The room before me was large, vast even, like a warehouse. Strip lights spanned the length of the ceiling, and the walls glowed white. There was a carpeted space at the end of the room showcasing a velour sofa and a glass coffee table, alongside traditional chests made from red elmwood and black ironwork. Arranged in front of me were low tables topped with wicker baskets full of foil packets of green tea and clay models of the gods. Along the walls were racks of men’s leather shoes in black and brown. There was an arrangement of ties and walking sticks and then, in a glass cabinet, tie pins of black lacquer with silver and gold metalwork – a golden carp swimming in a dark pool or a silver peony against the black night sky.
As I walked around the room, I thought of the men who had made these items and what their existence was like. Life in a facility like Chiba is largely silent. Prisoners are not allowed to talk to one another or look at each other. During exercise, bathing, even prayer, communication is prohibited and punished. In the factories, each man may focus only on the work before him. He cannot glance at the guards or other prisoners, check the time, or look out of the window. Permission has to be sought before he wipes his face or blows his nose. It is a world where men have little control over their minds and bodies; the only things they can influence are the products they create.
I thought of Kaitarō as I had last seen him, the man in the videos with his despair and defiance. I saw his face framed by long dark hair, his eyes gleaming at the camera, and I wondered which of these items he had made. I wondered how he might have changed in this world where for years he had been told exactly how to sit, stand, even sleep. I imagined him in the factory every day, inured to the routine body searches that took place before he entered the canteen or his cell block, looking at nothing and no one, moving to the sound of chimes. It was possible that I would be the first person he had really seen in twenty years. I wondered if he would be able to look me in the eye.
The door at the back of the shop opened and a sales assistant entered. She walked quickly in her flat shoes, wiping at the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief. She smiled and beckoned me towards the till. ‘Have you seen these?’ she asked, gesturing to a stationery rack on the counter. It contained the usual notebooks and writing paper with cherry blossoms, paper drinks coasters patterned with autumn leaves, but next to this, in a stand of their own, was a set of notebooks featuring Kumamon, the black bear of the Kumamoto Prefecture. This mascot is so endearing that he has gained nationwide popularity; his picture is even featured on babies’ milk bottles and instant noodles in supermarkets. On this notebook he wore the hat and uniform of a prison guard. There was a smile on his shiny black face, and bright red circles of health in each cheek. One paw was raised in a cheerful wave. Beneath him in bold green characters were the words Kumamon’s Memo!
The sales assistant looked at me expectantly and I gave her an enthusiastic smile. I knew people who collected these notepads; some would even be jealous if I bought one. I opened the front page and saw a slip of paper inside. Do not eat this, it said. Do not use this as a weapon. And finally, Do not throw it! I thought of the rows of men sitting in the factories, the tensions between them, the silence. The whir of the machines as the notebooks were assembled, one by one.
Outside, I stood in the rain before the gates, waiting to be let through. Reaching into the pocket of my dress, I drew out the newspaper article that I had kept there. I had found it on Grandpa’s desk that morning, abandoned in the grey light of the dawn. I unfolded it and read once more the words that were so familiar to me, the story of each of us. I stretched the article between my hands until it was so wet it seemed to seep into my skin. As the gates opened before me, I crumpled the paper in my fist and dropped it into a bin.
The soles of my boots squeaked on the jade linoleum as I was escorted past the waiting room with its white walls and long wooden benches. I was shown into a meeting booth no more than six feet wide. It was divided down the middle by a glass partition pierced through with tiny holes. It would be impossible to reach out to someone through the glass or even to touch them. Only the air might travel between us.
On my side of the partition was a desk and a brown plastic chair in which I sat down to wait. I waited and waited. I waited until I thought he would not come, until I thought that he could not face me. The instructions taped to the wall at my side stated that I was to speak exclusively on the subject matter specified at the gates and to do so quietly and calmly. I was not to communicate with the prisoner in foreign languages or gestures. Any contravention of the above rules would result in the meeting’s immediate termination.
I dropped my gaze, thinking of how I would speak to Kaitarō Nakamura. How could I be quiet and calm? Would I even know what to say? We had so little time. Prison visits last for fifteen or twenty minutes at most. On his side of the glass partition were two chairs: one for Kaitarō and one for his guard, who would monitor and record what was said, but the seats remained empty. There was nothing else, only the silence, a silence that lengthened with the ticking of the clock.
I was breathing slowly, shallowly, when I heard it, the slap of his slippers on the linoleum. I hesitated, unwilling to look up. It had been days since I last watched him on the screen in my bedroom, and finally there he was. The guard entered first, followed by a small man in a grey jumpsuit. They had shaved his head, but now so close to his release the hair had been allowed to grow back. It protruded from his scalp in a salt-and-pepper halo. His shoulders were hunched and his face was turned away from me as he held his hands out, waiting for his cuffs to be removed. With his head down, still refusing to look up, Kaitarō reached for the chair and sat down, moving with small economical movements. If there was a time for pity, it would have been in the prison shop, when I had braced myself for meeting someone who had loved her and lost her too. Now all I could see was my mother lying on the floor of a foreign apartment with deep purple bruises around her neck.
The man in front of me shifted in his seat, and I felt a jolt of shock as he raised his eyes to mine. His gaze travelled over me, from my hair held back from my face with clips, to the crisp collar of my shirt dress. Very slowly, the corners of his mouth curved up into a smile.
‘You look like your mother.’
We have many words for fate. Some are sentimental; others carry energy within them, cycles of luck and choice. The word that occurred to me as I sat in Chiba Prison was old, archaic even, but the most appropriate: sadame. A resigned fate that must be accepted because it cannot be changed.
Kaitarō’s face eased into a placid, neutral expression. Still, a light remained in his eyes as he looked over me, cataloguing my features in agile glances. The guard took a seat behind him and sat with his pen poised above a pad of paper. Eventually, Kaitarō’s gaze stilled and settled on my face. The knowledge that he had expected me, had registered me as a visitor twenty years ago, hung between us. Had he known I would come? Or had he only hoped that I would? I had been raised by my grandfather; I might never have known about him at all.
Kaitarō leaned forward slightly in his seat. ‘You’re a lawyer,’ he said.
I looked down at my clothes, at my black boots and dress, the casual nature of them. Then I remembered the portfolio I had brought with me in case all my familial arguments at the gate had failed, and the small round badge I had pinned to its rim. It lay on the desk in front of me. I nodded and again he smiled, slowly, wonderingly. ‘Like your mother,’ he said.
‘I qualified recently.’
‘You are registered with the Tokyo Bar?’ he asked, his eyes never leaving my face, and I nodded in reply.
‘Your grandfather tried to have me executed,’ he said.
‘I know.’
‘Do you wish he had succeeded?’
The blood rushed to my face as I thought of all the things I had experienced in the past weeks. Certainly, there were times when I had wished him dead. ‘Not at the moment,�
�� I said.
‘Do you blame him?’ he asked. And I thought of Yoshi at home, mourning the life he had created.
‘I might have done the same,’ I said, referring to my grandfather’s attempted revenge and not his secrecy with me.
Kaitarō nodded, accepting my answer. ‘What will you do now?’ he asked.
‘The statute of limitations has long expired.’
‘You are a resourceful family,’ he said, and I almost smiled. He did know us.
‘Are you glad that you are alive, Kaitarō Nakamura?’ I asked, my voice audible but low. The guard behind him leaned in to hear, his hand paused above his notebook. I looked at Kaitarō but he remained silent, his eyes cast down, and I wondered if he was remembering my mother. I wondered if he could visualise, even now, the smile she would develop when some small element of life pleased her. Finally, he looked back at me.
‘I am the only one who remembers her,’ he said.
The rage that rose within me was black and choking. I looked with hatred at this sad, thin man. ‘You are not the only one!’ I hissed, my voice loud in the tiny room. I leaned towards him, my breath condensing on the acrylic partition, pushing at the tiny holes between us. The guard stepped forward and placed a hand on Kaitarō’s shoulder. He had risen to meet me and now he was shoved back into his seat. The guard gave me a stern look and I sat back too, bowing my head in apology. The seconds ticked by and I kept my head down, contrite. I was running out of time.
‘Sumiko.’
I looked up as Kaitarō said my name. He reached forward, his fingers touching the glass, covering the porous holes.
‘I am not the only one who remembers her,’ he said. ‘But there is no one who knew her as I did.’
‘My grandfather knew her.’
‘Does he talk of her?’ Kaitarō asked, smiling when I said nothing. ‘If I died, so would she and everything she was to me.’
I curled my lip, my anger plain for him to see, along with the knowledge that he was right.
‘I have something for you,’ he said as I tried to compose myself. He ran a hand over his stubbly hair, more white than black.
‘I don’t want anything from you, Sumiko Sarashima,’ he said, and I started at his correct use of my name. ‘But I want you to have my memories.’ I frowned at him, and the silence stretched between us.
‘I have been writing to you,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘One letter a month, seven pages each.’ Against my will my lips twitched at the thought of the prison regulations, enforced even for unsent letters. ‘Every month,’ he said, leaning in to the partition, ‘I wrote a letter to you, in the hope that one day you would read them.’
‘You are a murderer. I should burn them,’ I said.
‘True,’ he acknowledged. ‘But there are some other things that I saved from our house.’ I had been staring at him, unwilling to give any quarter, but I flinched at his choice of pronoun and the life he had shared with my mother. ‘There isn’t much,’ he continued. ‘Only what I gathered up on the night she died. It was taken into evidence. Your grandfather was the guarantor of our lease,’ he said gently, ‘all of the furniture, most of our belongings, were disposed of by him.’
‘What do you have?’
‘Photographs of your mother in Hokkaido with me,’ he said. ‘I grew up there.’
‘I grew up without her. You can never make up for that.’
‘No,’ he said simply. Behind him the guard rose; our meeting had come to an end. Kaitarō turned and held out his wrists to be cuffed once more. I looked at him, at his dry, flaky skin and hollowed cheeks and tried to see if there was any trace left of the scratch she’d given him, the bloody scab on the videos. I looked and looked but his whole face was pale, the pallor of a man kept indoors for twenty years with only thirty minutes a week outside. He moved towards the door and in spite of myself I called out to him. The guard looked at me in annoyance, and I put out a hand to stay him. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please will you let me have the documents and photographs he mentioned?’
‘They will have to be assessed, Ms Sarashima. Our censor comes on Fridays.’ I saw Kaitarō smile a little, the action so slight his guard ignored it. As the door was opened for him, Kaitarō looked up at me. ‘Sumiko,’ he said, and the warmth in his eyes stayed with me, ‘burn them if you like.’
What Is in a Name
My grandfather avoided me after my visit to Chiba. He barely acknowledged my presence in the house, refusing to speak. We did not eat together, and I am not sure that he ate. It was as though in uncovering our past I myself had changed and the sight of me pained him. Still, I approached him every day, unable to stay away, and eventually I forced the issue by asking about the one thing he would discuss: my father.
He told me that they both attended Kaitarō Nakamura’s day of sentencing at the Tokyo District Court. My grandfather was early, but my father arrived late, hoping to slip in unnoticed and stand at the back. When the verdict was announced he fumbled with the door and ran down the main stairs, rushing across the expanse of the lobby and out into the rain. My grandfather followed, sure of what he would do.
My father walked away from the courts and down the street towards Kasumigaseki Station. On the corner was a phone booth, grey with the dirt and marked with footprints from other people’s shoes, cigarettes and sweat. He opened the booth and quickly shut the door. Then he hesitated for a moment, staring at the receiver, before finally reaching for it and dialling a number.
The air inside the booth was hot and condensation formed on the glass. My father’s face was just visible as he lifted his head and smiled. He spoke rapidly. There was a pause on the line and he waited, waited for someone to come to the phone, the person whose approval he needed most. He was holding the receiver in both hands and you could see his mouth frame the word ‘father’. In seconds the smile fell from his face; he bent his head, listening, and then slowly he lifted the receiver away from his ear. He stared at it for a moment before replacing it in its cradle. A small queue of people had begun to gather outside, some of them reporters, others waiting for the phone. A man stepped forward and rapped on the glass, startling my father, who nodded and quickly left the booth. He pushed through the people on the pavement, waving away the reporters who tried to speak to him. He could not help them, he shouted; he was not the man they sought, not Osamu Satō.
As more people gathered around him he was driven back towards the concrete edifice of the courts until he could go no farther. A few yards ahead of him on the path, my grandfather waited, sheltering beneath an umbrella in the rain.
My father was not charged with a crime, though he was ordered to pay a civil responsibility fine for his actions. His family were not hounded by the press. Even so, the Satōs cut him from their lives, but they did not do this because of how he had treated my mother or even because of her death. It was the full catalogue of his offences, collected and assembled by Kaitarō Nakamura, that drove them to it. The details of their son’s life reached them in a brown-paper parcel tied with string.
The report detailed Satō’s business dealings, his drinking, his debts, the loss of the money given to him by Yoshi on his marriage, his dismissal from his firm, and his pursuit of the woman in Nagoya. Finally, his actions to obtain a divorce were described, as well as his treatment of my mother. In all this, the murder of a young woman was but the final straw. I asked Grandpa if Kaitarō had sent them the file, but in the gloom of our dining room he pursed his lips in a tired smile. ‘I sent it,’ he said.
He knew my father would not contact us again and he had not. The last communication I ever had from him was a birthday card, sent shortly after the divorce when my mother was still alive. I had been sitting on the floor of the living room in Meguro, opening my pile of cards, when I found it. Inside he had written his address in Nagoya, another home I would never see, and enclosed a photograph. The two of them were standing
outside an apartment block on a thin strip of grass. I must have held it for a long time because Grandpa came in from the other room. ‘Aren’t you finished yet?’ he asked me. ‘Are you counting the love letters from all your admirers?’ He stopped when he saw what was in my hand, and came to sit beside me on the floor.
‘Who is this?’ I asked.
‘Your father’s girlfriend.’
‘She’s hideous,’ I murmured as he took me onto his lap.
She wasn’t hideous, but she wasn’t anything like my mother. Her face was broad with a heaviness to her cheeks – a woman no longer young. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth; they creased around her tight smile. My father had his arm around her and his expression mirrored hers; I could not tell if they were happy.
I remember that I turned my face into Grandpa’s neck. He had risen to his feet, lifting me with him. Then he set me down and bent towards the pile of cards I’d left on the floor, gathering them all together in his hands. In that moment he started a tradition that would extend to my adulthood: he arranged all the cards in rows across the coffee table, one by one, so that they covered it completely. ‘Look how special you are,’ he said.
We put the photo away in one of the family albums, and in the days after my return from Chiba Prison I found it again. It had not changed; the figures on the grass were just the same, frozen in time. I had learned so much about my father and his role in my mother’s death, and I knew, looking down at that picture, that I would not go in search of him.
For a time perhaps, the knowledge of my father’s fate helped to heal my grandfather. Though he grieved deeply for my mother, in knowing his enemies had been punished he was able to put his rage aside and look to the future. In a cocoon of silence, he rebuilt the world around him. All that was lost he recreated and invested in me.
What's Left of Me is Yours Page 28