“What kind of problems?” I really had no idea what he was driving at.
“Isn’t there something weighing on your heart?”
“For example?”
“‘For example’! What do you yourself want to do now?”
“Do you think I ought to get a job?”
“No, don’t ask me. Tell me what you would really like.”
“But even supposing I said I wanted to go back to school . . .”
“Yes, I know, it costs money. But the question is not the money. It’s what you feel.”
Why, I wonder, couldn’t he have mentioned the simple fact that the money would be forthcoming from home? That one fact would probably have settled my feelings, but I was left in a fog.
“How about it? Have you anything which might be described as aspirations for the future? I suppose one can’t expect people one helps to understand how difficult it is to help another person.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m really worried about you. I’m responsible for you now, and I don’t like you to have such halfhearted feelings. I wish you would show me that you’re resolved to make a real effort to turn over a new leaf. If, for example, you were to come to me to discuss seriously your plans for the future, I would certainly do what I could. But of course you can’t expect to lead your former life of luxury on the help that poor old Flatfish can give—don’t give yourself any illusions on that score. No—but if you are resolute in your determination to begin again afresh, and you make definite plans for building your future, I think I might actually be willing to help you to rehabilitate yourself if you came to me for help, though Heaven knows I haven’t much to spare. Do you understand my feelings? What are your plans?”
“If you won’t let me stay here in your house I’ll work . . .”
“Are you serious? Do you realize that nowadays even graduates of Tokyo Imperial University . . .”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of getting a job with a company.”
“What then?”
“I want to be a painter.” I said this with conviction.
“Wha-a-t?”
I can never forget the indescribably crafty shadow that passed over Flatfish’s face as he laughed at me, his neck drawn in. It resembled contempt, yet it was different: if the world, like the sea, had depths of a thousand fathoms, this was the kind of weird shadow which might be found hovering here and there at the bottom. It was a laugh which enabled me to catch a glimpse of the very nadir of adult life.
He said, “There’s no point in discussing such a thing. Your feelings are still all up in the air. Think it over. Please devote this evening to thinking it over seriously.”
I ran up to the second floor as though driven, but even when I lay in bed nothing of a particularly constructive nature occurred to me. The next morning at dawn I ran away from Flatfish’s house.
I left behind a note, scrawled in pencil in big letters on my writing pad. “I shall return tonight without fail. I am going to discuss my plans for the future with a friend who lives at the address below. Please don’t worry about me. I’m telling the truth.” I wrote Horiki’s name and address, and stole out of Flatfish’s house.
I did not run away because I was mortified at having been lectured by Flatfish. I was, exactly as Flatfish described, a man whose feelings were up in the air, and I had absolutely no idea about future plans or anything else. Besides, I felt rather sorry for Flatfish that I should be a burden on him, and I found it quite intolerably painful to think that if by some remote chance I felt like bestirring myself to achieve a worthy purpose, I should have to depend on poor old Flatfish to dole out each month the capital needed for my rehabilitation.
When I left Flatfish’s house, however, I was certainly not seriously entertaining any idea of consulting the likes of Horiki about my future plans. I left the note hoping thereby to pacify Flatfish for a little while, if only for a split-second. (I didn’t write the note so much out of a detective-story strategem to gain a little more time for my escape—though, I must admit that the desire was at least faintly present—as to avoid causing Flatfish a sudden shock which would send him into a state of wild alarm and confusion. I think that might be a somewhat more accurate presentation of my motives. I knew that the facts were certain to be discovered, but I was afraid to state them as they were. One of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sort of embellishment to every situation—a quality which has made people call me at times a liar—but I have almost never embellished in order to bring myself any advantage; it was rather that I had a strangulating fear of that cataclysmic change in the atmosphere the instant the flow of a conversation flagged, and even when I knew that it would later turn to my disadvantage, I frequently felt obliged to add, almost inadvertently, my word of embellishment, out of a desire to please born of my usual desperate mania for service. This may have been a twisted form of my weakness, an idiocy, but the habit it engendered was taken full advantage of by the so-called honest citizens of the world.) That was how I happened to jot down Horiki’s name and address as they floated up from the distant recesses of my memory.
After leaving Flatfish’s house I walked as far as Shinjuku, where I sold the books I had in my pockets. Then I stood there uncertainly, utterly at a loss what to do. Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship. I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful relationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy. I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. (I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty.) It was hardly to be expected that someone like myself could ever develop any close friendships—besides, I lacked even the ability to pay visits. The front door of another person’s house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there with a dank, raw smell.
I had no friends. I had nowhere to go.
Horiki.
Here was a real case of a true word having been said in jest: I decided to visit Horiki, exactly as I had stated in my farewell note to Flatfish. I had never before gone myself to Horiki’s house. Usually I would invite him to my place by telegram when I wanted to see him. Now, however, I doubted whether I could manage the telegraph fee. I also wondered, with the jaundiced intelligence of a man in disgrace, whether Horiki might not refuse to come even if I telegraphed him. I decided on a visit, the most difficult thing in the world for me. Giving vent to a sigh, I boarded the streetcar. The thought that the only hope left me in the world was Horiki filled me with a foreboding dreadful enough to send chills up and down my spine.
Horiki was at home. He lived in a two-storied house at the end of a dirty alley. Horiki occupied only one medium-sized room on the second floor; downstairs his parents and a young workman were busily stitching and pounding strips of cloth to make thongs for sandals.
Horiki showed me that day a new aspect of his city-dweller personality. This was his knowing nature, an egoism so icy, so crafty that a country boy like myself could only stare with eyes opened wide in amazement. He was not a simple, endlessly passive type like myself.