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 rice. So long as Sōichi handed her his monthly pay packet intact, they would have enough to pay a visit to the cinema a couple of times a month, to have a meal in the restaurant of one of the big department stores when they went shopping and even to deposit something in the postal savings account.

“I’m not going to stop you two from living apart if that’s what you’ve decided to do,” Wasao had told them when they left, “but you’ll have to manage your own finances from now on. Of course if you get ill or something I’ll try to help out, but you’d better not count on me too much.”

Kanako determined not to ask him for money whatever happened, and she made her plans for their new budget accordingly. Everything would have been all right if Sōichi had given her his full pay as agreed. But he did so only in their first month. Towards the end of the second month Sōichi took on someone else’s work in the factory and Kanako was happily looking forward to the extra money that he would be earning. When pay day came, however, Kanako found that all her household plans had been in vain. Profiting from the fact that his father no longer was watching him, Sōichi had gone back to his old habit of gambling and had succeeded in losing over half his month’s pay. He came home drunk and without a word threw his pay envelope on the floor. Kanako picked it up and emptied the contents.

“Is this all?” she said, holding up two notes.

Sōichi did not answer. He merely stood there, smoothing his unkempt hair.

When they had moved into their new house, Sōichi had taken out his tool box and busied himself with putting up shelves, installing the wireless that he had brought from his father’s place and other odd jobs. Occasionally he had taken his wife to a shrine festival and they had bought themselves something at a stall—a little potted tree or a cage of singing insects. Or again, he had locked up the house and taken her out to a film. Once they had been to see some Western-style dancing at the pleasure pavilion in Sumida Park and had been