Thirst for Love by Yukio Mishima Page B

store still hung to them by its staple.
    She stood idly for a moment face-to-face with this perplexing discovery. The socks fell from her fingers and draped themselves over the fishy garbage. After two or three minutes, she looked around her, and then, as a mother might bury a fetus, she quickly buried the two pairs of socks under the yellowed greens and the fishbones. She washed her hands. As she washed them, and as she carefully dried them again on her apron, she went on pondering. It was not easy for her to get her thoughts in order. Before she succeeded in doing so, an unreasoning anger came over her and determined how she would act.
    Saburo was in his three-mat room, changing into his work clothes. When he saw Etsuko appear between himself and the bay window, he dropped to a polite sitting posture and resumed buttoning his shirt. His sleeves were still unbuttoned. He glanced quickly at Etsuko’s face. She still had not said a word. He buttoned his sleeves and sat silent. Saburo was struck by her expression, which had not changed in the slightest degree.
    “What about the socks I gave you the other day? Would you show them to me?”
    Etsuko said this gently, but someone hearing it could catch in the softness an unnecessarily menacing note. She was angry. It was an anger whose reasons were inexplicable, born by chance in some corner of her emotions; Etsuko blew it up, amplified it. If she had not, she couldn’t have asked the questions she had in mind; her anger was born from the demands of the moment, a truly abstract emotion.
    There was a movement in Saburo’s black puppy’s eyes. He unbuttoned his left sleeve and buttoned it again. Now it was his turn to be silent.
    “What’s the matter? Why don’t you answer?”
    She leaned her arm against the railing of the window. Then she looked mockingly at Saburo. Even in her anger, she savored this joy moment after moment. What a thing it was! Until now she had never imagined this. Indulging herself with this proudly victorious feeling. Observing this tanned, downward-inclined neck, this refreshingly shaven beard. Etsuko was not aware that her words were charged with caressing tones.
    “It’s all right. Don’t be so crestfallen. I saw them, that’s all—thrown away in the garbage can. Did you throw them there?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    Saburo answered without hesitation. His answer unsettled Etsuko.
    He’s protecting someone , she thought. If not he would have hesitated just a little .
    Suddenly Etsuko heard the sound of sobbing behind her. It was Miyo, crying into the skirt of an old gray serge apron far too long for her. Out of her sobs haltingly came the words: “I threw them away. I threw them away.”
    “What are you saying? What are you crying about?” As Etsuko pronounced these words, she glanced at Saburo’s face. His eyes were filled with anxiety, with the wish to communicate with Miyo, in reaction to which Etsuko tore the apron from the girl’s face with a brusqueness verging on cruelty.
    Miyo’s frightened, beet-red face was revealed. It was an ordinary country-girl face. There was something ugly about her tear-stained features: her cheeks like ripe persimmons, swollen and red, looking as if they would bruise if pressed; her thin eyebrows; her large, stolid, unexpressive eyes; her impossible nose. Only her lips unsettled Etsuko slightly. Etsuko’s lips were rather thin. Quivering with sobs, wet and shining with tears and saliva, these lips had just the right degree of roundness, like a pretty red pincushion.
    “Well, why? I’m not particularly worried about the socks being thrown away. I just don’t understand—that’s why I’m asking.”
    “Yes, ma’am—”
    Saburo interrupted her. His glib speech made his normal self look like fraud: “Actually, it was I who threw them away, ma’am. They seemed much too fine for me to wear, so I threw them away, ma’am.”
    “Don’t say such silly things; it won’t work,” said Etsuko. Miyo feared