Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima Page B

his snow-drenched leather gloves against my cheeks.
    I dodged. A raw carnal feeling blazed up within me, branding my cheeks. I felt myself staring at him with crystal-clear eyes. . . .
    From that time on I was in love with Omi.
    For me this was the first love in my life. And, if such a blunt way of speaking be forgiven, it was clearly a love closely connected with desires of the flesh.
    I began looking forward impatiently to summer, or at least to summer's beginning. Surely, I thought, summer will bring with it an opportunity to see his naked body. Also, I cherished deeply within me a still more shamefaced desire. This was to see that "big thing" of his.
     
    On the switchboard of my memory two pairs of gloves have crossed wires—those leather gloves of Omi's and a pair of white ceremonial gloves. I never seem to be able to decide which memory might be real, which false. Perhaps the leather gloves were more in harmony with his coarse features. And yet again, precisely because of his coarse features, perhaps it was the white pair which became him more.
    Coarse features—even though I use the words, actually such a description is nothing more than that of the impression created by the ordinary face of one lone young man mixed in among boys. Unrivaled though his build was, in height he was by no means the tallest among us. The pretentious uniform our school required, resembling a naval officer's, could scarcely hang well on our still-immature bodies, and Omi alone filled his with a sensation of solid weight and a sort of sexuality. Surely I was not the only one who looked with envious and loving eyes at the muscles of his shoulders and chest, that sort of muscle which can be spied out even beneath a blue-serge uniform.
    Something like a secret feeling of superiority was always hovering about his face. Perhaps it was that sort of feeling which blazes higher and higher the more one's pride is hurt. It seemed that, for Omi, such misfortunes as failures in examinations and expulsions were the symbols of a frustrated will. The will to what? I imagined vaguely that it must be some purpose toward which his "evil genius" was driving him. And I was certain that even he did not yet know the full purport of this vast conspiracy against him.
    Something about his face gave one the sensation of abundant blood coursing richly throughout his body; it was a round face, with haughty cheekbones rising from swarthy cheeks, lips that seemed to have been sewn into a fine line, sturdy jaws, and a broad but well-shaped and not too prominent nose. These features were the clothing for an untamed soul. How could anyone have expected such a person to have a secret, inner life? All one could hope to find in him was the pattern of that forgotten perfection which the rest of us have lost in some far distant past.
    There were times when a whim would bring him peering into the books, erudite and far beyond my years, that I was reading. I would almost always give him a noncommittal smile and close whatever book I was holding, to keep him from seeing it. It was not out of shame : rather, I was pained by any indication that he might have an interest in such things as books, might reveal an awkwardness about them, might seem to weary of his own unconscious perfection. I found it bitter to think that this fisherman might forget, desert, deny the Ionia of his birth.
    I watched Omi incessantly, both in the classroom and on the playgrounds. While doing so, I fashioned a perfect, flawless illusion of him. Hence it is that I cannot discover a single flaw in the image that remains imprinted on my memory. In a piece of writing such as this, a character should be brought to life by describing some essential idiosyncrasy, some lovable fault, but from my memory of Omi I can extract not a single such imperfection. There were, however, numberless other impressions that I got from Omi, of infinite variety, all filled with delicate nuances. In a phrase, what I did derive from