The housemaid
Freida McFadden
In a seaside sanitarium where Yozo Oba-is being kept after a failed suicide attempt, his friends and family visit him, and other patients and nurses drift in and out of his room. Against this dispiriting backdrop, everyone tries to maintain a lighthearted, even clownish atmosphere: playing cards, smoking cigarettes, vying for attention, cracking jokes, and trying to make each other laugh.