about thirty (she had been married at one time but was later separated), and the younger a short, round-faced girl who looked fresh out of high school. The ground floor of the house was given over to a shop where small quantities of stationery supplies and sporting goods were offered for sale, but the principal source of income was the rent from the five or six tenements built by my late uncle. Takeichi, standing haplessly in my room, said, "My ears hurt." "They must've got wet in the rain." I examined his ears and discovered they were both running horribly. The lobes seemed filled to the bursting with pus. I simulated an exaggerated concern. "This looks terrible. It must hurt." Then, in the gentle tones a woman might use, I apologized, "I'm so sorry I dragged you out in all this rain." I went downstairs to fetch some cotton wool and alcohol. Takeichi lay on the floor with his head on my lap, and I painstakingly swabbed his ears. Even Takeichi seemed not to be aware of the hypocrisy, the scheming, behind my actions. Far from it—his comment as he lay there with his head pillowed in my lap was, "I'll bet lots of women will fall for you!" —It was his illiterate approximation of a compliment. This, I was to learn in later years, was a kind of demoniacal prophecy, more horrible than Takeichi could have realized. "To fall for," "to be fallen for" —I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar
