South of the Border, West of the Sun Page 0,19
to catch up with her. With her bad leg, she walked fairly slowly, just like Shimamoto, rotating her left leg as she dragged it along. I couldn’t take my eyes off the elegant curve inscribed by her beautiful stockinged legs, the kind of elegance only long years of practice could produce.
I tailed her for a long while, walking a little ways behind her. It wasn’t easy keeping pace with her, walking at a speed quite the opposite of the crowd around. I adjusted my pace, stopping sometimes to stare into a store window, or pretending to rummage around in my pockets. She had on black leather gloves and carried a red department store shopping bag. Despite the overcast winter day, she wore a pair of sunglasses. From behind, all I could make out was her beautiful, neatly combed hair curled fashionably outward at shoulder length, and her back tucked away in that soft, warm-looking red coat Of course, if I really wanted to see if she was Shimamoto, I could have circled around in front and got a good look at her. But what if it was Shimamoto? What should I say to her—and how should I act? She might not even remember me, for one thing. I needed time to pull myself together. I took some deep breaths to clear my head.
Taking care not to overtake her, I followed her for a long time. She never once looked back or stopped. She hardly glanced around her. She looked as if she had a place to get to and was determined to get there as soon as she could. Like Shimamoto, she walked with her back erect and her head held high. Looking at her from the waist up, no one would ever have suspected that she had something wrong with her leg. She just walked slower than most people. The longer I looked at her, the more I remembered Shimamoto. If this wasn’t Shimamoto, it had to be her twin.
The woman cut through the crowds in front of Shibuya Station and started up the slope in the direction of Aoyama. The slope slowed her down more. Still, she covered quite a bit of ground—so much you wondered why she didn’t take a cab. Even for someone with good legs, it was a tiring hike. Yet on she walked, dragging her leg, with me following at a discreet distance. Nothing in any of the windows caught her eye. She switched her handbag and her shopping bag from right to left a few times, but other than that she kept on walking, never varying her pace.
Finally she left the crowded main street. She seemed to know the layout of the area well. One step away from the bustling shopping area, you entered a quiet residential street. I followed, taking even greater care not to be spotted in the thinned-out crowd.
I must have followed her for forty minutes. We went down the back street, turned several corners, and once again emerged into the main thoroughfare. But she didn’t join the flow of passersby. Instead, as if she’d planned it all along, she headed straight into a coffee shop. A small shop selling cakes and sweets. I killed ten minutes or so sauntering back and forth, then ducked into the shop.
It was stiflingly warm inside, yet she sat there, back to the door, still in her heavy overcoat. Her red overcoat couldn’t be missed. I sat down at the table farthest from the entrance and ordered a cup of coffee. I took up a newspaper that was lying there and, pretending to read, watched what she was doing. A cup of coffee lay on her table, but in all the time I watched her, she didn’t touch it. Once, she took a cigarette out of her handbag and lit it with a gold lighter, but other than that she just sat there, without moving, staring out the window. She could have been just taking a rest, or maybe she was deep in thought about some weighty matter. Sipping my coffee, I read the same article a dozen times.
After a long time, she stood up abruptly and headed right toward me. It happened so suddenly I felt as if my heart had stopped. But she wasn’t coming over to me. She passed by my table and went to the phone. Dropping in some coins, she dialed a number.
The phone wasn’t far from where I was sitting, but what with all the loud conversations and