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A Change of Heart (I)

A certain elderly master of literary letters had died, and by the time his memorial service was drawing to a close, rain had begun to fall.

It was an early-spring rain.

On the way back, two men walked along sharing a single umbrella.

Neither had much use for the deceased old master beyond the barest courtesy; their talk turned, with considerable impropriety, to women.

The big man in formal dress, already going gray, was a literary man.

His much younger companion, in horn-rimmed glasses and striped trousers—a handsome fellow—was an editor.

"That old man too,"

said the literary man,

"had a taste for women, they say. Isn't it about time you paid off your own debts? You look worn out."

"I intend to give it all up."

the editor answered, his face reddening.

This literary man was so blunt and vulgar in his speech that the good-looking editor generally kept his distance from him, but today, having no umbrella of his own, he had no choice but to squeeze under the old man's bull's-eye umbrella—and so found himself, as a result, thoroughly grilled.

I intend to give it all up.

And that was not entirely a lie.

Something in him, somehow, had changed.

Three years since the war's end, and somewhere along the way, he had changed.

Thirty-four years old. Editor-in-chief of the magazine Obelisk—

Tajima Shuji. There was a faint trace of Kansai in his speech, though he scarcely spoke of his origins.

He was, by nature, a shrewd man; the editing of Obelisk

was merely a respectable face for the world, while in truth he helped run a black-market trade, from which he was forever raking in a tidy profit.

But ill-gotten gains never stay with a man, as the saying goes, and he drank as if pouring it straight down a drain, and was rumored to be keeping nearly ten mistresses.

He was not, however, unmarried.

Far from unmarried—his present wife was a second wife.

His first wife had died of pneumonia, leaving behind a feeble-minded daughter; after that he had sold his house in Tokyo, taken refuge with a friend's family in Saitama, and during that evacuation had made the present wife his own and married her.

As for the wife, it was of course her first marriage, and her family home was a fairly prosperous farming household.

When the war ended, he left his wife and daughter at her family home and went up to Tokyo alone, renting a single room in a suburban apartment—a place that was really nothing more than somewhere to sleep—and threw himself shrewdly into every corner of the city, raking in a tidy profit.

But three years had passed since then, and somehow his feelings had begun to change.

Whether it was because the world itself had subtly changed, or because his body, worn thin of late by his habitual excesses, had grown noticeably gaunt, or simply—simply—a matter of "age,"

all is vanity, even drink had grown tiresome, and the thought of buying a small house and sending for his wife and child from the country kept drifting, homesick, across his mind more and more often.

It was time, he thought, to wash his hands of the black market and devote himself to editing the magazine.

As for that, ……

As for that, the immediate obstacle.

First, he would have to part cleanly with the women.

When his thoughts reached that point, even so shrewd a man as he found himself at a loss, and a sigh escaped him.

"I intend to give it all up, ……"

The big literary man twisted his mouth into a wry grin. "That's all very fine, but tell me—just how many women do you have, exactly?"

A Change of Heart (II)

Tajima's face crumpled toward tears.

The more he thought of it, the more it seemed there was simply no way he could manage this on his own.

If it were only a matter of money it would be simple enough, but he could not imagine the women stepping aside for that alone.

"Now that I think of it, I must have been out of my mind. I spread myself absurdly thin, ……"

It occurred to him, on impulse, that he might as well confess everything to this disreputable old literary man and ask his advice.

"Surprisingly virtuous talk out of you. Though it's often the fickle ones who are strangely, almost distastefully terrified of morality—and that, too, is precisely why women take to them. Good-looking, moneyed, young, and on top of it moral and gentle—of course you're popular. It stands to reason. Even if you mean to quit, the other side won't agree to it, you know."

"That's just it."

He wiped his face with a handkerchief.

"You're not crying, are you."

"No, no, it's the rain—my glasses have fogged up, ……"

"No, that's a voice that's crying. Some ladies' man you are."

For a man mixed up in black-market dealings, morality was hardly his strong suit, but as the literary man had pointed out, this Tajima, for all his fickleness, also had a strangely conscientious side where women were concerned, and it seemed the women, for that very reason, relied on him deeply, without the least anxiety.

"Isn't there some clever way out of this?"

"There isn't. If you could go abroad for five or six years that would do it, but these days you can hardly go abroad on a whim. Best thing—call all the women together into one room, have them sing 'Auld Lang Syne,' no, 'We Bow Our Heads in Reverence' would be better, and you hand each of them a diploma one by one, and then you pretend to go mad, strip stark naked, and bolt out into the street, running. That's a sure thing. Even the women will be too dumbfounded not to give up on you."

It was no advice at all.

"Excuse me. I, ah, from here I can take the streetcar, ……"

"Oh, come now. Let's walk to the next stop. After all, this is a serious matter for you, isn't it. Let's the two of us work out a plan."

The literary man, it seemed, was bored that day, and would not let Tajima go.

"No, really, I can manage somehow on my own, ……"

"No, no, you can't solve this alone. Surely you're not thinking of dying, are you. Now I'm truly worried. To die for love of a woman—that's no tragedy, that's a comedy. No, a farce, is what it is. The height of the ridiculous. Nobody will pity you in the least. Better give up on dying. Ah—I have it. Find some stunning beauty from somewhere, explain the whole situation to her, have her pose as your wife, and go around calling on the women one by one with her in tow. It'll work like a charm. Every one of them will hold her tongue and back off. Well? Want to try it?"

A drowning man clutches at straws.

Tajima's heart wavered.

The March (I)

Tajima decided to give it a try.

But here, too, there was an obstacle.

A stunning beauty.

An ugly woman who was still somehow formidable he could find thirty of within a single block of walking from the streetcar stop, but a woman beautiful enough to be called stunning seemed doubtful to exist outside of legend.

Tajima was, by nature, vain about his own looks, a dandy, and full of vanity besides, so that walking beside a plain woman was said to bring on a sudden stomachache, which he used as an excuse to avoid it; and even his present so-called mistresses, each of them reasonably attractive as they were, amounted to nothing one could call a stunning beauty.

On that rainy day, from the mouth of the disreputable old literary man there had come this offhand "secret method"

—and having been handed it, though at first he had inwardly rebelled at how absurd it was, he himself could think of nothing better.

First, then—try it.

Perhaps, in some corner of life, just such a stunning beauty lay waiting to be found.

Behind his glasses his eyes began at once to dart about, furtively, unpleasantly.

Dance halls.

Cafés.

Assignation houses.

None. None to be found.

Only the ugly and the formidable.

Offices, department stores, factories, movie theaters, nude revues.

There was no way she could be there.

He peered shamelessly over the fence of a women's college campus, rushed to the venue of some Miss So-and-So beauty pageant, slipped in under the pretense of observing at an audition hall for movie "new faces," and wandered about aimlessly in every direction—but she was nowhere.

The quarry appears on the way home.

He had all but given up hope, and was walking with a thoroughly gloomy face through the black market behind Shinjuku Station at dusk.

He had no wish even to go and call on his so-called mistresses.

The mere thought of them made him shudder.

He had to part with them.

"Mr. Tajima!"

Called out to so abruptly from behind, he was so startled he nearly jumped.

"Er—now who might you be?"

"Oh, how mean."

It was a terrible voice.

A crow's caw of a voice, if ever there was one.

"Hm?"

He looked at her again.

He had truly failed to recognize her.

He knew this woman.

A black marketeer—no, a peddler who hauled goods on her back.

He had done business with her only two or three times, trading in black-market goods, but he remembered her for her crow's voice and for her astonishing brute strength.

Thin as she was, she carried loads of ten kan without the least trouble.

Reeking of fish, dressed in grimy, mud-caked clothes, in mompe trousers and rubber boots, impossible to tell man from woman, all but a beggar to look at—Tajima, dandy that he was, had gone off and washed his hands after their last transaction.

An outrageous Cinderella.

Her taste in Western dress was elegant.

Her figure was slender, her hands and feet delicately small, twenty-three or four—no, five or six—her face touched with melancholy, faintly pale as a pear blossom, unmistakably noble; a stunning beauty—and this, the very woman who had once hauled ten kan on her back with such ease.

That terrible voice was a flaw, but it would do no harm so long as she kept firmly silent.

She would do.

The March (II)

They say clothes make even a packhorse driver look fine, but a woman above all can be transformed by her attire alone into something almost unrecognizable.

Perhaps, at bottom, women are simply shape-shifters.

But even so, a woman capable of so splendid a transformation as this one—her name was Nagai Kinuko—was rare indeed.

"So, you've been putting quite a bit away, have you. You're looking remarkably sharp."

"Oh, how mean."

That voice, really, was terrible.

All her nobility, whatever there had been of it, blew away in an instant.

"There's something I'd like to ask of you."

"You're such a tightwad, always haggling me down, ……"

"No, it's not business. I'm thinking of washing my hands of it all before long, myself. Are you still hauling goods, same as ever?"

"Of course I am. If I don't haul, I don't eat."

Every word out of her was coarse.

"But you're hardly dressed for it now."

"Well, I am a woman, after all. Once in a while I like to dress up and see a movie too."

"A movie, today?"

"That's right. I already saw it. Something called... Ashikurige, or some such, ……"

"Hizakurige, you mean. Did you go alone?"

"Oh, don't be silly. Men are ridiculous."

"That's exactly why I'm asking you this. Lend me your face for an hour—no, thirty minutes will do."

"Is it a good story?"

"You won't lose out on it."

As the two of them walked side by side, eight out of every ten passersby turned to look.

Not at Tajima—at Kinuko.

Even Tajima, handsome as he was, was so overshadowed by Kinuko's truly stunning refinement that he looked shabby and meager beside her.

Tajima led Kinuko to a black-market restaurant he frequented.

"Does this place have any specialty they're proud of?"

"Well, the pork cutlet's supposed to be their pride."

"I'll have that. I'm hungry. And what else can they make?"

"They can probably make most things, but what exactly do you feel like eating?"

"Whatever this place is proud of. Isn't there anything besides the pork cutlet?"

"Their pork cutlet is a big one, you know."

"What a cheapskate. You're hopeless. I'll go ask in the back myself."

Superhuman strength, a bottomless appetite—and yet, for all that, a truly stunning beauty.

He must not let her slip away.

Tajima drank his whiskey and, watching with considerable irritation as Kinuko ate on and on with perfect composure, told her of his so-called request.

Kinuko simply ate, and whether she was listening or not, she seemed to take almost no interest in his story.

"You'll take it on, won't you?"

"You're an idiot. It's utterly hopeless, the way you're going about it."

The March (III)

Tajima, taken aback by this unexpectedly sharp thrust from the enemy, nonetheless said,

"Exactly, it's utterly hopeless—that's why I'm asking you like this. I'm at my wit's end."

"You don't need to go through all that bother. If you're sick of them, just stop seeing them, cold, and that'll be the end of it."

"I can't do anything so brutal. The women themselves might go on to marry, or find some new lover. It's a man's responsibility to see that they can properly settle their own feelings."

"Pff! What a responsibility. You just want an excuse to talk about breaking up so you can flirt with them a little more, don't you? You really do have a lecherous face."

"Now, now, say anything ruder than that and I'll get angry. There's a limit to rudeness, you know. And all you do is eat."

"I wonder if they can make sweet chestnut kinton."

"You still want to eat something? Isn't your stomach stretched out of shape? You're sick, you are. Why not see a doctor sometime. You've eaten an awful lot already. That's about enough, don't you think."

"What a cheapskate you are. Most women eat about this much, it's perfectly normal. Those young ladies who say 'oh, I've had quite enough'—that's just them putting on airs because they want to seem alluring. I could eat as much as you like."

"No, really, that's enough. This place isn't cheap, you know. Do you always eat this much?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Only when someone else is treating me."

"Well then, I'll let you eat as much as you like from now on, so listen to my request."

"But I'll have to take time off my work, so it's a loss for me."

"I'll pay you separately for that. Whatever you'd normally earn from your usual trade, I'll pay it properly, each time."

"So all I have to do is walk along with you?"

"Well, more or less. Only there are two conditions. In front of any of the other women, don't say a single word. I beg you. Laughing, nodding, shaking your head—that much, at most, is what I'd ask of you. The other is, don't eat anything in front of people. Once it's just the two of us alone, eat as much as you like, but in front of others I'd like you to keep to about a single cup of tea."

"And besides that, you'll give me money too, won't you? You're such a cheapskate, always trying to cheat me."

"Don't worry. I'm putting everything into this myself. If this fails, I'm ruined."

"Sounds like you're pitching camp with your back to the Fukusui river, or however that goes."

"Fukusui? You idiot, it's haisui—fighting with your back to the river."

"Oh, is that so."

She looked utterly unconcerned.

Tajima only grew more and more sour by the minute.

And yet, she was beautiful.

There was a cool, unearthly refinement about her, as if she belonged to some other world.

Pork cutlet.

Chicken croquette.

Tuna sashimi.

Squid sashimi.

Chinese noodles.

Eel.

Hodgepodge stew.

Skewered beef.

An assorted platter of nigiri sushi.

Shrimp salad.

Strawberries and milk.

And on top of it all, she'd asked for sweet chestnut kinton.

Surely not every woman ate like this.

Or then again—did they?

The March (IV)

Kinuko's apartment lay out in the direction of Setagaya; in the mornings she went out on her usual peddling rounds, but after two in the afternoon she said she was generally free.

Tajima arranged with Kinuko that, about once a week, on some day convenient to them both, he would telephone her, and they would meet somewhere and set off together, marching upon whichever woman was next in line for parting.

And so, a few days later, the two of them began their first march, bound for a beauty salon inside a certain department store in Nihonbashi.

The dandyish Tajima had, the winter before last, dropped in on this salon on a whim and had a permanent wave done.

The "instructor" there

was a Miss Aoki, around thirty years old, one of the so-called war widows.

It was not so much that he had picked her up as that she, if anything, had come to him.

Miss Aoki commuted to the Nihonbashi shop from the department store's dormitory in Tsukiji, but her income was barely enough for a woman living alone.

So Tajima had taken to helping with her living expenses, and by now, even at the Tsukiji dormitory, his relationship with Miss Aoki was openly acknowledged.

Even so, Tajima rarely showed his face at the Nihonbashi shop where Miss Aoki worked.

He himself thought that the appearance of a stylish, good-looking man like himself would surely be bad for her business.

And now, out of nowhere, he appeared at her shop with a stunning beauty on his arm.

"Afternoon."

Even that greeting came out stiffly formal. "I've brought my wife along today. I've just sent for her from where she was evacuated."

That alone was more than enough.

Miss Aoki too, with her cool clear eyes and soft white skin, was by no means a foolish-looking woman—a considerable beauty in her own right—but set beside Kinuko, the gap between them seemed as wide as that between a silver slipper and an army boot.

The two beauties exchanged a silent greeting.

Miss Aoki's face had already crumpled into something abject, on the verge of tears.

The outcome was already plain.

As already noted, Tajima had this conscientious streak where women were concerned, and had never once lied to a woman by claiming he was single.

That he had a wife and child evacuated to the countryside was something he had confessed to every one of them from the start.

And now, at last, that wife had come back to her husband's side.

And what was more, this wife of his turned out to be a peerless beauty—young, noble, and seemingly of the richest cultivation.

Even Miss Aoki had no recourse left but to look on the verge of tears.

"Would you do something with my wife's hair."

said Tajima, warming to the moment, moving in for the final blow.

"They say there's no one in Ginza, anywhere, with hands as skilled as yours."

That, however, was not entirely flattery.

In fact, she really was a remarkably skilled hairdresser.

Kinuko sat down before the mirror.

Miss Aoki draped a white cape over Kinuko's shoulders and began to comb out her hair, her eyes so full of tears they seemed ready to spill over at any moment.

Kinuko remained perfectly unmoved.

Tajima, of all people, was the one who had to step outside.

The March (V)

Around the time the set was finished, Tajima quietly slipped back into the salon, tucked a wad of bills nearly an inch thick into the pocket of the hairdresser's white smock, and, in an almost prayerful frame of mind,

"Good-bye."

he whispered, his own voice carrying, to his own surprise, something tender, something almost apologetic, gentle, tinged with a note near to sorrow.

Kinuko rose without a word.

Miss Aoki, also without a word, straightened Kinuko's skirt for her.

Tajima dashed outside a step ahead of her.

Ah, how painful, parting is.

Kinuko came out after him, expressionless, and said,

"It wasn't even all that good, was it."

"What wasn't?"

"The perm."

You idiot!

he wanted to shout at her, but they were inside the department store, so he held it in.

This Aoki woman never once spoke ill of anyone.

She never asked for money, either, and she'd always done his laundry for him.

"Is that the end of it now?"

"That's right."

Tajima felt nothing but a bleak, overwhelming loneliness.

"Fancy giving up and letting you go over a little thing like that—she's got no spine, that girl. She was rather a looker too, wasn't she. With looks like that, ……"

"Stop it! 'That girl'—don't call her that, it's rude. She's a gentle, quiet person, she is. Not like you at all. Just keep quiet, will you. Listening to that crow's voice of yours is enough to drive a man out of his mind."

"Oh my, oh my—my deepest a-peas-ology."

Ugh!

What a vulgar, cheap pun.

Tajima really did feel he was going out of his mind.

Out of some peculiar vanity, whenever Tajima walked out with a woman, he would hand her his wallet beforehand and let her do all the paying, affecting an air of magnanimous indifference, as though such matters as the bill were beneath his notice.

But until now, not one of these women had ever gone and bought things on her own, without so much as asking him.

Madam Deepest-A-Peas-ology, however, did exactly that without a flicker of hesitation.

The department store had no end of expensive goods.

She picked out the so-called luxury items boldly, without the slightest hesitation, and, strange to say, every single one of them was elegant and tasteful.

"Won't you please, for heaven's sake, stop."

"Such a cheapskate."

"And now you're going to go eat something too, I suppose?"

"Well, I suppose I'll go without, just for today."

"Give me back my wallet. From now on, you're not to spend more than five thousand yen."

So much for his vanity now—it had gone straight out the window.

"I won't spend that much."

"No, you did. I'll know for certain once I check what's left over. You spent more than ten thousand yen, no question. That meal the other day wasn't cheap either, you know."

"Well then, why don't you just quit? It's not as if I go around with you because I enjoy it, you know."

It was very nearly a threat.

All Tajima could do was sigh.

Monstrous Strength (I)

But Tajima, too, was no ordinary man to begin with.

He was, one might say, sharp as a whip—the sort of man who could lend a hand in the black market and walk away having made several hundred thousand yen in a single stroke, easy as anything.

To simply hold his tongue and display the virtue of magnanimous forbearance while Kinuko squandered his money so recklessly—that was simply not in his nature.

He couldn't rest easy until he'd gotten some fitting payback.

That little wretch!

How insolent.

He'd make her his.

The march toward parting could wait until after that.

First he would conquer her completely, transform her into a modest, obedient, frugal woman with a small appetite, and only then resume the march.

As things stood, she cost him too much money, and the march simply could not go on.

The secret to victory.

Let not the enemy draw near to you; draw near to the enemy.

He looked up Kinuko's apartment address in the telephone directory, bought only a single bottle of whiskey and two bags of peanuts—with the ulterior motive that if he got hungry he'd have Kinuko treat him to something—and reasoned that if he swilled down the whiskey and then pretended to pass out drunk and fall asleep, the rest would take care of itself.

Best of all, it would be dirt cheap.

No room charge, either.

That a man like Tajima—always so brimming with confidence where women were concerned—should come up with such a reckless, shameless, dirty scheme of conquest was proof enough that something had gone seriously wrong with him.

Perhaps having his money squandered so wastefully by Kinuko had driven him half out of his mind.

Lust, of course, is a thing to be guarded against, but it seems that a man who clings too greedily to money and thinks of nothing but getting his money's worth comes to no good end either.

So it was that Tajima, hating Kinuko so much, hatched an almost inhumanly petty and low scheme—and, sure enough, it landed him in a disaster that very nearly killed him.

That evening, Tajima tracked down Kinuko's apartment in Setagaya.

It was an old wooden two-story building with a gloomy, forbidding look.

Kinuko's room was right at the end of the hall, just up the stairs.

He knocked.

"Who is it?"

That familiar crow's caw came from within.

Tajima opened the door, and froze in astonishment.

Chaos.

A foul stench.

Ah, such desolation.

A four-and-a-half mat room.

The surface of the tatami gleamed pitch black, rippling up and down like waves, without so much as a trace remaining of the border edging.

The room was crammed full—kerosene cans, apple crates, one-sho bottles, things wrapped up in furoshiki cloths, something that looked like a birdcage, scraps of paper, evidently all the paraphernalia of her black-market peddling trade—scattered about in a damp, sticky mess, leaving hardly room to set a foot down.

"Oh, it's you. What did you come for?"

And as for Kinuko's clothing—it was just like that beggarly get-up he'd seen her in years before, mud-caked monpe trousers, giving the impression of someone whose very sex you couldn't tell at a glance.

On the wall of the room hung a single advertising poster for some mutual-loan company, and nowhere else was there anything resembling decoration.

There was not even a curtain.

Was this really the room of a girl of five-and-twenty, or thereabouts?

A single small lightbulb burned dimly, and all was mere desolation.

Monstrous Strength (II)

"I just came by to visit, but—"

said Tajima, gripped now by something more like fear, his own voice turning into a crow's caw to match Kinuko's, "but I could always come back another time."

"You're up to something. You're not the type to move a muscle without some ulterior motive."

"No, today, really, ……"

"You ought to clean yourself up a bit more. You're a little too smarmy, you know."

What an awful room, all the same.

Was he really meant to drink that whiskey here, of all places?

Ah, he should have bought a cheaper whiskey.

"I'm not smarmy. This is what's called being smart. And you, today of all days, are far too filthy, aren't you."

He said it, thoroughly disgusted.

"Today, you see, I had to carry something heavy on my back, so I got a bit tired and was taking a nap till just now. Oh, that's right, I've got something good. Why don't you come up into the room? It's quite cheap."

It seemed, apparently, to be talk of business.

If there was money to be made, the filth of the room was no obstacle at all.

Tajima took off his shoes, chose a relatively safe-looking patch of tatami, and sat down cross-legged, overcoat and all.

"You like karasumi, don't you? Being a drinker."

"It's one of my favorites. Have you got some here? I'll take you up on it."

"Don't be ridiculous. Pay up."

Kinuko, without the slightest hesitation, thrust her right palm out under Tajima's nose.

Tajima twisted his mouth, looking thoroughly fed up, and said,

"Watching everything you do makes life itself feel utterly futile. Put that hand away. I don't need any karasumi. That's something horses eat."

"I'm telling you I'll make it cheap for you, you fool. It's delicious, it's the real thing, straight from where it's made. Stop squirming and pay up."

She rocked her body from side to side, showing no sign of withdrawing her hand.

Unfortunately for him, karasumi truly was one of Tajima's great weaknesses—with that as a snack for his whiskey, he needed nothing else at all.

"I suppose I'll take a little."

Tajima, looking thoroughly put out, laid three large bills on Kinuko's palm.

"Four more."

Kinuko said it perfectly calmly.

Tajima, astonished, said,

"You idiot, that's enough of that."

"What a cheapskate. Buy the whole piece generously. It's like buying half a dried bonito stick cut in two. What a cheapskate."

"Fine, I'll buy the whole piece."

Even Tajima, smarmy as he was, found himself truly angry at this point, and said,

"There, one, two, three, four. That ought to do it. Get your hand out of my face. I'd like to see the face of the parent who raised a shameless creature like you."

"So would I. And I'd like to give them a good beating too. They say even a green onion, once thrown away, will wilt and wither, don't they."

"Bah, sob stories are tiresome. Lend me a cup. Now then, whiskey and karasumi. Oh, and I've got peanuts too. These I'll give to you."

Monstrous Strength (III)

Tajima drained the whiskey from a large cup, gulp, gulp, in two motions.

He had come today determined to somehow get Kinuko to treat him to something, but instead he had been made to buy the so-called "real thing"

—a fearfully expensive karasumi at that—and what was more, Kinuko, without the least regret, sliced the whole piece up into chunks before he even knew what was happening, heaped it into a grimy bowl, and dumped a generous helping of imitation MSG over the top, saying,

"Go on, eat up. The MSG's on the house. No need to worry about it."

That much karasumi was simply not something a man could eat.

And dousing it in MSG on top of that was sheer madness.

Tajima's face took on a look of anguish.

Even burning seven bills over a candle flame would not have brought so keen a sense of loss.

It was, truly, a waste.

Pointless.

Picking out, from the bottom of the heap, one piece of karasumi that had escaped the MSG, and eating it with something like an urge to weep, Tajima said,

"Have you ever cooked for yourself?"

—asking now, gingerly, half afraid of the answer.

"I could do it if I tried. I just don't, because it's a bother."

"And laundry?"

"Don't make fun of me. If anything, I'm rather the tidy type."

"The tidy type?"

Tajima gazed blankly around the desolate, foul-smelling room.

"This room was filthy to begin with, past all help. And with my line of work being what it is, the place is bound to get cluttered. Shall I show you the inside of the closet?"

She stood and flung open the closet to show him.

Tajima's eyes went wide.

Clean, orderly, seeming almost to give off a golden glow and a rich fragrance.

A chest of drawers, a dressing table, a trunk, and atop the shoe cabinet three dainty little pairs of shoes—this closet, in short, was the secret dressing room of the crow-voiced Cinderella.

She shut the closet again at once with a snap, and, settling herself down some distance from Tajima in a slovenly heap, said,

"Dressing up once a week or so is plenty. I don't particularly care to be liked by men, and for everyday wear, this is just about right."

"But those monpe trousers are a bit much, aren't they? They're unsanitary."

"Why?"

"It stinks."

"No use putting on airs. You always reek of liquor yourself, don't you. What a nasty smell."

"That's what you'd call a smelly sort of intimacy, I suppose."

As he grew drunker, the desolate state of the room and Kinuko's beggarly appearance came to bother him less and less, and a wicked notion welled up in him—perhaps he should go ahead and try out that original plan of his after all.

"They say the deeper the bond, the worse the quarrels, don't they."

What a clumsy way to go about seduction, this.

But then, men in such situations—even those reputed to be great figures, great scholars—will resort to just this sort of idiotic line, and, surprisingly enough, often succeed with it.

Monstrous Strength (IV)

"I hear a piano."

He was growing ever more affected.

He narrowed his eyes and cocked an ear toward a distant radio.

"You understand music too? You've got the face of someone tone-deaf."

"Fool, you don't know how well I know music. Give me a masterpiece and I could listen all day long."

"What's that piece?"

"Chopin."

A complete fabrication.

"Oh? I thought it was Echigo Jishi."

A nonsensical exchange between two people equally tone-deaf.

Since his spirits simply would not lift, Tajima quickly changed the subject.

"But surely you've been in love with someone before now."

"Don't be absurd. I'm not a lecher like you."

"Watch your language, why don't you. What a vulgar creature."

Suddenly displeased, he took another great gulp of whiskey.

This might already be a lost cause.

But to retreat now would compromise his honor as a ladies' man.

He simply had to stick it out and succeed.

"Love and lechery are fundamentally different things. You don't seem to know the first thing about it. Shall I teach you?"

Even as he said it, the oiliness of his own tone sent a chill through him.

This wasn't working.

It was a little early yet, but he decided he'd better just pretend to pass out drunk and go to sleep.

"Ah, I'm drunk. Drinking on an empty stomach, I've gotten badly drunk. Let me lie down here a moment, would you."

"No you don't!"

The crow's caw turned into a savage roar.

"Don't take me for a fool! I can see right through you. If you want to stay the night, hand over five hundred thousand—no, a million yen."

It was, in every way, a failure.

"There's no need to get so angry about it, is there. I'm drunk, so just here, a little, ……"

"No, no. Go home."

Kinuko stood and flung the door wide open.

Cornered, Tajima resorted to the clumsiest, most unseemly measure of all—standing up, he made a sudden lunge to throw his arms around Kinuko.

With a crack he was struck on the cheek by her fist, and Tajima let out an extraordinarily bizarre shriek.

In that instant, Tajima remembered that monstrous strength of hers, the strength that let her carry ten kan on her back with ease, and, trembling with fright, cried,

"Forgive me! Thief!"

—shouting this nonsensical thing, and dashed barefoot out into the hallway.

Kinuko calmly shut the door.

After a while, from outside the door, came,

"Er, my shoes, if you don't mind. ……And if you happen to have anything like string, I'd be grateful. The arm of my glasses is broken."

Feeling his guts boil with a humiliation greater than any he had known in his whole history as a ladies' man, he mended his glasses with the red tape Kinuko had graciously given him, looping it over both ears, and,

"Thank you!"

—he bellowed, half in desperation, and went down the stairs, missing a step partway down and letting out another shriek.

Cold War (I)

Tajima, however, could not bear to think of the capital he had sunk into Nagai Kinuko.

Never before had he engaged in such an unprofitable venture.

Somehow he had to make use of her, put her to work, and get his money's worth, or the whole thing would have been for nothing.

But that monstrous strength, that gluttony, that greed.

The weather turned warm, and all manner of flowers began to bloom, but Tajima alone remained thoroughly gloomy.

Four or five days after that night of great failure, once he had gotten new glasses and the swelling in his cheek had gone down, he went ahead and telephoned Kinuko's apartment.

He had decided to try appealing to her, this time, through a war of ideas.

"Hello, hello. This is Tajima. The other day I got much too drunk, ha ha ha ha."

"When a woman lives alone, all sorts of things happen. I'm not holding it against you."

"No, well, I've thought it over deeply since then, and, in the end, you see—the idea of my parting from these women, buying a small house, and calling my wife and child up from the countryside to make a happy home—is that, morally speaking, a bad thing to do?"

"I don't quite follow what you're saying, but it seems like any man, once he's saved up a good deal of money, starts thinking these petty little thoughts."

"So is that, then, a bad thing?"

"Isn't it a fine thing? You must have saved up quite a lot, haven't you."

"Don't keep talking only about money, ……it's a matter of morals, you see, of ideas, that's the question—what do you think?"

"I don't think anything at all. Not about you."

"Well, that's, I suppose, only natural, but I—this—I think it's a good thing."

"Well then, isn't that all fine and good? I'm hanging up. I don't want to hear this pointless chatter."

"But for me, this really is a matter of life and death. I believe morality is, after all, something one must hold in high regard. Help me, please help me. I want to do a good thing."

"How odd. You're not planning to pretend you're drunk again and try some idiotic stunt, are you. I've had quite enough of that."

"Don't make fun of me. Every human being has an instinct to do good."

"I can hang up now, can't I? There's nothing else you need, is there? I've been standing here shifting from foot to foot needing to pee for a while now."

"Wait, just a moment, wait. How about three thousand yen a day?"

The war of ideas had suddenly turned into a matter of money.

"Does that come with meals?"

"No, please, spare me that. My income's been rather low these days, you see."

"Nothing less than one ippon—that is, ten thousand yen—will do."

"Well then, five thousand. Let's settle on that. This is, after all, a matter of morals."

"I need to pee. Please, have mercy."

"Five thousand yen, I beg you."

"You really are a fool, you."

A stifled little laugh could be heard.

It had the air of consent.

Cold War (II)

Now that it had come to this, he would have to squeeze every last drop of use out of Kinuko—giving her nothing beyond her five thousand yen a day, not so much as a crust of bread or a cup of water, and working her mercilessly—or else it would be a loss.

Warmth of heart was strictly forbidden; it would be his own ruin.

Though he had been struck by Kinuko and let out that strange shriek, Tajima nevertheless discovered a way to turn her monstrous strength to his own advantage instead.

Among his so-called mistresses was one named Mizuhara Keiko, a Western-style painter not yet thirty and not especially skilled.

She rented two rooms in an apartment in Denenchofu, using one as a living room and the other as a studio, and Tajima—when this Miss Mizuhara had come, letter of introduction from some painter in hand, to the Obelisk—

had asked, blushing and nervous, to be allowed to draw illustrations or spot cuts or anything at all, and Tajima, finding this endearing, had decided to help support her livelihood, bit by bit.

She was a woman of gentle manner, few words, and a terrible tendency to cry.

Yet she never wept in that unseemly, howling sort of way.

Her weeping was as sweet and touching as a young girl's, which was not at all unpleasant.

But there was one great drawback.

She had an elder brother.

He had spent long years in the military in Manchuria, and was said to have been a rough, violent sort since childhood, apparently a big man with a solidly built frame—and when Tajima first heard this from Keiko, he felt a truly unpleasant sensation.

After all, this business of a sweetheart's brother, a sergeant or a corporal of some sort, has been, ever since the days of Faust, considered an exceedingly ominous presence for a ladies' man.

This brother, it seemed, had recently returned from repatriation somewhere in Siberia, and was now planted firmly in Keiko's living room.

Not wishing to come face to face with this brother, Tajima tried to lure Keiko out somewhere and telephoned the apartment, but it was no good—

"This is Keiko's brother speaking."

—came a man's strong voice, one that sounded thoroughly powerful.

So he really was there.

"I'm from a magazine, and I'd like a word with Miss Mizuhara about a picture, ……"

The end of his sentence was trembling.

"No good. She's caught a cold and is in bed. She won't be able to work for some while."

Bad luck.

Luring Keiko out now seemed all but impossible.

But simply to go on fearing her brother and putting off his parting with Keiko indefinitely seemed, in a way, rude to Keiko herself.

Besides, with Keiko laid up with a cold, and on top of that a repatriated brother lodging with her, she was surely hard up for money as well.

If anything, this might now be just the chance he needed.

He would speak gentle words of concern to the invalid, and then quietly slip her some money.

Surely even a soldier of a brother wouldn't go so far as to strike him.

He might even be more moved than Keiko herself, and ask to shake his hand.

And if, by some remote chance, the man should turn violent against him, ……that was precisely when he ought to take shelter behind Nagai Kinuko's monstrous strength.

It would be, truly, a hundred percent exploitation, a hundred percent use of her.

"Now listen, I think it'll probably be fine, but there's a rough sort of man there, and if he ever raises his arm at me, I'd like you to just lightly hold him down, like so. Oh, don't worry, he's supposed to be a weakling anyway."

He had, without quite realizing it, taken to speaking to Kinuko in remarkably polite language.

(Unfinished)