No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

128
•till afraid of human beings, and before I could meet
even the customers in the bar I had to fortify myself
by gulping down a glass of liquor. The desire to see
frightening things—that was what drew me every
night to the bar where, like the child who squeezes
his pet all the harder when he actually fears it a
little, I proclaimed to the customers standing at the
bar my drunken, bungling theories of art.
A comic strip artist, and at that an unknown one,
knowing no great joys nor, for that matter, any great
sorrows. I craved desperately some great savage joy,
no matter how immense the suffering that might ensue,
but my only actual pleasure was to engage in
meaningless chatter with the customers and to drink
their liquor.
Close to a year had gone by since I took up this
debased life in the bar in Kyobashi. My cartoons were
no longer confined to the children's magazines, but
now appeared also in the cheap, pornographic magazines
that are sold in railway stations. Under a silly
pseudonym I drew dirty pictures of naked women to
which I usually appended appropriate verses from
the Rubaiyat.
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
pursuit