No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

81
But it lasted only one night. In the morning,
when I woke and got out of bed, I was again the
shallow poseur of a clown. The weak fear happiness
itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool.
Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness. I
was impatient to leave her while things still stood the
same, before I got wounded, and I spread my usual
smokescreen of farce.
"They say that love flies out the window when
poverty comes in the door, but people generally get
the sense backwards. It doesn't mean that when a
man's money runs out he's shaken off by women.
When he runs out of money, he naturally is in the
dumps. He's no good for anything. The strength goes
out of his laugh, he becomes strangely soured. Finally,
in desperation, he shakes off the woman. The proverb
means that when a man becomes half-mad, he will
shake and shake and shake until he's free of a woman.
You'll find that explanation given in the Kanazawa
Dictionary, more's the pity. It isn't too hard for me to
understand that feeling myself!"
I remember making Tsuneko laugh with just
such stupid remarks. I was trying to get away quickly
that morning, without so much as washing my face,
for I was sure that to stay any longer would be
useless and dangerous. Then I came out with that
crazy pronouncement on "love flying out the window,"
which was later to produce unexpected complications.