Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

Café Chanoir was packed with customers. Even after pushing through the glass door and stepping inside, I couldn't immediately find my friends. I stopped for a moment. Jazz hurled raw flesh onto my senses. At that moment, the laughing face of a woman appeared before my eyes. I stared at it with an awkward intensity. Then the woman raised a white hand. Beneath that hand, I finally discovered my friends. I moved closer in that direction. And when passing by that woman, her gaze and mine crossed without colliding.

Around one of the tables there, three young men sat encircling it in silence as though annoyed by the orchestra. They would merely exchange brief eye signals when they saw me. On the table amidst smoke, whiskey glasses gleamed coldly. I sat there joining their silence.

I used to meet them here every night.

I was twenty. I had lived almost entirely in solitude until then. But my age no longer afforded me the calm needed to live entirely alone. And nothing had seemed more unbearable than that season passing from spring to summer. At that time, these friends invited me to join them at Café Chanoir. I wanted them to accept me. And I agreed. That evening, I met the girl one of them—Maki—was desperately trying to claim as his own.

That girl was laughing boisterously amidst the orchestra. Her beauty made me think of a fruit so ripe it seemed ready to fall from the branch at any moment. It had to be plucked before it fell. The girl's crisis drew me in.

Maki wanted her with the voracity of a starving man. His fierce desire awakened my first desire within me. My misfortune begins there...... Suddenly, one of them arched back on his chair and turned toward me. He was moving his mouth as if saying something. But the music kept me from making it out. I leaned my face closer to him.

“Maki’s trying to slip that girl a letter tonight.”

He repeated it in a slightly raised voice. At that voice, Maki and another friend also turned toward us. They smiled earnestly. And once again, they returned to the same silence as before. I alone changed color. I tried to hide that with cigarette smoke. However, the silence that had felt pleasant until now suddenly began to suffocate me. Jazz constricted my throat. I snatched the glass. I attempted to drink it. But the sight of my own frenzied eyes staring back from the bottom of the glass terrified me. I could no longer stay there.

I fled to the veranda. The dimness there cooled my feverish eyes. And without being seen by anyone, I could gaze steadily at the girl buffeted by the electric fan in the distance. The way she contorted her face against the wind lent her an unexpected divinity. Suddenly, the contours of her face quivered. She turned this way and began laughing. For an instant, I believed she laughed because she noticed me watching her intently from the veranda. But I immediately realized my own mistake. The figure of me standing on the dim veranda couldn't possibly be visible from her direction. Had someone signaled her to come? I suspected whether that was Maki. She turned resolutely in this direction and began walking.

I felt my hand heavy like a fruit. I placed it on the veranda's handrail. The handrail covered my hand in dust.

2

That night, like a speeding bicycle falling, my heart suddenly collapsed. I had derived every velocity of my heart from her. Now, I have lost it all at once. It seems I can no longer rise again by my own strength alone.

“It’s the telephone.” Mother said this and entered my room. I did not respond. Mother scolded me. I finally looked up at Mother’s face. And “Please just leave me be as I am now.” I made that expression to Mother. Mother looked at me with concern and exited the room.

Even when night fell, I no longer attempted to go to Café Chanoir. I no longer attempted to go to her place, to the friends' places. I remained motionless in my room. And I made every effort to do nothing. I leaned my elbows on the desk, supporting my head with both hands. Under my elbow lay a book that always remained open to the same page. And on that page was depicted such a monster—he possessed a skull so heavy he could not support it himself. And he was always rolling it around him. From time to time he would open his jaw and, with his tongue, peel off the grass moistened by his own breath. And once, he unknowingly ate up his own legs. And nothing felt more familiar to me than this monster.

Yet it's impossible to keep living in pain like that forever. I knew this. Then why didn't I try to pull myself out of that suffering? The truth was, I'd been waiting without even knowing it myself. Waiting for her love to belong not to Maki but me; waiting for some friend to come tell me this in wide-eyed amazement; waiting for a single miracle.

One night toward dawn, I had a dream. I lay on my back with Maki, sleeping on what seemed to be a grassy area within Ueno Park. Suddenly I opened my eyes. Maki was still sleeping soundly. Before I knew it, I saw her appear from across the grass with another waitress, talking in low voices as they approached us. She was telling the other woman that the one she truly loved was actually me, and that what she had thought was Maki delivering my letter turned out to be Maki’s own letter. And they passed right before us without noticing us in the slightest. I felt an extraordinary bliss. I glanced furtively at Maki. Maki had opened his eyes before I knew it.

“You were sleeping quite well, weren’t you?” I said. “Who, me?” Maki made a strange face. “Wasn’t it you who’d been sleeping?”

I had closed my eyes before I knew it. “There, you’ve fallen asleep again.” Listening to Maki’s voice like that, I fell rapidly back into sleep.

Then I truly opened my eyes on the bed. And that dream made me clearly aware of my own unrealized hope for a miracle. The expectation of that miracle evoked fresh pain within me even as it grew all the stronger through that very act. And that, colluding with the unbearable loneliness of night, forcibly dragged me back to Café Chanoir.

Café Chanoir. Nothing had changed there. The same music, the same conversations, tables stained in identical fashion. Amidst these things I desired to find her and Maki unchanged from before, and myself alone transformed beyond recognition. Yet instantly I felt a dark foreboding. To my eyes she did nothing but avoid my gaze.

“What’s this? You’re looking like a damn fool.”

“What’s wrong with you?” While trying to assume my usual pose, I answered my friends.

“I’d been a bit under the weather.”

Maki stared at me. And he said: “Now that you mention it, you looked like you were in such pain the other night.”

“Yeah.” I stared at Maki suspiciously. I feared people seeing that I was suffering. And yet, from the instinct of a wounded person who cannot help but probe their own injuries with their own fingers, I was seized by a desire to clearly know what was causing my suffering. After futilely searching for her face, I stared at Maki again and said. “What happened to that girl?” “Huh?” Maki deliberately put on a look of incomprehension. Then he suddenly smiled as if grimacing. That smile spread to my face as well. I felt myself beginning to lose my own will.

Suddenly, my friends’ voices shattered that silence.

“Maki’s finally got his hands on that one.” Then another voice sounded.

“This morning was his first time having her.” A feeling I had never experienced before seized me. I couldn’t tell whether it was painful or not. My friends were moving their mouths incessantly. But I could no longer catch any words from them. I suddenly felt the lingering presence of that contagious smile still drifting across my face. That was truly unexpected even to myself. Yet I felt that I had grown terribly distant even from this surface of myself. Through that, like a diver, I measured the depth of the pain I was sinking into. And just as the sound of waves clashing on the sea’s surface barely reached the ocean floor, the music and clatter of dishes barely reached me.

I made every effort to resurface through alcohol's power. "He drinks like there's a hole in him." "He seems distressed." "His lips are trembling."

“What’s causing him such suffering?” While gradually resurfacing bit by bit, I finally became sensitive to those friends’ seemingly concerned gazes. However, they hadn’t seen through me at all. I succeeded in making them believe I was ill. I no longer had even the energy to search for her face.

After leaving Café Chanoir and parting with my friends, I got into a taxi alone. I was being shaken powerlessly while staring at the driver’s large shoulders. The surroundings suddenly darkened. The car passed through the forest of Ueno Park to take a shortcut. “Hey” I involuntarily tried to place my hand on the driver’s shoulder. Because that suddenly made me recall Maki’s large shoulders. But my heavy hand hardly tried to leave my body. My heart was constricted by sorrow. The headlights illuminated only a portion of the lawn. That lawn suddenly revived this morning's dream within me. The face of her in the dream drew near enough to touch my face. However, that face clumsily comforted me.

3

Midsummer days. The intense sunlight, just as it obscured the view of goldfish in a bowl, didn't allow me to clearly see the sorrow within my heart. And the heat paralyzed all my senses. I could hardly comprehend what surrounded me. I was just dazedly existing amid the smell of frying pans, the glare off laundry, and the roar of automobiles passing beneath my window.

But when night came, my sadness became clearly visible to me. One by one, all sorts of memories came flooding back. The park's memory came to the forefront. Then that one alone rapidly grew larger, and all other memories were hidden behind it. I was terribly afraid of this memory. And trying to separate it from myself, I began to struggle like a madman.

I walked without caring where. I walked simply because I didn’t want to be inside myself. What I needed was to be far away not just from her and my friends, but even from myself. I feared all memories, and I feared performing any action that might bring new memories. For that reason, I did not try to do anything other than pollute the sidewalk with my own shadow.

One night, a young woman wearing a yellow sash passed by me, smiling as she went. I followed her with a kind of pleasure. But when she entered a shop, I walked away without waiting at all. I immediately forgot her. Two or three days later, I noticed a young woman wearing a yellow sash walking through the crowd again. I quickened my pace. Yet even when I caught up and looked, I could no longer tell if she was the same woman from days before. And finding myself so absent-minded pleased my sorrow.

Sometimes, small bars facing the sidewalk pulled me in. In the dim, smoke-hazed interior, I dirtied my table with cigarette ashes and liquor stains. And finally, that soiled table made me recall the long, long sidewalk that my shadow had polluted all night. I felt utterly exhausted. I left that place, immediately leaped into a taxi, and then leaped into bed. And I fell into sleep like a stone.

One night, while walking through the crowd, I was vaguely watching a young man approaching from ahead. Then that young man stopped in front of me. It was one of my friends. I suddenly burst out laughing while grasping his hand.

“Oh, it’s you.” “Did you forget about me?”

“Ah, I completely forgot!”

I said with deliberate cheerfulness. However, even as I looked at him, I did not overlook how my failure to recognize him—how utterly absent-minded I had been—seemed to be causing him sorrow.

“Why didn’t you come to us?” “I didn’t meet anyone at all.” “I didn’t want to meet anyone at all.”

“Hmph... Then you don’t know about Maki either.”

“I don’t know.” Then he began walking in silence without uttering a word. I sensed that his impending talk about Maki would inevitably overturn my heart once more. Yet I followed him like a dog.

“That woman was an angel, you know.” He pronounced the word “angel” contemptuously.

"Maki often took that woman to baseball games and the cinema." "At first, by Maki's telling, she'd been utterly bewitching." "But then Maki went and made this roundabout proposal about sleeping together." "Next thing you know, her whole manner toward him changed completely." "After that? Her coldness near about killed him with misery." "Can't tell if she's clueless about men's hearts or just gets off on torturing them." "Arrogant bitch or plain stupid—take your pick.—Hey! Whiskey!" "You having any?"

“I don’t need any.” I shook my head. I felt it as if it were someone else’s head. “And then...” My friend continued. “Maki suddenly vanished somewhere. When we were wondering what happened, yesterday he came swaggering back.” “Turns out he’d been in Kobe for a week—wearing himself out roaming bars every day to exhaust those swollen desires of his.” “Now he’s got that look like all the bile in his gut’s settled.” “More practical than I gave him credit for.”

While feeling my head gradually fill with the buzzing of bees, I silently listened to my friend's story. During that time, I occasionally looked up at my friend's face. That made me recall my own self who had been so absent-minded as I stared at that face in the crowd earlier without realizing it was him, and then made me recall all the pain that had been consuming me to such an extent.

4

For several days prior, I had been conditioning myself not to recall her face at all. This made me believe she no longer existed. Yet it was like growing accustomed to my room's disarray until I stopped noticing it altogether—like convincing myself the pipe buried beneath book piles had vanished. Moving those books would inevitably reveal the pipe beneath.

In this way, when she reappeared before me, her very presence revived within me a love for her that was no different from before. However, my reason had piled up between her and me my wounded self-esteem and all the memories of pain. Nevertheless, through all those things, a single poignant emotion—the doubt that perhaps it was still me whom she truly loved—began to invade my being. That is the definite sign of love. And by acknowledging that, I inevitably experienced the despairing feelings of a patient who cannot escape his own illness.

Time corrodes pain. But it does not sever it. I rather desired to be operated on. That very impatience of mine gave me the bold idea to go alone to Café Chanoir to meet her.

I looked around inside the café like a first-time customer. The faces of several familiar waitresses, who smiled at me with apparent curiosity, blocked my view of what I was searching for. My eyes, hesitating, finally found her among them. She was leaning against the Orchestra Box near the entrance. That unnatural posture made me believe that even while knowing I had entered, she was still feigning unawareness of it. I watched only her direction like a patient anxiously observing each movement of the surgeon performing the operation.

Suddenly the orchestra started. She quietly left the Orchestra Box. And without looking at me, she walked toward my direction with apparent nonchalance. And then, five or six steps away from me, she slightly raised her face. Her eyes collided with mine. Then she suddenly formed a smile and, walking with difficulty, drew near me. And then she stopped silently before me. I too was silent. I could do nothing but remain silent.

The suffocating silence of surgery.

I could do nothing but stare at her hand. Perhaps from staring too intensely—or maybe because my eyes had grown tired—her hand suddenly appeared to tremble. Then dizziness darkened my forehead, brought confusion, and finally began to fade away.

“Oh, cigarette ash has fallen.” Her subtle notice informed that the surgery had ended.

The course of my surgery was utterly miraculous. Her face suddenly appeared before me, vivid and impossibly large, refusing to leave that space. That face—like a close-up on screen erasing all else—made Maki’s existence vanish from before me along with every memory I possessed and every shred of my future. Was this the true course or merely a transient one? Such distinctions no longer mattered to me. Before me existed nothing but her enormous beautiful face. And beyond that remained only a kind of painful pleasure her visage had birthed within me—one without which I could no longer live.

I found myself once again going to Café Chanoir every night as before. By now, none of my friends came here anymore. Paradoxically, this awakened in me a boldness I had completely lacked when among them—a boldness that began to govern my every action.

And she—

One night, as I waited for the drink I had ordered, she happened to be clearing the table left by a neighboring customer who had departed. At that moment, staring fixedly at her, I discovered she was moving plates and knives with gestures so slow they seemed almost like motions through water. The slowness of her movements appeared to arise naturally from a sensitive awareness that she was being watched and loved by me. I could not help but feel that slowness as something supernatural—irrefutable proof she loved me.

Another night, a waitress said to me.

“The things you people do—we just don’t understand them.” That woman’s use of “you all” clearly seemed to mean me and Maki and the others. However, I deliberately took that to mean it was about her and me. I disliked how that woman laughed while flashing her gold teeth. I despised that woman and did not respond.

In such a manner, under subtle scrutiny, while obtaining confirmation of her love, I would sometimes find myself assaulted by fits of desire. Her supple limbs made me anticipate the pleasure of tightly binding them to my own like a necktie. And I could no longer look at her teeth without sensing the faint sound they made colliding with mine. The very memory of Maki having gone out with her to parks and cinemas—that memory which inflicted pain whenever recalled—simultaneously made me believe in that fantasy's possibility. How should I make that request to her? I recalled Maki's method. The method through love letters. But that unfortunate precedent had made me superstitious. I searched for other methods. And I chose one from among them. The method of waiting for an opportunity.

The best opportunity. My glass became empty. I called the waitress. She started coming toward me. At the same time, the other waitresses also began approaching. The two immediately noticed this exchange, smiled while hesitating. Then she strode toward me as though resolved. This manifestation of her granted me unforeseen courage. “Claret!” I told her. “And then...”

She slightly moved her foot away from my table and brought her face closer to mine. "Tomorrow morning—would you come to the park? There's something I need to talk to you about." "Is that so…" While blushing faintly, she drew back from me. Then, returning to her previous posture with one foot slightly advanced, she lowered her face and walked away. I waited with the ease of someone releasing a tame bird from their hand, trusting it would immediately return. Sure enough, she brought the Claret again. I signaled her with a glance.

“Is around nine okay?” “Ah…” She and I exchanged slightly sly smiles. Then she left my table.

When I left Café Chanoir, I had no idea how to spend the time until tomorrow morning. To me, that interval seemed profoundly hollow. I got into bed without desiring sleep in the slightest. Suddenly, Maki’s face floated up. But immediately her face floated up over it, and while smiling slyly, hid it away. Then I slept for a brief while.—And when I rose from bed, it was still early morning. I paced around the house, spoke loudly to everyone regardless of who they were, and barely touched my breakfast. My mother treated me like I was mad.

5

At last she came.

I stood up from the bench while dropping my cane. My heart throbbed violently. I couldn't see her face clearly.

I sat down on the bench with her again. I became somewhat accustomed to being by her side. I realized I was seeing her face for the first time in sunlight. It looked slightly different from the face I had always seen under electric light. The sun imparted a raw vitality to her cheeks. I gazed at this transformation, moved. She seemed afraid of being stared at so intently by me. Yet she remained cautious. She hardly moved. And occasionally let out a light cough. I kept talking incessantly about something or other. I wanted silence yet feared it. What I desired was the silence that only holding her hand and pressing my body against hers would permit us.

I talked about myself. Then I talked about friends. And occasionally I would ask about her. However, I wasn’t waiting for her reply. As if afraid of that, I began talking about myself again. And then my talk suddenly turned to friends. Suddenly, she interrupted me. “Are Mr. Maki and the others angry with me?” Her words suddenly stripped away the drug that had been numbing my groin.

I felt the pain I had experienced before rising within me once more. I finally managed to answer that I hadn't met Maki since then either. And I felt as though my breath were stopping. I couldn't utter another word. Despite this violent transformation in me, she remained silent as before. To me, she in that state seemed terribly cold. Eventually, seeing that I would do nothing about the increasingly unnatural silence, she began trying to break it through her own efforts. But to do so, she could only awkwardly utilize her light cough that had become strangely noticeable after I fell silent.

“I’ve been coughing so much like this... I wonder if there’s something wrong with my chest?” I suddenly remembered her with sentimentality. I could no longer tell whether her heart was hard or fragile. In my terrible pain, I began to indulge in a fantasy—with a strange sort of pleasure—of her tuberculosis bacteria gradually invading my lungs. She continued her efforts. “Last night after closing up the shop, I took my dog for a walk around here, you know. It was around two o’clock. It was terribly dark. When I did so, someone started following me. But you see, when they saw my dog, they went off somewhere. That’s because it’s a very big dog, you see.”

I had completely surrendered myself to her ministrations. She somehow managed to reapply medicine to my wound and thoroughly bind it with bandages. And I felt the comfort of being with her gradually finding equilibrium with the pain of being with her.

One hour later, we stood up from the bench. I noticed that the area around her kimono's waist was terribly wrinkled. The wrinkles formed by that bench decisively sealed my happiness.

When we parted, we promised to go see a moving picture tomorrow afternoon.

The next day, I spotted her walking through the park from inside the car. My small cry brought the car to an abrupt halt. I almost fell forward while signaling to her. Then the car, having picked her up, started moving while making a half-turn, and one minute later passed in front of Chanoir, which in the afternoon had almost no customers entering and where only the figures of waitresses could be glimpsed. This small adventure pleased us timid ones.

Cinema Palace. Emil Jannings' Varieté. As I entered, I momentarily lost sight of her in the artificial darkness. Then I found something resembling her right beside me. Yet I couldn't confirm whether it was truly her. My hand hesitated while seeking hers. And my eyes could only register human limbs - magnified tenfold from their actual size - moving ceaselessly across the screen.

While drinking soda water at the basement soda fountain, she extolled Emil Jannings to me. "What marvelous shoulders." Saying this, she tried to make me recall how Jannings had acted out the murder scene using only his shoulders. What floated into my eyes at that moment, however, was not Jannings' shoulders but Maki's shoulders that bore some resemblance to them. I suddenly recalled a certain day in June when I had been walking through town with Maki. While waiting for him to buy a newspaper, I had watched a woman pass in front of us. The woman passed by without looking at me, steadily gazing up at Maki's broad shoulders... Within that memory, before I knew it, that unknown woman and she had swapped places. Within that memory, I saw her staring intently at Maki's shoulders. And I believed she was now unconsciously conflating Jannings' shoulders with Maki's shoulders. However, I was not being unfair. I found Maki's shoulders truly magnificent. And just as she desired to have those sturdy shoulders pressed against her own, I too found myself unable to resist desiring the same.

I realized I no longer tried to see the world except through her eyes. A single symptom that manifests in us when our hearts are tightly bound together like a necktie. It always accompanied pain akin to losing consciousness. I could no longer distinguish which of the two hearts entwined within me was mine and which was hers.

6

When we were about to part, she

“What time is it?” she asked me. I extended the hand wearing the wristwatch. She squinted her eyes and peered at it. I thought that expression was beautiful.

After being alone for a while, I suddenly remembered that wristwatch. While walking, I was thinking about how the money I had received from my father had completely run out. I had to somehow procure a little pocket money on my own. First, I recalled the many books I had sold off numerous times in such situations. However, almost no books remained with me now. It was at this moment that I suddenly remembered my wristwatch.

However, I didn't know how to convert such things into money. I remembered one friend who was accustomed to these matters. I resolved to go ask him at his apartment.

I found the friend shaving his soap-lathered face in his cramped room. Beside him, another friend I knew leaned against a chair, exhaling a large cloud from the pipe. Then there was another figure facing the wall, lying sprawled on the bed like a burlap sack. I couldn't tell who that was.

“Who is that?” “It’s Maki.” Hearing our voices, he turned his body toward us.

“Oh, it’s you.” He looked at me while half-opening his eyes.

I stared back at Maki with a nervous, angry-looking gaze. I thought about how long it had been since I last saw him. Yet anxiety that our actions since yesterday had already become known to them—that they might sarcastically confront me about it—stripped me of all such emotions. However, all three sat in melancholy silence, though I detected no accusatory tone in that silence directed at me. I immediately perceived this. Then growing bold, while feeling toward them the same intimacy as before, I sat down on the edge of the bed where Maki lay sprawled.

However, I could no longer see Maki in the same way as before. In my gaze as I looked at Maki, her gaze inevitably intermingled. As I gazed entranced at his face, I could not help but intensely envy it. I felt the need for a new mask to hide the turmoil within me from them. I lit a cigarette and, while carving a smile onto my face, said resolutely.

“How've you been lately? Don’t you go to Chanoir anymore?”

“Yeah, I don’t go.” Maki answered in a heavy tone. Then he suddenly turned to the friends and said, “There’s a much more interesting place than that.” “Old Man and Hag?” The friend responded while moving his razor. The first time I heard the name Hag. My imagination vividly depicted it as an obscene place. I thought such “dens of vice” were the most suitable places for Maki to spew out the desires that had accumulated within him. And compared to myself, who seemed endlessly sorrowful, I found his rough way of living to be far more robust. And I found myself feeling something like a desire to lean on him.

“Are you going there again tonight?” “I want to go, but I don’t have the money.” “Don’t you have any?” The razor turned toward me. “I don’t have any either.” At that moment, I remembered my wristwatch. I wanted to appear endearing to them.

“Why don’t we turn this into cash?”

I removed my wristwatch and handed it to Maki. “Oh, this here’s a nice watch.” While saying that, I stared steadily at Maki—as he held my wristwatch in his hand—with girlish eyes.

Around ten o'clock, we entered Jiji-Baa. While entering, I tripped over a chair and knocked it onto a thin man's leg. I laughed. The man stood up and tried to grab my arm. Maki shoved the man's chest from the side. The man staggered and plopped back down onto his original chair. As he tried to stand up again, the man next to him stopped him. The man cursed us. We sat around a dirty table, laughing. Then, a woman wearing a thin, semi-transparent kimono approached us there. And she forced her way between me and Maki and sat down.

“Want a drink?” Maki placed his own whiskey glass before the woman. She made no move to take it, instead gazing through the glass as if studying its contents. One friend winked exaggeratedly—one eye squeezed shut, the other grotesquely wide—while jerking his chin toward them in mockery. I answered with a flutter of eyelids. This woman bore some resemblance to her from Café Chanoir. The likeness unsettled me profoundly. Yet it only recalled cheap photographic reproductions. Every detail of her features proved crude beyond comparison when measured against that original.

The woman finally picked up the whiskey glass, took a sip, then placed it back before Maki. Maki drank down the remainder in one gulp. The woman, gradually pressing her body against Maki in a blatant manner, glared at him from under her brows, pursed her lips, and thrust out her chin. Such actions imparted an unexpected charm to that woman. That formed a striking contrast before me with the reserved—and therefore even cold-seeming—movements of the woman from Café Chanoir. I realized that while these two women seemed similar in some way, they were in fact similar in no way at all—that is to say, they were alike in all respects except every aspect. And there I felt as though I could perceive Maki’s current pain.

Maki's pain had begun seeping into me by degrees. There in that space, my pain and his and hers all coalesced. I grew terrified these three elements might combine into something explosive within me. By chance, her hand brushed against mine. "My, what cold hands you have!"

The woman gripped my hand. I felt nothing but a professional coldness in it. However, my hand was gradually growing damp with sweat from hers. Maki poured whiskey into my glass. That gave me a good opportunity. While forcibly pulling my hand away from the woman, I took the glass. However, I was already afraid of getting any more drunk. I was afraid of myself—this self who might suddenly burst into tears before Maki when drunk. And I deliberately knocked over my glass on the table.

After one o'clock, we left Jiji-Baa. The taxi we had boarded was cramped for us four. I was forcibly seated on Maki's lap. His thighs were large and sturdy. I blushed girlishly at the ears. Maki spoke behind me.

“Did you like it?”

“Damn, a place like that…” I jabbed my elbow into his chest. At that moment, I clearly conjured up the woman from Jiji-Baa’s face in my mind. Then the woman from Café Chanoir’s face rose up alongside it. And those two faces overlapped in my head, tangled together, then faded away while spreading like cigarette smoke. I felt myself to be utterly exhausted. Absentmindedly, I picked my nose with my finger. I noticed the finger was still smeared with white powder.