THE THIRD NOTEBOOK : PART ONE
One of Takeichi's predictions came true, the other went astray. The
inglorious prophecy that women would fall for me turned out just as be
said, but the happy one, that I should certainly become a great artist,
failed to materialize.
I never managed to become anything more impressive than an
unknown, second-rate cartoonist employed by the cheapest magazines.
I was expelled from college on account of the 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 hut old magazines to read. I was leading the life of a
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