No Longer Human ( PDFDrive )

98
incident at Kamakura, and I went to live in a tiny
room on the second floor of Flatfish's house. I gathered
that minute sums of money were remitted from home
every month for my support, never directly to me,
but secretly, to Flatfish. (They apparently were sent
by my brothers without my father's knowledge.)
That was all—every other connection with home
was severed. Flatfish was invariably in a bad humor;
even if I smiled to make myself agreeable, he would
never return the smile. The change in him was so
extraordinary as to inspire me with thoughts of
how contemptible—or rather, how comic—human
beings are who can metamorphize themselves as
simply and effortlessly as they turn over their hands.
Flatfish seemed to be keeping an eye on me, as if
I were very likely to commit suicide—he must have
thought there was some danger I might throw myself
into the sea after the woman—and he sternly forbade
me to leave the house. Unable to drink or to smoke,
I spent my whole days from the moment I got up
until I went to bed trapped in my cubicle of a room,
with nothing but old magazines to read. I was leading
the life of a half-wit, and I had quite lost even
the energy to think of suicide.
Flatfish's house was near the Okubo Medical
School. The signboard of his shop, which proclaimed
in bold letters "Garden of the Green Dragon, Art and