Death in Midsummer & Other Stories by Yukio Mishima

strange, sweet, melting emotion.
    'And did you enjoy the cherries jubilee?' asked the waiter.
    Kawase had intended to leave a 15-per-cent tip, but he left a 20-per-cent tip instead.
    5. During the twelve-hour jet flight back to Japan, Kawase went time after time to the lounge for a smoke and thought of the bright morning light in his hotel, where Asaka had stayed the night.
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    With a shortage of help to look after the hundreds of rooms, the rule that a guest could not have a woman in his room, current in all good hotels, had become an empty form. Outside the elevator the hotel corridor was empty late at night. There was not even a danger of being overheard, walking along the thick carpeting under rows of old-fashioned brackets. Somewhat befuddled, Asaka and Kawase bet five dollars on whether or not they could get in a dozen kisses between the elevator and the room, a considerable distance away. Kawase won.
    In the morning they awoke from a brief sleep, drew back the curtains, and looked far down at San Francisco Bay, shimmer*
    ing between buildings in the morning sunlight.
    The day before, having breakfast alone, Kawase had scattered crumbs to the pigeons on the ledge. They flew up again this morning when he opened the window. There were no crumbs today, however, for the two of them could scarcely call for room service. Disappointed, the pigeons withdrew to a hollow below the ledge, craned their necks inquiringly for a time, and flew away. Their necks were an intricate combination of blue, brown, and green.
    Below, the cable car was already clanging its way up the street. Asaka was in a black slip, her rich shoulders bare. It was flesh with which he had long been familiar, and yet, here abroad, it seemed to give off a strong, simple scent as of the meadows, quite the opposite of the artificial scent it had in kimono and powder. That the earthiness in her skin, like the effect of the sun sinking into the skins of her ancestors over the ages, should give such pleasure to a person whose skin was the same colour was one of those strange reversals possible only in a foreign country.
    It was a fine, free morning, and all the bonds and restraints that had tied Kawase's heart from the morning before were miraculously swept away.
    Bringing the neck of his pyjamas together against the morning chill, he said brightly: 'And what will you do this time if you have a baby?'
    Asaka was seated like a foreign prostitute at the mirror, dazzling in the sunlight. She was looking at her reflection. The 64

    gentle slope of the shoulders seemed to send out its own radiance.
    'If I have a baby it will be Sonoda's,' she answered, briskly mentioning the name of her patron.
    But as he approached Japan, that memory faded and the image of his wife and child in their loneliness grew stronger.
    Kawase did not himself know why he seemed so intent upon painting them in sad, sentimental colours. Was there some force that drove him to look upon them so? His wife had written faithfully once a week in his absence, and her letters indicated that all was well.
    The jet flew low over the sea. The lights were turned out to show the lights of Tokyo, and soft music played. The plane would apparently go directly into Haneda Airport from the bay off Yokohama. Clusters of lights came slowly up at them. All the strained sadness of the city - the more people crowded into it the more sadness - seemed to be in those clusters of lights.
    In the heady disquiet of returning home from a long trip abroad, Kawase listened to the deep breathing of the engines and gave himself up to the precise and yet somehow frustrating flow of time and space as rows of lights at the runways emerged from the disorder.
    The confusion of customs, the irritation of waiting for his luggage - performing the last duties required of the traveller at the end of the road, he climbed the red-carpeted stairs and immediately saw his wife, child in arms, among the welcomers.
    She had on a lawn-green sweater