No Longer Human - By Dazia Osuma

The Third Notebook: Part Two

Horiki and myself. Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, thereby degrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relations between lloriki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship. I threw myself on the chivalry of the madam of the bar in Kyobashi. (It is a strange UBC of the word to speak, of a woman's chivalry, but in my experience, at least in the cities, the women possessed a greater abundance of what might be termed chivalry than the men. Most men concerned themselves, all fear and trembling, only with appearances, and were stingy to boot.) She enabled me to marry Yoshiko and to rent a room on the ground floor of an apartment building near the Sumida River which we made our home. I gave up drink and devoted my energies to drawing cartoons. After dinner we would go out together to see a movie, and on the way back we would stop at a milk bar or buy pots of flowers. But more than any of these things it gave me pleasure just to listen to the words or watch the movements of my little bride, who trusted in me with all her heart. Then, just when I had begun to entertain faintly in my breast the sweet notion that perhaps there was a chance I might turn one of these days into a human being and be spared the necessity of a horrible death, Horiki showed up again. He hailed me, "How's the great lover? Why, what's this? Do I detect a note of caution in your face—you, of all people? I've come today as a messenger from the Lady of Koenji." He lowered his voice and thrust his jaw in the direction of Yoshiko, who was preparing tea in the kitchen, as much as to ask whether it was all right to continue. I answered nonchalantly, "It doesn't matter. You can say anything before her." As a matter of fact, Yoshiko was what I should like to call a genius at trusting people. She suspected nothing of my relations with the madam of the bar in Kyobashi, and even after I told her all about the incident which occurred at Kamakura, she was equally unsuspicious of my relations with Tsuneko. It was not because I was an accomplished liar—at times I spoke quite bluntly, but Yoshiko seemed to take everything I said as a joke. "You seem to be just as cocksure of yourself as ever. Anyway, it's nothing important. She asked me to tell you to visit her once in a while." Just when I was beginning to forget, that bird of ill-omen came flapping my way, to rip open with its beak the wounds of memory. All at once shame over the past and the recollection of Bin unfolded themselves before my eyes and, seized by a terror so great it made me want to shriek, I could not sit still a moment longer. "How about a drink?" I asked. "Suits me," said Horiki. Horiki and myself. Though outwardly he appeared to be a human being like the rest, I sometimes felt he was exactly like myself. Of course that was only after we had been making the round of the bars, drinking cheap liquor here and there. When the two of us met face to face it was as if we immediately metamorphosed into dogs of the same shape and pelt, and we bounded out through the streets covered with fallen snow. That was how we happened to warm over, as it were, the embers of our old friendship. We went together to the bar in Kyobasbi and, eventually, we two soused dogs visited Sbizuko's apartment in Koenji, where I sometimes spent the night. I shall never forget. It was a sticky hot summer's night. Horiki had come to my apartment about dusk wearing a tattered summer kimono. He told me that an emergency had come up and he had been obliged to pawn his summer suit. He asked me to lend him some money because he was anxious to redeem the suit before his aged mother found out. The matter apparently concerned him genuinely. As ill luck would have it, I hadn't any money at my place. As usual I sent Yoshiko oat to the pawnshop with some of her clothes. I lent Horiki what he needed from the money she received, but there was still a little left over, and I asked Yoshiko to buy some gin with it. We went up on the roof of the apartment house, where we celebrated the evening cool with a dismal little party. Faint miasmic gusts of wind blew in from the river every now and then. We began a guessing game of tragic and comic nouns. This game, which I myself had invented, was based on the proposition that just as nouns could be divided into masculine, feminine and neuter, so there was a distinction between tragic and comic nouns. For example, this system decreed that steamship and steam engine were both tragic nouns, while streetcar and bus were comic. Persons who failed to see why this was true were obviously unqualified to discuss art, and a playwright who included even a single tragic noun in a comedy showed himself a failure if for no other reason. The same held equally true of comic nouns in tragedies. I began the questioning. "Are you ready? What is tobacco?" "Tragic," Horiki answered promptly. "What about medicine?" "Powder or pills?" "Injection." "Tragic." "I wonder. Don't forget, there are hormone injections too." "No, there's no question but it's tragic. First of all, there's a needle—what could be more tragic than a needle?" "You win. But, you know, medicines and doctors are, surprisingly enough, comic. What about death?"  "Comic. And that goes for Christian ministers and Buddhist priests, too." "Bravo! Then life must be tragic?" "Wrong. It's comic, too." "In that case everything becomes comic. Here's one more for you. What about cartoonist? You couldn't possibly call it a comic noun, could you?" "Tragic. An extremely tragic noun." "What do you mean? Extremely tragic is a good description of you." Any game which can drop to the level of such abysmal jokes is despicable, but we were very proud of what we considered to be an extremely witty diversion, never before known in the salons of the world. I had invented one other game of a rather similar character, a guessing game of antonyms. The antonym of black is white. But the antonym of white is red. The antonym of red is black. I asked now, "What's the antonym of flower?" Horiki frowned in thought. "Let me sec. There used to be a restaurant called the 'Flower Moon'. It must be moon." "That's not an antonym. It's more of a synonym. Aren't star and garter synonymous? It's not an antonym." "I've got it. It's bee." "Bee?"  "Aren't there bees—or is it ants—in peonies?" "What are you trying to do? No bluffing now." "I know! Clustering clouds that cover the flowers . . ." "You must be thinking of clouds that cover the moon." "That's right. Wind that destroys the blossoms. It's the wind. The antonym of flower is wind." "Pretty poor. Sounds like a line out of a popular song. You betray your origins." "Well, then, how about something more recondite, say a mandolin?" "Still no good. The antonym of flower . . . you're supposed to name the thing in the world which is least like a flower." "That's what I'm trying to do. Wait! How about this—a woman?" "Then what's a synonym for woman?" "Entrails." "You're not very poetic, are you? Well, then, what's the antonym for entrails?" "Milk." "That's pretty good. One more in that vein. Shame. What's the antonym of shame?" "Shameless—a popular cartoonist I could name." "What about Masao Horiki?" By the time we reached this point we had gradually become incapable of laughter, and were beginning to experience the particular oppressiveness, as if one's head were stuffed with broken glass, that comes from getting drunk on gin. "Don't be cheeky now. I for one have never been tied up like a common criminal the way you have." I was taken aback. Horiki at heart did not treat me like a full human being. He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost. His friendship had no other purpose but to utilize me in whichever way would most further his own pleasures. This thought naturally did not make me very happy, but I realized after a moment that it was entirely to be expected that Horiki should take this view of me; that from long ago, even as a child, I seemed to lack the qualifications of a human being; and that, for all I know, contempt, even from Horiki, might be entirely merited. I said, feigning tranquillity, "Crime. What's the antonym of crime? This is a hard one." "The law, of course," Horiki answered flatly. I looked at his face again. Caught in the flashing red light of a neon sign on a nearby building, Horiki's face had the somber dignity of the relentless prosecutor. I felt shaken to the core. "Crime belongs in a different category." Imagine saying that the law was the antonym of crime! But perhaps everybody in "society" can go on living in self-satisfaction, thanks to just such simple concepts. They think that crime hatches where there arc no policemen. "Well, in that case what would it be? God? That would suit you—there's something about you that smells a little of a Christian priest. I find it offensive." "Let's not dispose of the problem so lightly. Let's think about it a bit more together. Isn't it an interesting theme? I feel you can tell everything about a man just from his answer to this one question." "You can't be serious. The antonym of crime is virtue. A virtuous citizen. In short, someone like myself." "Let's not joke. Virtue is the antonym of vice, not of crime." "Are vice and crime different?" "They are, I think. Virtue and vice are concepts invented by human beings, words for a morality which human beings arbitrarily devised." "What a nuisance. Well, I suppose it is God in that case. God. God. You can't go wrong if you leave everything at God .. . I'm hungry." "Yoshiko is cooking some beans downstairs now." "Thanks. I like beans." He lay down on the floor, his hands tucked under his head. I said, "You don't seem to be very interested in crime." "That's right. I'm not a criminal like you. I may indulge myself with a little dissipation, but I don't cause women to die, and I don't lift money from them either." The voice of a resistance weak but desperate spoke from somewhere in my heart. It said that I had not caused anyone to die, that I had not lifted money from anyone—but once again the ingrained habit of considering myself evil took command. It is quite impossible for me to contradict anyone to his face. I struggled with all my might to control the feelings which mounted more dangerously in me with each instant, the result of the depressing effects of the gin. Finally I muttered almost to myself, "Actions punishable by jail sentences are not the only crimes. If we knew the antonym of crime, I think we would know its true nature. Cod . . . salvation . . . love . . . light. But for Cod there is the antonym Satan, for salvation there is perdition, for love there is hate, for light there is darkness, for good, evil. Crime and prayer? Crime and repentance? Crime and confession? Crime and .. . no, they're all synonymous. What is the opposite of crime?" "Well if you spell 'crime' backwards—no, that doesn't make sense. But the word does contain the letters r-i-c-e. Rice. I'm hungry. Bring me something to eat." "Why don't you go get it yourself?" My voice shook with a rage I had almost never before betrayed. "All right. I'll go downstairs, then Yoshiko and I will commit a crime together. Personal demonstration is better than empty debates. The antonym of crime ie rice. No—it's beans!" He was so drunk he could barely articulate the words. "Do as you please. Only get the hell out of here." He got up mumbling incoherently. "Crime and an empty stomach. Empty stomach and beans. No. Those are synonyms." Crime and punishment. Dostoievski. These words grazed over a corner of my mind, startling me. Just supposing Dostoievski ranged 'crime' and 'punishment' side by side not as synonyms but as antonyms. Crime and punishment—absolutely incompatible ideas, irreconcilable as oil and water. I felt I was beginning to understand what lay at the bottom of the scum-covered, turbid pond, that chaos of Dostoievski's mind—no, I still didn't quite see . . . Such thoughts were flashing through my head like a revolving lantern when I heard a voice. "Extraordinary beans you've got here. Come have a look." Horiki's voice and color had changed. Just a minute before he had staggered off downstairs, and here he was back again, before I knew it. "What is it?" A strange excitement ran through me. The two of us went down from the roof to the second floor and were half-way down the stairs to my room on the ground floor when Horiki stopped me and whispered, "Look!" He pointed. A small window opened over my room, through which I could see the interior. The light was lit and two animals were visible. My eyes swam, but I murmured to myself through my violent breathing, "This is just another aspect of the behavior of human beings. There's nothing to be surprised at." I stood petrified on the staircase, not even thinking to help Yoshiko. Horiki noisily cleared his throat. I ran back up to the roof to escape and collapsed there. The feelings which assailed me as I looked up at the summer night sky heavy with rain were not of fury or hatred, nor even of sadness. They were of overpowering fear, not the terror the sight of ghosts in a graveyard might arouse, but rather a fierce ancestral dread that could not be expressed in four or five words, something perhaps like encountering in the sacred grove of a Shinto shrine the white-clothed body of the god. My hair turned prematurely grey from that night. I had now  lost all confidence in myself, doubted all men immeasurably, and abandoned all hopes for the things of this world, all joy, all sympathy, eternally. This was truly the decisive, incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the eyebrows, a wound that was to throb with pain whenever I came in contact with a human being. "I sympathize, but I hope it's taught you a lesson. I won't be coming back. This place is a perfect hell . . . But you should forgive Yoshiko. After all, you're not much of a prize yourself. So long." Horiki was not stupid enough to linger in an embarrassing situation. I got up and poured myself a glass of gin. I wept bitterly, crying aloud. I could have wept on and on, interminably. Without my realizing it, Yoshiko was standing haplessly behind me bearing a platter with a mountain of beans on it. "He told me he wouldn't do anything . . ." "It's all right. Don't say anything. You didn't know enough to distrust others. Sit down. Let's eat the beans." We sat down side by side and ate the beans. Is trustfulness a sin, I wonder? The man was an illiterate shopkeeper, an undersized runt of about thirty, who used to ask me to draw cartoons for him, and then would make a great ado over the trifling sums of money he paid for them. The shopkeeper, not surprisingly, did not come again. I felt less hatred for him than I did for Horiki. Why, when he first discovered them together had he not cleared his throat then, instead of returning to the roof to inform me? On nights when I could not sleep hatred and loathing for him gathered inside me until I groaned under the pressure. I neither forgave nor refused to forgive her. Yoshiko was a genius at trusting people. She didn't know how to suspect anyone. But the misery it caused. God, I ask you. Is trustfulness a sin? It was less the fact of Yoshiko's defilement than the defilement of her trust in people which became so persistent a source of grief as almost to render my life insupportable. For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces, Yoshiko's immaculate trustfulness seemed clean and pure, like a waterfall among green leaves. One night sufficed to turn the waters of this pure cascade yellow and muddy. Yoshiko began from that night to fret over my every smile or frown. She would jump when I called her, and seemed at a loss which way to turn. She remained tense and afraid, no matter how much I tried to make her smile, no matter how much I played the clown. She began to address me with an excessive profusion of honorifics. Is immaculate trustfulness after all a source of sin? I looked up various novels in which married women are violated. I tried reading them, but I could not find a single instance of a woman violated in so lamentable a manner as Yoshiko. Her story obviously could never be made into a novel. I might actually have felt better if anything in the least resembling love existed between that runt of a shopkeeper and Yoshiko, but one summer night Yoshiko was trusting, and that was all there was to it . . . And on account of that incident I was cleft between the eyebrows, my voice became hoarse, my hair turned prematurely grey, and Yoshiko was condemned to a life of anxiety. In most of the novels I read emphasis was placed on whether or not the husband forgave the wife's "act." It seemed to me, however, that any husband who still retains the right to forgive or not to forgive is a lucky man. If he thinks that he can't possibly forgive his wife, he ought, instead of making such a great fuss, to get divorced as quickly as possible and find a new wife. If he can't do that he should forgive and show forbearance. In either case the matter can be completely settled in whichever way the husband's feelings dictate. In other words, even though such an incident certainly comes as a great shock to the husband, it is a shock and not an endless scries of waves which lash back at him over and over again. It seemed to me a problem which could be disposed of by the wrath of any husband with authority. But in our case the husband was without authority, and when I thought things over, I came to feel that everything was my fault. Far from becoming enraged, I could not utter a word of complaint; it was on account of that rare virtue she possessed that my wife was violated, a virtue I long had prized, the unbearably pitiful one called immaculate trustfulness. Is immaculate trustfulness a sin? Now that I harbored doubts about the one virtue I had depended on, I lost all comprehension of everything around me. My only resort was drink. My face coarsened markedly and my teeth fell out from the interminable drinking bouts to which I surrendered myself. The cartoons I drew now verged on the pornographic. No, I'll come out with it plainly: I began about this time to copy pornographic pictures which I secretly peddled. I wanted money to buy gin. When I looked at Yoshiko always averting her glance and trembling, doubt gave birth to fresh doubt: it was unlikely, wasn't it, that a woman with absolutely no defences should have yielded only that once with the shopkeeper. Had she been also with Horiki? Or with somebody I didn't even know? I hadn't the courage to question her; writhing in my usual doubts and fears, I drank gin. Sometimes when drunk I timidly attempted a few sneaking ventures at indirect questioning. In my heart I bounded foolishly from joy to sorrow at her responses, but on the surface I never ceased my immoderate clowning. Afterwards I would inflict on Yoshiko an abominable, hellish caressing before I dropped into a dead sleep. Towards the end of that year I came home late one night blind drunk. I felt like having a glass of sugar-water. Yoshiko seemed to be asleep, so I went myself to the kitchen to look for the sugar bowl. I took off the lid and peered inside. There was no sugar, only a thin black cardboard box. I took it absentmindedly in my hand and read the label. I was startled: somebody had scratched off most of the writing, but the part in Western letters remained intact. The word DIAL was legible. DIAL. At the time I relied entirely on gin and never took sleeping pills. Insomnia, however, was a chronic complaint with me, and I was familiar with most sleeping pills. The contents of this one box of Dial was unquestionably more than sufficient to cause death. The seal of the box was unbroken. I must have hidden it here at some time or other in the past when I felt I might need it, after first scratching off the label. The poor child could not read Western letters, and I must have thought it was enough if I just scratched off with my nails the part of the label in Japanese. (You have committed no sin.) I very quietly filled a glass with water, careful not to make the least noise, and deliberately broke the seal of the box. I poured the whole contents into my mouth. I calmly drained the glass of water in one gulp. I switched off the light and went to bed at once. For three days and nights I lay as one dead. The doctor considered it an accident, and was kind enough to postpone reporting to the police. I am told that the first words I murmured as I began to recover consciousness were, "I'm going home." It's not clear even to myself what place I meant by "home," but in any case these were the words I said, accompanied, I was told, by profuse weeping. Gradually the fog cleared, and when I regained consciousness there was Flatfish sitting at my pillow, a most unpleasant expression on his face. "The last time was also at the end of t lie year, wasn't it? He always chooses the end of the year, just when everybody is frantically busy. He'll prove the death of me if he keeps on doing such things." The madam of the bar in Kyobashi was the recipient of Flatfish's discourse. I called, "Madam." "What? Have you come to? " She held her smiling face directly over mine as she spoke. I burst into tears. "Take me away from Yoshiko." The words came as a surprise even to myself. The madam rose to her feet and breathed a barely audible sigh. Then I made an utterly unpremeditated slip of the tongue, one so comic, so idiotic that it all but defies description. I said, "I'm going somewhere where there aren't any women." Flatfish was the first to respond, with loud guffaws; the madam tittered; and in the midst of my tears I turned red and smiled despite myself. "An excellent idea," said Flatfish still continuing his inane laughter. "You really ought to go to a place with no women. Everything goes wrong as soon as women are around you. Yes, a place without women is a fine suggestion." A place without women. And the worst of it was that my delirious ravings were later to be realized in a most ghastly way. Yoshiko seemed to have got the idea that I had swallowed the overdose of sleeping pills by way of atonement for her sin, and this made her all the more uncertain before me. She never smiled, and she looked as if she could hardly be persuaded to open her mouth. I found the apartment so oppressive that I would end by going out as usual to swill cheap liquor. After the Dial incident, however, I lost weight noticeably. My arms and legs felt heavy, and I often was too lazy to draw cartoons. Flatfish had left some money when he came to visit me. (He said, "It's a little gift from me," and offered it exactly as if it were his own money, though I gathered that it actually came from my brothers as usual. This time, unlike when I ran away from Flatfish's house, I was able to get a vague glimpse through his theatrical airs of importance; I too was clever and, pretending to be completely unaware of what was going on, humbly offered Flatfish my thanks for the money. It nevertheless gave me a strange feeling, as if at the same time I could and could not understand why people like Flatfish resorted to such complicated tricks.) I did not hesitate to use the money to go by myself to the hot springs of southern Izu. However, I am not the kind to make a leisurely tour of hot springs, and at the thought of Yoshiko I became so infinitely forlorn as to destroy completely the peaceful frame of mind which would have permitted me to gaze from my hotel window at the mountains. I did not change into sports clothes. I didn't even take the waters. Instead I would rush out into the filthy little bars that looked like souvenir stands, and drink gin until I fairly swam in it. I returned to Tokyo only sicklier for the trip. The night I returned to Tokyo the snow was falling heavily. I drunkenly wandered along the rows of saloons behind the Ginza, singing to myself over and over again, so softly it was only a whisper, "From here it's hundreds of miles to home . . . From here it's hundreds of miles to home." I walked along kicking with the point of my shoes the snow which was accumulating. Suddenly I vomited. This was the first time I had brought up blood. It formed a big risingsun flag in the snow. I squatted there for a while. Then with both hands I scooped up snow from places which wore still clean, and washed my face. I wept. "Where does this little path go? Where does this little path go?" 1 could hear indistinctly from the distance, like an auditory hallucination, the voice of a little girl singing. Unhappincss. There arc all kinds of unhappy people in this world. I suppose it would be no exaggeration to say that the world is composed entirely of unhappy people. But those people can fight their unhappiiicsB with society fairly and squarely, and society for its part easily understands and sympathizes with such struggles. My unhappincss stemmed entirely from my own vices, and I had no way of fighting anybody. If I had ever attempted to voice anything in the nature of a protest, even a single mumbled word, the whole of society—and not only Flatfish— would undoubtedly have cried out flabbergasted, "Imagine the audacity of him talking like that!" Am I what they call an egni.^t? Or am I the opposite, a man of excessively weak spirit? I re>Uydon't know myself, but since I seem in either case to be a mass of vices, I drop steadily, inevitably, into unhappiness, and I have no specific plan to stave off my descent. I got up from the snowbank with the thought: I ought to get the proper kind of medicine without delay. I went into a pharmacy nearby. The proprietress and I exchanged looks as I entered; for that instant her eyes popped and she held her head lifted, as if caught in the light of a flash bulb. She stood ramrod stiff. But in her wide-open eyes there was no trace of alarm or dislike; her look spoke of longing, almost of the seeking for salvation. I thought, "She must be unhappy too. Unhappy people are sensitive to the unhappiness of others." Not until then did I happen to notice that she stood with difficulty, supporting herself on crutches. I suppressed a desire to run up beside her, but I could not take my eyes from her face. I felt tears starting, and saw then the tears brimming from her big eyes. That was all. Without saying a word I went out of the pharmacy and staggered back to my apartment. I asked Yoshiko to prepare a Bait solution. I drank it. I went to sleep without telling her anything. The whole of the following day I spent in bed, giving as excuse a lie to the effect that I felt a cold coming on. At night my agitation over the blood I had secretly coughed became too much for me , and I got out of bed. I went to the pharmacy again. This time I confessed with a smile to the woman what my physical condition was. In humble tones I asked her advice. "You'll have to give up drinking.'' We were like blood relatives. "I may have alcoholic poisoning. I still want to drink." "You musn't. My husband used to soak himself in liquor in spite of his T.B. He claimed that he killed the germs with liquor. That's how he shortened his life." "I feel so on edge I can't stand it. I'm afraid. I'm no good for anything." "I'll give you some medicine. But please cut out the drinking at least." She was a widow with an only son. The boy had been attending a medical school somewhere in the provinces, but was now on leave of absence from school with the same illness that killed his father. Her father-in-law lay abed in the house with palsy. She herself had been unable to move one side of her body since she was five, when she had infantile paralysis. Hobbling here and there in the shop on her crutches she selected various medicines from the different shelves, and explained what they were. This is a medicine to build your blood. This is a serum for vitamin injections. Here is the hypodermic needle. These are calcium pills. This is diastase to keep you from getting an upset stomach. Her voice was full of tenderness as she explained each of the half-dozen medicines. The affection of this unhappy woman was however to prove too intense. At the last she said, "This is a medicine to be used when ''you need a drink so badly you can't stand it." She quickly wrapped the little box. It was morphine. She said that it was no more harmful than liquor, and I believed her. For one thing, I was just at the stage where I had come to feel the squalor of drunkenness, and I was overjoyed to be able to escape after such long bondage to the devil called alcohol. Without a flicker of hesitation I injected the morphine into my arm. My insecurity, fretfulness and timidity were swept away completely; I turned into an expansively optimistic and fluent talker. The injections made me forget how weak my body was, and I applied myself energetically to my cartoons. Sometimes I would burst out laughing even while I was drawing. I had intended to take one shot a day, but it became two, then three; when it reached four I could no longer work unless I had my shots. All I needed was the woman at the pharmacy to admonish me, saying how dreadful it would be if I became an addict, for me to feel that I had already become a fairly confirmed addict. (I am very susceptible to other people's suggestions. When people say to me, "You really shouldn't spend this money, but I suppose you will anyway ... " I have the strange illusion that I would be going against expectations and somehow doing wrong unless I spent it. I invariably spend all the money immediately.) My uneasiness over having become an addict actually made me seek more of the drug. "I beg you! One more box. I promise I'll pay you at the end of the month." "You can pay the bill any old time as far as I'm concerned, but the police are very troublesome, you know." Something impure, dark, reeking of the shady character always hovers about me. "I beg you! Tell them something or other, put them off the track. Ill give you a kiss." She blushed. I pursued the theme. "I can't do any work unless 1 have the medicine. It's a kind of energy-builder for me." "How about hormone injections?" "Don't be silly. It's liquor or that medicine, one or the other. If I haven't got it I can't work." "You mustn't drink." "That's right. I haven't touched a drop of liquor since I began with that medicine. I'm in fine physical shape, thanks to you. I don't intend to go on drawing stupid cartoons forever, you know. Now that I've stopped drinking and have straightened myself out, I'm going to study. I'm sure I can become a great painter. I'll show you. If only I can get over this critical period. So, please. How about a kiss?" She burst out laughing. "What a nuisance you are. You may already have become an addict, for all I know." Her crutches clacked as she hobbled over to the shelf to take down some medicine. "I can't give you a whole box. You'd use it all up. Here's half." "How stingy you've become! Well, if that's the best you can do." I gave myself a shot as soon as I got back home. Yoshiko timidly asked, "Doesn't it hurt?" "Of course it hurts. But I've got to do it, no matter how painful it is. That's the only way to increase the efficiency of my work. You've noticed how healthy I've been of late." Then, playfully, "Well, to work. To work, to work." Once, late at night, I knocked on the door of the pharmacy. As soon as I caught sight of the woman in her nightgown hobbling forward on her crutches, I threw my arms around her and kissed her. I pretended to weep. She handed me a box without a word. By the time I had come to realize acutely that drugs were as abominable, as foul—no, fouler—than gin, I had already become an out-and-out addict. I had truly reached the extreme of shamelessness. Out of the desire to obtain the drug I began again to make copies of pornographic pictures. I also had what might literally be called a very ugly affair with the crippled woman from the pharmacy. I thought, "I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There's no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it's sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves—it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin." I paced back and forth, half in a frenzy, between my apartment and the pharmacy. The more I worked the more morphine I consumed, and my debt at the pharmacy reached a frightening figure. Whenever the woman caught sight of my face, the tears came to her eyes. I also wept. Inferno. I decided as a last resort, my last hope of escaping the inferno, to write a long le,tter-j to-ray~father fat which I confessed my circumstances fully and accurately (with the exception, of course, of my relations with women). If it failed I had no choice but to hang myself, a resolve which was tantamount to a bet on the existence of God. The result was to make everything only the worse: the answer, for which I waited day and night, never came, and my anxiety and dread caused me to increase still further the dosage of the drug. I made up my mind one day to give myself ten shots that night and throw myself into the river. But on the afternoon of the very day I chose for the event, Flatfish appeared with Horiki in tow, seemingly having managed with his diabolical intuition to sniff out my plan. Horiki sat in front of me and said, with a gentle smile, the like of which I had never before seen on his face, "I hear you've coughed blood." I felt so grateful, so happy for that gentle smile that I averted my face and wept. I was completely shattered and smothered by that one gentle smile. I was bundled into an automobile. Flatfish informed me in a quiet tone (so calm indeed that it might almost have been characterized as compassionate) that I should have to go for the time being to a hospital, and that I should leave everything to them Weeping helplessly, I obeyed whatever the two of them decreed, like a man bereft of all will, decision and everything else. The four of us (Yoshiko came along) were tossed in the car for quite a long time. About dusk we pulled up at the entrance to a large hospital in the woods. My only thought was, "This must be a sanatorium." I was given a careful, almost unpleasantly considerate examination by a young doctor. "You'll need to rest and recuperate here for a while," he said, pronouncing the words with a smile I could only describe as bashful. When Flatfish, Horiki and Yoshiko were about to go, leaving me there alone, Yoshiko handed me a bundle containing a change of clothes, then silently offered from her handbag the hypodermic needle and the remaining medicine. Is it possible she actually believed after all that it was just an energy-building medicine? "No," I said, "I won't need it any more." This was a really rare event. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that it was the one and only time in my life that I refused something offered to me. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the fear that if I declined something offered me , a yawning crevice would open between the other person's heart and myself which could never be mended through all eternity. Yet I now refused in a perfectly natural manner the morphine which I had so desperately craved. Was it because I was struck by Yoshiko's divine ignorance? I wonder if I had not already ceased at that instant to be an addict. The young doctor with the bashful smile immediately ushered me to a ward. The key grated in the lock behind me. I was in a mental hospital. My delirious cry after I swallowed the sleeping pills—that I would go where there were no women— had now materialized in a truly uncanny way: my ward held only male lunatics, and the nurses also were men. There was not a single woman. I was no longer a criminal—I was a lunatic. But no, I was definitely not mad. I have never been mad for even an instant. They say, I know, that most limatics claim the same thing. What it amounts to is that people who get put into this asylum are crazy, and those who don't are normal. God, I ask you, is non-resistance a sin? I had wept at that incredibly beautiful smile Horiki showed me, and forgetting both prudence and resistance, I had got into the car that took me here. And now I had become a madman. Even if released, I would be forever branded on the forehead with the word "madman," or perhaps, "reject." I Disqualified as a human being. | / I had now ceased utterly to be a human being,_ I I came at the beginning of summer. Through the iron bars over the windows I could see waterlilies blossoming in the little pond of the hospital. Three months later, when the cosmos were beginning to bloom in the garden, my eldest brother and Flatfish came, to my great surprise, to take me out. My brother informed me in his habitually serious, strained voice that my father had died of gastric ulcers at the end of the previous month. "We won't ask any questions about your past and we'll see to it that you have no worries as far as your living expenses are concerned. You won't have to do anything. The only thing we ask is that you leave Tokyo immediately. I know you undoubtedly have all kinds of attachments here, but we want you to begin your convalescence afresh in the country." He added that I need not worry about my various commitments in Tokyo. Flatfish would take care of them. I felt as though I could see before my eyes the mountains and rivers back borne. I nodded faintly. A reject, exactly. The news of my father's death eviscerated me. He was dead, that familiar, frightening presence who had never left my heart for a split second. I felt as though the vessel of my suffering had become empty, as if nothing could interest me now. I had lost even the ability to suffer. My brother scrupulously carried out his promise. He bought a house for me at a hot spring on the coast, about four or five hours journey by rail south of the town where I grew up, an unusually warm spot for that part of Japan. The house, a thatch-covered rather ancient-looking structure, stood on the outskirts of the village. It had five rooms. The walls were peeled and the woodwork was so worm-eaten as to seem almost beyond all possibility of repair. My brother also sent to look after me an ugly woman close to sixty with horrible rusty hair. Some three years have gone by since then. During this interval I have several times been violated in a curious manner by the old servant. Once in a while we quarrel like husband and wife. My chest ailment is sometimes better, sometimes worse; my weight fluctuates accordingly. Occasionally I cough blood. Yesterday I sent Tetsu (the old servant) off to the village drugstore to buy some sleeping pills. She came back with a box rather different in shape from the one I'm accustomed to, but I paid it no particular attention. I took ten pills before I went to bed but was surprised not to be able to sleep at all. Presently I was seized with a cramp in my stomach. I rushed to the toilet three times in succession with terrible diarrhoea. My suspicions were aroused. I examined the box of medicine carefully—it was a laxative. As I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, a hot water bottle on my stomach, I wondered whether I ought to complain to Tetsu. I thought of saying, "These aren't sleeping pills. They're a laxative!" but I burst out laughing. I think "reject" must be a comic noun. I had taken a laxative in order to go to sleep. Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. Everything passes. This year I am twenty-seven. My hair has become much greyer. Most people would take me for over forty.