The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Read Online Free PDF

stones did not make me lose my footing and the darkness freely opened up the road ahead of me.
    I came to a place where the road widened and led into the little hamlet of Yasuoka. Here grew a great keyaki tree. The trunk of the keyaki tree was moist with dew. I hid at the foot of the tree and waited for Uiko's bicyele to come from the direction of the village.
    I had no idea of what I meant to do after I had waited. I had come running along here out of breath, but now that I had rested in the shade of the keyaki tree, I did not know myself what I was intending to do. I had, however, been living too much out of touch with the external world, and had as a result conceived the fancy that, once I leaped into the outer world, everything became easy, everything became possible.
    The mosquitoes stung my legs. I heard cocks crowing here and there. I peered up the road. In the distances I saw something white and indistinct. I thought that it was the color of the dawn, but it was Uiko.
    She was riding her bicyele. The headlight was turned on. The bicyele glided along silently. I ran out from the keyaki tree and stood in front of the bicycle. The bicycle just managed to come to a sudden halt.
    Then I felt that I had been turned into stone. My will, my desire—everything had become stone. The outer world had lost contact with my inner world, and had once again come to surround me and to assume a positive existence. The “I” who had slipped out of his uncle's house, put on white gym shoes and run along this path through the darkness of the dawn until reaching the keyaki tree—that “I” had made merely its inner self run hither at full speed. In the village roofs whose dim outlines emerged in the darkness of the dawn, in the black trees, in the black summits of the Aoba-yama, yes, even in Uiko who now stood before me, there was a complete and terrible meaninglessness. Something had bestowed reality on all this without waiting for my participation; and this great, meaningless, utterly dark reality was given to me, was pressed on me, with a weight that I had until then never witnessed.
    As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only things that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was always absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.
    I was not looking at anything. Uiko, as I recall, was frightened at first, but, when she realized that it was I, she only looked at my mouth. She was, I suppose, looking at that silly little dark hole, that ill-formed little hole which was soiled like the nest of a small animal of the fields, and which now wriggled meaninglessly in the early dawn light-she was only looking at my mouth. And, having satisfied herself that not the slightest power was going to emanate from that mouth to connect me with the outside world, she felt relieved.
    "Good heavens!" she said. “What an extraordinary thing to do. And you only a stutterer!"
    Uiko's voice carried the freshness and propriety of a morning breeze. She rang the bell of her bicycle and once more put her feet to the pedals. She bicycled round me, as though she were avoiding a stone on the road. Though there was not another soul about, Uiko scornfully rang the bell of her bicycle again and again, and as she pedaled away, I could hear it echoing across the distant fields.
    l hat evening, as a result of Uiko's having told on me, her mother called at my uncle's house. My uncle, who was usually so gentle, scolded me harshly. I cursed Uiko then and came to wish for her death; and a few months later my curse was realized. Ever since then I have firmly believed in the power of curses.
    Day and night I wished for Uiko's death. I wished