Blue Bamboo: Tales by Dazai Osamu Read Online Free

although nothing he says is the least bit funny, the members of his entourage laugh uproariously at every word, all but slapping their knees. On one such occasion the professor kicked his chair back and rose to his feet in a rage but unfortunately stepped on an orange he’d dropped earlier, squishing it and allowing a startled, feeble shriek to escape his lips. ‘Eek!’ he cried, at which the entire company exploded with laughter. Thus the professor’s righteous anger ended in a sad and pitiful farce. But he is not about to give up. He’s determined to punch that weasel in the nose one day.
    “Hearing his loathsome, grating voice on the radio has put the professor in a most unpleasant mood, and he gulps down a beer. Never having been one to hold his liquor very well, he grows tipsy almost at once. A young girl selling fortunes enters the beer hall. The professor calls her over and in a soft, familiar tone of voice says: ‘How old are you, dear? Thirteen? You don’t say. That means that in another five years... no, four years... no, no, in another three years, you can get married. Now listen carefully. How much is thirteen plus three? H’mm?’ And so on. Even a respected professor of mathematics can behave rather inappropriately when drunk. Now, however, having been somewhat overly persistent in teasing the girl, he realizes he has little choice but to buy one of her fortunes. The professor is not a superstitious man, but tonight, partially because of the radio broadcast, he feels somewhat vulnerable and has a sudden urge to consult the fortune as to what will become of his research, and where his destiny will lead him. When one’s life begins to unravel, one is tempted, sadly enough, to cling to the thread of prophecy.
    “The fortune is of the invisible ink variety. The professor heats the paper with the flame of a match, opening his bleary eyes wide in an attempt to focus on the words as they appear. At first he’s uncertain what he’s seeing—it merely looks like some sort of design—but gradually the lines resolve into clear-cut characters written in a flowing, old-fashioned style:
    JUST AS YOU WISH
    “Seeing this, the professor beams. Well, no, ‘beams’ is hardly the word. Our noble professor erupts with a vulgar-sounding chuckle—‘Er, her, her, her’—then thrusts out his chin and looks about at the other drunken customers. None of them take any particular notice of the professor, but that doesn’t stop him from nodding to each of them and producing a series of silly laughs—‘Ha, ha. Just as you wish! Hee, hee, hee. Excuse me. Ho, ho!’—as he strolls serenely out of the beer hall, his self-confidence thoroughly restored.
    “Outside, a slow-moving river of people flows over the street. It’s quite a crush. People jostling and shoving, all of them dripping with sweat but trying to look composed and indifferent as they shuffle along. They’re walking with no goal or destination in mind, to be sure, but precisely because their daily lives are so dreary they are harboring, all of them, some faint flicker of hope that compels them to stroll through the Shinjuku night with looks of cool composure on their faces. Walk up and down those streets all you like, not a single good thing will come of it. This much is certain. But happiness is being able to hope, however faintly, for happiness. So, at least, we must believe if we are to live in the world of today. Discharged from the beer hall’s revolving door, the professor totters and dives into the city’s sad current of migrant souls and is at once jostled and swept downstream, floundering and flailing as if he were drowning. Tonight, however, of all the members of this vast throng, the professor is quite possibly the one with the greatest confidence. The odds of his obtaining happiness are better than anyone else’s. Recalling his good fortune from time to time as he walks along, he smiles or nods to himself, or raises his eyebrows to give his