From the Archives: Tokyo Chase Scene, Not Quite in D-Minor (Allegro Vivace a Movimento Perpetuo)

I disavow any and all responsibility for this ludicrous chase scene, which is based on various suggestions from friends, and my own fleeting impressions of Tokyo, which I've only visited once. (No matter how this chase scene sounds, incidentally, I thought the city was excellent. Confusing in the extreme, but excellent.)

CONDITIONS

1. The chase takes place in Japan.

2. The chase must be set to music of some kind, and the music must influence the outcome of the chase.

3. At some point, someone has to jump from a skyscraper.

4. All of the following must appear: pachinko, rice snacks, vending machines, Shinjuku Station, women on a shopping trip, nerds, pocket calculators.

What can I say? I was putting on my headphones, anyway, and I didn't see the point in stopping. So Mr. Nishikawa had come in, and that tall Chinese guy, Li-Gui or Gui-Men, or something of that sort. (Whatever. It wasn't his real name, anyway.) So the building was on fire and the sprinklers were malfunctioning--that too. So a seething semicircle of computer nerds had sprung up from nowhere, brandishing calculators--so what? Everybody dies some time. All you can do is make it spectacular. You're not really dead till you're forgotten, right?

"Caprice in D-minor," I shouted, flinging my arms wide--but I had the tape on the wrong side, and it was the Moto Perpetuo instead. I took that as a good sign: perpetual motion equals speed, grace, escape, and life. I corrected myself aloud: "Allegro vivace a movimento perpetuo!" I spun the volume dial with my thumb, turning it up all the way.

Mr. Nishikawa and Li-Gui exchanged glances. They looked puzzled. This wasn't the reaction they'd expected. The computer nerds buzzed amongst themselves, lips forming zeds and doubleyous (which, from what I can work out, form the basis of the Japanese language, in its entirety).

"Zayu zxxx wa wuu," I said, lowering my voice to a ferocious movie-samurai growl. "Zxxxxx!"

"What the--?" mouthed Li-Gui. His fat brows came together, putting me in mind of horny caterpillars. Mr. Nishikawa bulged his Adam's apple and showed off his fillings. The geeks typed furiously, formulating napalm on their adding machines.

"Doppio movimento," I yelped. I grabbed Li-Gui's hands in mine, as if to sweep him up in a dance, and swung myself neatly between his legs. I skated across the parquet floor, borne on a torrent of sixteenth notes (and the seat of my pants, slippery from too much desk-sitting). I slid clean across the hall, sucking a sheaf of paper from the copy-machine with the wind of my passage. (Not, please note, the passage of wind--that's more Nishikawa's department.) I got a brief glimpse of rows of alarmed faces poking out of offices, just in time to catch me whizzing straight through the faux-finish arch and onto the third-floor rotunda balcony. There, remarked by a fresh set of spectators, my flight was halted abruptly by the balustrade. I bounced to my feet unhurt, even managing to squeeze off a hasty bow for my audience.

By the time Li-Gui had got out of the road, giving the geeks a clear shot through the archway, I'd taken off in the direction of the fire escape, trailed by a retinue of persistent photocopies. Various missiles shattered on the parquet or exploded on the tile floor three storeys down. I, unscathed, covered the distance between archway and exit in two bars (thirty-two sixteenth notes; twelve strides; just under four seconds). I clattered down two storeys' worth of metal stairs, into a miniature inferno. The garbage had been forgotten in the alley, and it had ignited along with everything else on the first floor. (The fire, I should point out, had nothing to do with my headlong flight. It had started, near as I could figure, when someone knocked a coffee-maker into a fishtank. A school of sparks swam into a nearby inbox, which went up like a Christmas tree in January. Soon, the whole office was blazing away, and the first and second floors had to be evacuated. Everyone from the third floor up stayed at their desks, slaving away, which is precisely what I'd been doing till the nerd squad put in its appearance.)

A pocket calculator zinged through the air, grazing my wrist. A smattering of blood hit the pavement, shortly followed by the rest of me. I couldn't go back up, of course, what with Nishikawa and the Geek Brigade blocking the way. There was nothing for it but to jump (I jumped from the Nishikawa Building, and all I got was this lousy scar!)--so I did. I rolled twice and thought I was free, but Li-Gui had seen his chance for the afternoon off, and was after me in a trice.

"Addoppia ancora," I shouted, picking up my pace to match the music. I looked back to check on Li-Gui's reaction, and found myself entangled with a cyclist, who had sprung up from nowhere.

"Zzxxx zwa ZHOU!" he scolded, checking his tires for punctures.

"Zhou you," I giggled, evading both him and Li-Gui in a flock of horrible crones. I would have been free right there and then, but my head and shoulders stuck up from theirs like a tree above bushes, so my ruse was doomed. Li-Gui traded zeds for the cyclist's doubleyous, and suddenly they were both after me, and my crones had dispersed like petals in the wind. They must have spotted a sale. Old folks, I swear--they're the same everywhere: cheap, shrivelled, and smelling like mothballs. They've got nothing to do, so they bundle around all day, getting in the way and buying things they don't need. Then, the second you do want them for something, they've somewhere important to be.

Feeling exposed, I took off down a side-street, one of a hundred. I dodged and swerved, avoiding knots of fifteen-minute smoke-breakers eating vending-machine riceballs. The machines themselves lurked ominously in doorways and alcoves, dispensing hot meals and rude magazines. Corporate slaves in cheesy American suits leaned against them, comparing notes.

"Don't get the soup from this machine," I imagined one saying to the other. "It has no taste."

"But the next machine uses too much tofu. I don't like tofu in my soup."

"Here, try a rice ball instead. This one is perfectly fried, and deliciously crispy on the outside."

I passed women with too much lipstick on, smoking their cigarettes in a savage sort of way:

"Look at that man outside the chemist's! I'm sure he's a pervert."

"Why?"

"He has his hand in his pocket. It's been in there for five minutes."

"Five minutes already? Hurry up with your cigarette--we'll be late!"

Signs, both static and moving, advertised noodles, soup, nightclubs, and pachinko. Li-Gui detached one smoke-breaker from the rest, and seconds later, a rice-ball splattered on my neck. Now, there were three of them, chasing me down the narrow street in single file. I sought refuge in Mr. Takanori's Pachinko, and was immediately sucked into a cyclone of elbows and knees and body odours. Clacky ball sounds and raucous bell sounds mingled with the music in my headphones. I struggled and reeled, and was engulfed forthwith. A minnow could sooner have escaped Charybdis. Li-Gui and his friends were likewise embroiled. Round and round we went. Round and round went the pachinko balls. Neon bar signs, tacked to the walls to no apparent purpose, flashed and sputtered. We all got dizzy. Li-Gui turned quite green. At last, the cyclist sank beneath the tide, Li-Gui slid into the men's room, and I squirted out to the right. The smoke-breaker seized hold of a pachinko machine, and that was the last I saw of him. He's probably still there, the poor sod, down to his last yen and unable to tear himself free.

For my own part, free at last, I sailed straight through the back door, miraculously rejoining the old crones from outside the Nishikawa Building. They must have spotted the mother of all sales--each old bag had spawned two new bags, filled to the brim with things in paper packages. I oiled through their ranks, stealing something from every sack: dried squid from one, scented envelopes from the next, powdered eel from a third. I emerged with bulging pockets, and three parasols under my coat.

For a moment, it seemed I'd got off free and clear, with a good haul of swag besides. Shinjuku Station was just ahead, with its silvery promise of freedom. I let the crowd bear me along--a hundred yards, fifty, twenty-five to go, three hundred and six notes left in the Moto Perpetuo and then--

"Zx wazou ZXXXX!"

I spun and dodged, just in time to avoid disembowelment by handlebars. It was Li-Gui and the cyclist on a tandem, pursued in turn by two men in helmets (the rightful owners of the tandem, no doubt.) I collided with the first of the helmet men, bounced off the second, and made a bid for a passing tram.

"Colla parte!", I yelled, running out of relevant musical terms and picking one out of a hat. I ducked three old ladies, seven communters, and a man in a bear costume. Li-Gui, having abandoned the tandem, dove for my legs. I stumbled under his assault, spilling sloppily into the street. My Walkman crumpled under me, and Paganini petered out in a snarl of tape. A stupid three-wheeled car screeched to a halt mere inches from my head, disgorging none other than. Mr. Nishikawa.

"You're fired!" he cried, triumphant.

Li-Gui applauded. So did everyone else in the street, just because they could. The Geek Brigade drifted over in an awkward sort of way, chortling and nudging each other.

"He stole my pen," said one.

"That's nothing," said another. "He stole my extra pocket."

"One of those ones you clip to the inside of your coat?"

"Yes. It had ten thousand yen in. I was taking Naruko to lunch."

"The bastard!"

I picked myself up and trudged back to the Nishikawa Building to clean out my office, covered in shame and manky stuff from the gutter.

I did mention this would be completely absurd, didn't I?