Hell Read online

  As he reached the spot, he recognized the set for Iwa Daimyojin Temple, in which he had performed Ghost Story at Yotsuya on the Tokaido. It was decorated with red streamers, and light bulbs shone dimly in the votive candle-holders on either side.

  “Why have you cursed me, Iwa-sama? I have done nothing wrong. Please forgive me if I have. Save me from this torment!” pleaded Konzo, scraping and bowing, his hands clasped together, before finally bursting into tears. Onstage above him, the repartee of the actors went on:

  MONZABURO: “He let his meagre talents go to his head and he started bragging about how popular he was.”

  NARIKOMAYA: “The vile Konzo even had the nerve to poke fun at kabuki itself.”

  MONZABURO: “Even now, he is no doubt spouting jokes at our expense somewhere, regardless of the rules of our profession.”

  KONZO: “No–o! That’s not true! I’m right here! I’ll be there soon!”

  Konzo stood up to see a statue of the deity Inari, flanked by two foxes. “Damn that Monzaburo. Damn him to Hell.”

  Konzo’s eyes were blank as he stared out into the darkness. He had begun to whisper to himself, reciting his lines as if to keep from forgetting them. But this soon degenerated into delirious babbling.

  “I’m not conceited, really I’m not. I only told those jokes because I was on television. That’s all. Iwa-sama! Inari-sama! Please make them stop!”

  Where was he now? He had walked and walked and yet the storage area never seemed to end. But now as he looked around, he didn’t seem to be in the storage area at all. It was some sort of basement room. He wasn’t under the stage. Could he be under the building next door? But there were baskets, paper lanterns and other props scattered about, so he had to be in the Kabukiza. He heard a noise coming through a small grated window. It was the painfully familiar sound of an underground train approaching and then receding. He pressed his ear to the window and wept.

  “Oh, blessed Inari,” Konzo prayed. “They say the worst things happen to the best people. Is that why this is happening to me? What have I done to deserve this? Was I conceited to go on television? Is that it? I was just trying to entertain people. That’s all. But I didn’t ignore my rehearsals. And I went and greeted all the guests on opening night, just as I was supposed to. Please, I’ll do anything. Just forgive me!”

  As they sat in the Night Walker, the cast of Premiere 21 could talk of nothing but how Konzo Ichikawa had disappeared under the stage of the Kabukiza. Izumi had been negotiating a deal with a businessman named Sasaki and arrived at the club later than usual. Yumiko saw him cutting straight across the dance floor and motioned to him, pointing to the empty seat beside her. Izumi came and sat down. He was one of them now. Kashiwazaki, Osanai and Shibata grinned at one another. They knew he was Yumiko’s slave. But Yumiko herself couldn’t have cared less what they thought, and in any case she was much more interested in the fate of Konzo Ichikawa.

  “I heard that it was a plot by the other actors,” said Yumiko breathlessly, continuing where she had left off before Izumi’s arrival. “When a kabuki actor gets popular and goes on television, the other actors don’t like it and they may him pay.”

  “But how could he go in there and not come out?” asked Kashiwazaki, knitting his brows at the thought. “It’s been days.”

  “He must’ve croaked – I mean, passed away – by now. Don’t you think?” said Shibata in a low voice, doing her best to hide her pleasure. Hearing about someone dying always made her feel strangely cheerful.

  Kashiwazaki glared at Shibata. “What is it with you?” he asked, curling his lips. “Look at what you’re wearing tonight: a bright red suit. Have a little respect.”

  “You know, I heard that they can still hear his voice from under the stage,” said Nishizawa softly, trying to scare Kashiwazaki. “They’ve searched and searched, and they can’t find any trace of him, but they say that when you stand on the stage you can faintly hear him reciting his lines.”

  “Oh God, no. No no no.” Kashiwazaki began to shake. “I’m going to have nightmares about this.”

  “He must be haunting the place,” said Osanai. “After all, he was a star on his way up. He must still have attachments to the world of the living.”

  “Excuse me, but do we really know that Konzo is dead?” said Izumi timidly. He had heard about the case in the news. “He’s only been missing seven days. He could still be alive, even without anything to eat or drink. There are many cases of people surviving that long. Maybe he just got stuck somewhere.”

  “That’s right,” said Yumiko. “Believe me, I know what it’s like under the stage at Kabukiza. I’ve been down there. It’s terrible, a mess. The manager told me people get lost there all the time.”

  “Konzo Ichikawa, the doomed kabuki actor, wandering beneath the stage like a ghost…” said Nishizawa spookily.

  “And today is the seventh day since his disappearance. His ghost might even show up here to haunt us…” said Osanai, joining in.

  “Boo!” shouted Yumiko, suddenly tapping Kashiwazaki on the back. He fainted, hitting the table with enough force to knock off glasses and dishes.

  Konzo continued to wander. The room seemed to go on for ever. Could the basements of all the buildings in the world be connected? The area beneath the Kabukiza stage was one storey below ground – an area elsewhere taken up by underground shopping plazas. But here there was only a single dreary, cold, concrete corridor lit by dim emergency lamps. There was no sign of human life. Where was he? He was no longer in the world he had known – that much was clear – and yet he had no recollection of dying. Was this a dusky creation of his consciousness? Was he trapped in a twilight figment of his imagination?

  In the distance he could see a vertical strip of light. What was it? And what were those muffled sounds of life that seemed to be coming from that direction? Shaking now, Konzo hauled his tired frame onwards, drawn by the light and the voices.

  He came to a door. What could be on the other side? Was it Hell? Konzo began to tremble. Did he have any other choice but to go in? His situation couldn’t get any worse. He was as good as dead already. If there was a party going on, he would welcome it, even in the filthy state he was in.

  It was a metal door – the kind you would find in a machine room. The steel handle was cold. He pushed down hard on it and pulled the door open. He was met with laughter, squeals, the clinking of glasses, the smell of steak and perfume. It was the Night Walker.

  Mayumi Shibata and the novelist Yoshio Torikai had just left their hotel room when they were accosted outside the lift by two men, one of them holding a camera.

  “I see you two just came out of that room,” said the shorter man. He was buck-toothed and spat as he talked.

  “Who are you?” demanded Torikai, who took great pride in being a novelist. He was not your garden-variety celebrity and he would not stand to be treated like one. But right now, he was trying his best to shield Shibata from the lens of the muscular man with a camera. Shibata’s teeth were chattering as she hid behind Torikai’s back.

  “Ha ha ha. I’m a reporter. But you didn’t really need me to tell you that, did you?” said the short man. “How long has this been going on?”

  “If you’re trying to get a story out of us,” said Torikai, pressing the lift button, “then you’ll have to make an appointment.”

  “Oh, come on,” laughed the reporter. “I don’t think you understand the situation. Let’s see here…” He looked over Torikai’s shoulder at Shibata. “You were a guest on Premiere 21, weren’t you? Is that when it all started?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it if you’ll just make an appointment. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  “You’re a married man, aren’t you? So that makes this, you know, adultery.”

  “I told you to make an appointment!” shouted Torikai. “What are you, a moron?!” He tried to get away from the small man, but the photographer kept trying to get a photo of Shibata.

&nb
sp; Anger flashed briefly on the reporter’s face, but he quickly regained his composure. “Shall I just say you didn’t deny anything?”

  “I told you I’d tell you everything, didn’t I? My God, your breath stinks.”

  The lift doors opened. Fortunately it was empty, and Torikai and Shibata scurried in. “Stay away from us. I can’t stand the stench,” Torikai shouted, as he pushed the reporter and photographer out of the lift.

  “I guess I’ll just have to say you panicked and ran away!” the reporter shouted back.

  Shibata burst into tears as soon as the doors closed, and Torikai pulled her to him. “If Bungei owns the tabloid,” he said, “I can try to hush it up.”

  “When do you think it’ll be published?”

  “Within the next couple of weeks maybe.”

  “Your poor wife.”

  Torikai decided to put on hold telling his wife. After all, the article might not come out at all. But he had to face the fact that it was going to be published. He couldn’t stop it. He just wasn’t a big enough name in the publishing world. And once it was out, he was going to be put through Hell. Salvaging his marriage could take an eternity, and during that time he wouldn’t be able to write. But writing was all he had! He loved his wife, but if they had to get divorced, so be it. He had been prepared for that possibility the first time he slept with Shibata. Or at least he thought he was prepared.

  Mamoru Kashiwazaki felt like he was in Hell. He wasn’t going to get paid for his next two concerts. His manager Osanai had been in charge of producing the concerts, but he had run off with the advance, leaving Kashiwazaki with nothing. Why had he trusted a man like that? In the industry they say the best managers do the worst things, and Osanai had been a very good manager.

  Of course, managers who ripped off their clients always found their way back into the business. Sooner or later they turned up managing someone else as if nothing ever happened.

  Kashiwazaki tossed and turned in bed. Ever since that evening at the Night Walker, he felt like he was cursed. He had never been so scared. He had been there with the usual group from Premiere 21. Konzo’s disappearance was already old news, but for some reason Kashiwazaki couldn’t help staring at the place on the sofa where Konzo had always sat. Everyone seemed down. Mayumi Shibata was especially depressed because hints of her affair with Yoshio Torikai had come out in the tabloids.

  “Come on, snap out of it,” said Osanai. He hadn’t yet run off with Kashiwazaki’s cash, but he must have been planning it. “If you really want to be an actress, you’ve got to get used to things like this. If you want to have a private life, forget about television. Maybe you should try stage acting.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Nishizawa quickly. “We plan to have her on the show for a long time. Don’t put ideas into her head.”

  Nishizawa was also depressed. His wife, he discovered, had borrowed heavily from a loan shark to pay for her Louis Vuitton bags and Chanel suits, and he was now struggling to make the outrageous loan payments. “These guys just won’t give up,” he said. “They call me every day with their thick Osaka accents. ‘You think you can mess with us? We’ll sell your wife to a whorehouse! You don’t know who you’re dealin’ with!’ The other day they came to the TV station and hassled the security guards. Don’t they realize that I’ll never be able to pay them back if I lose my job?”

  “It really does sound like you don’t know who you’re dealing with,” said Yumiko, who had once done a special report on loan sharks.

  “I’m so sick of this,” said Nishizawa. “I’m afraid to go home because I know they’ll be waiting by the front door when I get there.”

  “Well, they don’t seem to be here, at least,” replied Yumiko, who began looking anxiously around the room. “You know,” she said, “I could use a little compassion myself. I’m the one being stalked. The guy first showed up at a meeting of my fan club. Everything was going great, everybody laughing and having a good time, people lining up to introduce themselves to me. They even applauded every time I finished talking. But there was this one guy just standing in the corner, smiling creepily and not saying anything.

  “Then he showed up a month later. I was eating breakfast with my husband, and he just walks right in and says, ‘Good morning, Yumiko.’ I probably forgot to lock the door when I took the rubbish out. Anyway, my husband yells, ‘Who the hell are you?’ The nutcase just laughs and says, ‘That’s what I was going to say to you!’ Then he comes up to me and says, ‘You always look so pretty, Yumiko. Come on, let’s have breakfast.’ I must’ve turned pale as a ghost. And then he sits right down at the table! My husband grabbed him by the neck and threw him out. The guy didn’t put up a fight, but the whole time he was saying, ‘What’re you doing? I’m Yumiko’s husband! Get your hands off me!’

  “Since then, he’s been showing up every couple of days. It doesn’t matter what time it is or whether my husband is around or not. If I’m not there, he’ll just wait for me by the front door. I went to the police, but they just laughed. They said a TV personality should expect this kind of thing. They found out his name, but because he hasn’t hurt me and doesn’t carry a weapon, the police think he’s harmless. And they think he’s mentally ill, so they won’t arrest him because they’re afraid some mental-illness advocacy group will make trouble for them.

  “So now that he knows the police aren’t going to touch him, he’s got bolder and bolder, and he’s been looking more and more disturbed. He waits for me at the television station. Sometimes he’ll yell stuff at my husband and me. I’m afraid he’ll come after us with a knife or something. I’m just so sick of it. I wish somebody would help me.”

  At that moment, Mamoru Kashiwazaki was frozen in fear. Konzo Ichikawa, still in his stage make-up and kimono, was coming slowly towards him. He came not from the direction of the dance floor, but rather from a passageway between the box seats. He was floating just above the floor, reaching out with both arms towards his friends, smiling sadly, as if asking them to take him back into the group.

  Kashiwazaki’s eyes grew large. He stared at Konzo, his lips quivering, unable to speak or move, paralysed with fear. But none of the others noticed. Yumiko continued her tale of woe. Finally, Kashiwazaki fainted, falling face down onto the table.

  “Here we go again,” said Osanai, annoyed.

  “Lay him down and put his feet up,” said Nishizawa, who then began to tend to Kashiwazaki. Several patrons stood around, watching.

  As soon as he regained consciousness, Kashiwazaki looked at the faces peering down at him. “Is he here? Is he? Is he? Is he?” he mumbled.

  “Who?”

  “Konzo… Konzo… Konzo Ichikawa.”

  “Of course he’s not here,” said Yumiko. “You saw something, didn’t you? What did you see?”

  “He was coming from over there,” said Kashiwazaki, pointing towards the passageway, at the end of which was the steel emergency-exit door.

  “You must have just imagined it,” said Yumiko, stroking Kashiwazaki’s long hair. “You know how overworked you get.”

  “Is he all right?” asked an expressionless waiter who had approached the table.

  Still shaking, Kashiwazaki sat up. “I wasn’t imagining it,” he said. “You really didn’t see him? No one did? Well I know what I saw. Wait, what happened to Izumi? He didn’t see him too, did he? Where’s Izumi? Where did he go?”

  “Don’t get so excited,” said Yumiko, pressing gently down on Kashiwazaki’s shoulders to keep him from sitting up. “Izumi isn’t here today.”

  “That’s not true. I saw him there. Right next to you.”

  “He went to France on business,” said Osanai. “Remember he talked about it? He had to go to that auction in Paris.”

  Nishizawa had been called away for a phone call, and his face was grim as he returned. “That was the TV station,” he reported. “They just got the news of a hijacked flight from Paris. They said there was someone named Izumi among the Japanese passengers. And
… they said that the plane crashed.”

  “Aaaaggghhh!” Kashiwazaki jumped up with a shriek.

  That was the last time that anyone in the group went to the Night Walker. But Kashiwazaki still dreamt of talking with his friends there, at the club with the sprawling dance floor. In his dreams, the place was always warm and filled with the aromas of food. Both Konzo Ichikawa and Yoshitomo Izumi were there. Konzo with the same makeup and stage costume as the night Kashiwazaki had seen him, and Izumi in his usual spot next to Yumiko.

  Kashiwazaki couldn’t sleep. He was afraid to. He tossed and turned. He couldn’t avoid sleep for ever. He was in Hell when he was awake and in Hell when he was asleep. It was like all the little hells he had endured since childhood had joined together to torment him as an adult. He had been called a “pansy” in junior high, and he was called a “queer” in high school. Yes, his life had been Hell. The promoters said that they wouldn’t pay him – his manager already got his cut – but they would pay his band, which meant that he had a rehearsal the next day. He didn’t have any choice. People said that the promoters were yakuza, so what could he do? He had taken out a huge loan to buy his new luxury apartment, and now this…

  Sachiko Izumi still lived in the house that her husband had bought. Her lover had died five years after the death of her husband, and more than twenty years had passed since then, but Sachiko still dreamt of them both. Mostly she dreamt of Takeshi.

  She was asleep on the second floor when the doorbell rang. She got up and stepped out onto the landing in her white negligee. The door opened without a sound, and Takeshi walked in. For some reason, he didn’t have his crutches with him.

  As he removed his coat, Takeshi spoke matter-of-factly to Sachiko, paying no attention to her nervousness. “It’s been a long time since we met that day at the hotel, hasn’t it? We slipped away from your husband and went into the garden. I still think it’s amazing how well we understood each another, considering we’d never met before.”