Masako Togawa - The Lady Killer

“No. Algeria. My name Sobra. I come Japan to study.”

The thought of a student from a developing country made Fusako feel protective.

“Oh. I see. This film is set in Algeria, then. Do you still have the Foreign Legion?” She made conversation as they climbed the steps together, and for some reason her heart began to sing.

When they got to the top, the ticket office was closed. Ichiro shrugged his shoulders, and the sight of this so-foreign gesture melted her heart. A girl on the other side of the room called her over to the place where tickets were now being sold, and so she ended up paying for both of them. He argued a bit, but as the newsreel had just started they hurried into the theater.

During the two hours that the film was being screened, he sat bolt upright, his eyes never straying from the screen. He did nothing menacing or suggestive, such as trying to take her hand. In the presence of this quiet foreign student, she felt more and more at ease, and her feelings toward him became warmer.

The film ended, and they left by the emergency staircase at the back. Borne along by the crowd, they found themselves in a narrow back street where there was a jumble of small bars and dustbins. Just like the Casbah, she thought, her mind still on the film. Was the man walking beside her born in a place like this? The very thought made her feel romantic. On the spur of the moment, she said, “Shall we have a drink?”

He accepted, and they went into a bar. Instead of a sweet cocktail, she ordered a highball. She felt quite capable of holding her drink tonight, and in any case she was determined to see this adventure through to the end.

When they left, the man paid.

“Let me stand you one this time,” she said, and led the way into another bar. She felt rather proud at having a foreigner in tow, quite apart from which such travelers should be treated with hospitality. Also, she wanted to eat something.

Bit by bit she became a little drunk, and the alcohol made her talkative. She began to tell him everything—about her work, the other people there, the story of her background and childhood, the apartment in Koenji where she lived alone. He asked no questions, but she kept talking. All the things bottled up inside her came out; if he did not fully understand, then so much the better. He just sat and listened, looking at her and smiling, never losing his smile. He was an ideal listener, and so she kept on talking.

She had not realized that the bar was one that stayed open all night, so it was with a sense of shock that she realized that it was already 2 a.m. She had to go home. She stood up unsteadily and nearly fell. As she was recovering, the man paid the bill. Drunk as she now was, she felt loath to part with the foreigner. She clung to his arm; she seemed to be floating, though her heels kept catching on the pavement. She had never been like this before. Half regretfully, she began to coquet him.

“You have nowhere to go tonight, have you?” He shook his head. This childish response reminded her of a stray dog. She stopped a taxi.

“Get in. We’ll go to my apartment. I have never taken anyone there before, but you are an exception.” She tried to whisper, but her voice came out loud and drunken.

When the taxi reached her apartment, the familiar streetlights at the crossing and even the potted palm at the entrance danced before her eyes like ghosts. For a moment, she could not recognize it and thought that she had come to the wrong place.

At last, though ten years too late, the cinematic real life of which she had dreamed when she was twenty was beginning to happen to her. She unsteadily climbed the uneven steps; the paint was peeling off the plaster. The man was supporting her with one arm; she leaned against him and felt his hand on her breast through the thick overcoat.

She unlocked the door and staggered in. He was still holding her. There was no fire, and the apartment was as cold as ice. She switched on a small foot warmer and sat him beside it while she busied herself making a cup of tea. He got up and stood awkwardly; what an inexperienced young man he seemed! She took two mattresses from the cupboard, two bed covers, clean sheets, and pillowcases and made up the beds. She was rationalizing all the while—nothing to be ashamed of in sleeping quietly next to a man, and anyway she would stay up all night. She called him over.

“Bring the foot warmer. It’ll keep you warm; Japan is much colder than your country.” What less could she offer a young man from a faraway land of deserts?

The man stood gazing at her with burning eyes. “If he desires me,” she thought drunkenly, “do I give him everything?” He began to undress slowly, and she went to take his clothes, only to be seized in a tight embrace. How strong his arms were, even though he looked so quiet! Algerians were certainly different. For a moment she felt afraid and struggled, but then he kissed her. They fell onto the bed, and her struggling stopped. She gave herself to him.

The man took a long time, seeming to taste all of her body. Was this the Algerian way? This put her off for a moment, but the aversion faded away, turning to joy as she felt his lips crawl all over her body. She smelled his sweat; it seemed redolent of the deserts of North Africa that she had seen in the film a few hours before. She was carried to a primitive land, became an animal, and submitted.

At about five in the morning, Ichiro Honda turned in the bed and touched the naked woman. She slept on, but he awoke.

For a moment he could not remember where he was, but then he realized that he was in the woman’s apartment and not in his bed in the hotel. He raised his left hand in front of his eyes and looked at his self-winding Omega. The date had changed; tomorrow already, he thought. Being careful not to awaken the sleeping woman at his side, he slipped out from under the coverlet.

The icy air hit his naked body, raising goose pimples. He rubbed his chest and powerful shoulders vigorously and quickly dressed. A small light was still burning by the bed, and he looked around the room. There was a portable typewriter on the desk; he thought for a while and then slipped a piece of paper into it and began to type slowly. He kept looking at the woman to see if the rattle of the keys awoke her, but she slept on. He could just see her face above the coverlet; even in sleep she seemed exhausted. Not even the chatter of the typewriter could awaken her. He left the paper in the typewriter and slipped out of the room and into the hall outside, where he was overcome by the sour smell of the apartment. To him it suggested the melancholy of strange places, evoking a sensation he had had many years before in someone’s flat in Chicago. He stepped into the street and breathed deeply of the fresh morning air, tasting a refreshing sense of release from the adventure of the night before, but this sensation did not last for long. By the time he had reached the broad thoroughfare of Olympic Street after feeling his way along the misty lane, it was gone.

He hailed a cab, took it to the Meikei-so, where he changed his clothes, and arrived back at the hotel at about 6 a.m. The clerk at the front desk suppressed his curiosity and pretended not to look at him as he handed over the key. Honda thanked him curtly and went upstairs.

All day long, as he tried to get on with his work, Honda sensed a postcoital lassitude that lingered in his body like the dregs of a good wine. He felt too exhausted to go out in the evening and stayed in the hotel. After dinner, he sat on a sofa by the wall in the lobby reading a newspaper in a heavy binder. Idly, he cast his eye over the local news section, when suddenly one item leaped out of the page and caught his eye. He read it carefully; at 2 a.m. on the previous night, it said, a cashier at a supermarket who lived alone had been strangled in her apartment at Kinshibori. The name and address seemed familiar. It seemed to be the same as one of his recent victims, a girl whom he had picked up about two months ago at a dance hall in Koto Rakutenchi.