Sins As Scarlet

by Nicolas Obregon

  Easy now, we don’t want to put you down.

  Drop. The. Knife.

  These final seconds didn’t make any sense; they fit no narrative. The thoughts in her head were inane, paralysed by the thought that she should reach for some stoicism or great, redemptive philosophy at the end. Instead, she couldn’t think of anything beyond fear and relief at onrushing death.

  Mara glanced over at Bebé’s dead body. Urine was dripping out of his pant leg, mixing on the floor with the burger grease. In death, his round face looked scared. Mara Zambrano drank in the image, savoured it as though she could take it with her.

  ‘Evelyn,’ she whispered. ‘I’m coming.’

  Then Mara raised the knife and ran at the men. In the next second her cranium was a flesh piñata, blood and brain slapping the departures board – Zurich, London, Honolulu, Tel Aviv, Tokyo – every city dripping blood.

  29. Beside You

  POLICE SMASH ORGAN-HARVESTING RING IN DESERT RAID

  Wesley Kwang & Iverna Mejía | Reporting from Huxley, Arizona

  Doctors, lawyers and fugitives with links to organized crime were among the fourteen suspects arrested over the weekend, the Phoenix District Attorney Office says. Investigators descended on the small unincorporated desert community of Huxley in the early hours of Saturday morning following an anonymous tip-off. They were expecting to find evidence of a black market in organs and human tissues. What they discovered instead was a scene of imprisonment, carnage and death – including the bodies of two Border Patrol officers suspected of corruption.

  Law enforcement officials say the first officers on the scene were ‘shocked’ by the extent of the operation, describing the uninhabited town as ‘one big kidney motel’. Documentation allegedly shows healthy organs being sold for as much as $100,000. For those ‘supplying’ the organs, many of whom are undocumented and facing severe financial difficulty, the promise of high-value recompense is ‘a dream come true’, according to Katherine Floccari of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, who is collaborating on the case. However, it seems as if many of the foreign nationals found at Huxley were being held against their will. Investigators found evidence of murder, sexual assault, large-scale forgery of documents and money laundering in an operation that already seems to stretch across state lines and international borders. Early indications seem to implicate several hospitals across Arizona, Southern California and the Los Angeles area. The investigation is ongoing.

  Iwata was sitting at his mother’s bedside in the Torrance Memorial Medical Center. The news of his hospitalization for a gunshot wound had provoked a massive heart attack in Nozomi Iwata. Though he’d avoided infection and left hospital after just a few days, the damage had been done. Nozomi hadn’t opened her eyes in days.

  Iwata sat by her side, holding her small, limp hand. Decisions would have to be made, bills would have to be paid. He knew he needed to take action, at the very least to gather himself. But Iwata had nothing. Nothing but guilt and woe. Like a poor man expected to foot a bill, he turned his empty pockets out.

  Out of the window, far beyond the hospital grounds he saw two young girls putting up clothes on a line. From the way they were moving it looked as if music might be playing there. The pegs looked like little dead birds.

  ‘Mom?’ Iwata’s voice sounded strange, childlike. The bleeping from her life-support machine was steady, as if she were agreeing.

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  ‘The nurse said I should talk to you.’

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  ‘But I guess we never say much, do we?’

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Iwata switched to Japanese, speaking more furtively, as though it were a secret. ‘You wanted to talk and I kept on saying no. I – I shouldn’t have done that. I’m very sorry. I’m always sorry.’

  Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Morning became afternoon and the city outside slowly turned a bronzy brown, as though baked with butter. Iwata opened the koi carp box that his mother had wanted him to see. Inside, bound with coloured ribbons, was a stack of notebooks.

  Carefully, Iwata took one out. It smelled of his mother. He opened it and saw her delicate pen strokes. Every year on my birthday there is a meteor shower called the Perseid Meteor, or the Tears of St Lawrence to Christians.

  Slowly, frequently taking breaks to breathe, Iwata consumed his mother’s past, her history, her stories. And in them, it was as if he was meeting someone that he had always known for the first time.

  Against all prognoses, Nozomi regained consciousness for a single sunny afternoon a few days before her death. Iwata described the blueness of the sky, as her eyes were no longer functioning. He described how the ocean sparkled in the distance, though he could not see it from where he sat. Nozomi, her voice now so different and small, made only one request. To be taken to Hibiya Park. Struggling to speak, Iwata told her that maybe the next day, when it would be less hot.

  ‘Is it warm outside, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘… Where is outside?’

  ‘Torrance, Mother. Your home.’

  ‘Oh. Are there flowers here?’

  ‘Yes, they’re very beautiful. Snapdragons, I think.’

  ‘It’s my birthday soon.’

  ‘Yes,’ Iwata lied. ‘We’ll have cake. I’ll go to Mitsuwa.’

  ‘You always buy too much. Go with your girl.’

  ‘Yes.’ Iwata laughed, desperate tears dropping into his lap. ‘I will. She’s Japanese. You’re really going to love her.’

  Nozomi reached out her one exposed finger and Iwata kissed it.

  The funeral was on a day of perfect blue sky and temperate sun. A soft breeze passed through the lone arroyo willow outside. Above the Toyota Meeting Hall, tall palms swayed gladly. A yellow kingbird sang somewhere nearby, its high-pitched call sounding like chi-bear, chi-bear.

  Nozomi’s instructions had been clear. The funeral was a heavily choreographed procedure; everything was accounted for. The people arrived with their kōden envelopes swathed in satin – the amounts contained within depending on their closeness to Nozomi. The envelopes varied in aspect but they followed minute rules relating to ribbon placement, where names were written, whether the flap ought to be up or down, and so on. They were accepted by two teenage volunteers from the arts centre who then handed over a bag in return containing a thank-you card and personalized tea, to be enjoyed while remembering Nozomi.

  When everyone had arrived and taken their seats the process began. The nōkanshi, an elderly man who had been flown in from Japan, took great care to ensure that nobody present saw the bare skin of the deceased. He cleaned Nozomi Iwata’s body underneath the quilt with a sterilized cloth, the weariness, the cares and the pains of this world washed away. He worked tenderly, as if he had felt a great love for this woman all his life.

  When the cleaning was finished the nōkanshi dressed her in her final clothes – a white-and-purple kimono – wrapped right over left, in contrast to the living. He applied her make-up with the gentlest of brush strokes and used Nozomi’s favourite colours, the pallidness of death replaced by a faint, human blush. Throughout the process the nōkanshi worked with absolutely serenity, his old face serious yet sympathetic, his movements unhurried, like he had no audience. Iwata had never witnessed such dignity.

  When the work was complete Iwata could barely look at his mother, she was so beautiful.

  ‘I will now affix the lid,’ the nōkanshi said in Japanese. Iwata and Earnell McCrae helped him lift Nozomi’s small body into the casket, made of fine hinoki cypress.

  ‘She is ready for viewing,’ the nōkanshi announced.

  Nozomi’s face was visible through a little window, as though she were in a cuckoo clock. Iwata bowed behind the coffin as the guests passed by to say their final goodbyes. The priest began to chant a sutra and, one by one, the guests offered incense to Nozomi. Lastly, flowers were placed around her shoulders. In death, she received a new Buddhist name, the kaimyō – given i
n order to prevent the return of the deceased if their name were called.

  When it was over Iwata travelled to the crematorium. Alone, he stood next to his mother’s coffin for a long time. He wanted to say something but could find no words to convey his love. He kissed the coffin, then nodded. As Nozomi Iwata slid slowly into the cremator, her favourite song played – Van Morrison’s ‘Beside You’.

  Afterwards Iwata picked her bones from the ashes using large chopsticks. He started with the feet bones and worked his way upwards to ensure that Nozomi would not be upside down in the urn.

  In the parking lot of the crematorium Iwata stood alone. The sun had almost set. On the other side of the street Callie and Santi were sitting outside the frozen-yoghurt place, chattering about something or other. Iwata did not know what they could have in common, yet they never ran out of things to say to each other. He smiled and put his hands in his pockets, feeling bereft and peaceful all at once.

  ‘You look like you could use a smoke.’

  Iwata turned to see an old man in a black suit and heavy spectacles walking towards him. He had a white beard, liver spots on his cheeks and fluffy silver eyebrows.

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘That was a tentative rejection. Quitter?’

  ‘More than once.’ Iwata considered the man. ‘I spoke to you on the phone?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m Kimura. You’re Nozomi’s son.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You grew up here?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘You’re like gaijin, huh?’ The old man laughed. ‘American gaijin, that’s you.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘I knew it was you the moment I saw you.’ Kimura’s smile faded. ‘… What a shame.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Nothing, it just would have been easier the other way. Anyway, ignore me. It was a wonderful afternoon.’ He took out a trembling cigarette and lit up. ‘Your mother would have approved. We were friends.’

  ‘I know, I’ve read about you.’

  Kimura seemed surprised by this. ‘Read?’

  ‘She kept journals.’

  ‘Ah. That explains it. I probably don’t come off too well.’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘We should talk.’ He puffed out smoke and pointed to his car. Iwata helped him into the driver’s seat, then sat on the little concrete lip of the parking lot.

  ‘My mother’s journals just stop. They’re full of blanks. I want to know why she left me, I want to know why she just disappeared.’

  Kimura bowed his head, then nodded. ‘You already know I was close to your mother. Truth is, I loved her. One day she just disappeared on me too. I searched all over for her, but nothing. It was like I had imagined her. Then years later, she sends me a letter out of the blue. Says she loved me very much but she’s started a new life with someone else in America. Imagine my shock – little Nozomi on the other side of the world. I always figured I would love again like that, but I never did …’ He sighed the sigh of regretful old men and smiled distantly, a long-held bittersweetness. ‘Only recently I was thinking of calling her, saying to her, “Nozomi, how did we let forty years slide without seeing each other?” ’

  Kimura looked over at the crematorium and fell quiet for a time. ‘I only saw Nozomi once again. I was in Los Angeles with work and we met for coffee. It was just a single hour. But we had entire lives to catch up on. You see Nozomi told me the truth, what really happened.’ He looked up at Iwata. ‘Tell me something, did she ever talk to you about your father?’

  Iwata felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. ‘No. Never.’

  ‘All right, the truth is’ – Kimura closed his leathery eyelids and sighed – ‘I came here because I thought there was a chance it would be me. Your mother never told me explicitly, only that she had a son and the timeframes matched up. But looking at you, I know now that you’re not mine.’ Opening his eyes, he shook his head. ‘Kid, I’m sorry, but your mother was raped. The man who attacked your mother is Ryoma Hisakawa. Your father.’

  ‘Hisakawa …’

  The name hit Iwata hard. Dormant memories erupted from deep within him, the truth of his childhood returning with force. He remembered the early years his mind had protected him from for so long: the beatings, the hunger, the muffled shrieks from the other room as his mother was tortured. Iwata remembered the pills his mother would escape into, her vacant eyes and grinding teeth. He remembered the smile the blank man gave when he whipped him, spreading out the lashes, long enough for the burning on his buttocks to subside, only to rip into them again. And now, as if stepping out from behind some drapes, Iwata remembered the face of his father, Ryoma Hisakawa. He had always known the name, burrowed deep within him like a botfly, the name he himself had been born into – Kosuke Hisakawa.

  Iwata considered what he was being told. That this man, this rapist, had created him. That his entire existence had been born out of an act of filth. Iwata’s throat constricted, not at this knowledge but at the thought of what his mother suffered. His face burned with the shame of all the things he had thrown at her, all the poison that had dripped from his tongue.

  Iwata put his head between his legs. Tears stung his eyes, his eardrums pounded, the panic surged. After a few seconds he laid his cold palms on the warm, cracked Californian concrete and exhaled. Iwata felt a tentative hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry, kid. But you deserved to know.’

  ‘Finish it,’ Iwata said thickly.

  Kimura sighed. ‘Hisakawa’s father was Somebody, a powerful man. He was buying up all the land in Yūrakuchō. After Hisakawa attacked your mother, he gave her a choice. Marry him, or her father’s business would be crushed. She had no choice. She left me and married Hisakawa. Tolerated him for as long as possible. But then one day she couldn’t. She just ran. I suppose she met your stepfather a while after that. Never came back to Japan again. Your grandfather’s bar burned down shortly after your mother left. He died a few years later.’

  ‘Hisakawa … is he still alive?’

  ‘Yes. And now he’s a Somebody too.’

  There was a long silence between them, only the far-off drone of the freeway mixing in with the breeze through the trees.

  ‘I was thinking on the way over here’ – Kimura licked his lips – ‘maybe there could be a way for you to … confront him. I’m not suggesting anything untoward. Just that you would be able to give him a piece of your mind. Maybe I could help arrange a meeting. We’d give you a good cover story, change your name, of course. I used to know some people. With some luck I think I could get you a sit-down with the bastard.’

  Iwata pictured an old, fat man grinning – a grotesque version of himself. The revenge would be perfunctory; there would be no sanguine luxuriation. He would simply pluck Ryoma Hisakawa from this life – lint on a cuff. It made perfect sense to Iwata, this simple act. Even if he hanged for it, it wouldn’t matter. That, at least, would be the end of it, the sad little circle finally broken.

  ‘A sit-down …’ Iwata echoed.

  ‘Kid, I’m old, but you? Well, look at you. You’re strong.’

  Look at me, Iwata thought. He looked nothing like his mother. That left one alternative.

  But now he heard a child’s laughter. Iwata looked over the road at Santi. He was smiling, picking sleep out of his eye. This tiny artless gesture was all it took for Iwata to feel it: there were better things in this world to live for. To love. To fight. To do good things.

  Otherwise, he would be his father’s son. Otherwise, he would be like Mara – an asteroid.

  ‘Mr Kimura, why did you come here?’ Iwata asked.

  The old man frowned. ‘To pay my respects, of course.’

  ‘I think an old man came here today to tempt a younger man into vengeance.’

  ‘I came here to tell you who raped your mother and burned down your family business. That’s all. I’m just saying, you know, that it wouldn’t be too late to talk to him. Make him see.�
��

  Iwata nodded. ‘Maybe another time.’

  ‘Now hold on –’

  ‘Safe journey home, Mr Kimura.’

  Iwata crossed the road. Santi had frozen yoghurt all over his face. Callie squeezed Iwata’s hand under the table and it felt like life itself. From where they were sitting, he could see the palm trees against coming night, their fronds like spiders in dark windowpanes.

  ‘Thank you for helping me today, Cal.’

  ‘You know I love being with him.’ She smiled sadly. ‘Will you be okay?’

  ‘We’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’m going to miss my two guys.’ She buried her face in Santi’s wild mop. When she looked back up at Iwata there was a crumpled smile on her lips and tears in her eyes. ‘But this is best for all of us.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  Callie passed Santi over to Iwata and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Santiago’ – she spoke in Spanish – ‘look after your uncle – deal?’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘Goodbye, Kosuke.’

  She hugged them both in the same motion. Then she walked away.

  Iwata put his face on the crown of Santi’s head, smelling kid shampoo and Callie’s perfume. He watched her get into her car and drive back to her old life – a place where both of them knew he never belonged.

  ‘Shall we go home, Santiago?’

  ‘Sure,’ he answered.

  Iwata smiled. The boy’s English was getting better.

  30. Sunset

  The sky above Los Angeles was shockingly blue. Front gardens were stippled with succulents, monarch butterflies bobbed about milkweed. In the Starbucks on North Vermont Avenue a woman in a Joy Division T-shirt was writing a screenplay about a gay magician whose life was turned upside down when implicated in a murder at the Magic Castle involving his trademark trick.

  A mile to the south, on Virgil, in a repurposed butcher shop, a Nicaraguan man spoke of heaven and the redemptive power of financial contributions. At the hipster café next door two young women from podunk towns were discussing their idea for a meditation-retreat business over almond-milk lattes. Across the road two policemen gave a homeless man a ticket for sleeping in the street. Fly-guy inflatables danced outside the second-hand car dealership on the corner.