Page:Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon (Reece).pdf/181

 lonely anguish of always being one step away from being able to enter the realm of fortune and being left standing outside. It was thus for him the case when he realized that socially. Love! love! love! To think that even now he was at the mercy of such a passive fate; his heart ached to the core at his lack of spirit and his hapless destiny. It occurred to him that he was Turgenev's so-called "superfluous man" and thought of the hero's empty life.

Being unable to stand his desolation, he began to ask for saké in the afternoon. Complaining that his wife was slow in preparations and the side dish for saké on the table did not taste good, he got angry and drank in desperation. Emptying one saké bottle after another, Tokio, in no time, got drunk as a stone. He stopped complaining about his wife. He only hollered "saké, saké" whenever the jug became empty, then, he emptied the new container, gulping the saké down. The timid maid looked aghast at her master, wondering what had gone wrong with him. At first, he had been fondly hugging, patting, and kissing his five-year old son, but when the child, for some reason, began to cry, Tokio lost his temper and spanked him on his buttocks. Three of his children were afraid and perplexed looking at the red face of their father who was not like the father that they used to know. After drinking nearly a he finally sprawled out drunk, not caring even when he overturned the table, and he then began to sing slowly, with an odd beat, a puerile free verse poem which had been popular some ten years before.

You must think that it was only a windstorm That swirled alone in front of your gate