Daughter of Bad Times

by Rohan Wilson

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘I can hear it. Every time you speak, it’s there.’

  ‘I have nothing to be unhappy about.’

  As soon as I said it I felt myself blush. For a while there was only the rattle of the motor, the bash of the boat in the swell. The wind was warm and filled my ears with sound. I watched Feydhoo Finolhu rising off the bow. What I did have was a sense of my own difference—that I was different from Alessandra, different from the students at Yale. Whenever I met someone, I could see the calculations going on behind their eyes. The arithmetic of race. Where are you from? Where do you fit in? I was a foundling. I didn’t belong anywhere. Looking back, I can see how lonely I’d become, how cut off.

  ‘I have nothing to be unhappy about,’ I said again.

  In a hostess bar in Ginza. Low lit. Shabby. The chandeliers on the ceilings are those twenty fifties–style ones, made to look like floating orbs. Jazz pipes in from somewhere as we watch the hostess, a young woman in a blue satin gown, pearls in her ears, pearls on her neck, pour from a bottle of Yamazaki single malt into several glasses. I hate whisky. Hoshino ordered it. I would have ordered Moët, but my role is to defer to him. Hoshino hands me a drink and passes drinks to the other members of my team, to the lovely, weepy Nichika, who is messaging her boyfriend under the table, and Clover, the girl from a family of Michigan autoworkers who I personally hired for her excellent formal Japanese.

  ‘Kampai,’ Hoshino says and holds up his glass.

  We hold up our glasses. ‘Kampai.’

  The night wears on. We drink. My thoughts return over and over to Misaki Sakurai. In a search of the prefectural records, I’d found a woman by exactly that name, of roughly the right age, in roughly the right place, outside Kobe in a piss-poor industrial town called Akashi. It wasn’t more than a minute’s work to find her. Misaki Sakurai, widowed, no children. I’d sat staring at the file for an hour and I could feel the slow unwinding of everything I’d believed about myself. Was this my mother? Widowed, no children. I mean, it seemed possible. If this was my mother, it also meant I’d been lied to my entire life. The cracks in my foundation spread the more I thought about it.

  Hoshino. The justice minister’s chief of staff. He takes off his tie and loops it around his head. He calls for more whisky. He’s red and sweating. Nichika excuses herself and I stand while she bows and makes apologies. Trouble on the domestic front. Hoshino begs her to stay for one more drink.

  ‘It’s only ten o’clock,’ he says.

  ‘Please excuse me,’ Nichika says. ‘My boyfriend is waiting.’

  ‘Bah. Boyfriend. Your boyfriend can’t drink like I can.’

  Hoshino bungs down another shot. His eyes are wild.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Nichika says. She leaves as fast as she can.

  So, he turns his attention to me. He sees my empty glass and calls the hostess to fill it. ‘This is Genji,’ he says and caresses the hostess’s arm. ‘Do you like her name?’

  ‘Genji is a prince,’ I say. ‘It’s a man’s name.’

  Genji laughs in a way probably meant to be cute.

  ‘Precisely,’ Hoshino says. ‘Don’t you think it suits her?’ He squeezes her smooth and hairless forearm.

  I hold my glass politely with both hands for her to fill.

  What I ought to say next is something like, ‘We look forward to hearing about the minister’s decision on dietary minimums.’ My job here is to push the Cabey-Yasuda line and try to uncover what the government is thinking. With the way Hoshino drinks, usually it’s pretty easy to find out what’s happening inside parliament, what decisions we can expect, and how much money we’ll make. What I ought to say is, ‘We hope the minister will move ahead with our proposals.’ But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I sip from my glass and settle back on the leather sofa to stare up at the chandelier. Not for a second do I feel bad about my inaction.

  Because right now, Yamaan is locked in a CYC detention centre at the bottom of the world. Because Alessandra would rather let him rot than do the right thing. Because I’m not Rin Braden at all—I’m Rin Sakurai.

  So yeah, I’m enjoying my inaction, to be honest. I’m not thinking about audit frequencies, safety and monitoring procedures, clauses and subclauses. For the first time in years I’m awake. That past girl, the one who sleepwalked into a world of prison food and electric fences, she’s gone and she’s never coming back.

  For every second I sit here in silence, CYC’s multibillion-dollar Yokosuka project grows more and more endangered. We have contracts in place with Nishimatsu Constructions for a November commencement date. Miss that date and delays will run costs into the extra tens of millions or even more. Clover gives me a sharp look across the table. Behind her heavy-framed glasses her eyes are jumping side to side as she tries to signal me to start talking to Hoshino. She’s a Yale graduate and acts like it. I met her at a function for the Japanese ambassador when he visited the university. She’d been chosen from among the graduate cohort to deliver an address to him in Japanese. She speaks Japanese with a cute Kansai inflection, a trait the locals in Tokyo adore.

  ‘We look forward to hearing about the minister’s decision,’ she says, trying to kick-start the conversation.

  ‘The minister is a pig-faced pervert,’ I say.

  Clover makes a strangled coughing sound. ‘No, he really isn’t.’

  ‘Leave him to chase some pussy in Kabukicho.’

  ‘I think you need to reconsider what you’re saying,’ Clover says.

  Hoshino isn’t one for formality though, not when he’s drinking, and by now his drinking has hit that level where he quits giving a fuck. He’s knotted his tie around his forehead like a kung-fu master. It hangs down past his jowls.

  ‘The minister likes it when women piss on him,’ he says.

  I look at Clover. ‘See?’

  ‘I don’t think we should be talking about this,’ she says.

  ‘Does he drink it?’ I say. ‘The piss? Like, what’s his deal?’

  Hoshino sits back. His eyes are red and narrow. ‘Not only pissing,’ he says. ‘The minister likes to be slapped and humiliated. He likes being forced to crawl.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘that’s pathetic.’

  ‘We’re looking forward to hearing about the minister’s decision on dietary minimums,’ Clover says, with her hands pressed together. ‘We believe our offer represents value for the Ministry of Justice. If we can move on to the—’

  ‘You know something else,’ Hoshino says. ‘When the minister heard about what you did in Houston, with that inmate, he got a big grin.’ Here, Hoshino stretches his cheeks into a leer. ‘He said to me, Hoshino, that girl is a firecracker. What I would give to light her wick.’

  I put down my drink. I’m surprised to find that I don’t particularly care about Houston anymore.

  ‘Of course, I told the minister there was no truth to the rumour,’ he says.

  ‘It’s true. All of it’s true.’

  Hoshino blows air through his lips. ‘You’re joking with me,’ he says. ‘This is American humour.’

  ‘Should we really be talking about this now?’ Clover says.

  ‘I wonder what you could have done,’ Hoshino says. ‘A cute little thing like you.’

  ‘I broke a man’s arm.’

  Hoshino’s eyebrows lift so sharply that the knotted tie falls down his face.

  ‘I placed the client in a wristlock,’ I say without emotion. ‘He wanted to kill me. I wasn’t going to let that happen.’

  ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you really are a firecracker.’ He sips some more of his whisky. Sweat sparkles on the dome of his head. His hair is smoothed across it like a barcode. ‘A firecracker, it’s true.’

  He is looking quite openly at my breasts now, the shape of which show through the shirt I’m wearing. He slides towards me along the leather bench seat and leans closer.

  His gaze lifts to my face. ‘I worry about you, you know.’

  ‘Thank you
. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘We’ve worked so closely on Yokosuka. You’ve become like a daughter.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Let me give you some advice. As a father. You’re losing your demureness.’

  I try to smile. It comes out thin. He shakes his head sadly.

  ‘Your hair, for example,’ he says. ‘A Japanese should never have hair that’s white. It’s not natural. I fear you’re becoming too American.’

  ‘I am American.’

  ‘That’s a passport. Your spirit is Japanese. Breaking a man’s arm? Wearing your hair blonde? That’s not Japanese. It’s like you want to become a foreigner.’

  ‘How can I become a foreigner when I’m already American?’

  ‘Yes. Be careful. If you end up as an American you’ll never be able to come home.’

  Hoshino believes the LDP party lines about his country. Strong state, weak people. Cultural purity. Racial purity. Even as decades of population loss leaves whole towns standing empty and causes national defaults and inflation that doubles prices every couple of years, he still believes that immigration would destroy the country. I’ve spent years trying to convince Hoshino that a facility like the ones we built in Australia, where refugees have a pathway to residence, would benefit the country. His answer? Japan is for the Japanese.

  I’m finding it hard to concentrate. Clover is watching me across the table and she lifts one eyebrow and mouths ‘What are you doing?’ I ignore her. My smile is so thin that I feel my lips growing taut. I turn to Hoshino.

  ‘Why don’t I show you?’ I say.

  ‘Show me what?’

  ‘Give me your hand.’ I seize him by the wrist. ‘Now, stand up.’

  He’s grinning hard enough to hurt himself. ‘Oh, what’s this?’

  ‘You have to act quickly,’ I say and lead him away from the table. ‘Otherwise the inmate will defeat you.’

  I take his hand and place it on my chest.

  ‘He tried to grab my shirt. Like this.’

  Hoshino is grinning harder than ever. He lets his hand slide down just above my breast.

  ‘First I pushed his wrist towards the elbow,’ I say and twist his hand outwards. He cries in shock. ‘Then I forced him to the floor.’

  Hoshino goes down on one knee. I twist a little further and he falls on his side.

  ‘To break his arm, all I do is push.’

  I force the elbow against the joint.

  He’s slapping the carpet. His eyes are pinched shut. ‘Itai, itai, itai,’ he’s saying. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

  ‘Nothing to it. I never even noticed what I’d done.’

  His face is pressed into the carpet. His tie falls into his mouth. He’s red and sweating. Genji is out of her seat and other hostesses are standing from nearby tables. They look at each other and for the first time tonight the expressions they wear are genuine. Hoshino spits out his tie. ‘Get her off me,’ he cries.

  ‘The inmate thought he could control the situation,’ I say. ‘If someone tries to control me, I show them who I am.’

  ‘Get her off.’

  The hostesses gather around Hoshino. He rolls to his knees. Some of them help him stand. ‘Are you okay?’ they’re saying. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ He pushes them away. He opens and closes his fist and straightens his arm. ‘You’re stronger than you look,’ he says.

  I bow to him low and deep. Some of my hair has come unpinned. It hangs in my eyes. I take up my bag and coat and I signal Clover to do the same. We stand together in the starry light of the chandeliers. Hoshino is having his arm tended by Genji. Another young woman in an evening gown of black satin mops his face. Clover whispers in my ear in English, ‘That was fucking amazing.’

  We bow again. We leave slowly, steadily, out past the hostesses and the gaping customers and into the first snowfall of winter.

  The next morning, I take the maglev from Tokyo station to Akashi and I realise I’m in a bad way. I sit splayed in the seat as city after city—Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka—all one vast city really, a thousand kilometres long, melts by in a speed blur. The maglev runs above it on piers and from this height the suburban roofs seem set into the ground like cobbling away to where the dim shapes of mountains sit in a raw mist. Then would come the long, long dark of the tunnels in which I see myself reflected in the glass, eyes dark beneath white hair, the sombre downturned mouth, and then bursting out into the light as we emerge above another suburb, another city, and here stand the sea-nets of golf ranges strung on columns and the apartment towers rising at differing heights like blades of grass. Beneath it all the constant thrum of air passing around the carriage.

  I also feel that thrumming inside.

  Here’s what I was told: your mother died and you were orphaned. I rescued you from an institution. Alessandra told me these things over and over. She would say them in a straightforward way, until they became the truths of the universe. Your mother died and you were orphaned. I rescued you from that terrible little school. No more questions, go to sleep. This was the conversation. The reason why we had this conversation so often was because I had a memory of my mother. I remembered her face. Her face and her hair. I remembered her lying on a tatami floor in a hot beam of sun while her hair spread outward, and she would not wake no matter how much child-Rin shook her by the shoulder. A memory of a memory, remade and retold until it fit a new world, a new language, until it became the narrative of my mother’s death. The precise moment of the loss.

  No more questions, go to sleep.

  In the upper left of my vision, messages from Clover emerge from little blue bubbles.

  spoke to matsubara. said hoshino has his arm in a sling.

  wants a meeting at 9.

  can you make it?

  I ignore these. The maglev shoots from a tunnel in a blast of sunlight onto an overpass above Kobe. The speedometer at the head of the carriage says we’re doing 505 kilometres per hour. Another message.

  everything ok?

  I like Clover. Might even call her a friend. But she knows me well enough to realise I won’t answer that.

  It’s 9.32 a.m. when I disembark at Nishi-Akashi station. Outside the air is noticeably colder than Tokyo. The sky is a frail, porcelain blue. I slip on my winter coat. What’s my play here? I don’t really know. It didn’t feel right to send this woman an email or something saying, hey, you don’t know me but there might be a chance I’m your daughter. Besides, what if she ignores it? Then I’m no better off. This needs to be sorted out, right now, one way or the other. So I call up the address from the file and a laser-green arrow appears on the pavement, directing me. I knot my scarf and follow.

  Japan is a country in decline. I cross through whole neighbourhoods that stand empty, overgrown, and vandalised. Some of the houses have been bulldozed. In others, automated demolition drones dismantle walls and floors of deserted buildings like worker ants. Cabey-Yasuda operates a fleet of these remote-operated construction drones in Tokyo, crewed by prisoners detained in our Miyakojima facility who sit in cubicles wearing telepresence headsets. You hear people say it a lot—demolition is the only growth industry. It’s meant as a joke, but I don’t find it funny. I feel a weird sort of sadness when I think about it. I mean, this is where I come from. It’s me. Or the alternate me—the me I could have been. Did Alessandra believe she was saving me from something? Most definitely.

  The green arrows lead me into a mighty park in the centre of Akashi. Here and there, old women in polyester tracksuits take their exercise or walk dogs. At the centre are the remains of a samurai castle. I stop and stare. Barely even a castle, just two white towers on a wall of fitted stones. The castle proper is long gone—only these towers remain. I stand staring for so long that my glasses assume I need interpretation and begin to give me the run-down.

  ‘This castle was built by Ogasawara Tadazane in 1619 to guard against a possible invasion—’

  ‘I remember this place,’ I say
. ‘I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘Would you like me to continue the narration?’

  Wind rattles the leafless cherry trees lining the paths.

  ‘No, that’s fine.’

  The arrows lead me by a lake rimmed around in concrete and out past a tall stand of bamboo to a gate. It exits into the outer suburbs of the city, a long descending ramp and then a potholed road, a picnic table on its side. Piles of garbage in plastic bags. The houses in the street mostly deserted. This isn’t exactly Manhattan.

  I come to a house better kept than most and the green arrows tell me this is the place. I unwind my scarf. There’s a rock garden in front. Raked gravel. The trees clipped and shaped and moss growing among the roots. I look around. Along the street there stands a rice paddy. This has to be it. I breathe in and breathe out. My heart rate reads 130 bpm. Blood pressure way up. I remove my glasses and pocket them. I tuck the stringy bits of my hair behind one ear. I ring the front door bell.

  A distant call from inside of ‘Hai!’

  The blood is so loud in my ears that it hurts.

  When the door swings in there’s a woman standing in the genkan. She smiles. She’s short and wiry with a knot of black hair tied back. Middle-aged, her skin beginning to spot. She tilts her head slightly.

  ‘Hai?’ she says.

  I feel unsteady. From a far-away place I say, ‘Sumimasen.’ I bow slightly. ‘Eto ne—’

  Before I can say more the woman lets out a frightening squeal and falls back from the door. She puts her hand to her chest. I’m frozen to the spot. This is not what I expected. The woman has fallen to her knees among the shoes, holding her heart, and a series of changes comes over her, a grin of pain, a sudden paleness, as if struck by some sickness, and then she throws herself forward and grabs for my feet.

  ‘Daijoubu desu ka?’ I say.

  The woman looks up in anguish. She reaches for my hand. Her eyes well. In fine formal Japanese she moans, ‘Please forgive me.’

  We sit in the front-most room of the house on tatami edged with black cloth and I know, in a dizzying kind of way like a time slippage, that I’ve been here before. Time passed but it never passed. I’m still here and I never left. I cup my hands in my lap and wait while this small woman composes herself. She looks up with eyes as red and swollen as a drunk’s. It leaves me feeling uncomfortable. I don’t share her naked pain. I squeeze her fingers and look around the room. A scroll of calligraphy hangs on the wall that bears a mantra from the Heart Sutra: Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. I read it twice through, expecting another line, but that’s all there is. In the corner behind glass panels stands a butsudan of black lacquer work. All of it neatly arranged and kept clean. And this woman kneeling in fits of tears.