you about gambling. When I lived in Shitaya, there was a girl in the neighbourhood about twenty-four years old. She was a pretty little piece, I can tell you! I used to watch her passing outside my window. She strutted past in her straw sandals with her head high in the air. She wore a big gold chain over her breast and always carried a shining patent leather handbag. She had a gold chain on the bag also. She lived in a poor looking sort of house and I got to wondering how she could afford to doll herself up like that. Then I heard she’d been gambling and made quite a pile. ‘That’s how to get rich,’ I thought to myself. ‘Even women can do it.’ Then early one morning on my way to work I saw a girl hurrying out of a low-class brothel. I just saw her back but there was something familiar about the way she walked. I followed her for a while and then saw her face as she got on a tram. It was the girl with the gold chain, all right! So much for gambling!”
“That’s right,” said a serious-looking man on the bench. “You can’t always hit it lucky. And even if you do, it doesn’t always work out. Why, only last week I saw in the paper that a certain man won a gambling pool or something. He’d been hard up all his life and then all of a sudden about half a million yen fell in his lap. What did he do? He went stark raving mad and murdered his wife with a hatchet! No, it’s no good when things change too much…. I’m not so sure it isn’t best to jog along the way we do.” The man sat looking straight ahead after he had spoken. He seemed quite moved by what he had said. After a while he got up and left. Then one by one the others began to leave, some to start their night-shifts, some for the public baths, some for home. Soon they had all gone except myself, a tin-smith called Chō and two others.
“Is it hard to learn the flute?” said Kichikō, an engineer’s mate. “I’d like to play the flute.”
“What an idea!” said Chō with a smile. “How’s a clumsy ox like you going to play the flute? Anyhow it takes years before you can play an instrument.”
