One of Takeichi's predictions came true, the other went astray. The inglorious prophecy that women would fall for me turned out just as be said, but the happy one, that I should certainly become a great artist, failed to materialize. I never managed to become anything more impressive than an unknown, second-rate cartoonist employed by the cheapest magazines. I was expelled from college on account of the incident at Kamakura, and I went to live in a tiny room on the second floor of Flatfish's house. I gathered that minute sums of money were remitted from home every month for my support, never directly to me, but secretly, to Flatfish. (They apparently were sent by my brothers without my father's knowledge.) That was all—every other connection with home was severed. Flatfish was invariably in a bad humor; even if I smiled to make myself agreeable, he would never return the smile. The change in him was so extraordinary as to inspire me with thoughts of how contemptible—or rather, how comic—human beings are who can metamorphize themselves as simply and effortlessly as they turn over their hands. Flatfish seemed to be keeping an eye on me, as if I were very likely to commit suicide—he must have thought there was some danger I might throw myself into the sea after the woman—and he sternly forbade me
to leave the house. Unable to drink or to smoke, I spent my whole days from the moment I got up until I went to bed trapped in my cubicle of a room, with nothing hut old magazines to read. I was leading the life of a
