Horiki noisily cleared his throat. I ran back up to the roof to escape and collapsed there. The feelings which assailed me as I looked up at the summer night sky heavy with rain were not of fury or hatred, nor even of sadness. They were of overpowering fear, not the terror the sight of ghosts in a graveyard might arouse, but rather a fierce ancestral dread that could not be expressed in four or five words, something perhaps like encountering in the sacred grove of a Shinto shrine the white-clothed body of the god. My hair turned prematurely grey from that night. I had now lost all confidence in myself, doubted all men immeasurably, and abandoned all hopes for the things of this world, all joy, all sympathy, eternally. This was truly the decisive incident of my life. I had been split through the forehead between the
eyebrows, a wound that was to throb with pain whenever I came in contact with a human being. "I sympathize, hut I hope it's taught you a lesson. I won't be coming back. This place is a perfect hell ... But you should forgive Yoshiko. After all, you're not much of a prize yourself. So long." Horiki was not stupid enough to linger in an embarrassing situation. I got up and poured myself a glass of gin. I wept bitterly, crying aloud. I could have wept on and on, interminably. Without my realizing it, Yoshiko was standing haplessly behind me bearing a platter with a mountain of beans on it. "He told me he wouldn't do any ..." "It's all right. Don't say anything. You didn't know enough to distrust others. Sit down. Let's eat the beans." We sat down side by side and ate the beans. Is trustfulness a sin, I
