No Longer Human

THE THIRD NOTEBOOK: PART ONE

One of Takeichi's predictions came true, the other went astray. The inglorious prophecy that women would fall for me turned out just as he said, but the happy one, that I should certainly become a great artist, failed to materialize.
I never managed to become anything more impressive than an unknown, second-rate cartoonist employed by the cheapest magazines.
I was expelled from college on account of the incident at Kamakura, and I went to live in a tiny room on the second floor of Flatfish's house. I gathered that minute sums of money were remitted from home every month for my support, never directly to me, but secretly, to Flatfish. (They apparently were sent by my brothers without my father's knowledge.) That was all—every other connection with home was severed. Flatfish was invariably in a bad humor; even if I smiled to make myself agreeable, he would never return the smile. The change in him was so extraordinary as to inspire me with thoughts of how contemptible—or rather, how comic—human beings are who can metamorphize themselves as simply and effortlessly as they turn over their hands.
Flatfish seemed to be keeping an eye on me, as if I were very likely to

commit suicide—he must have thought there was some danger I might throw myself into the sea after the woman—and he sternly forbade me to leave the house. Unable to drink or to smoke, I spent my whole days from the moment I got up until I went to bed trapped in my cubicle of a room, with nothing but old magazines to read. I was leading the life of a half-wit, and I had quite lost even the energy to think of suicide.
Flatfish's house was near the Okubo Medical School. The signboard of his shop, which proclaimed in bold letters "Garden of the Green Dragon, Art and Antiques," was the only impressive thing about the place. The shop itself was a long, narrow affair, the dusty interior of which contained nothing but shelf after shelf of useless junk. Needless to say, Flatfish did not depend for a living on the sale of this rubbish; he apparently made his money by performing such services as transferring possession of the secret property of one client to another—to avoid taxes. Flatfish almost never waited in the shop. Usually he set out early in the morning in a great hurry, his face set in a scowl, leaving a boy of seventeen to look after the shop in his absence. Whenever this boy had nothing better to do, he used to play catch in the street with the children of the neighborhood. He seemed to consider the parasite living on the second floor a simpleton if not an outright lunatic. He used even to address me lectures in the manner of an older and wiser head. Never having been able to argue with anybody, I submissively listened to his words, a weary though admiring expression on my face. I seemed to recall having heard long ago from the people at home gossip to the effect that this clerk was an illegitimate son of Flatfish, though the two of them never addressed each other as father and son. There must have been some reason for this and for Flatfish's having remained a bachelor, but I am congenitally unable to take much interest in other people, and I don't know anything beyond what I have stated. However, there was undoubtedly something strangely fish-like about the boy's eyes, leading me to wonder if the gossip might not be true. But if this were the case, this father and son led a remarkably cheerless existence. Sometimes, late at night, they would order noodles from a neighborhood shop— just for the two of them, without inviting me—and they ate in silence, not exchanging so much as a word.

The boy almost always prepared the food in Flatfish's house, and three times a day he would carry on a separate tray meals for the parasite on the second floor. Flatfish and the boy ate their meals in the dank little room under the stairs, so hurriedly that I could hear the clatter of plates.
One evening towards the end of March Flatfish—had he enjoyed some unexpected financial success? or did some other stratagem move him? (even supposing both these hypotheses were correct, I imagine there were a number of other reasons besides of so obscure a nature that my conjectures could never fathom them)—invited me downstairs to a dinner graced by the rare presence of sake. The host himself was impressed by the unwonted delicacy of sliced tuna, and in his admiring delight he expansively offered a little sake even to his listless hanger-on.
He asked, "What do you plan to do, in the future I mean?"
I did not answer, but picked up some dried sardines with my chopsticks from a plate on the table and, while I examined the silvery eyes of the little fish, I felt the faint flush of intoxication rise in me. I suddenly became nostalgic for the days when I used to go from bar to bar drinking, and even for Horiki. I yearned with such desperation for "freedom" that I became weak and tearful.
Ever since coming to this house I had lacked all incentive even to play the clown; I had merely lain prostrate under the contemptuous glances of Flatfish and the boy. Flatfish himself seemed disinclined to indulge in long, heart-to- heart talks, and for my part no desire stirred within me to run after him with complaints.
Flatfish pursued his discourse. "As things stand it appears that the suspended sentence passed against you will not count as a criminal record or anything of that sort. So, you see, your rehabilitation depends entirely on yourself. If you mend your ways and bring me your problems—seriously, I mean —I will certainly see what I can do to help you."
Flatfish's manner of speech—no, not only his, but the manner of speech of everybody in the world—held strange, elusive complexities, intricately presented with overtones of vagueness: I have always been baffled by these precautions so strict as to be useless, and by the intensely irritating little maneuvers surrounding