The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Read Online Free PDF Page B

that the witness of my disgrace would disappear. If only no witnesses remained, my disgrace would be eradicated from the face of the earth. Other people are all witnesses. If no other people exists, shame could never be born in the world. What I had seen in Uiko's visage, behind those eyes of hers which shone like water in the dark, dawn light, was the world of other people-the world, that is, of other people who will never leave us alone, who will stand ready as the partners and witnesses of our crime. Other people must all be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed....
    Two months after she had told on me, Uiko gave up her job at the Naval Hospital and stayed at home. There was all sorts of gossip in the village. Then, at the end of autumn, the incident occurred.
    We never so much as dreamed that a deserter from the Navy had taken refuge in our village. At about noon one day a member of the kempei-tai military police came to our village office. But it was no such rare thing for the kempei to come and we did not attach any particular importance to the visit.
    It was a bright day towards the end of October. I had attended my classes as usual, finished my evening homework and was ready for bed. As I was about to turn out the light, I glanced out of the window and heard people running along the village street; they sounded out of breath like a pack of dogs. I went downstairs. My aunt and uncle had woken up, and we all went out together. One of my schoolmates was standing at the entrance of the house. His eyes were wide open with surprise.
    "The kempei have just caught Uiko," he shouted to us. "They've got her over there. Let's go and look!"
    I slipped on my sandals and started running. It was a lovely moonlit night and here and there in the harvested fields the rice racks threw clear shadows on the ground.
    Behind a cluster of trees I could see the movement of a group of dark silhouettes. Uiko was sitting on the ground in a black dress. Her face was extremely white. Round about her stood some kempei and her parents. One of the kftnpei was holding out something that looked like a lunch box and he was shouting. Her father was turning his head from one side to the other, now apologizing to the kempei, now reproaching his daughter. Her mother was crouched on the ground and was crying.
    We were observing the scene from the far end of a rice field. The number of spectators gradually increased and their shoulders touched each other silently in the night. Above our heads hung the moon as small as if it had been squeezed.
    My schoolmate whispered an explanation into my ear. It appeared that Uiko had stolen out of her house with the lunch box and was setting off for the next village when she was caught by the kempei, who had been lying in ambush for her. She had clearly intended to deliver the lunch box to the deserter. Uiko had grown intimate with this deserter while she was working at the Naval Hospital; as a result she had become pregnant and had been dismissed. The kempei was now cross-examining her about the deserter's hiding-place, but Uiko just sat there without moving an inch and remained obdurately silent.
    For my part, I could only gaze unblinkingly at Uiko's face. She looked like a madwoman who has been caught. Her face was motionless under the moon.
    Until then I had never seen a face so full of rejection. My face, I thought, was one that had been rejected by the world, but Uiko's face was rejecting the world. The moonlight was mercilessly pouring over her forehead, her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her cheeks; but her motionless face was merely washed by the light. If she had moved her eyes or her mouth even a little, the world, which she was striving to reject, would have taken this as a signal to come surging into her.
    I gazed at it and held my breath. At the face whose history had been interrupted at just this point, and which would not tell a single thing regarding either