The Third Notebook

Part Two

　Horiki and me.

　If what people call "friendship" in this world is the business of mutual contempt accompanied by mutual association, each making the other more worthless in the process — then the relationship between me and Horiki was certainly "friendship" in every sense.

　I had come to rely on the chivalrous spirit of the madam of that Kyōbashi stand bar — (an odd use of the phrase "chivalrous spirit" for a woman, but in my experience, at least in the case of city men and women, it was women who possessed far more of what might be called chivalrous spirit than men. Men were mostly timid, always dressing up their appearances, and stingy) — and I had managed to take Yoshiko, the tobacco shop girl, as my common-law wife. We rented a single ground-floor room in a small two-story wooden apartment building near the Sumida River in Tsukiji, lived there together, I stopped drinking and threw myself into the cartooning work that was gradually becoming a regular income, and after dinner the two of us would go to see a film, stop at a coffee shop on the way home, buy a pot of flowers — but more than any of that, it was fun simply to listen to the words and watch the movements of this small bride who trusted me from her heart, and I had begun to warm a faint, sweet hope in my chest that perhaps I too might gradually become more humanlike, and avoid dying some wretched death — and it was right at that point that Horiki appeared before me again.

"Hey! Lecher. Hmm? You've even gotten a somewhat more sensible look about you. Today I'm here as a messenger from the Kōenji lady."

　He started to say this, then suddenly dropped his voice, jerked his chin toward Yoshiko who was preparing tea in the kitchen, and asked: Is it all right? — to which I answered calmly:

"It's fine. You can say anything."

　Indeed, Yoshiko was something I could only call a genius of trust. Whether it was the matter of the Kyōbashi bar madam or the fact that I told her about the Kamakura incident, she showed no suspicion about Tsuneko — not because I was skilled at lying, but sometimes I even stated things plainly, yet to Yoshiko it all seemed to register as nothing more than a joke.

"She's the same as ever, conceited as anything. It's nothing much, really — just a message saying come play at Kōenji sometime."

　When I'm about to forget, a strange bird swoops down and drives its beak into the wound in my memory. Immediately, the memories of shame and sin from the past unfold vividly before me, and in a terror that makes me want to scream, I can't keep my seat.

"Shall we drink?"

　said I.

"All right."

　said Horiki.

　Horiki and me. We resembled each other in form. Sometimes it seemed we were identical people. That was, of course, only when we were drinking cheap sake in one place or another — but in any case, whenever the two of us got together, we would in no time transform into two dogs of the same breed with the same coat and go racing through the snow-covered streets.

　From that day on we resumed our old friendship, went together to that small bar in Kyōbashi, and eventually even those two drunken dogs visited Shizuko's apartment in Kōenji and stayed the night.

　I haven't forgotten. It was a muggy summer night. Horiki arrived at my Tsukiji apartment near dusk, wearing a wrinkled yukata, and said that he had pawned his summer suit that day for some necessary reason, and it would cause real trouble if his old mother found out, so please lend him some money — he wanted to redeem it right away. Unfortunately I had no money either, so as usual I sent Yoshiko with her clothing to the pawnshop to raise some cash, and after lending some to Horiki there was still a little left, so I had Yoshiko buy cheap spirits with the remainder, and we went up to the rooftop of the apartment, received the occasional faint foul breeze drifting in from the Sumida River, and held a truly dismal rooftop party.

　At that point the two of us started playing a game of matching "comedy nouns" and "tragedy nouns." This was a game I had invented. All nouns have categories like masculine, feminine, neuter, but in addition to that, they ought also to be divided into comedy nouns and tragedy nouns. For instance, an ocean liner and a steam train are both tragedy nouns, while a streetcar and a bus are both comedy nouns — whoever doesn't understand why is unfit to discuss art; a playwright who inserts even a single tragedy noun into a comedy has already failed by that alone, and the same holds for tragedy. That was the idea.

"All right? Tobacco?"

　I ask.

"Trag." (Short for tragedy.)

　Horiki answers immediately.

"Medicine?"

"Powdered? Tablet?"

"Injection."

"Trag."

"Is it? There are hormone injections too, you know."

"No, definitely Trag. The needle above all. You're a magnificent Trag."

"Fine, I'll concede. But you know, medicines and doctors — they're surprisingly Com. (Short for comedy.) What about death?"

"Com. Priests and Buddhist monks too, I'd say."

"Well done. And life would be Trag."

"Wrong. That's Com too."

"No, then everything becomes Com. Let me ask you another. A cartoonist? Surely you can't say Com?"

"Trag, Trag. Great tragedy noun!"

"What, you're the great Trag yourself."

　It had degenerated into this sort of poor pun, which wasn't amusing, but we were quite pleased with our game, proud of it as an extraordinarily witty invention never seen in any salon in the world.

　There was also another similar game I invented around that time — a game of matching antonyms. The antonym of black is white. But the antonym of white is red. The antonym of red is black.

"What's the antonym of flower?"

　I ask, and Horiki twists his mouth in thought.

"Hmm, there's a restaurant called Hanatsuki, so — moon."

"No, that isn't an antonym. That's more of a synonym. Stars and violets are synonyms too, not antonyms."

"Got it — it's a bee."

"A bee?"

"With peonies... ants?"

"Come on, that's a motif for a painting. You can't cheat."

"I've got it! Flowers and gathering clouds..."

"That's moon and gathering clouds."

"Right, right. Flowers and wind. Wind. The antonym of flower is wind."

"That's bad, that's a line from naniwabushi ballads. Your origins are showing."

"No, lute."

"That's even worse. The antonym of flower is... something as un-flower-like as anything in this world — that's what we should be looking for."

"Then that's... wait, well, women?"

"While we're at it, what's the synonym of women?"

"Innards."

"You really have no poetry in you. Then what's the antonym of innards?"

"Milk."

"That's not bad. Keep that up, one more. Shame. The antonym of shame."

"Shameless. Trend cartoonist Kamiji Ikuta."

"What about Horiki Masao?"

　From around here the two of us gradually stopped being able to laugh, and fell into the gloomy mood unique to spirits — like glass shards packed into one's skull.

"Don't get smart with me. I haven't had the disgrace of being tied up like you."

　I was startled. Horiki had never, in his heart, regarded me as a proper human being — he understood me as nothing more than a suicide survivor, a shameless fool, an idiot monster, a so-called "living corpse" — and had merely used me for his amusement in whatever ways I could be used. That was what "friendship" amounted to. I felt genuinely bad about it, yet I also reconsidered: it's reasonable for Horiki to see me that way — I've always been a child who seemed to have no qualification to be human, and perhaps it's only fitting that even Horiki should look down on me.

"Sin. What's the antonym of sin? This is a hard one."

　I said this with an air of apparent nonchalance.

"The law."

　Horiki answered that quite composedly, and I looked at him again. Receiving the red glow of the blinking neon sign on the nearby building, Horiki's face looked gravely imposing, like a stern detective. I was profoundly amazed.

"Sin — surely it's not something that simple."

　The antonym of sin is the law! But perhaps everyone in the world thinks that simply, and goes about their lives at ease. That where there are no detectives, that's where sin lurks.

"Then what is it — God? You've got something vaguely priestly about you, you know. It's distasteful."

"Don't dismiss it so lightly. Let's think about it together a bit more. It's an interesting theme, don't you think? I feel like from a person's answer to this theme, you could understand everything about that person."

"Give me a break... The antonym of sin is virtue. The virtuous citizen. In other words, a person like me."

"Stop joking. But virtue is the antonym of evil. Not the antonym of sin."

"Are evil and sin different?"

"I think they are. The concepts of good and evil were created by human beings. They're words of morality that humans made up arbitrarily."

"Oh, shut up. Then it's God after all. God, God. Put God on anything and you can't go wrong. I'm starving."

"Yoshiko is cooking broad beans downstairs."

"Oh thank god. My favorite."

　He clasped his hands behind his head, rolled over and lay on his back.

"You seem to have absolutely no interest in the concept of sin."

"Of course not — I'm not a sinner like you. I may fool around, but I don't cause women to die or extort money from them."

　Somewhere deep inside, a faint yet desperate voice of protest rose — I didn't cause her to die, I didn't extort anything — yet this habit of mine: immediately thinking again that no, I was the one at fault.

　I simply cannot argue face-to-face. Fighting down as hard as I could the grimness that was welling up moment by moment due to the spirits' gloomy intoxication, in an almost solitary-sounding voice I said:

"But being put in prison isn't the only sin. If I could find the antonym of sin, I feel I might be able to grasp the substance of sin... God... salvation... love... light... but God has Satan as its antonym, and the antonym of salvation must be suffering, love has hatred, light has darkness, virtue has evil, sin and prayer, sin and repentance, sin and confession, sin and... ah, they're all synonyms. What is the antonym of sin?"

"The antonym of sin (tsumi) is honey (mitsu). Sweet as honey. I'm starving. Bring something to eat."

"Why don't you go get it yourself!"

　A burst of angry voice, more intense than any I had uttered since birth, came out of me.

"All right then, I'll go downstairs and commit a sin with Yoshiko. Investigation beats argument. The antonym of sin is sweet bean jelly, or was it broad beans?"

　He was so drunk he could barely get the words out.

"Do whatever you please. Get out of here!"

"Sin and hunger, hunger and broad beans — or is that a synonym?"

　He mumbled nonsense as he got up.

　Sin and punishment. Dostoevsky. It flashed for a moment across a corner of my mind, and I caught my breath. What if Dostoevsky had placed sin and punishment not as synonyms but as antonyms? Sin and punishment as absolutely incompatible opposites, ice and fire that cannot coexist. Dostoevsky's murky stagnant pond, the bottom of a tangle of chaos, considering sin and punishment as antonyms... ah, I'm beginning to understand it, no, not yet... thoughts were spinning like a magic lantern in my mind when:

"Hey! There's trouble — come here!"

　Horiki's voice and expression had changed. He had just staggered unsteadily downstairs, I thought — but he was back.

"What is it?"

　With a peculiar bloodthirsty urgency, the two of us descended from the rooftop to the second floor, and Horiki stopped midway on the staircase leading down from the second floor to my room on the ground floor.

"Look!"

　he whispered, pointing.

　The small window above my room was open, and through it the interior of the room was visible. The light was on. There were two animals in there.

　Dizzy and swaying, I murmured to myself through violent heaving breaths: this too is the form of a human being, this too is the form of a human being, there is nothing to be surprised at — and stood frozen on the stairs, forgetting even to go to Yoshiko's aid.

　Horiki gave a loud, pointed cough. I fled alone back up to the rooftop, lay down, and looked up at the summer night sky heavy with approaching rain. The emotion that assailed me then was neither anger, nor disgust, nor grief — it was a terrifying, overwhelming fear. Not the fear one feels toward graveyard ghosts, but the kind of ancient, savage terror one might feel upon encountering a white-robed deity in a shrine's cedar grove — a fear that brooks no argument. My early white hair began that night, and I utterly lost all confidence in everything, utterly began to suspect people fathomlessly, and permanently separated myself from all hope, joy, and sympathy toward the workings of this world. It was, truly, a decisive event in my life. I had been struck head-on, right between the eyes, and from that time forward the wound throbbed with pain at every approach to any human being.

"I feel for you, but this should have taught you a lesson. I won't come here again. It's utter hell. But... forgive Yoshiko. You're no good yourself, after all. Excuse me."

　Horiki was not so obtuse as to linger in an awkward situation.

　I got up, drank spirits alone, and then sobbed aloud, weeping. I could weep as much as I wanted, endlessly.

　At some point, Yoshiko had appeared behind me, standing vacantly with a plate heaped with broad beans.

"He said... nothing would happen..."

"It's all right. Don't say anything. You simply had no knowledge of doubting people. Sit. Let's eat the beans."

　We sat side by side and ate the beans. Ah — is trust a sin? The man was an ignorant, short merchant of about thirty who would have my cartoons drawn, then leave behind a small amount of money with a great show of munificence. That merchant, to his credit, never came back after that. Yet for some reason, more than any hatred toward that merchant, in sleepless nights I was tormented by surging waves of hatred and rage toward Horiki — who, the very moment he discovered them, without even making a loud warning cough, had turned back around and come to tell me on the rooftop.

　There is no question of forgiving or not forgiving. Yoshiko is a genius of trust. She had no knowledge of doubting people. But precisely because of that — such wretchedness.

　I ask God: is trust a sin?

　More than the fact that Yoshiko was violated, it was the fact that Yoshiko's trust was violated that became, for a long time afterward, a source of suffering almost too great to survive. For someone like me — repulsively timid, always watching other people's expressions, someone whose capacity to trust others was cracked through — Yoshiko's innocent trust had seemed as refreshing as a waterfall through new green leaves. In a single night it had turned into yellow filth. And from that night on, Yoshiko became anxious at my every frown and smile.

　When I called "Hey," she would flinch, looking unsure where to put her eyes. No matter how much I tried to make her laugh or clown around, she would become flustered, fearful, and started addressing me in formal speech.

　Is indeed innocent trust the very source of sin?

　I searched and read various stories about men violating wives, but I could find no woman who had been violated in as wretched a manner as Yoshiko. The thing makes no story at all. If even the slightest feeling resembling love had existed between that short merchant and Yoshiko, my feelings might have been easier to bear — yet it was simply one summer night, Yoshiko trusting, and then that was that. And because of it my brow was split head-on, I lost my voice, my hair began to turn white, and Yoshiko was condemned to be perpetually flustered for the rest of her life. Most such stories seemed to place their emphasis on whether the husband could forgive the wife's "act," but to me that didn't seem like such a terribly agonizing great problem. Blessed is the husband who retains the right to forgive or not forgive — if you truly can't forgive, there's no need to make such a fuss, just quietly divorce her and take a new wife; if you can't do that, just "forgive" her and put up with it — in any case it seems like something that could be settled smoothly entirely by the husband's feelings alone. In other words, such an event might certainly be a great shock to the husband, but it is a "shock" that, unlike waves that keep breaking back time and again without end, is a trouble that the aggrieved husband's anger can handle and resolve in any manner he chooses. But in our case, I had no rights whatsoever, and the more I thought about it the more it seemed everything was my fault — far from being angry, I couldn't say a single word of reproach. And the wife had been violated precisely because of the rare quality she possessed — and that quality was the unbearably dear, innocent trust that I had always longed for. It was the very quality I had adored in her.

　Is innocent trust a sin?

　Doubting even the sole saving quality I had relied upon, I no longer understood anything at all, and the only place I could go was alcohol. The expression on my face grew extremely degraded; I was drinking spirits from morning, my teeth were crumbling, and the cartoons I drew had come to resemble crude obscene pictures. Let me be clear: around that time I began copying erotic prints and selling them secretly. I needed money for spirits. Looking at Yoshiko always averting her eyes from me and being flustered, I thought — wasn't she completely without guard, so perhaps with that merchant it hadn't been just once? And what about Horiki? Or perhaps with someone I don't even know? — suspicion bred suspicion, yet I had no courage to press her on it outright. I writhed in the usual anxiety and fear, drank spirits and got drunk, timidly tried clumsy leading questions, internally foolishly swung between joy and grief, on the surface clowned all the more, and then subjected Yoshiko to loathsome hellish caresses, and sank into a sleep like mud.

　Near the end of that year, I came home late and dead drunk, craved some sugar water, and as Yoshiko appeared to be sleeping, I went to the kitchen myself, found the sugar bowl, opened the lid, and found no sugar inside — only a black, narrow little paper box. I picked it up absently, looked at the label affixed to the box, and was struck with horror. The label had been more than half scratched off with a fingernail, but the Roman letters remained, and they spelled clearly: D-I-A-L.

　Dial. At the time I was drinking mostly spirits and not using sleeping pills, but since insomnia was something of a chronic condition for me, I was fairly well acquainted with most sleeping medications. One box of Dial like this would certainly contain more than a lethal dose. The seal on the box hadn't been broken yet — but she had clearly been hiding it here, with the intention to use it someday, and had even scratched off the label. Poor thing — she couldn't read the Roman letters on the label, so she had scratched off half of it with her fingernail, thinking that would be sufficient. (You bear no sin.)

　I quietly filled a glass with water without making a sound, then slowly broke the seal on the box, tipped the entire contents into my mouth at once, calmly drank down the glass of water, turned off the light, and lay down to sleep.

　For three days and nights, I was apparently as if dead. The doctor apparently treated it as an accident and delayed reporting it to the police. The first words I apparently murmured as I was coming around were: "I want to go home." Where exactly "home" referred to, even I myself couldn't quite say — but in any case I said that, and cried terribly.

　Gradually the fog cleared, and I looked to find Hirame sitting at my bedside with a deeply displeased expression.

"And last time too, it was the end of the year — we're both spinning with busyness at year-end, and to be pulled into this every year at the year-end is more than my life can take."

　The one listening to Hirame's complaint was the madam of the Kyōbashi bar.

"Madam."

　I called out.

"Yes, what is it? Are you awake?"

　The madam said this, leaning her face over mine with a smile.

　I let the tears flow.

"Separate me from Yoshiko."

　Words came out that even I hadn't expected.

　The madam raised herself up and let out a faint sigh.

　Then I made another truly unexpected blunder of a remark, one that was so comic and so foolish it defied description.

"I'm going somewhere there are no women."

　Ha ha ha, first Hirame burst out laughing in a loud voice, then the madam too began giggling, and I too, with tears still streaming, became red-faced and smiled wryly.

"Yes, that would be good."

　said Hirame, still laughing loosely.

"It would be good to go somewhere with no women. Things don't go well when there are women around. Somewhere with no women — what a splendid idea."

　Somewhere with no women. Yet that stupid delirium of mine was later to be realized in a terribly grim manner.

　Yoshiko seemed to have gotten it into her head that I had drunk the poison in her place, and was even more flustered around me than before, not laughing at anything I said, unable to speak properly — so I too found it stifling to be in the apartment room, and inevitably went out and continued drinking cheap spirits as before. However, since the Dial incident, my body had visibly grown thin and wasted, my limbs felt heavy, my cartoon work grew increasingly sluggish, and with the money Hirame had left as a get-well gift that time (Hirame presented it saying "this is from Shibuta's regards," making it seem like money from himself personally, but it seemed to be money from my older brothers back home. By that time, unlike when I had fled Hirame's house, I had grown dimly able to see through Hirame's pompous performance, so I slyly pretended to notice nothing and respectfully thanked Hirame for the money — yet why Hirame and the others went through such elaborate contrivances, I understood and yet didn't understand, and couldn't help finding it strange) — using that money, I steeled myself and went alone to a hot spring resort in southern Izu, but that sort of leisurely hot spring touring was not in my nature at all. When I thought of Yoshiko the loneliness was boundless, I was far from the composed state of sitting in a room at an inn gazing at the mountains, I didn't even change into a inn robe or get into the bath, and instead ran outside, dived into some grimy tea shop, drank spirits as if bathing in them, and only returned to Tokyo having made my health worse.

　It was a night of heavy snowfall in Tokyo. I was walking drunkenly through the back streets of Ginza, murmuring over and over in a low voice the song "here is how many hundreds of miles from home, here is how many hundreds of miles from home," scattering the falling snow with the tip of my shoe — and suddenly I vomited. That was my first hemoptysis. A great rising-sun flag was formed in the snow. I crouched for a while, then scooped up snow from an unstained area with both hands, and wept as I washed my face.

　Oh, where does this narrow path lead?

　Oh, where does this narrow path lead?

　A pitiable little girl's singing voice reached me faintly from a distance, like an auditory hallucination. Misfortune. In this world there are many miserable people — indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say there are only miserable people — but their misfortunes are things they can protest loudly against "society," and "society" easily understands and sympathizes with their protests. But all my misfortune stems from my own sinfulness, and there is no one I can complain to. If I even start to murmur a single word of complaint, not just Hirame but every person in the world would certainly be astonished that I had the audacity to say such a thing. I don't know whether I am what people vulgarly call "selfish," or the opposite, too timid — I can't make sense of myself — but I seem in any case to be a mass of sin, and the more I am left to myself, the more I become unhappy, with no concrete means of prevention.

　I stood up, thinking I should get some appropriate medicine, entered a nearby pharmacy, looked up and met the eyes of the woman there — and instantly she raised her head like a flash of light had hit her, eyes wide, standing stock-still. Yet in those wide eyes there was no look of astonishment or disgust — there was something almost like the look of someone seeking salvation, of longing. Ah, this person too must certainly be unhappy, and unhappy people are sensitive to others' unhappiness too — I thought, and then noticed she was standing unsteadily on crutches. Suppressing the urge to rush to her side, while continuing to look into each other's faces, tears came to my eyes. Then from the woman's large eyes too, tears began to overflow and fall.

　Without a word, I left that pharmacy, staggered home to the apartment, had Yoshiko make salt water for me to drink, silently went to bed, and the next day too, pretending to have a slight cold, lay in bed all day. That night, unable to bear the anxiety about my secret hemoptysis any longer, I got up and went to that pharmacy again, and this time, laughing, I honestly and easily confessed all my physical circumstances to the woman and asked her for advice.

"You must stop drinking."

　We were like family.

"I might have become an alcoholic. Even now I want to drink."

"You mustn't. My husband too, despite having tuberculosis, used to say he was killing the bacteria with alcohol, and soaked himself in it, shortening his own life."

"I can't bear the anxiety. I'm too frightened, I simply can't manage."

"I'll give you some medicine. Just stop drinking, at least."

　The woman (a widow with one son who had entered a medical school in Chiba or somewhere, soon contracted the same illness as his father, and was currently on leave from school and hospitalized; there was a bedridden stroke victim of a father-in-law at home; and the woman herself had suffered infantile paralysis at age five and one leg was completely useless) — she moved around on her crutches, clip-clop, gathering various medicines from this shelf and that drawer.

　This is a blood-builder.

　This is a vitamin injection. And here is the syringe.

　These are calcium tablets. And diastase, so as not to upset your stomach.

　What's this, what's that — she explained five or six kinds of medicine with affection, but her affection too was too deep for me. At the end, the woman said: "And this — for those absolutely unbearable moments when you simply must drink" — and quickly wrapped a small box in paper.

　Morphine injection.

　The woman said it was less harmful than alcohol, and I believed her — partly because by then I had begun to find the state of drunkenness from alcohol genuinely unclean, and partly there was joy at being able, after such a long time, to escape from the Satan called alcohol. Without any hesitation, I injected that morphine into my own arm. Anxiety, agitation, shyness — all cleanly removed, and I became quite cheerful and voluble. And once I had the injection, forgetting even my physical weakness, I threw myself into my cartoon work, and ideas of such peculiar amusement would arise that I would burst out laughing at my own drawings.

　Starting at one vial a day, it became two, and by the time it was four, I could no longer work without it.

"You mustn't. If you become addicted, it'll be terrible."

　When the pharmacy woman said that to me, I began to feel I had already become a fairly serious addict — (I am extremely susceptible to others' suggestions. If someone says "don't spend this money," and then adds "but knowing you..." I get a strange feeling that not spending it would be wrong, that I'd be betraying their expectations, and I always immediately spend the money) — and the anxiety about addiction made me seek even more of the drug.

"Please! One more box. I'll definitely pay the bill at the end of the month."

"The bill can be anytime, but the police are troublesome, you see."

　Ah, always around me there is something murky and dark and suspicious, the atmosphere of a person in the shade.

"Please, somehow manage it, please, won't you? I'll give you a kiss."

　The woman's face reddened.

　I pressed further:

"Without the medicine I can't make any progress at all with my work. For me, it's like a stimulant."

"In that case, wouldn't a hormone injection be better?"

"Don't insult me. It's either alcohol or that medicine — one or the other, or I can't work."

"Alcohol won't do."

"Exactly. And you know, since I started using that medicine I haven't had a single drop of alcohol. My physical condition is much better because of it. I don't intend to spend my whole life drawing bad cartoons — from now on, I'll stop drinking, fix my body, study, and definitely become a great artist. This is a critical time for me. So please, all right? Shall I give you a kiss?"

　The woman laughed:

"Oh dear. Don't blame me if you get addicted."

　Clip-clop went the crutches as she went to the shelf for the medicine.

"I can't give you a whole box. You'd use it all at once. Half, then."

"Stingy. Well, it can't be helped."

　I went home and immediately injected one vial.

"Does it hurt?"

　Yoshiko asked me, nervously.

"Of course it hurts. But to improve the efficiency of my work, I have to do this whether I like it or not. Haven't I been very energetic lately? Now then, work. Work, work."

　I was exuberant.

　Sometimes in the deep of night I knocked on the pharmacy door. The woman would appear, moving with her crutches clip-clop in her sleeping clothes, and I would suddenly hug her and kiss her, pretending to cry.

　The woman would silently hand me a box.

　The moment I truly came to understand that drugs were, like spirits — no, even more so — loathsome and foul things was already too late, and I had become a complete addict. Truly the height of shamelessness. To obtain the drug, I began copying erotic prints again, and even entered into a sordid relationship in the literal sense with that crippled pharmacy widow.

　I want to die, I should die, it's all beyond recovery, no matter what I do, no matter what I try, things only get worse, I only pile shame on shame, there is no hope of riding bicycles to see the waterfall through new green leaves, nothing but foul sins piling on base sins, suffering intensifying and growing stronger, I must die, I have to die, being alive is itself the source of sin — even feeling all this at my wits' end, I still found myself only going back and forth between the apartment and the pharmacy in a near-deranged state.

　No matter how much I worked, my drug use was increasing proportionally, so the accumulated drug debt was rising to a terrifying amount, the woman would be on the verge of tears when she saw my face, and I too would weep.

　Hell.

　The last resort to escape from this hell — with a resolve so desperate I was staking God's very existence on it, telling myself that if this failed there was nothing left but to hang myself — I wrote a long letter to my father in my hometown, confessing my true circumstances in their entirety. (I couldn't bring myself to write about the women, but everything else.)

　The result was only worse — days and days passed with no reply, and the anxiety and agitation from that only made me increase my drug dosage.

　That afternoon, when I had quietly resolved to inject ten vials all at once that night and jump into the Okawa river, Hirame appeared — seeming to have sniffed it out with a demon's intuition — bringing Horiki with him.

"I hear you've been coughing up blood."

　Horiki sat cross-legged before me and said this, and smiled more gently than I had ever seen him smile before. That gentle smile was so kind and welcome that I involuntarily turned my face away and let the tears fall. And that single gentle smile of his completely broke me down and buried me.

　I was put in an automobile. You must be hospitalized at any rate, leave the rest to us — Hirame urged me in a subdued tone, (one that I could only describe as merciful, a quietly gentle tone), and I, as if emptied of all will and judgment, simply kept crying quietly and meekly followed the two men's instructions. Yoshiko made four of us, and we rode in the automobile for a very long time, and when the surroundings had grown dim, we arrived at the entrance to a large hospital in the midst of a forest.

　I had assumed it was a sanatorium.

　I received an examination from a young doctor with an oddly gentle, courteous manner, and then the doctor said, almost as if blushing:

"Well, you'll rest here quietly for a while."

　And then Hirame, Horiki, and Yoshiko prepared to leave me there alone — but Yoshiko handed me a bundle wrapped in cloth containing a change of clothes, and then silently drew out from her sash the syringe and the remaining supply of that drug. She must have been thinking it was just a vitality booster all along.

"No, I don't need it anymore."

　That was, truly, a remarkable thing. Refusing when offered something — that had happened perhaps only once in my entire life up to that point. My misfortune was the misfortune of one incapable of refusal. The terror of refusing when offered something was this: that in both the offerer's heart and my own heart, a whitish irreparable crack would form. Yet at that moment, I naturally refused the morphine I had been frantically craving in near-delirium. Had I been struck by Yoshiko's, one might call it, "divine ignorance"? In that instant, perhaps I had already ceased to be an addict.

　Yet immediately after, led by that young doctor with his bashful smile, I was shown into a certain ward, and the lock clicked shut behind me. It was a mental hospital.

　The stupid delirium I had babbled while swallowing the Dial — "going somewhere with no women" — had been realized in a truly peculiar manner. In that ward there were only male lunatics; the orderlies too were all male; there was not a single woman.

　By now I was no longer a sinner — I was a lunatic. No — I was most certainly not mad. Not for a single moment had I been mad. Yet, ah — madmen mostly say exactly that about themselves, it seems. In other words, those put into this hospital are considered lunatics; those not put in are considered normal.

　I ask God: is passive non-resistance a sin?

　At Horiki's strange, beautiful smile I wept, and forgetting all judgment and resistance I got in the automobile and was brought here, and became a lunatic. Even if I'm released from here one day, I will still be a lunatic — no, a ruined man (廃人) — a brand struck into my forehead.

　No longer human.

　I had, by now, completely ceased to be a human being.

　I had come here in early summer, and through the iron-grated window I had been able to see red water-lily flowers blooming in the small pond in the hospital garden; three months passed, the cosmos flowers in the garden began to bloom, and unexpectedly my oldest brother came from home, bringing Hirame, to take me away. He told me that Father had died of a gastric ulcer at the end of last month, that they would no longer question my past, that they intended not to cause me financial worry, that I didn't need to do anything — but in return, even though there might be things I was reluctant to leave behind, I should leave Tokyo immediately and begin a convalescent life in the countryside. Any loose ends from what I had done in Tokyo had been handled mostly by Shibuta, so I needn't worry about that. All of this he said in the usual earnest, strained tone.

　The mountains and rivers of home seemed to rise before my eyes, and I nodded faintly.

　Truly a ruined man.

　From the time I learned Father had died, I became even more empty and hollow. Father was gone — that familiar yet terrifying presence that had never left my breast for an instant was gone. I felt as though the vessel of my suffering had been emptied out. I even came to think that perhaps the reason the vessel of my suffering had been so oppressively heavy was because of Father. All motivation drained away. I had lost even the capacity to suffer.

　My oldest brother kept his promises to me exactly. Four or five hours south of the town where I was born and raised by train, there was a coastal hot spring village, unusually warm for the northeast of Japan. On the outskirts of that village he purchased for me a thatched house, with five rooms but quite decrepit — the plaster peeling from the walls, the pillars eaten by insects, barely worth repairing — and attached to me a hideous old maid with shockingly red hair, close to sixty.

　Three and some years have now passed since then. During that time the old maid named Tetsu violated me in strange ways on several occasions, we sometimes started something like a married couple's quarrel, my chest complaint waxed and waned, I put on weight and lost it, coughed up blood-streaked phlegm, and yesterday I told Tetsu to go to the village pharmacy and buy some Calmotin, and she came back with a box of Calmotin in a different shape from usual. I didn't particularly pay it any attention, took ten tablets before bed but wasn't sleepy at all, thought that was strange, and then my stomach started feeling odd and I hurried to the toilet, where there was fierce diarrhea, and then made three more trips to the toilet in a row. Deeply puzzled, I looked carefully at the medicine box, and it was a laxative called Henomotin.

　I lay on my back with a hot-water bottle on my stomach, thinking to give Tetsu a scolding.

"This isn't Calmotin. It's Henomotin."

　I started to say that, and then broke into helpless laughter. The "ruined man" — it seems this, somehow, is a comedy noun. Trying to sleep, taking a laxative, and furthermore the laxative is called Henomotin.

　Now, I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

　Everything simply passes.

　In the world of what they call "human beings," where I have lived in shrieking agony, that alone was the single thing that seemed to approach truth.

　Everything simply passes.

　This year I will turn twenty-seven. My white hair has increased so noticeably that most people take me for over forty.