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By Root 444 0

all, I wonder if I should start with the hideaway. It makes little difference where I do start. But it’s easy to begin talking about that day. It was then, about two weeks ago, that I was to leave the city for a week on business. It was the first trip I had planned since leaving the hospital; perhaps it was also a day that greatly impressed you. Ostensibly, the purpose of the trip was to inspect progress in constructing a printing-ink factory in Osaka. But this was a pretext. Actually on that day, I shut myself up in my room at the S— Apartments, putting the finishing touches to my plans. Here is a sample from the diary entry for that day:

May 26. Raining. I went to visit the S— Apartments I located through a newspaper advertisement. A child, playing in the front garden, broke out crying as soon as she saw my face. But geographically the location is good and the arrangement of the rooms almost ideal, so I shall settle on this one. There is a piercing, pungent smell of new wood and fresh paint. The room next door seems to be vacant. Something tells me I could probably rent that one too.…

But at the S— Apartments I did not use another name, nor did I try to conceal my identity. Perhaps this appears indiscreet, but I had my own scheme. Having gone this far with the deception about my face, there was nothing to be done about it. Actually, some little girl about primary-school age, playing in front of the entryway, had taken one look at me—I must have appeared like something out of a nightmare—and begun sobbing. Of course, the superintendent was stupidly affable, doubtless because it was his business.…

No, the affability wasn’t confined to the superintendent.… Unfortunately, almost everybody I met gave me, ungrudging, only affability. As long as things did not go any further, everyone put up a fine show. And that was to be expected. If they did not want to look me square in the face, at least they had to be affable, I suppose. Anyway thanks to that, I was able to avoid unnecessary inquisitiveness. Shut off by a wall of affability, I was always completely alone.

Perhaps because the S— Apartments had been so recently constructed almost half the eighteen units were still empty. Although I did not request it, the superintendent showed me to the farthest room on the second floor, next to an emergency stairway. That’s the long and short of it. Of course, his picking out that particular unit for me was incontestably valuable. The bathroom was ordinary, not first-class; a desk was provided along with two chairs; and there was a terrace-like bay window which the other rooms did not have. Furthermore, a parking lot with four or five places was located at the bottom of the emergency stairway, and from there one could get out directly by a side driveway. This was quite useful too. I had to be prepared from the start, so I immediately paid a three-months’ deposit. At the same time, I told the superintendent to buy bedding from a near-by shop and have it delivered. The man was increasingly less able to conceal his delight and kept on prattling endlessly about the sunniness of the place and the excellence of the ventilation. When those subjects of conversation were exhausted, he would go on jabbering about himself. But when he held out the key to me, it slipped from his grasp—luckily—and fell to the floor, making a sharp clatter. With an abashed expression, he hastily tore the seal from the gas-inlet valve and departed. Thank God! If false veneer always came off so easily, what a relief it would be.

IT HAD already become so dark I could not count the fingers on the hand I held before my face. The room, unused to human habitation, was cold and unaffable. But this was better than an affable man. I had grown terribly familiar with darkness since the event in question. How wonderful it would be, frankly, if everybody in the world would suddenly lose his sight or forget the existence of light. Immediately, there would be agreement about form. Everybody would accept the fact that a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread whether triangular or round.