No Longer Human

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 Horiki 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 use 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 sin 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 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 Shizuko'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,