had driven me willy-nilly into desperate attempts to ingratiate myself with both of them. It was just as if I were bound to them by some ancient debt. It was at this same period that I became the unexpected beneficiary of the kindness of a waitress in one of those big cafes on the Ginza. After just one meeting I was so tied by gratitude to her that worry and empty fears paralyzed me. I had learned by this time to simulate sufficiently well the audacity required to board a streetcar by myself or to go to the Kabuki Theatre or even to a cafe without any guidance from Horiki. Inwardly I was no less auspicious than before of the assurance and the violence of human beings, but on the surface I had learned bit by hit the art of meeting people with a straight face—no, that's not true: I have never been able to meet anyone without an accompaniment of painful smiles, the buffoonery of defeat. What I had acquired was the technique of stammering somehow, almost in a daze, the necessary small talk. Was this a product of my activities on behalf of the movement? Or of women? Or liquor? Perhaps it was chiefly being hard up for cash that perfected this skill. I felt afraid no matter where I was. I wondered if the best way to obtain some surcease from this relentless feeling might not be to lose myself in the world of some big cafe where I would be rubbed against by crowds of drunken guests, waitresses and porters. With this thought in my mind, I went one day alone to a cafe on the Ginza. I had only ten yen on me. I said with a smile to the hostess who sat beside me, "All I've got is ten yen. Consider yourself warned." "You needn't worry." She spoke with a trace of a Kansai accent. It
