No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

82
I didn't meet my benefactor of that night again
for a whole month. After leaving her my happiness
grew fainter every day that went by. It frightened
me even that I had accepted a moment's kindness: I
felt I had imposed horrible bonds on myself. Gradually
even the mundane fact that Tsuneko had paid
the bill at the cafe began to weigh on me, and I felt
as though she was just another threatening woman,
like the girl at my lodging house, or the girl from the
teacher's training college. Even at the distance which
separated us, Tsuneko intimidated me constantly.
Besides, I was intolerably afraid that if I met again
a woman I had once slept with, I might suddenly
burst into a flaming rage. It was my nature to be very
timid about meeting people anyway, and so I finally
chose the expedient of keeping a safe distance from
the Ginza. This timidity of nature was no trickery
on my part. Women do not bring to bear so much as a
particle of connection between what they do after
going to bed and what they do on rising in the
morning; they go on living with their world successfully
divided in two, as if total oblivion had intervened.
My trouble was that I could not yet successfully
cope with this extraordinary phenomenon.
At the end of November I went drinking with
Horiki at a cheap bar in Kanda. We had no sooner
staggered out of that bar than my evil companion