Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

Outside, the cold winds played at his mufflerless throat, but his feet danced merrily over the pavement. In the lanes not occupied by trams the cars thrust and jostled, so it took some time for him to find a break in the traffic and dart across the road, just in time to catch a crowded bus that arrived at that very moment.

He got off at Shinjuku Oiwake and was immediately attracted by the beauty of a selection of musical instruments arrayed in a brilliantly lit window. It was Kotani, a well-known instrument shop, and he pushed open the door and went in. Within, all was light and gaiety; students, couples, and salaried workers crowded the counters buying audio equipment, records, or musical instruments. His eye quickly picked out a group of office girls gathered around a record stand. Most of them were just over twenty years old, but one woman stood out as being older. Although one of the group, she seemed to detach herself from their gay chatter. They obviously all worked for the same company, and from their conversation he gathered that they were English-language typists. It seemed that someone at their workplace was about to get married, and they were choosing a present.

Watching them, he made up his mind. The old maid would be his target for tonight. He had already sensed in her a mixture of loneliness and irritation. When he heard her decline an offer to go with the younger women to a coffee shop, his mind was made up. He withdrew a little and made himself as unobtrusive as possible whilst watching the group.

Shortly afterward, the woman left the group and made her way to the door. She left the shop alone, and Ichiro followed her.

His victim was smartly dressed in a well-tailored mohair coat of simple design. She looked over thirty, and something in the jut of her chin revealed to him the pride of a woman who lives alone as well as the shadow that overhangs a woman who has lost the chance of marriage. He was ready to begin the night’s hunt.

He followed her, knowing from her conversation that she was headed for Shinjuku Station. There should be plenty of time to overtake her and engage her in conversation. So far, his premonitions had never let him down; everything always went smoothly. So it would be tonight.

He caught up with her at the pedestrian crossing just in front of Isetan Department Store. She stood waiting for the lights to change, unaware of his presence behind her, gazing at the nape of her neck. The thought of this woman, who would be his within a few hours, standing just in front of him gave him mixed feelings of joy and secret sensuality. He identified himself with a hero in a fairy story clad in a mantle of invisibility. The north wind blew in his face, foretelling winter, and old newspapers and fallen leaves whirled in the air. All around, people hurried about their business, their collars turned up against the cold.

At first, it seemed as if the woman was bound for the station, but then she stopped in front of the Meigaza Cinema and gazed at a poster of an old French film that was showing. He stood in the window of the bookshop next door and watched her. The bell signifying the start of the last performance began to ring, and as if this made up her mind for her, the woman went in, just as Ichiro’s sixth sense had told him she would. Despite her telling her companions that she had somewhere else to go, she was just another of his victims starving for love. All he need do would be to set a little snare, and she would be his.

For this aging spinster had undoubtedly been upset by the topic of her colleague’s marriage, drinking the stale blood of her own missed romance. All he would have to do would be to talk to her and to listen to whatever she had to say. That would be all.

After her back vanished into the entrance, he counted five slowly and then followed her up the steps. He paused to let her get far enough ahead for him to overtake her on the staircase. If no one else interfered, it would be easy.

He steadied his breathing and then began to trot up the steep, narrow stairway to the fifth floor, taking the stairs two at a time.

Fusako Aikawa, an English-language typist at the Sato Trading Company, was quite unaware of the fact that Ichiro Honda was pursuing her up the stairs of the Meigaza. She was thinking back to her college days, when she had been a regular frequenter of this cinema. In those days, the five-floor climb had not worried her one little bit. Indeed, it had given her pleasure to climb the stairs in those days, for she had believed that an enchanting world of mystery awaited her at the top; that once there, she would be wafted away to a land of real life. How she had pined for real life in those innocent days, she thought. And when she had got it, what had it turned out to be? What had the last ten years brought her other than going to work and then going home to sleep every evening?

Of course, she had had one or two relationships with men, but what had they signified? They had been no more than boring love affairs—not the real life that she craved, the life of the silver screen. She put them out of her mind. And so she had developed into a trusted, long-service employee who saved half her salary every month, a confirmed old maid who turned up her nose at pleasure. Even she herself did not know at what point she had finally become like that.

What had made her an old maid? Her alarm clock every morning; the crowded trains commuting to work; the monotonous repetitions of the menus at the office cafeteria.

What was more, she was angry with herself for escaping with a spurious excuse from the other girls in the music shop, just running away from the painful topic of her colleague’s wedding. Why had she had to pretend that she had another engagement? Why such an obvious lie? Why not tell them that their sentimental chatter disgusted her?

She stopped halfway up the stairs to catch her breath. The bell stopped; in the cinema, the lights would be going down, and she felt as if she was trapped in a vacuum. And then she heard Ichiro Honda’s footsteps pounding on the staircase. She stepped to one side to let the stranger pass.

That was not Honda’s idea at all, of course, and he cannoned into her, thereby giving himself the chance to talk to her. She slipped and nearly fell, supporting herself against the wall. She turned to glare at him, but was disarmed by the halting Japanese of his apology: “So sorr-eee.” It made her smile. He extended a helping hand.

“No, I’m quite all right, really.” Little did she understand the hunter’s technique. To the contrary, she formed, as she was intended to, a good first impression of this young man with a sporty hat and his tie twisted a little to one side.

“Is cinema more further?” came the deep, attractive voice.

“Yes, a bit.” For some reason, perhaps because she was talking to a foreigner, Fusako also adopted a peculiar accent, but this, in a strange way, relaxed her and made her lower her usual guard against unknown men. Somehow, this collision halfway up the stairs with a stranger who spoke broken Japanese seemed a most natural event. She went on:

“It’s inconvenient not having an elevator, isn’t it?” and set off again up the stairs with him at her side. It never crossed her mind that he was not a foreigner. Even though his features looked rather Japanese, somehow his manner was quite different from that of the men at her workplace. The way he held himself and moved, his special brand of sweet openness, made him clearly a foreigner. She had already stepped into Ichiro’s trap.

“This film my country.”

He pronounced each word with careful slowness, making sure she could grasp his meaning. As if to answer her unspoken question, he said, “Why I want to see.”

“Are you from France?”