Falling From the Floating World

by Nick Hurst

  There was another positive – the desk was an antique with old-style locks rather than Yales. At secondary school, a few of us had fancied ourselves master burglars in the making. We hadn’t progressed beyond using paper clips on small padlocks but we’d become quite adept at this. I grabbed one from the desk-tidy and sat on the floor to re-hone my skills.

  It took a few attempts before I got a feel for it again but by this point I was completely absorbed. I’m not sure how long it was before I found the right balance of shape and rigidity, but when I did, I got the satisfying click of the false key slotting into place.

  I leaned forward and jiggled it twice to ensure it was solid and wouldn’t get warped out of shape. It felt perfect.

  Knowing there was no stopping me I started to turn.

  I never found out if it would have worked.

  I tried opening my eyes but swiftly shut them against the glare of a blinding light. I wondered if I’d reached the end of the long, dark tunnel.

  ‘He’s coming round.’

  My lids snapped open at the sound of the voice. If it was the tunnel, I’d come out the wrong end. I was slumped on the sofa in the Takata-gumi office, my head rolled against the wall above the backrest, my face tilted towards the overhead light.

  ‘What the hell?’

  I put my hand to the back of my head and pulled it away sharply when my fingers came to a swollen lump. I held them in front of me and saw they were smeared with blood.

  ‘Right, motherfucker, you’ve got some explaining to do. Like telling us what the fuck you think you were doing.’

  It could only be Kurotaki. Sure enough, he entered the periphery of my vision just after I heard his voice.

  I felt nauseous. I hadn’t worked out what was going on yet, so it was likely the result of whatever had happened to my head rather than fear.

  ‘What happened?’ I groaned.

  Kurotaki nodded to his left and my eyes followed his gesture just in time to see a fist block out the light and crash into my face. My neck snapped back, propelling my head into the wall which made a perfect contact with the bloody egg. I think I passed out briefly, as the next thing I knew a hand was lifting me off my side and sitting me back up.

  ‘I’m asking the questions,’ said Kurotaki. ‘You’re welcome to ask your own and you can go off on any tangent you like, but you should know Sumida here’s going to hit you every time you do.’

  ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  If Sumida’s deft footwork to the cupboard was anything to go by, this tangent was an exception. I threw up in the bucket he pulled out.

  Kurotaki wasn’t impressed. ‘Arrgh, that stinks. You dirty gaijin fuck.’

  Whether that was an observation or an indication that Japanese vomit was sweeter smelling was rendered irrelevant by Sumida dumping the bucket in the toilet and slamming the door. I took a lungful of air. My stomach felt relatively normal again and while my head was in agony, the maelstrom of confusion had passed. The problem with that was my memory had returned and I realised how much trouble I was in.

  ‘Are you done?’

  I nodded and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Sumida put a glass of water in front of me. I took a couple of gulps to wash away the taste but also to play for time.

  ‘So what were you doing?’ Kurotaki asked again.

  I tried to think of something good to say, but my brain was still rattling around my skull and I couldn’t come up with anything but the truth.

  ‘I wanted to find out about the power station. I couldn’t think of any other way.’

  There wasn’t much more to add.

  ‘And you thought you would break into our office? Go through Kumichō’s own stuff?’

  I nodded, bringing a flash of blinding pain.

  ‘You stupid fuck.’

  It was pithy summary and a fairly accurate one too.

  He turned to Sumida. ‘Get a chopping board.’

  That brought me to my senses. If we’d had the summary, this was the time for sentencing and a chopping board didn’t seem a good way to start. Sumida went without a word to the kitchen. In panic, I looked up at Kurotaki as I heard Sumida rummage through drawers.

  ‘You couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?’ he sneered. ‘What, you don’t have anything to say? You don’t want to shoot your mouth off again and tell me what I can do to you?’

  I didn’t. I was too busy fighting hysteria. I tried to look at Kurotaki but it was hard to keep my eyes focused on one spot.

  ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about me this time,’ he went on. ‘You’re going to take care of this all by yourself.’

  At this point Sumida came back and dropped a wooden chopping board on the coffee table along with a ball of thin string. He kicked the table towards me so it came to a stop against my legs.

  ‘Wrap the string around the little finger of your left hand,’ Kurotaki said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He raised his eyes in exasperation and turned to Sumida who honed in.

  ‘OK, OK,’ I said, grabbing the ball of string.

  I unravelled a length and started wrapping it around my finger.

  ‘What the fuck good’s that?’ demanded Kurotaki. ‘You’ve got to wrap it tighter than that. You’ll know it’s right when it hurts.’

  ‘But that’ll cut off the blood to my finger.’

  He smirked. My stomach sank as any doubts about what was to come next were dispelled.

  When I was eighteen, I took a shortcut with a friend through a park. It was after hours so we had to scale the fence at either end. But that didn’t concern us – it was something we always did to save the extra five minutes’ walk to the pub. On this occasion, I felt something strange as I jumped down. I looked around from my squat and realised it was my arm. It was raised high up behind me, held by the ring caught on the ridges of wire that poked from the frame of the gate.

  I only needed one look at the bone gleaming through the ripped mess of my finger to realise I needed to get to hospital, and that it would be best if I didn’t look at it again. It hadn’t really hurt though. Perhaps it had been so unexpected I was anaesthetised with shock.

  Thanks to the NHS and its plastic surgeons, I was not only stitched up but had the feeling in my nerves saved as well. I was told I’d been lucky not to tear off my finger. It was the closest to going a digit down I’d ever wanted to get.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Kurotaki.

  The bottom half of my little finger was cocooned in a tightly bound weave of pink thread. The tip was starting to turn blue.

  ‘You can snip it off there.’

  I looked at him, astonished even he could be so blasé until I realised he meant the ball of string.

  ‘I don’t have any scissors.’

  ‘That’s all right. You can use this.’

  I didn’t see what ‘this’ was. I only heard a faint swoosh followed by a whack as something hit the chopping board. The ball of string, now severed from the cocoon on my finger, rolled to the edge of the table. My eyes returned to the chopping board in the middle of which a huge knife was now wedged.

  ‘That’s a Kunimitsu tantō,’ said Kurotaki with obvious pride.

  I looked at him blankly, too terrified to show whatever reaction he was hoping to see.

  ‘Kunimitsu was one of Japan’s greatest swordsmiths,’ he said, sounding irritated. ‘He made swords in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. They’re almost all in museums and collections. That’s the closest you’ll ever get.’

  Quite frankly, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about Kunimitsu and the last thing I wanted was to be as close to the knife/short sword/whatever it was as I now was.

  ‘I was only trying to do what Kumichō said. He told me to be proactive. That’s all I was trying to do. I just wanted to help out for the AGM.’

  I was blindsided with a whack to the head by Sumida but it was open-handed, more sympathetic than a punch but also more offensive. Not that I ha
d any pride left to offend. I was on the verge of tears and probably only one slap away from losing all self-control.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ ordered Kurotaki. ‘The time for talking’s over. You’ve done what you’ve done. Pull yourself together and take the consequences like a man.’

  I took some deep breaths and tried to steady myself. It took a minute before I felt I could speak again without breaking down.

  ‘What do I do?’ I asked in a marginally stronger voice.

  ‘Put your hand on the edge of the table by you and leave your finger lying across the board.’

  Kurotaki took on a businesslike tone and I was thankful. It made it seem slightly less of an affront to nature and part of a process instead – follow the instructions, get to the end, and move on.

  ‘Take the knife by the handle and stick the tip in the board, a little above the joint of your finger. Then bring it down hard.’

  I took another deep breath. It didn’t work.

  ‘Do I really—’

  ‘Don’t let yourself down.’

  I reached towards the knife.

  ‘Don’t touch the blade!’

  ‘OK, OK.’

  ‘You don’t touch a sword by its blade – the oils from your skin tarnish it.’

  ‘I won’t touch it,’ I said. ‘But it’s going to have to make contact with my skin when I …’

  I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘That will be OK.’

  I looked at the knife and my mind started to run away from it. What if I wanted to take up the piano again? I wouldn’t be able to reach the octave plus chords – perhaps I could do my ring finger instead? And what about medical insurance? I wasn’t sure what my status was now that I’d left my job. Even if I still had cover, would it extend to yakuza rituals? Surely they wouldn’t pay for someone stupid enough to cut their own finger off?

  I tried again to gather myself for what I had to do.

  ‘How badly is it going to hurt?’

  ‘I’ve never had to find out,’ said Kurotaki.

  I looked at Sumida who held up the full complement on his hands. He finally spoke.

  ‘Apparently it’s not too bad,’ he lied.

  ‘The knife,’ I said. ‘It’s—’

  ‘So sharp you could put it on its edge and it would cut through the board and into the table,’ said Kurotaki. ‘Don’t worry about the tantō. Get yourself together, take it in your hands and do what you have to do. It will be all right.’

  His tone was more respectful than it ever had been before, perhaps an acknowledgement of what I was about to do, an act finally worthy of a yakuza. Despite that, I couldn’t see any outcome to cutting off my own finger that could be summarised as ‘all right’.

  I picked up the knife by its handle and stared at it, captured by a morbid curiosity for the instrument about to do me such harm. All I could see was the blade. Its hilt was thick, but tapered in a keen line to a razor-sharp edge an inch or so below. It bore no decoration and had no frills or unnecessary curves. Yet despite being designed solely for malice it managed to be strangely beautiful at the same time. But it was a brutal beauty, a beauty that hadn’t come from an affectation to please the eye. The crisp lines epitomised form after function. They’d been forged from its thirst for blood.

  In this case, the blood was to be mine.

  I stabbed the end into the board, closed my eyes and took another deep breath. I opened them and pulled down sharply with all of my might.

  The knife sliced through my skin like it was nothing and made light of the cartilage between the bones. Then it stopped. And it was when it stopped I realised the moment’s delay of pain had only been that. The muscles in my body went rigid as the first wave hit. Sweat started to pour from my face. I fought to keep my breath within me as I feared it would come out as a scream.

  I looked up at Kurotaki, my eyes wide.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It happens. The joint can be sticky. Take a moment and then give it another go. Get on your knees if you think you can get a better angle from there.’

  I slipped off the edge of the sofa onto my knees. I braced myself and then put all of my weight onto my right hand to force the knife down. It sank in slightly further and seemed to separate something within the joint. But it still didn’t go through.

  The intensity of pain multiplied and my breath now came out somewhere between a guttural groan and a roar.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Kurotaki, enthusiastically. ‘You’re almost there. You’re right in the joint. Give it a wiggle and a final thrust – you’ll be straight through.’

  My breath was coming in starts and I knew my strength wouldn’t hold up to much more. I wiggled the knife and felt it break slightly from the grip of the bones. Pain surged through my body, as though there was too much to be contained in just a small joint.

  I slammed down one last time with everything I had. The knife sliced through the mutilated remains of my finger and came to a stop in the board. I let go and looked at the amputated tip, horrified yet fascinated by the sight. I lifted my hand as if it were someone else’s and stared at the other end. White bone poked through oozing blood and severed arteries. I retched once but nothing came out.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ advised Kurotaki. ‘It won’t help. Just put the tip on this piece of cloth and fold it over like that – that’s right – and that. Good. Now have a drink of this.’

  He handed me a bottle of whisky. I took three large gulps.

  ‘We’ll take care of your finger. It’ll go to Kumichō with apologies for what you did. Now wrap your hand in this,’ he gave me a drying up towel, ‘and go with Sumida. He’ll take you to the hospital so you can get fixed up.’

  Beyond capacity for thought, I numbly obeyed.

  FIVE

  He might not have been loquacious but Sumida was definitely better than Kurotaki.

  ‘You made a decent show of yourself,’ he said when I got in his car two days later. ‘I’ve seen guys do it better – some are almost looking for an excuse. They’ll take off a finger and then finish their drinks before they go, just to make a point. But I’ve seen others, proper yakuza, do a lot worse.’

  He was being quite friendly for someone who’d almost broken my cheekbone and then forced me to cut off a finger. I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  ‘Thanks.’

  I thought a little.

  ‘You’re not affected by it?’

  He had no idea what I meant.

  ‘The violence. It doesn’t affect you? The things you do. They don’t keep you awake at night?’

  ‘It’s the world we live in. It’s my job.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘It’s like I imagine life in an office – you worked in an office, right?’

  I nodded at the second part of his sentence.

  ‘You had to give people bollockings?’

  ‘Mostly not, but maybe once or twice.’

  ‘It probably wasn’t the part of the job you enjoyed, right? It just had to be done.’

  Now I shrugged.

  ‘It’s a bit like martial arts. When I fight I’m aggressive, I want to land big punches and kicks and knock the other guy out. But it’s not personal. It’s no different to hitting those punchball machines you get at fairs. It’s like everything – you do what you need to for the situation you’re in. It’s like this guy, I had to cut his hand off the other day—’

  ‘You did what?’

  Despite everything, I was shocked by the nonchalance of this aside.

  ‘I had to cut his hand off. Don’t worry,’ he said, catching my look. ‘We didn’t kill him – we had a tourniquet – but I was under orders to teach him a lesson, more than just a rebuke.’

  He nodded at my hand, whose lack of a finger I would have described in stronger terms than ‘a rebuke’.

  ‘I didn’t know him so obviously I had no personal issues. I don’t even know what he did. But he’d fucked someone over and whoever it was must hav
e been rich or powerful. So he had to be taught not to do it again.’

  He looked at me.

  ‘Different trade, different tools, but it’s the same as what you did at your work.’

  It was an eloquent enough explanation but I still felt there was a difference. I let it go. He was better than Kurotaki, at least.

  ‘So, what are we doing now?’

  ‘We’re going to the office,’ he said. ‘Kumichō wants to see you.’

  My stomach turned at the thought.

  I don’t remember the journey to the hospital except for the pain and Sumida repeating what I should say. I stumbled into A&E with him at my side and he insisted I was immediately seen. I think my condition would have predicated it, but it didn’t hurt to have an intimidating yakuza beside me to prevent any complaints.

  ‘You cut it off by mistake making sushi?’ the doctor asked as she examined my finger.

  I nodded.

  ‘And then fell down the stairs and hurt your head?’

  ‘I was drunk.’

  ‘It’s lucky you’d happened to tie it up with string before the accident then, isn’t it?’

  I was beyond anything but repeating what I’d been told to say or nodding my head. I nodded.

  ‘OK, let’s get it cleaned up,’ she said with a sigh.

  When my ‘friends’ came by the following day they were turned away.

  ‘You were concussed when you fell,’ the doctor said. ‘We’re going to need you in here another day.’

  I was feeling a fair bit better but I still left my response at a nod.

  ‘Look, we both know your story isn’t true,’ she said in a concerned voice. ‘I don’t want you going back with those men. Let me help you. Let me call the police.’

  I looked at her properly for the first time. She was somewhere in her fifties and her manner suggested she’d had people reporting to her for quite some time. I could imagine it being intimidating but just then she seemed more like a stern mother. I would have loved to have her scoop me up in her arms.