Silence Once Begun

by Jesse Ball

  That agency was then made known through various trials: trial by combat, trial by fire, trial by water. This then was the proof. The proof was not the accusation, nor the statement of an individual.

  That said, it has generally always been the case that a person willing to confess to a crime may be acknowledged to have performed that crime. Such a position is mistaken: one cannot know that a person has the truth of a thing, most particularly in the manner in which he/she is affected by it. Our knowledge about ourselves is our least reliable knowledge. Yet, so thoroughly do we ordinarily champion our own cause that it is acknowledged effective to believe that a person who deems it impossible to any further champion his/her own cause must be guilty. Else, why would he/she not continue to declare innocence?

  It is primarily through a judgment that favors efficiency over truth that confessions are deemed viable.

  All true convictions should proceed from a scientific investigation the results of which can be replicated (and which should be shown to be replicable). A particular person should not necessarily have any involvement whatsoever in the investigation into or trial of their offense. The world itself should provide all details and all evidence. If such evidence is lacking, then a crime cannot be proven without a doubt, and a person ought not to be convicted or punished.

  Joo & How It Went in Practice

  [Int. note. This was the most recent of the papers. In my opinion, the previous sheets were old notes, written by Sato Kakuzo prior to the Narito Disappearances, likely even prior to his departure from Sakai. This paper, on the other hand, might even have been written in the year I received it, or thereabouts, long after the last gasps of the Narito Disappearances had been forgotten. He begins this with a vague ascription of date, but whether it can be trusted is unclear.]

  The Unwilling Participation of Jito Joo

  I write now to explain the unwilling participation of Jito Joo in the events of last year. Whether this document will be read by anyone during my life, whether it will be destroyed before anyone has seen it, whether it will be seen next week after I am carted away on some unrelated charge, who can say? I write it in order to not be a part of any deception related to Jito Joo, in order to say my piece about the truth of the matter.

  I had known Jito Joo before I returned from Sakai. When we resumed our relationship, it was not much of a surprise to either of us. Things had gone well before I left; they went well after. It was simply a geographical dislocation that made us stop seeing each other. It was a geographical reuniting that prompted the resumption of our relationship.

  I will say this also: Joo was smarter, sharper, and more clever than any of the other girls I knew, whether in Sakai or anywhere in Osaka. This alone was a determinant for me. I loathe to repeat myself, and with Joo, one never must. We also shared certain sympathies of temperament, and of political viewpoint. As I see it, the politics of our daily life are inextricable from the larger politics of the world. Therefore, when we felt ourselves confined, when Joo and I, sitting in our small apartment, felt ourselves confined, we sought for ways out.

  I had been reading a great deal. I had read of various French attempts to throw off this oppressive air that infiltrates daily life. Debord, Vaneigem, and others had made many attempts, both to inspire, and to act in their own right. This led directly, as I will explain, to the events that I caused, that I and Jito Joo caused, in Osaka Prefecture.

  I had planned the matter already. I had a sense of what I wanted to do. My eye had pinpointed a term, had seen a specific, which I felt should be overloaded and made to destroy itself. That specific, that element, was the confession. I felt that no one had stood against it sufficiently. I felt that its innate duplicity, its essential divergence from truth or fact, should be marked and seen by all for what it was. Yet wherever I went, whomever I spoke to, I was astonished. The matter was not clear; this matter, so clear to me, was not clear to others. Patently, I saw this as an opportunity, one to be prosecuted with swiftness, if I may take liberties with the phrase.

  So, to return to the narrative, I was living there with Joo. I had made a plan, but had no helpers. I was working at the docks, traveling to the docks to work, and returning exhausted. I was angry. I was in love. I was also afraid—I was not sure that Joo would share my adherence to the precise elements of my plan, and once I confided it to her, it would have to go forward in that exact way, else fail.

  That is why I trapped her. That is why the first contract was not the contract signed by Oda Sotatsu. The first contract, made in the same way, after a supposed game of chance, was signed by Jito Joo. I was ashamed to have had to make it, ashamed to have had to perpetrate it. But, in the course of time I saw that she would never have agreed to the repeatedly heartless actions that were required of her, had she not been forced by her agreement, and by her fealty to what she saw as her honor.

  Joo & How It Went in Practice 2

  One night, Joo and I were playing at a game, a game of chance, a comparison of cards, a drawing and comparison of cards. Neither would win more than the other. She would at times win; I would at times win. Our method at first had been to play for forfeits. When the burden of inventing forfeits proved too much, we moved to agreed-upon and more dangerous consequences. We began to cut ourselves with a knife upon a loss. I stepped from a second-story window and injured my leg. She stepped in front of a car and caused it to drive off the road. I give these examples as evidence of the state of mind in which we were going forward. We were in love with each other. We were in love with the mechanism we were using to repel the dank pressure of conformity. We were despairing all the while, because after each arch of our backs, the weight pressed down again, just as strongly as it had before.

  Yet, I had my plan. Joo knew nothing of it. I said to her, I said, Joo, this time we shall write an agreement. We shall make a contract. The contract will bind one to the will of the other for a period of time. She objected. A period of time? How banal. Why not the course of a project, why not for the duration of some project, that therefore could stand for a week or a year or more. This was the sort of thing Joo would suggest. I agreed, and so we hammered out the terms of the bargain. The loser would be forced to obey the other entirely within the confines of the proceeding, of the particular project. Beyond that, he or she could have his/her will, but only insomuch as he/she would not affect the successful execution of the project by his/her actions.

  I wrote it up. We cosigned the establishment of a bargain: that the loser of our card game would be forced to sign the sheet. We dated it.

  We then sat facing each other. I laid the cards out. She cut them and drew one. I cut them and drew another. I won and she signed the agreement. It was as simple as that. I had placed the cards in order, and knew where to look for my winning card. She didn’t guess that I would do such a thing. She didn’t realize that there was a thing for which I was working, a thing for which I would cheat. But there was, and I did. And from then on, I had Jito Joo’s complete obedience in all matters related to the Narito Disappearances.

  She never went back on her agreement, and she never threatened to. She never wanted to see it. Indeed, I did not keep it. I destroyed it immediately, the very day she signed it. To see such a document, and remember my behavior in relation to it—I wanted no part of that. I was looking to the future. I was thinking on how I could use her, and how I could cause a dislocation in the life of my society.

  How It Went in Practice

  As you may now suspect, the matter of the card game, as played with Oda Sotatsu, was similarly rotten. Joo and I got him to the bar; we got him drunk. Joo flirted with him. I complimented him. He was a man in a difficult situation. His life was difficult, bleak. He had little, and little to look forward to. In this way he was entirely typical, yet he was not typical in his nature. In his nature, he was proud, he was unrelenting. I knew what I had in Oda Sotatsu.

  That he lost the card game, that he signed the confession: it was all inevitable. I had created the s
ituation in my mind while sitting in a room in Sakai, a year before. I had moved shapes, edged like paper, in the stanzas of my head, and now I was watching as Sotatsu wrote on a sheet of paper. He wrote, Oda Sotatsu, and wrote the date, and he looked up at me, and I was looking at him from far away. I knew then that I had done it.

  He left the bar, went away, it didn’t matter where. The farther the better. If they had had to hunt for him, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. I took Joo by the arm, I went home with her. We slept together. I read the confession like a poet reads a poem he has written, a poem which he feels will change his fortunes. But like a poet, it is not his own fortune that his poems change.

  How It Went in Practice 2

  I had noticed that Sotatsu was watching Joo, was looking at her. I knew her to be what she was—not only pretty, not only a pretty girl, a girl one wanted, but also a smart girl, a girl whose opinion was worthwhile. She would say sharp things and make people look stupid. She had, in fact, done this to Sotatsu. She had done it to me. Shall I say, most of the other girls we had ever met weren’t like that? I knew Sotatsu thought much of her, and so the thought crept into my mind, as I lay there, knowing that elsewhere in the town, Sotatsu lay, awaiting the arrival of the police, the thought crept in: should I send her to him? Could Jito Joo be the method for holding Sotatsu to his pledge? I looked at her where she lay naked beside me, and I felt completely sure. I felt not only that it would work, but that she would do it. Despite the fact that she need not do it, that she could claim it went beyond anything agreed to, it remained true. Our very helplessness in the face of our lives, the fact that we wanted to be drastic, and that we wanted to force that drasticness on others—it meant she would throw herself willingly off this cliff. She would let me tell her to go to him, and she would go to him, and she would hold him to his pledge.

  Joo, I said, when I woke her, take this confession.

  She stood and dressed while I watched her, and I thought, this is the essence of my life—not before or after will I have so many fine things at such fullness: the love of a girl, the plight of a friend, the grand opening of a conspiracy. I felt it all. And now, later, I can tell you—I was not wrong. There has been nothing to compare that moment to, and I expect there will not be. I expect very little now.

  How It Went in Practice 3

  If I am explaining how it went, I should explain it all, I guess. Friends in Sakai had an uncle. He owned a farm. He was a hateful man. The farm was an old place, etched out of a hillside. Nothing was near it, just a mostly abandoned shrine. He wasn’t even a very good farmer. The sort of man who could live on sawdust, who perhaps was made of sawdust. I met him; I traveled there with the express purpose of meeting him. I met him, and we got along well. He was a converted anarchist. He was an anarchist in a non-political sense. He was a sort of poverty-stricken miscreant who didn’t at all have a bad time of it. He enjoyed sitting outside in the morning time, and that was about it. I won him over by confessing how much I hated people. This surprised him: you hate people too? Yes, I do. I hate people. Well, we have that in common, then. So, we sat together in the morning time, and I described to him this fantastic plot I had come up with. It was a huge insult, I told him, we were throwing a huge insult in the face of the society. They would have to bear it. There was no way they could do anything else but bear it. He found the whole thing very funny. He agreed.

  And so it became my lot: to travel in a borrowed car from place to place, finding old people with odd views, and convincing them, Go away for a while. I have a place for you.

  In my defense, I explained the whole thing to each one. I explained to each one what it was that I was doing. I told them they might have to stay away for a year or two, or three, for five years even, ten. Who could say? I spoke for a long time, a very long time, and I did it again and again and again. In every case, when I had finished, the person got up, leaving everything just as it was. In every case, when I had finished, the person got up, and we walked out to the car. We got into the car, and we drove away.

  One by one, I drove each person to the farm, where the old man took them in. There they lived together, a little boardinghouse of the oddest folk you’ve ever seen. The funny thing is, they got along very well together. I believe the time when they were disappeared was the happiest time most of those people had seen in many years.

  When I’d driven the last one there, I didn’t go back, not until the whole thing was over. I didn’t even send a message. That was part of the bargain. I’d explained it all to the old man. I’d explained it to each of them. We were all of one mind.

  How It Went in Practice 4

  Joo fell into it. I didn’t know it would go that way. She fell into it like an actress. You would never have known she didn’t care at all about Sotatsu. I said to her sometimes, Joo, Joo. I shook her, I woke her up, I said, Joo, go there, visit him now. You have to keep it up. She’d say, no, no. She’d curl into me, into the blankets. I want to stay here, she’d say. But, I would push her off. I’d pull off the blanket. She’d stand up, shake herself off. Go on, I’d say. She would nod, and change, and go off. Remember, I would tell her, as she looked back at me: I don’t exist. Nothing exists except Sotatsu’s resolve. Make him know it. Make him know he can hold out.

  For the most part, it went well. There was trouble when Sotatsu’s brother came, but Joo fixed it. She was quick. I told you she was. She undid whatever the brother did. She kept Sotatsu to himself, to his own resolve, to what he had decided. I couldn’t have imagined a better handler. She got so I didn’t even have to tell her to go. She would just go on her own. I would wake up and she would be gone. Then I’d be working, I’d take a breath during the day and think:

  There on the farm, my disappeared people are standing in a line, looking down the mountain. There in the prison, Sotatsu is standing, looking at the wall. There in the bus, Jito Joo is sitting, looking at her feet. I am no one. No one knows that I am anyone, but my plan is inevitable. The judges are doing what I am telling them to do, simply because I understand better than they do this one thing: the absurd lengths to which human beings go to prove themselves reasonable.

  How It Went in Practice 5

  I was worried often. I can’t pretend I didn’t wake in a sweat most nights, afraid that something had gone wrong. Sometimes Joo would tease me, too. She’d arrive crying, saying he had recanted, he had confessed, only to break into laughter when she saw my horrified face. It’s not a joke, I would tell her, and she would laugh. Joo, Joo, I would say. You are a hard one.

  But when the sentence had gone through, and when he was on death row, I felt more secure. That much, at least, had been secured. I was afraid too that some of my disappeared people would die. They were old! People die sometimes—yet it would not be easy to account for. I had nothing to do but wait, and I could not even learn how things were at the farm.

  Several months into his stay on death row, Sotatsu started behaving strangely. He started writing odd things on paper. He started talking to the guards. I was worried that he was breaking down. That’s when I told Joo: I wanted her to go there and sleep with him, if it could be managed. I wanted her to bind him to her that way.

  She broke into tears. She didn’t want to. I said you have to. You don’t have any choice. She said she wouldn’t do it. I said you will. You need to. She got her things and went out. She never came back. Whether she did go or not, to the prison, I can’t say. I never saw her again.

  The next day, I heard the news on the radio.

  +

  One day in the springtime, when I was still a child, Oda Sotatsu was taken from his prison cell. He was led down hallways. He was asked to show that he was indeed himself, and he showed it. Others agreed to it. He was led into one room after another, past statues. He was made to stand on a flat trapdoor and when the word was given he was hanged by the neck until dead.

  The news was broadcast by radio and by television to the general population. There was happiness, but also confusio
n. Many there were who wanted to know—what had happened to the disappeared.

  Then, one week following the execution, in the city of Sakai, a procession appeared in the street. It was a procession of people dressed all in white, every one, and led by a young man, Sato Kakuzo. They were dressed as penitents, in the old fashion, he and all those who were supposedly disappeared, those for whose sake Oda Sotatsu had been executed. They were still living, and they walked in a procession through the streets to the courthouse, while the city looked on in astonishment. There on the steps of the courthouse, Sato Kakuzo delivered a speech to members of the press and a crowd that had gathered, following the procession. In his speech he accused the society of the crime it had committed, making it known that the murder of the innocent man Oda Sotatsu had gone forward, and that others too, in the days and years to come, would be executed, on no evidence at all.

  We cannot allow this, he said. Those of you still living, those of us still living, we cannot allow this. If you live still, with your actions declare, we cannot allow this.

  The newspapers printed the matter.

  Some weeks passed, and it was essentially forgotten. When I learned of it, I felt I should write about it. I felt it must have been written about. I felt there must have been books and books about it. There were none. I felt my life and my experience, my loss suited me to the task, so I set this down, this book.

  This then is the book about it. This is the record of Oda Sotatsu and his life, and of the plot of Sato Kakuzo, and of the love of Jito Joo.

  Acknowledgments