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 Antiques," was the only impressive thing about the place. The shop itself was a long, narrow affair, the dusty interior of which contained nothing but shelf after shelf of useless junk. Needless to say, Flatfish did not depend for a living on the sale of this rubbish; he apparently made his money by performing such services as transferring possession of the secret property of one client to another— to avoid taxes. Flatfish almost never waited in the shop. Usually he set out early in the morning in a great hurry, his face set in a scowl, leaving a boy of seventeen to look after the shop in his absence. Whenever this boy had nothing better to do, he used to play catch in the street with the children of the neighborhood. He seemed to consider the parasite living on the second floor a simpleton if not an outright lunatic. lie used even to address me lectures in the manner of an older and wiser head. Never having been able to argue with anybody, I submissively listened to his words, a weary though admiring expression on my face. I seemed to recall having heard long ago from the people at home gossip to the effect that this clerk was an illegitimate son of Flatfish, though the two of them never addressed each other as adopter and son. There must have been some reason for this and for Flatfish's having remained a bachelor, but I am congenitally unable to take much interest in other people, and I don't know anything beyond what I have slated. However, there was undoubtedly something strangely fish-like about the boy's
