Once in a while we quarrel like husband and wife. My chest ailment is sometimes better, sometimes worse; my weight fluctuates accordingly. Occasionally I cough blood. Yesterday I sent Tetsu (the old servant) off to the village drugstore to buy some sleeping pills. She came back with a box rather different in shape from the one I'm accustomed to, but I paid it no particular attention. I took ten pills before I went to bed but was surprised not to be able to sleep at all. Presently I was seized with a cramp in my stomach. I rushed to the toilet three times in succession with terrible diarrhea. My suspicions were aroused. I examined the box of medicine carefully—it was a laxative. As I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, a hot water bottle on my stomach, I wondered whether ought to complain to Tetsu. I thought of saying, "These aren't sleeping pills, They're a laxative!" but I burst out laughing. I think "reject" must be a comic noun. I had taken a laxative in order to go to sleep. Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes. That is the one and only thing I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell. Everything passes. This year I am twenty-seven. My hair has become much greyer. Most people would take me for over forty.
EPILOGUE
I never personally met the madman who wrote these notebooks. However, I have a bare acquaintance with the woman who, as far as I
