for me to be able to remember that old man's face so accurately I could draw it, is surely a proof of how bad the sushi was and how it chilled and distressed me. I should add that even when I have been taken to restaurants famous for sushi I have never enjoyed it much. Tsuneko was living in a room she rented on the second floor of a carpenter's house. I lay on the floor sipping tea, propping my cheek with one hand as if I had a horrible toothache. I took no pains to hide my habitual gloom. Oddly enough, he seemed to like seeing me lie there that way. She gave me the impression of standing completely isolated; an icy storm whipped around her, leaving only dead leaves careening wildly down. As we lay there together, she told me that she was two years older than I, and that she came from Hiroshima. "I've got a husband, you know. He used to be a barber in Hiroshima, but we ran away to Tokyo together at the end of last year. My husband couldn't find a decent job in Tokyo. The next thing I knew he was picked up for swindling someone, and now he's in jail. I've been going to the prison every day, but beginning tomorrow I'm not going anymore." She rambled on, but I have never been able to get interested when women talk about themselves. It may be because women are so inept at telling a story (that is, because they place the emphasis in the wrong
places), or for some other reason. In any case, I have always turned them a deaf ear. "I feel so unhappy." I am sure that this one phrase whispered to me would arouse my
