footsteps as I approached the door, and I could hear Shizuko talking with Shigeko. "Why does he drink?" "It's not became he likes liquor. It's because he's too good, because . . ." "Do all good people drink?" "Not necessarily, but ..." "I'm sure Daddy'll be surprised." "Maybe he won't like it. Look! It's jumped out of the box." "Like the funny man in the comics he draws." "Yes, isn't it?" Shizuko's low laugh sounded genuinely happy. I opened the door a crack and looked in. I saw a small white rabbit bounding around the room. The two of them were chasing it. (They were happy, the two of them. I'd been a fool to come between them. I might destroy them both if I were not careful. A humble happiness. A good mother and child. God, I thought, if you listen to the prayers of people like myself, grant me happiness once, only once in my whole lifetime will be enough! Hear my prayer!) I felt like getting down on my knees to pray then and there. I shut the door softly, went to the Ginza, and did not return to the apartment. My next spell as a kept man was in an apartment over a bar close by the Kyobashi Station. Society. I felt as though even I were beginning at last to acquire some vague notion of what it meant. It is the struggle between one individual
and another, a then-and-there struggle, in which the immediate triumph is everything. Human beings never submit to human beings. Even slaves practice their mean retaliations. Human beings cannot conceive of any means of survival except in terms of a single then-and- there contest. They speak of duty to one's country
