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208 pages, Hardcover
First published November 30, 1961
A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned'. It was a line that Eguchi could not forget. Remembering it now, he wondered whether the girl asleep.... no, put to sleep.... in the next room might be like a corpse from a drowning.
The first woman in his life had been his mother. "Of course. Could it be anyone except Mother?" came the unexpected affirmation. "But can I say that Mother was my woman?"
Now at sixty seven, as he lay between two naked girls, a new truth came from inside him. Was it a blasphemy, was it yearning?
The roar of the waves against the cliff softened while rising. Its echo seemed to come up from the ocean as music sounding in the girl's body, the beating in her breasts, and the pulse at her wrist added to it. In time with the music, a pure white butterfly danced past his closed eyelids.
Standing in his night kimono, he for the first time felt the cold press upon him. The woman came back with two white tablets.
"Here you are. Sleep late tomorrow."
"Oh!" He opened the door to the next room. The covers ere as they had been, thrown back in confusion, and the naked form of the fair girl in shining beauty.
They had been born asleep
(¡)
They grew up asleep, fell in love
asleep and wed
in their sleep.
(¡)
They hated the awake.
They said the awake
would not live inside themselves.
They said the awake
would be only
sight when they see
hearing when they hear
grief when they grieve.