Again I made a list of the kanji I didn't know. I realize some translations might not be correct if you read the kanji in context, but this was the best I could do, with my still limited knowledge. The list is less than the first pages, so I could read and understand more, which does make me feel just a little more pleased with myself. I will not comment on the story yet, because I feel like I still need to read the pages more than once and more than this timespan, to really comprehend. Some things seems confusing to me, the storyline, but it's hard to pinpoint it exactly were. Maybe it's just feels strange that someone would cheat on their wife.
These vocab lists are very helpful for me. Makes it easier to reference the vocabulary quickly instead of spending so much time looking them up. Thank you!
- Previously, T lets wife touch his fake beard (wife now doesn’t know who is in the dark with her.) つけひげうちじゅう捜してみたが、どこにもいない。
- Scared to be caught, T gets covers himself with a futon a pretends to sleep by fake-snoring. 空いびきをかきながら、Tはもうビクビクものだった。
- Wife believes that it is a misunderstanding and goes back to sleep. 勘違い
- T sneaks out to one of his favourite spots, leaving a hint that it wasn’t him with the wife in bed (cigarette case with random initials.)
- Wife notices that T is gone in the morning. During a search within the house, she finds the case, which surprised her.
- When T gets back home, he feigns ignorance regarding the cigarette case. とぼけてみせる
- In T’s head, the story/situation he experienced seems like it is from a story teller. 落語家
- There isn’t limits in what he can do in conversation, so he continues to answer each quest with ignorance until his wife reveals what she thought happened last night, from start to finish. 一部始終
- Wife still doesn’t know what truly happened.
These two were not as hard to follow as the first two pages; however, there is still a lot of literary/archaic? terms that throw off my comprehension a bit.
Ex.
「とど」
end of pg. 109
会話入りでやってちゃ際限がないから
end of pg. 109
十何町ってなに？
middle-left pg. 108
Without a doubt, an enjoyable read so far. I’m interested to see what is next.
Almost completely spot on! I think one important thing to keep in mind is that the narrator is separate from T. The narrator tells the story of T, so the part about the rakugo refers to the narrator's own telling of the story, and that he shouldn't tell it in too much detail (as a rakugo story teller would). This is also what the 会話入り refers to: the part where the rakugo story teller acts out a story between two people.
A 町 here refers to a block, so '10 and a few blocks'.
I felt like I was sitting with the narrator in an izakaya listening to a ridiculous story...I will reserve my comments on T's wife until I read more...but I'm getting the feeling she's an airhead.
Even though T's character is deeply flawed/immature, the effort he puts into playing a prank on his wife shows a childlike playfulness. I'm interested to see how their relationship develops because there's so much that's wrong between them. Still, I don't hate T, though I don't quite like him either...
I looked up more words this time because I wanted to catch all the humour of the situation. Really curious about the ending...how could all the lies possibly turn out well? It's like watching an accident about to happen.
I'm going to miss your 感想文 after this week, very nice Ai! Haha we'll see what happens at the end. I was expecting a very different ending so I'm curious to hear your opinion.
Although I had to look up fewer words for this segment, I ended up having more points I couldn't understand:
1 - もうしめたものだ - I'm assuming this would be もう閉めたものだ, something like done or case closed?
2 - テクテクと十何町を、行きつけの待ち合いへ歩いた
3 - 夫はしじゅう持ているとのは違う - what is the しじゅう supposed to be here? 始終? and what does it mean in this sentence?
4 - やらふにおちぬ
5 - 殊勝げ
6 - The whole part with 落語家 - how does their conversation relate to a rakugo?
His plan seems to be going well at the end of this segment despite the nighttime spook. I'm not sure if his wife noticed the moustache or if it even fell at all, but I'm guessing since she went to sleep she must have thought him her husband despite the disguise.
1. I've never seen this with kanji, but your interpretation seems good! It's almost a set phrase and it means 'everything has gone according to plan' or 'gotcha!' or 'I've done it!', something along those lines.
2. Which part did you not understand here? It means something like 'He walked over ten blocks toward his regular (place for) encounters.'
3. Correct, it is indeed 始終 and means 'always' here. 'This [thing] is different from the one her husband usually/always carries.' The original sentence is 夫がしじゅう持っているのとは違う。
4. You've parsed it wrong here, it's ふにおちない which is usually written 腑に落ちない.
5. The げ here means 'having the appearance of' or '...-looking'.
6. The implication here is 'if I were to describe the whole conversation in the way a rakugo story teller would, there would be no end, so I will refrain from doing that'.
What I managed to (probably indirectly) translate was thus:
T: did you swap this tobacco container?
It goes without saying, that it was the aforementioned silver cigarette case.
[Comprehension jumps off a cliff]
Wife or T: no. What happened to it?
playing dumb, T (or T's playing dumb while his wife says): but
and then, a bit kinder, (probably) wife: didn't you come home last night?
T: huh?
Continuing to play dumb, T: but, I just got here. Are you saying I got home in the first place?
This raises the tension. With those words, his wife suddenly realises.
Like a storyteller, the beginning of the conversation is endless, so after he ends it by answering a question with a question, his wife realises that she continuously spent some of the evening ??? Being frank???
I was having a great time reading from the second paragraph of the first page until the start of the dialogue, because I understood what was being said, even if I looked up every third word. After the beginning of the dialogue, no amount of dictionaries and Japanese Google searches were clearing my confusion :P
I'll still persevere, if for no other reason, then just in the hopes that there'll be more pages like 108 haha
feigning ignorance even more, T said 'what? but I have mine right here. besides, did you say I came home last night?' here he elevated his pitch slightly. with these words, he startled his wife.
But if I paint you a picture of the entire of the entire conversation in the way a rakugo performer would, there would be no end, so I'll stop it here, but after exchanging questions and answers for a while, finally they arrived at a point where the wife confessed everything about the night before.
just a quick on the spot freestyle translation so don't take it too literally, but I hope this helps at least...
Oh wow, thank you so much! That was really helpful. I came into the dialogue absolutely certain that T would speak first (which then jumbled everything up), after the line
細君がおずおずしながら、聞くんだね
I'd looked up おずおず and the explanation was "相手を恐れて、ためらいながらする様子。おそるおそる。" Which I took to mean "hesitating due to being afraid of the conversation partner" back then. Furthermore, I took 聞く, with that misconception in mind, to mean "listen" instead of "ask". I'm seeing now with rejuvenated morning eyes that the する probably meant "doing something", so thus "doing something hesitatingly due to being afraid" might be the correct meaning.
Also looking back over the text, it's clear my tiredness may have played a part, because it was 家をあけた (開), which makes a lot more sense, not 家をあげた. Oh well.
P.S. this is my first time actually trying to read Japanese literature, is this generally how authors write in Japan? I've never before seen such a cocktail of formal literary Japanese and colloquialism/slang o.o
Like he'll use a word like のであろう but then in the same sentence use 細君, which jsho tells me is familiar language? Or じゃない, or さて, and I've only ever seen こりゃ/そりゃetc in manga or anime haha
1. I presume you were confused by ありやしない? It's a more colloquial way of writing ありはしない→'as for it being there, it did not'. Here it adds the nuance of 'of course' or 'logically' or 'obviously', especially in combination with the なんか. So here the sentence means 'Obviously, at that hour there were no taxis/rickshaws.'
2. 'Something just felt a little off to her.' This 腑に落ちる literally means 'to settle in the gut' so 腑に落ちない means something like 'it did not sit right' or 'it feels off'.
Yeah, you're doing so well! Can't wait to read your responses for day 3! Good luck!
I've just read the first paragraph and am gonna pick up later, so for now I just have one confusion:
二度とヒゲにさわらせないように
I don't really get it. Aside from the confusion between whether 二度 is にど or ふたたび, the confusion from yesterday carries over. Why is he trying to not touch his moustache? Is that what's being said? And what's the ように doing in that sentence? I know its two common meanings are 'like' and 'in order to'. Does he pull up the futon in order to not touch his moustache? That just circles back to the original question.
Hi 晴れ姉! I think the confusion here stems from your understanding of the verb. If it said that he's not trying to touch his own beard, it would say さわらないように, but this is the causative form さわらせないように, which means 'he made sure not to let her touch [his beard]'.
When 二度 is followed by と the reading is almost always にど. But for its meaning as a separate word, it does not really matter which reading you pick, as it still means the same.
I can't keep up even with the slower pace but I'm slogging through it. I also tried to read the Murakami story that had been posted previously, and I'm finding this story both easier and harder. It's less dense in vocabulary and doesn't require me to go to a dictionary every other word, but it's most colloquial and idiomatic and makes it much harder to get a strong grasp of a lot of the grammatical points. I'm getting the general gist but there are a lot of sentences where I really don't know what a particular expression or another is doing in the sentence. For example:
そこにいくらか変わった味がある This was so hard to understand because I couldn't parse theそこにいくらか part. いくらか seems to mean a little bit but I was reading it as some sort of a question instead of something similar to 何か or どうか etc. If I stopped every time I wasn't sure what exactly was going on I'm pretty sure every page would take two hours, as it is I'm skimming for broad understanding and it's still taking quite a while.
The short answer is that いくらか means a little. It does function in the same way that どうか and 何か do. いくら refers to an extent here, so this means something like 'to a certain extent' or 'slightly'.
I know this process can be painful, frustrating and sometimes tedious. But trust me, things will get better. Struggling through a text like this is so important to make progress. Today, one of these pages might take you an hour or even two. But the next story you'll read will go much faster. I remember the first novel I read. Each page took me 6 hours and I still had no idea what was going on. It felt like I had wasted months of my time when I finally got through the first 100 pages. But after taking a week off, I noticed that a lot of the materials that I had been struggling with before suddenly felt much easier. And so I learned: even though it's tough when your in the middle of it, the rewards at the end are really worth the pain!
I find Murakami easier, somehow, but that's also because I'm already know his work and many kanji keep coming back, as well as the same sentence structure and grammar. This story however is completely new to me, and I too find it hard to really understand the grammar and sentence structures which makes it hard to simple follow the story. But I know Bunsuke is right if we keep doing this, we will improve tremendously, I'm sure of that.
The segment this time around seemed to be a bit strange in the context of the read! I wonder if there is a great big mystery or reason for the cheating to occur? Maybe the character had doubts that his wife was being unfaithful and wanted to find out for himself? The pages this time were definitely a bit easier to read but still confusing overall. Hoping to see where this goes!
Hi Kat, the narrator expresses that sometimes people are curious what it would feel like if their wife would cheat on them (but only as a fantasy). And so he starts pretending to be another man for his wife to fall in love with. In this way, his curiousity is satisfied while his wife never actually has to cheat on him do produce that feeling.
These two pages felt easier than the first two. I'm a little confused about whether T intended for his wife to notice the mustache during the night or not. Also, is it implied that they had sex during the previous night ? If so, I completely missed it. Could someone kindly point me in the right direction ?
Hi Jon, there are no implications of sex, but that's probably because it is not relevant to this part of the story. I think the main point is that the wife notices the mustache and is startled by it. I think it's kind of left to our own imaginations whether other stuff happened :D
But yes, he definitely wanted her to notice the mustache, but only in the dark when she couldn't tell it was her husband with a fake beard on, so her imagination could run wild.
Cheat on their wife and pretend to be someone else and than have intercourse with his wife and reveal himself to her, a strange game indeed, now I am curious to read the rest of the story.
Again I made a list of the kanji I didn't know. I realize some translations might not be correct if you read the kanji in context, but this was the best I could do, with my still limited knowledge. The list is less than the first pages, so I could read and understand more, which does make me feel just a little more pleased with myself. I will not comment on the story yet, because I feel like I still need to read the pages more than once and more than this timespan, to really comprehend. Some things seems confusing to me, the storyline, but it's hard to pinpoint it exactly were. Maybe it's just feels strange that someone would cheat on their wife.
P 108-109
悲鳴 ひめい shriek; scream
上げる あげる to raise
決して けっして never; by no means
無理 むり unreasonable
同時に どうじに coincident with
存在 そんざい existence; being
認める したためる to write up
向き むき direction
変える かえる to change
二度と にどと never again
勘違い かんちがい misunderstanding
寝込む ねこむ to stay in bed
床 とこ bed
手早い てばやい nimble; quick; agile
例 れい custom
残す のこす to leave (behind, over)
抜け出す ぬけだす to slip out
庭 にわ garden
越す こす to cross over
翌朝 よくあさ the next morning
驚く おどろく to be surprised
捜して さがす search, to look for
寝坊 ねぼう sleeping in late
違う ちがう to differ (from)
心配 しんぱい worry
服装 ふくそう garments
替える かえる to exchange; to replace?
落語家 らくごか rakugo story teller
際限 さいげん limits; end; bounds
答え こたえ answer; reply; response
一部始終 いちぶしじゅう story; from beginning to end
See Levi's comments ;）したためる is a rare reading. 9 times out of 10 this will be みとめる. 例の～ indeed means 'the aforementioned' or 'the usual'.
Good to know, next time I will know and feel proud, thank you.
These vocab lists are very helpful for me. Makes it easier to reference the vocabulary quickly instead of spending so much time looking them up. Thank you!
Your welcome!
認める - I read this as みとめる, to acknowledge
例 れい - I think in this case it would be "the aforementioned" or "the ~ in question" rather than "custom"
You are absolutely right, normally this is written in kana isn't it, do you know why it is written in kanji in this case? I just wondered.
Quick check on understanding
- Previously, T lets wife touch his fake beard (wife now doesn’t know who is in the dark with her.) つけひげうちじゅう捜してみたが、どこにもいない。
- Scared to be caught, T gets covers himself with a futon a pretends to sleep by fake-snoring. 空いびきをかきながら、Tはもうビクビクものだった。
- Wife believes that it is a misunderstanding and goes back to sleep. 勘違い
- T sneaks out to one of his favourite spots, leaving a hint that it wasn’t him with the wife in bed (cigarette case with random initials.)
- Wife notices that T is gone in the morning. During a search within the house, she finds the case, which surprised her.
- When T gets back home, he feigns ignorance regarding the cigarette case. とぼけてみせる
- In T’s head, the story/situation he experienced seems like it is from a story teller. 落語家
- There isn’t limits in what he can do in conversation, so he continues to answer each quest with ignorance until his wife reveals what she thought happened last night, from start to finish. 一部始終
- Wife still doesn’t know what truly happened.
These two were not as hard to follow as the first two pages; however, there is still a lot of literary/archaic? terms that throw off my comprehension a bit.
Ex.
「とど」
end of pg. 109
会話入りでやってちゃ際限がないから
end of pg. 109
十何町ってなに？
middle-left pg. 108
Without a doubt, an enjoyable read so far. I’m interested to see what is next.
Almost completely spot on! I think one important thing to keep in mind is that the narrator is separate from T. The narrator tells the story of T, so the part about the rakugo refers to the narrator's own telling of the story, and that he shouldn't tell it in too much detail (as a rakugo story teller would). This is also what the 会話入り refers to: the part where the rakugo story teller acts out a story between two people.
A 町 here refers to a block, so '10 and a few blocks'.
とど means 'finally' or 'in the end'.
Happy to hear you're enjoying the project :D
I felt like I was sitting with the narrator in an izakaya listening to a ridiculous story...I will reserve my comments on T's wife until I read more...but I'm getting the feeling she's an airhead.
Even though T's character is deeply flawed/immature, the effort he puts into playing a prank on his wife shows a childlike playfulness. I'm interested to see how their relationship develops because there's so much that's wrong between them. Still, I don't hate T, though I don't quite like him either...
I looked up more words this time because I wanted to catch all the humour of the situation. Really curious about the ending...how could all the lies possibly turn out well? It's like watching an accident about to happen.
I'm going to miss your 感想文 after this week, very nice Ai! Haha we'll see what happens at the end. I was expecting a very different ending so I'm curious to hear your opinion.
Although I had to look up fewer words for this segment, I ended up having more points I couldn't understand:
1 - もうしめたものだ - I'm assuming this would be もう閉めたものだ, something like done or case closed?
2 - テクテクと十何町を、行きつけの待ち合いへ歩いた
3 - 夫はしじゅう持ているとのは違う - what is the しじゅう supposed to be here? 始終? and what does it mean in this sentence?
4 - やらふにおちぬ
5 - 殊勝げ
6 - The whole part with 落語家 - how does their conversation relate to a rakugo?
His plan seems to be going well at the end of this segment despite the nighttime spook. I'm not sure if his wife noticed the moustache or if it even fell at all, but I'm guessing since she went to sleep she must have thought him her husband despite the disguise.
1. I've never seen this with kanji, but your interpretation seems good! It's almost a set phrase and it means 'everything has gone according to plan' or 'gotcha!' or 'I've done it!', something along those lines.
2. Which part did you not understand here? It means something like 'He walked over ten blocks toward his regular (place for) encounters.'
3. Correct, it is indeed 始終 and means 'always' here. 'This [thing] is different from the one her husband usually/always carries.' The original sentence is 夫がしじゅう持っているのとは違う。
4. You've parsed it wrong here, it's ふにおちない which is usually written 腑に落ちない.
5. The げ here means 'having the appearance of' or '...-looking'.
6. The implication here is 'if I were to describe the whole conversation in the way a rakugo story teller would, there would be no end, so I will refrain from doing that'.
Thank you so much for the explanations!
For #2, the words I hadn't understood here were both 十何町 (couldn't find a meaning for 何町) and 行きつけの待ち合い
行きつけの待ち合い
Favourite/preferred place to go/rendezvous point (presumably, for meeting other women.)
Things I didn't understand:
1: かわいらしい悲鳴 (lovely scream???)
2: 家を上げた
3: everything after the dialogue starts
What I managed to (probably indirectly) translate was thus:
T: did you swap this tobacco container?
It goes without saying, that it was the aforementioned silver cigarette case.
[Comprehension jumps off a cliff]
Wife or T: no. What happened to it?
playing dumb, T (or T's playing dumb while his wife says): but
and then, a bit kinder, (probably) wife: didn't you come home last night?
T: huh?
Continuing to play dumb, T: but, I just got here. Are you saying I got home in the first place?
This raises the tension. With those words, his wife suddenly realises.
Like a storyteller, the beginning of the conversation is endless, so after he ends it by answering a question with a question, his wife realises that she continuously spent some of the evening ??? Being frank???
I was having a great time reading from the second paragraph of the first page until the start of the dialogue, because I understood what was being said, even if I looked up every third word. After the beginning of the dialogue, no amount of dictionaries and Japanese Google searches were clearing my confusion :P
I'll still persevere, if for no other reason, then just in the hopes that there'll be more pages like 108 haha
Hahah "comprehension jumps off a cliff", I enjoyed that one.
かわいい悲鳴 is just a tiny or cute shriek.
Couldn't find a 家を上げた, what do you mean?
「この煙草入れ、どっかで取りかえていらっしったのじゃなくって」
(wife) did you exchange your cigarette case for a different one?
いうまでもなく、例の銀製のシガレット・ケース。
of course, it was the aforementioned silver cigarette case.
「いいえ、それ、どうかしたのかい」
(T) no, is something wrong with it?
と、Ｔがとぼけて見せると、
said T, feigning ignorance, to which his wife responded in a slightly childlike tone
「だって」と少しあまえて、「ゆうべ、あなたがもってお帰りなすったのじゃありませんか」
well, didn't you bring it home with you last night?
「へええ」と更にとぼけて「だが、僕のはちゃんと、これ、ここに持っているよ。それに、第一僕がゆうべ帰ったって？」ここで少し調子を高める。この一言で、細君をハッとさせる訳わけだね。
feigning ignorance even more, T said 'what? but I have mine right here. besides, did you say I came home last night?' here he elevated his pitch slightly. with these words, he startled his wife.
などと、落語家みたいに、会話入りでやっちゃ、際限がないから、それはよすとして、よろしく一問一答を繰りかえしたのち、とど、細君が昨夜の一伍一什いちぶしじゅうを、打開けて了うところまでこぎつけた。
But if I paint you a picture of the entire of the entire conversation in the way a rakugo performer would, there would be no end, so I'll stop it here, but after exchanging questions and answers for a while, finally they arrived at a point where the wife confessed everything about the night before.
just a quick on the spot freestyle translation so don't take it too literally, but I hope this helps at least...
Oh wow, thank you so much! That was really helpful. I came into the dialogue absolutely certain that T would speak first (which then jumbled everything up), after the line
細君がおずおずしながら、聞くんだね
I'd looked up おずおず and the explanation was "相手を恐れて、ためらいながらする様子。おそるおそる。" Which I took to mean "hesitating due to being afraid of the conversation partner" back then. Furthermore, I took 聞く, with that misconception in mind, to mean "listen" instead of "ask". I'm seeing now with rejuvenated morning eyes that the する probably meant "doing something", so thus "doing something hesitatingly due to being afraid" might be the correct meaning.
Also looking back over the text, it's clear my tiredness may have played a part, because it was 家をあけた (開), which makes a lot more sense, not 家をあげた. Oh well.
P.S. this is my first time actually trying to read Japanese literature, is this generally how authors write in Japan? I've never before seen such a cocktail of formal literary Japanese and colloquialism/slang o.o
Like he'll use a word like のであろう but then in the same sentence use 細君, which jsho tells me is familiar language? Or じゃない, or さて, and I've only ever seen こりゃ/そりゃetc in manga or anime haha
Good Morning!
there are some sentences I don't unerstand, but I list here only those two:
1. もうその時分車なんかありやしない、...
2. 何とやら腑ふに落ちぬ
The most of the today's part I can understand even if not every sentences is clear - that makes me happy yeah yeah yeah :)
regards,
Dana
Good morning Dana, did you have a good rest?
1. I presume you were confused by ありやしない? It's a more colloquial way of writing ありはしない→'as for it being there, it did not'. Here it adds the nuance of 'of course' or 'logically' or 'obviously', especially in combination with the なんか. So here the sentence means 'Obviously, at that hour there were no taxis/rickshaws.'
2. 'Something just felt a little off to her.' This 腑に落ちる literally means 'to settle in the gut' so 腑に落ちない means something like 'it did not sit right' or 'it feels off'.
Yeah, you're doing so well! Can't wait to read your responses for day 3! Good luck!
I've just read the first paragraph and am gonna pick up later, so for now I just have one confusion:
二度とヒゲにさわらせないように
I don't really get it. Aside from the confusion between whether 二度 is にど or ふたたび, the confusion from yesterday carries over. Why is he trying to not touch his moustache? Is that what's being said? And what's the ように doing in that sentence? I know its two common meanings are 'like' and 'in order to'. Does he pull up the futon in order to not touch his moustache? That just circles back to the original question.
Hi 晴れ姉! I think the confusion here stems from your understanding of the verb. If it said that he's not trying to touch his own beard, it would say さわらないように, but this is the causative form さわらせないように, which means 'he made sure not to let her touch [his beard]'.
When 二度 is followed by と the reading is almost always にど. But for its meaning as a separate word, it does not really matter which reading you pick, as it still means the same.
Ah yeah, I always forget that the causative can also mean 'let someone xyz'. Thanks!
you're welcome!
I can't keep up even with the slower pace but I'm slogging through it. I also tried to read the Murakami story that had been posted previously, and I'm finding this story both easier and harder. It's less dense in vocabulary and doesn't require me to go to a dictionary every other word, but it's most colloquial and idiomatic and makes it much harder to get a strong grasp of a lot of the grammatical points. I'm getting the general gist but there are a lot of sentences where I really don't know what a particular expression or another is doing in the sentence. For example:
そこにいくらか変わった味がある This was so hard to understand because I couldn't parse theそこにいくらか part. いくらか seems to mean a little bit but I was reading it as some sort of a question instead of something similar to 何か or どうか etc. If I stopped every time I wasn't sure what exactly was going on I'm pretty sure every page would take two hours, as it is I'm skimming for broad understanding and it's still taking quite a while.
The short answer is that いくらか means a little. It does function in the same way that どうか and 何か do. いくら refers to an extent here, so this means something like 'to a certain extent' or 'slightly'.
I know this process can be painful, frustrating and sometimes tedious. But trust me, things will get better. Struggling through a text like this is so important to make progress. Today, one of these pages might take you an hour or even two. But the next story you'll read will go much faster. I remember the first novel I read. Each page took me 6 hours and I still had no idea what was going on. It felt like I had wasted months of my time when I finally got through the first 100 pages. But after taking a week off, I noticed that a lot of the materials that I had been struggling with before suddenly felt much easier. And so I learned: even though it's tough when your in the middle of it, the rewards at the end are really worth the pain!
Every page takes about an hour for me anyway hahahahhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa it's fine I'm fine :)
You can do this :):):)!!!!
I find Murakami easier, somehow, but that's also because I'm already know his work and many kanji keep coming back, as well as the same sentence structure and grammar. This story however is completely new to me, and I too find it hard to really understand the grammar and sentence structures which makes it hard to simple follow the story. But I know Bunsuke is right if we keep doing this, we will improve tremendously, I'm sure of that.
The segment this time around seemed to be a bit strange in the context of the read! I wonder if there is a great big mystery or reason for the cheating to occur? Maybe the character had doubts that his wife was being unfaithful and wanted to find out for himself? The pages this time were definitely a bit easier to read but still confusing overall. Hoping to see where this goes!
Have a great night everyone,
Kat.
Hi Kat, the narrator expresses that sometimes people are curious what it would feel like if their wife would cheat on them (but only as a fantasy). And so he starts pretending to be another man for his wife to fall in love with. In this way, his curiousity is satisfied while his wife never actually has to cheat on him do produce that feeling.
That makes more sense, thank you for the clarification!
Of course!
These two pages felt easier than the first two. I'm a little confused about whether T intended for his wife to notice the mustache during the night or not. Also, is it implied that they had sex during the previous night ? If so, I completely missed it. Could someone kindly point me in the right direction ?
Hi Jon, there are no implications of sex, but that's probably because it is not relevant to this part of the story. I think the main point is that the wife notices the mustache and is startled by it. I think it's kind of left to our own imaginations whether other stuff happened :D
But yes, he definitely wanted her to notice the mustache, but only in the dark when she couldn't tell it was her husband with a fake beard on, so her imagination could run wild.
Cheat on their wife and pretend to be someone else and than have intercourse with his wife and reveal himself to her, a strange game indeed, now I am curious to read the rest of the story.
Haha I won't spoil the ending, but it's different from what I thought it was going to be...