m sick as a dog and that radio goes . . .”
    The lightbulb in the sickroom had been covered with a furoshiki so that the glare did not bother the sick man’s eyes. Etsuko had climbed on a chair and tied it there without even bothering to call a nurse for help. The light coming through the muslin had the unfortunate effect of imparting a greenish cast to Ryosuke’s face. In this strange green umbra his bloodshot eyes seemed overwhelmed by anger and tears.
    Etsuko put down her knitting and stood up. “I’m going downstairs,” she said; “I’ll ask them to turn it down.” As she reached the door she heard behind her a bone-chilling groan.
    It was a cry that might have been emitted by an animal being stepped on. Etsuko turned; Ryosuke was