Silence Once Begun

by Jesse Ball

  INT.

  You went there often, you say?

  JIRO

  At this time, at this one particular age, we were always there. We’d sit some distance from it, and have muttered conferences, make plans. Or if I just ran off from the house, or Sotatsu did, the other one would know that that’s where to go. He’d go there and find the one who’d run off. I was always finding Sotatsu there, and he was always finding me there. We thought that gate wasn’t in use, that someone had closed it a hundred years before, and that no one even remembered it was there. But, one day we went there and it was open. It was half swung open and the way was clear. I was terrified. It is hard to explain how frightening it was to me. I didn’t even want to go near it, but Sotatsu pulled me along. I balked at the very edge and he continued on. When I saw that he was going to go through, I started crying and ran home. I didn’t look back, not once. He went in by himself.

  INT.

  Do you regret it?

  JIRO

  Somehow it happened that I never asked him what was in there. It seems like I would have, like such an important question couldn’t possibly have escaped me, but that is exactly how it happens. Children are constantly forsaking whole methods of thinking in favor of new ways, and with that they give up all the old questions. Of course, later they remember. What did Sotatsu see in there? I am so fond of him when I think of it, when I imagine him at that gate, disappearing from sight. It is something I never saw, but I wish I had.

  Int. Note

  I went to visit the prison that Oda Sotatsu was kept in. I was not allowed to go inside, but I took photographs from the car that I had rented, and I drove to various points in the countryside where there were vantages onto it. I would like to say it was a remarkable building, but it wasn’t much of anything. An ugly complex, not even particularly threatening. There was a small store about a half mile from the entrance where they sold soda, candy, newspapers, maps, etc. I asked the man what he thought about the prison. He said it kept him in business. Apparently people would buy things there to take to inmates when they visited. What’s the most popular thing? I inquired. He held up some peculiar candy that I had never tried. I bought some of it.

  I knew, of course, that it wouldn’t be the same thing people had been bringing in when Oda Sotatsu was there. I knew that. But when you are dealing with something as odd as this, you sometimes get a sense for how to behave. I felt like buying that candy changed my relationship to the prison. The remaining photographs I took were a little different. Later I asked someone, a photographer friend I knew, I asked her to look at the photographs I had taken. Of the lot of them, she separated out the six I had taken after going to the convenience store.

  These ones, she said, these are much better than the others.

  Interview 16 (Brother)

  [Int. note. On this day I had decided to be bold and ask Jiro about why he hadn’t tried harder to convince Sotatsu to recant. However, my opportunity for such a question did not arise.]

  INT.

  Your brother had been in the prison then for a few weeks when you finally saw him?

  JIRO

  That’s true. The guards were confused. At first they took me to the wrong prisoner. It was an old man. He came to the edge of his cell and peered at me. I think he was trying to remember who I was. Probably no one had visited him in years.

  INT.

  How long did you stand there?

  JIRO

  Not long. I said, Good luck, old-timer. He called me some name that I don’t remember. His voice was very shrill. The guard was looking at the paper he had been given. Suddenly he figured it out. He apologized and took me to the right place. It sounds very comedic, I know, but in a place like that, I don’t think the guards would do such a thing on purpose. I believe it was a mistake.

  INT.

  But then he did take you to Sotatsu?

  JIRO

  Yes, and my brother was actually in another ward entirely. Not even the same building. In his special building all prisoners were in single cells. They couldn’t see one another. They ate alone. Even the exercise, which was walking around in a concrete atrium—even that was alone.

  INT.

  How large would you say the cells were?

  JIRO

  Perhaps seventeen square meters.

  INT.

  And you were the first visitor he had had in weeks?

  JIRO

  I believe he had another visitor. I was told that. I think the girl was still seeing him. She was going during the trial, and the guard mentioned her to me. He said, your sister has been coming. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true. She did every single thing my father told her, everything he ever said, no matter how small, she did that thing exactly. There was no chance that she was visiting Sotatsu against my father’s wishes. That’s when I remembered that I had seen Jito Joo at the police station, and I connected her with a girl mentioned in a news report during the trial, a girl visiting Sotatsu.

  INT.

  Have you ever spoken to her about it, since that time?

  JIRO

  Never.

  INT.

  To get back to this first moment, the guard took you to Sotatsu’s cell. Did Sotatsu get up when he saw you?

  JIRO

  He was asleep. The guard had handed me off to a different guard. In fact, that process had happened three times. This deepest guard, he woke Sotatsu up by banging on the door. He opened the door and stood in it, banging it. Sotatsu opened his eyes. I could see from where I stood, he opened his eyes but didn’t move aside from that. Here was a guard banging a stick and shouting his name and he just calmly lies there.

  INT.

  Did you say anything?

  JIRO

  He sat up after a minute. When he saw me, his expression didn’t change, but he came over. The guard had shut the door by then, but there was a window that slid open and we could see through it, we could still see each other. I was always trying not to blink. I would stare and stare at him and then eventually I would blink, but he never would. I stood there with him until it got dark, maybe two hours. The guard told me five times, six times, I had to go, but I had a feeling I was getting all I would get of him, that I wouldn’t see him again, so I didn’t want to go. I put all of myself into just watching and stood there looking at him as powerfully as I could. Eventually, I had to go. And as it turned out, I was wrong. I did get to see him again. But, I was glad I stayed as long as I could that day.

  INT.

  So, you left the prison when it was getting dark?

  JIRO

  Yes.

  INT.

  And you said the bus didn’t stop there? You had to walk to the bus station?

  JIRO

  It was a two-hour walk to the bus station from the prison. Then, the bus didn’t run at night, so I slept in the bus shelter, leaning on the bench and an aluminum fence, and caught the bus the next morning back in time for the second shift.

  INT.

  That mustn’t have been so easy for you.

  JIRO

  It was hard, having what happened happen to him at all, but then, having him in a place that was so difficult to reach? That’s why I only went to see him maybe eight times. Maybe if I had had a car it would have been easier. I could do it, though, sleeping at the bus stop, walking for hours, I could do it because I could hardly feel anything. If it was like that for me, I was always thinking, what was it like for my brother?

  Interview 17 (Brother and Mother)

  [One day, I managed to convince Jiro to come with me to speak to his mother one final time. I had tried repeatedly to get access to her again, but she would not meet me. Jiro said that he thought he could convince her, but that if his father found out, it would never come to pass. He was as good as his word, and we met her in a park. There was a little wood and two benches sitting across from each other. I put the microphone by her and Jiro. I sat on the other bench. Some of my questions turned out to be inaudible, so I have r
econstructed or omitted them. The words spoken by Jiro and Mrs. Oda were entirely clear.]

  INT.

  I wanted to speak to you a little more, because I know that there are so many things you know that no one else does. Your knowledge of Sotatsu is something very valuable, I think, and I would appreciate it very much if you would share some more of it with me.

  MRS. ODA

  (nods to herself)

  JIRO

  We were speaking of the time that Sotatsu got a medal at school. Do you remember that?

  MRS. ODA

  (makes a shushing sound)

  JIRO

  Of course you remember that. I was trying to recall what the medal was for, but I couldn’t. Do you remember?

  MRS. ODA

  Geometry. A geometry medal.

  INT.

  Was there some kind of competition that he won?

  JIRO

  Yes, I think there was. I think he won a geometry competition and they gave him a medal. He was very proud of it. As a matter of fact, I believe he kept it his whole life.

  MRS. ODA

  That’s nonsense. It wasn’t a competition. It was a thing he had to do, to get up in front of the school and present at a visit by the mayor. The teacher had him do it because she thought he would do the best job of it, but he didn’t. He actually misdrew the shape and labeled the lines wrong. The teacher gave him the medal anyway, since it had already been made.

  JIRO

  He always told me …

  MRS. ODA

  The teacher was very embarrassed. I believe he left the school partway through the year and they had to find a new teacher.

  JIRO

  Oh, now I remember—and that was because …

  MRS. ODA

  Because your brother embarrassed us.

  JIRO

  I didn’t know that.

  INT.

  But he was ordinarily very good at math, then? That was why the teacher had selected him?

  MRS. ODA

  I don’t think so. I don’t think he was good at math.

  JIRO

  Come now. He was good at math. You know that.

  MRS. ODA

  I don’t know much of anything. Your father and I went to the auditorium. You were there too. So was your sister. We sat there and someone from each class went up to show the mayor what they were learning. Sotatsu was wearing new clothes that we had bought just for that. We didn’t have very much money. Hardly any. But we did this, because we wanted to show people that we were as good as anybody. He was up there in line with the others. We sat in the audience. Practically the whole town was there. Then the mayor came in, and he went up to the stage, and he shook hands. They brought out the young students to do this and that, and they did it. Then someone showed a science project. Then someone showed something about photography, an older child. Then it was Sotatsu’s turn. He was trying to show something, I don’t know, something about a triangle. He drew it wrong. Everyone froze up. Sotatsu kept trying to explain it. I don’t know actually if he did draw it wrong, or if he wrote the wrong numbers, but they didn’t match up. He kept pointing to the drawing on the chalkboard. Meanwhile the mayor was just looking away. He wouldn’t look at Sotatsu. Your father and I, we …

  INT.

  Mrs. Oda …

  [Jiro’s mother got up then and walked away, saying something under her breath to Jiro that I couldn’t make out. That was the last I saw of her.]

  Interview 18 (Watanabe Garo)

  [Int. note. This is from a later portion of the in-person interview. It was difficult to keep Garo on subject, so much of the interview was worthless, or I should say it alternated between being invaluable and being worthless. Some subjects will not disclose information unless they feel they are in a conversation. These individuals ask questions of the questioner, beg for particulars and follow ultimately useless lines of inquiry. Such was Garo. I am therefore skipping the tedious discussion of my own life (with his interminable quizzing), as it has no bearing here. I skip to a point at which we are discussing discipline at the prison.]

  INT.

  But there were beatings?

  GARO

  I’m not saying there were beatings, not as such. I’m saying if someone ended up deserving a beating, it would be a rare thing for him not to end up, one way or another, getting the thing he deserved. Do you see it? It isn’t about one person deciding to discipline someone, a guard or anybody else, it isn’t about that person choosing something. It isn’t about the way in which such a thing is gone about. It’s an inevitable thing, a person behaves again and again in a way that is a kind of communication. It is someone saying, I don’t learn the usual way. Try something else with me. And eventually someone else tries something else. Talking about context, it isn’t even the right way. I mean, maybe if you mean, maybe if you are talking about the difference between being above water or below.

  INT.

  You are talking about a guard beating someone with a stick?

  GARO

  Yes, but it isn’t beating, it is communication. It isn’t an action, not in and of itself. It’s a constant pressure, the effect of a constant pressure. It is a result, not a thing. It can’t be looked at by itself, separated out.

  INT.

  Did Sotatsu get beaten that way?

  GARO

  I don’t believe he was ever beaten. Nothing physical, or not much, was ever done to him. He went along with things, mostly. He wasn’t any trouble. And he wasn’t there for long. Also, there is a feeling around some—that they are doomed. When that feeling comes, the guards tend to have as little as possible to do with that person. Most of them.

  INT.

  But some don’t?

  GARO

  Well, there was one guard.

  INT.

  What did he do?

  GARO

  He would lean up against the window of Sotatsu’s cell and he would talk. He would stand there talking to him for hours.

  INT.

  What was he saying?

  GARO

  Nobody knew at first, but it came out after a while. It was maybe a week of this guy having shifts with Oda and talking to him. Then a supervisor found out and moved the guy on.

  INT.

  But what was he saying?

  GARO

  Well, I went to Sotatsu’s cell one of those days after the guy had been talking to him for quite a while. Sotatsu is sitting there on the bed, holding his shogi pieces, staring at his feet. He looks up and sees me. Something made me open the door and come in. I said, What’s the problem? He looked at me for a little while and I stood there. Then he says, Is it true what Mori says, the way the hanging goes? Is it really like that? That’s how I found out.

  INT.

  All that time he was whispering to him about the execution?

  GARO

  He was, and what’s worse, he was just making up hideous things. Horrible things. He said they brought the family and made them all watch. He said they hanged you naked so they wouldn’t have to bury the clothes. I don’t know half of what he said, but it was awful. Sometimes that happens to a man in that environment. You can start doing things like that. Mori, I guess, he wasn’t suited for the work.

  INT.

  So what did you tell Oda?

  GARO

  I described the hanging to him. We’re not supposed to do it. Sometimes it’ll spook the prisoners, make them harder to deal with. We’re not supposed to, but I figured, what Mori began, I had to finish. So, I explained it to him.

  INT.

  Can you describe it now?

  GARO

  Well, this was a long time ago. I don’t know how it’s done currently. I wouldn’t want to talk about that.

  INT.

  Can you just say again what you said to Oda about those hangings, the way it used to be done? It doesn’t have to mean anything about what goes on now.

  GARO

  I think so, I think I can.

  Interview
19 (Brother)

  [Int. note. I had to return to the city briefly, and Jiro had also returned for a meeting. So, we met at a train station, before going back to his house. At the station, we had to move around to find a spot that was sufficiently quiet for the recorder. We began several times, and had to stop and move. I got into an argument with a drunk man who kept interrupting us, and this made Jiro laugh. It was in good spirits, therefore, that we began this interview.]

  INT.

  You were talking about that last visit, about how they took your things away? The tape is recording now.

  JIRO

  I tried to bring him a little music box I had found. It was stupid, the music box, not the idea. I think it was a good idea, to bring it, only it didn’t work out. They took it away.

  INT.

  What did the music box play?

  JIRO

  Well, it sounds really stupid, but you have to know—Sotatsu loved Miles Davis, especially this one record, Cookin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet.

  INT.

  But surely there’s no music box that plays Miles Davis …

  JIRO

  Well, maybe there is now. I don’t know about that. Then there wasn’t, not really. But this one, it was a little box with a mirror inside and when you opened it, it played “My Funny Valentine,” which is from that record. It was very expensive, this music box. It cost me almost a week’s salary. But, I thought, if it can cheer Sotatsu up just a little, then …

  INT.

  You tried to bring it into the prison, even though you knew such things weren’t usually allowed?