A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe

through a pane of frosted glass, a dozen pell-mell lemons glistened with suchrawness that the nerves of Bird’s weakened stomach quaked at the sight of them.
    “Do you always buy so many lemons?” Having struggled frantically into his pants and buttoned his shirt up to the neck, Bird was in possession of himself again.
    “It depends, Bird,” Himiko replied with terrific indifference, as if she were trying to impress on Bird the boredom of his question. Bird, rattled again, “When did you get back, anyway? Did you drive around in that MG until dawn?” Instead of answering, Himiko merely stared at him mockingly, so Bird hurried to add, as if the report were crucial: “Two friends of yours came around in the middle of the night. One seemed to be just a boy and the other was a middle-aged gentleman with a head like an egg; I got a look at him from behind the curtain. But I didn’t say hello.”
    “Say hello? Naturally, you didn’t have to,” said Himiko, unmoved. Bird took his wristwatch out of his jacket pocket and checked the time—nine o’clock. His class began at ten. A cram-school instructor brave enough to stay home without notifying the office or to show up late for a class would have to be quite a man. Bird was neither so dauntless nor so dim of wit. He tied his necktie by feel.
    “I’ve been to bed with each of them a few times and they think that gives them the right to come over here in the middle of the night. The young one is a freaky type; he’s not specially interested in just the two of us sleeping together; his dream is to be around when I’m in bed with someone else so that he can help out. He always waits until somebody is with me here and then he comes around. Even though he’s fantastically jealous!”
    “Have you given him the chance he’s looking for?”
    “Certainly not!” Himiko snapped. “That boy has a thing for adults like you; if you ever got together he’d do everything he could to please you. Bird, I bet you’ve had that kind of service lots of times before. Weren’t there boys below you in college who worshiped you? And there must be students in your classes who are particularly devoted. I’ve always thought of you as a hero figure for kids in that kind of sub-culture.”
    Bird shook his head in denial and went into the kitchen. He realized as the soles of his feet touched the chilly wooden floor that he had not put on his socks, and wasn’t that going to be a chore! If he put pressureon his stomach when he bent over to look for his socks he might throw up again. Bird winced. But it felt good to tread the floor in bare feet, and grasping a lemon with wet fingers while water from the tap pummeled his hands was pleasurable too, if only mildly. Bird selected a large lemon, cut it in half, and squeezed the juice into his mouth. A sensation of recovery he remembered well dropped cold and tingly with lemon juice from his throat toward his tyrannized stomach. Bird returned to the bedroom and began looking for his socks, carefully holding himself straight up.
    “That lemon really seems to have done the job,” he said to Himiko gratefully.
    “You may vomit again but this time it’ll taste of lemon; it might be nice.”
    “Thanks a lot for the encouragement.” Bird watched the contentment the juice had brought him scatter like mist before a wind.
    “What are you looking for? You look like a bear hunting a crab.”
    “My socks,” Bird murmured; his bare feet struck him as ridiculous.
    “In your shoes, so you can put them on together when you leave.”
    Bird looked down at Himiko doubtfully as she lay on the floor in her blanket and supposed this was the custom here whenever one of her lovers bundled into bed. She probably took the precaution so that her friends could flee the house in their bare feet with their shoes in hand if a bigger and wilder lover should appear.
    “I’d better be going,” Bird said. “I have two classes this morning. Thanks a lot for last night