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Horiki and myself.
Despising each other as we did, we were constantly together, therebydegrading ourselves. If that is what the world calls friendship, the relationsbetween Horiki and myself were undoubtedly those of friendship.I threw myself on the chivalry of the madam of the bar in Kyobashi.
(Itis a strange use of the word to speak of a woman's chivalry, but in myexperience, at least in the cities, the women possessed a greater abundanceof what might be termed chivalry than the men. Most men concernedthemselves, all fear and trembling, only with appearances, and were stingyto boot.) She enabled me to marry Yoshiko and to rent a room on theground floor of an apartment building near the Sumida River which wemade our home. I gave up drink and devoted my energies to drawingcartoons.
After dinner we would go out together to see a movie, and on theway back we would stop at a milk bar or buy pots of flowers. But more thanany of these things it gave me pleasure just to listen to the words or watchthe 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 sweetnotion that perhaps there was a chance I might turn one of these days into ahuman being and be spared the necessity of a horrible death, Horiki showedup again.He hailed me,
"How's the great lover? Why, what's this? Do I detect anote of caution in your face—you, of all people? I've come today as amessenger from the Lady of Koenji."
He lowered his voice and thrust hisjaw in the direction of Yoshiko, who was preparing tea in the kitchen, asmuch as to ask whether it was all right to continue.I answered nonchalantly,
"It doesn't matter. You can say anythingbefore her."
As a matter of fact, Yoshiko was what I should like to call a genius attrusting people. She suspected nothing of my relations with the madam ofthe bar in Kyobashi, and even after I told her all about the incident whichoccurred at Kamakura, she was equally unsuspicious of my relations withTsuneko. It was not because I was an accomplished liar—at times I spokequite 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'snothing 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 cameflapping my way, to rip open with its beak the wounds of memory. All atonce shame over the past and the recollection of sin unfolded themselvesbefore my eyes and, seized by a terror so great it made me want to shriek, Icould 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 human beinglike the rest, I sometimes felt he was exactly like myself. Of course that wasonly after we had been making the round of the bars, drinking cheap liquorhere and there. When the two of us met face to face it was as if weimmediately metamorphosed into dogs of the same shape and pelt, and webounded out through the streets covered with fallen snow.That was how we happened to warm over, as it were, the embers of ourold friendship. We went together to the bar in Kyobasbi and, eventually, wetwo soused dogs visited Shizuko's apartment in Koenji, where I sometimesspent the night.I shall never forget.
