No Longer Human

THE SECOND NOTEBOOK (part1)

On the shore, at a point so close to the ocean one might imagine it was there that the waves broke, stood a row of over twenty fairly tall cherry trees with coal-black trunks. Every April when the new school year was about to begin these trees would display their dazzling blossoms and their moist brown leaves against the blue of the sea. Soon a snowstorm of blossoms would scatter innumerable petals into the water, flecking the surface with points of white which the waves carried back to the shore. This beach strewn with cherry blossoms served as the playground of the high school I attended. Stylized cherry blossoms flowered even on the badge of the regulation school cap and on the buttons of our uniforms.
A distant relative of mine had a house nearby, which was one reason why my father had especially selected for me this school of cherry blossoms by the sea. I was left in the care of the family, whose house was so close to the school that even after the morning bell had rung I could still make it to my class in time if I ran. That was the kind of lazy student I was, but I nevertheless managed, thanks to my accustomed antics, to win popularity with my schoolmates.
This was my first experience living in a strange town. I found it far more agreeable than my native place. One might attribute this, perhaps, to the fact that

my clowning had by this time become so much a part of me that it was no longer such a strain to trick others. I wonder, though, if it was not due instead to the incontestable difference in the problem involved in performing before one's own family and strangers, or in one's own town and elsewhere. This problem exists no matter how great a genius one may be. An actor dreads most the audience in his home town; I imagine the greatest actor in the world would be quite paralyzed in a room where all his family and relatives were gathered to watch him. But I had learned to play my part. I had moreover been quite a success. It was inconceivable that so talented an actor would fail away from home.

The fear of human beings continued to writhe in my breast—I am not sure whether more or less intensely than before—but my acting talents had unquestionably matured. I could always convulse the classroom with laughter, and even as the teacher protested what a good class it would be if only I were not in it, he would be laughing behind his hand. At a word from me even the military drill instructor, whose more usual idiom was a barbarous, thunderous roar, would burst into helpless laughter.
Just when I had begun to relax my guard a bit, fairly confident that I had succeeded by now in concealing completely my true identity, I was stabbed in the back, quite unexpectedly. The assailant, like most people who stab in the back, bordered on being a simpleton—the puniest boy in the class, whose scrofulous face and floppy jacket with sleeves too long for him was complemented by a total lack of proficiency in his studies and by such clumsiness in military drill and physical training that he was perpetually designated as an "onlooker."Not surprisingly, I failed to recognize the need to be on my guard against him.
That day Takeichi (that was the boy's name, as I recall) was as usual "onlooking" during the physical training period while the rest of us drilled on the horizontal bar. Deliberately assuming as solemn a face as I could muster, I lunged overhead at the bar, shouting with the effort. I missed the bar and sailed on as if I were making a broad jump, landing with a thud in the sand on the scat of my pants. This failure was entirely premeditated, but everybody burst out laughing, exactly as I had planned. I got to my feet with a rueful smile and was

brushing the Hand from my pants when Takeichi, who had crept up from somewhere behind, poked me in the back. He murmured, "You did it on purpose."

I trembled all over. I might have guessed that someone would detect that I had deliberately unused the bar, but that Takeichi should have been the one came as a bolt from the blue. I felt as if I had seen the world before me burst in an instant into the raging flames of hell. It was all I could do to suppress a wild shriek of terror.
The ensuing days were imprinted with my anxiety and dread. I continued on the surface making everybody laugh with my miserable clowning, but now and then painful sighs escaped my lips. Whatever I did Takeichi would see through it, and I was sure he would soon start spreading the word to everyone he saw. A t this thought my forehead broke out in a sweat; I stared around me vacantly with the wild eyes of a madman. If it were possible, I felt, I would like to keep a twenty-four hours a day surveillance over Takeichi, never stirring from him, morning, noon or night, to make sure that he did not divulge the secret. I brooded over what I should do: I would devote the hours spent with him to persuading him that my antics were not "on purpose" but the genuine article; if thing9 went well I would like to become his inseparable friend; but if this proved utterly impossible, I had no choice but to pray for his death. Typically enough, the one thing that never occurred to me was to kill him. During the course of my life I have wished innumerable times that I might meet with a violent death, but I have never once desired to kill anybody. I thought that in killing a dreaded adversary I might actually be bringing him happiness.
In order to win over Takeichi I clothed my face in the gentle beguiling smile of the false Christian. I strolled everywhere with him, my arm lightly around his scrawny shoulders, my head tilted affectionately towards him. I frequently would invite him in honeyed, cajoling tones to come and play in the house where I was lodging. But instead of an answer he always gave me only blank stares in return.
One day after school was let out—it must have been in the early summer— there was a sudden downpour. The other students were making a great fuss about