No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

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it possible she actually believed after all that it was
just an energy-building medicine?
"No," I said, "I won't need it any more."
This was a really rare event. I don't think it is
an exaggeration to say that it was the one and only
time in my life that I refused something offered to
me. My unhappiness was the unhappiness of a person
who could not say no. I had been intimidated by the
fear that if I declined something offered me, a yawning
crevice would open between the other person's
heart and myself which could never be mended
through all eternity. Yet I now refused in a perfectly
natural manner the morphine which I had so desperately
craved. Was it because I was struck by Yoshiko's
divine ignorance? I wonder if I had not already ceased
at that instant to be an addict.
The young doctor with the bashful smile immediately
ushered me to a ward. The key grated in
the lock behind me. I was in a mental hospital.
My delirious cry after I swallowed the sleeping
pills—that I would go where there were no women—
had now materialized in a truly uncanny way: my
ward held only male lunatics, and the nurses also were
men. There was not a single woman.
I was no longer a criminal—I was a lunatic. But
no, I was definitely not mad. I have never been mad
for even an instant. They say, I know, that most lima-