Page:Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon (Reece).pdf/151

 after day, only to be followed by having supper and going to bed. He tried changing houses but it did not make him any happier than before, talking with his friends did not please him, nor did reading through foreign novels give him any satisfaction. Nay, even the very conditions of nature--the growth of the garden shrubbery, the drops of rain, the bloom and fall of the blossoms--seemed to him to make his humdrum life all the more humdrum, and he was so forlorn he did not know what to do with himself. He keenly felt that he would like, if possible, to make a new love with the young and beautiful woman whom he always saw on the road.

At the age of thirty-four to thirty-five, as a matter of fact, everyone has this type of anguish, and though there are many men around this age, who play with low-grade women, they are after all, hoping only to assuage their loneliness. It is in this age group that there are many men in the world who divorce their wives.

On the way to the office, he encountered every morning a beautiful woman teacher. At that time, he took meeting this woman daily as his only pleasure and gave free rein to his imagination about her. Suppose a love affair materialized, and he took her to a cozy room in nearby Kagurazaka where they could secretly enjoy themselves. . . . What if the two of them took a walk in the suburbs without letting his wife know. . . . No, why stop there, since his wife was, at that time, pregnant, suppose by chance she dies from a difficult delivery, then what if he replaced her with this woman. . . . Would he be able to casually have her as his second wife? He considered such things as he went along.