Wager in Mid-air 175
What made me begin to hate my new occupation, however, was not just the feeling that I was prostituting such talents as I might have; it was the relentless monotony. I soon learned that almost all the workers with whom I had now come to spend my time suffered to a greater or lesser extent from this sense of monotony. They were for ever discussing possible ways of breaking the tedium of their lives.
We would gather in the evening by the benches near the suburban tenements where we lived. One by one we arrived from different directions, exhausted at the end of a long day’s work in the heat. We sat down heavily on the benches or, if there was no longer any room, squatted beside it on the gravel, and indolently fanned ourselves as we chatted away oblivious to the passing of time. Along came a couple of young street-acrobats. One of them danced round with a lion’s mask while the other accompanied him on a tambourine. A girl wearing a red sash came out of the ice-cream parlour opposite where we sat and gave the boy a copper. Later a young woman strolled past with a samisen, her hair fastened in a bun with a green comb, and a baby on her back.
“Not bad looking, eh?”
“I bet she’s an ex-geisha or something. What do you think?”
She walked up and down the street in front of us. Occasionally she stopped and strummed on her samisen. Later a huge, dirty-looking woman in an advanced state of pregnancy waddled past us. We looked at her in fascination. She was the most repulsive woman we had ever seen. … So that day drew slowly to an end.
“A good job? Hell, there’s no such thing as a good job! It’s all a lot of sweat! If anyone thinks it’s fun making a living, he’s crazy.”
“No, we’ll never get anywhere this way. Just sweat away till we croak, that’s all! The only way to make money is gambling.”
“Gambling, eh?” said a large, dark-skinned bricklayer who was squatting next to the bench in his under-shirt. “I’ll tell
