The White Man and the Pachinko Girl

by Vann Chow

  “If I can find this tape, its distributor would have been on it. I can have my lawyer send a temporary injunction as a first step to the distributor to stop them from further disseminating the materials. It will be a start. I want to help Misa.”

  “It depends on whether she signed a contract or not, or if she accepted money in return for being featured.”

  “...I cannot believe it if she did.” Smith never considered these possibilities. He could of course just ask Misa, but if his conjecture turned out to be a mistake, it would just embarrass her further. And if it were correct, it would acerbate her pain, to be reminded that she had legally consented to whatever abuse she was subjected to. Anyhow, he had no way to know how to proceed without seeing what was on the tape. “We need to analyze the video.”

  In his mind, Smith had enlisted Aileen as his lawyer, making the natural assumption that Aileen would want to help him in his investigation. Being a human rights lawyer herself with a particular interest in women's rights in Japan, she had no reason to turn down the opportunity to work together. He had largely missed the fact that he had ignored Aileen at the square yesterday in the commotion and until now did not call her back to explain his absentmindedness. She was in fact quite offended at the moment by his behaviors.

  Tanaka could see no sign of Smith's body reacting to the strange vibe that seemed to ooze out of his study, where he had in the previous months watched and re-watched the raw footage that was later compiled and edited into the tape in question. Smith's mind was busy coming up with a plan.

  “So you want to know who did it?”

  “Yes. Unfortunately, I only know that the director of that movie was a Frenchman, his surname 'Sergey'. I need all information I can get my hands on about this. Names of people involved in the tape. From the names, I could track down the news report of Misa's rape and the guy's arrest. Can you help me?”

  “What will you do when you have all of the information?”

  “I will bring the perpetuator into justice,” Smith said. “I have faith in the Japanese judiciary system.”

  “One of which you are not familiar with.”

  “I know what I am doing. Tell me, do you know this man? And if you don't you must have some acquaintance who might know or some database where you can search.”

  “Yes, of course, I can.” Tanaka set down his glass of sherry, stood up and walked thoughtfully behind the couch on which Smith had sit himself. He glanced at this white walled sun-lit study through the gap again. His table filled with equipment and documents were tempting his attention. His mind was ensnared by the monster that sat inside it, and he could hardly peel away. From the unattached earphone, he seemed to see puffs of dust swirling near the earpieces in shapes of a thrashing hand. The hand of Misa. It twirled in the air like it belonged to someone who was being strangled. In his ears, he heard Misa's low moan.

  Should I tell Smith about his documentary in the making or should I not?

  Tanaka had hoped to play the hero himself. He was not ready to share his part with someone else. On the other hand, with Smith in it, the storyline would become so much richer. Was Smith the right character to cast? What would be more appealing to the critics? He started to imagine the headlines of the news in the future when all was known from the release of his documentary. The possibility was endless. The combination of characters and outcome could make or break his work. He needed to make an intelligent decision about this. Pen and paper were what he needed at the moment, and they sat inside his haunted study.

  Ahh....yi.yahh...

  He heard Misa again. For nights he had poured over every bit of detail of her case. It had to be just hallucinations he was having. Perhaps all he needed was a couple more drinks to shake off her voice.

  Then his heart skipped a beat when he heard the jangle of keys outside his apartment door. A loud thump signaled that the neighbors were home.

  Smith had cocked up his head to see Tanaka's troubled expression.

  Something was amiss. Tanaka was apparently agitated from the news Smith had just shared.

  “What do you have in there?” He asked the man.

  44. Magic Dragon

  Smith chuckled.

  “I cannot believe you,” he said to Tanaka through the white, smokey haze they had created from smoking indoors, windows locked and the door of the study closed shut to keep the smoke from seeping out, thus alarming their neighbors. “What do you have to do to get these?” He held up the joint between his index and middle finger.

  Tanaka took a drag of the fresh joint he just rolled up and exhaled. Beautiful trails of smoke danced in front of him.

  Smith waved his arm in the air as if he could brush the white ribbons of smoke away like condensation on glass and said, “Incredible. This is the first joint I have ever smoked in Japan. Well, actually in years, even before Japan.” He closed his eyes for a second for the setting sun coming through from the windows behind Tanaka hurt his eyes. Two long trails of smoke burst out of his nostrils.

  To see Smith enjoyed his stash so much pleased Tanaka.

  “I have my sources.” He pointed the remote in his hand to the infra-red receiver of the air purifier. It was a high-end model. One could see its internal workings through the transparent outer case with metallic rims as decoration. The increased power of the filter machine zapped the air clean of white swirls in no time. “Are you surprised that the nation of stringent rules and regulations could produce such a malefactor like me?”

  “There were more malefactors I have come in contact with around here than anywhere else I have been,” Smith replied half jokingly. “Our most respected leaders, Mura, Ogawa, Hirano, and Kojima were all excellent examples.” Those were the latest list of executives from DaiKe arrested in the bribery probe.

  “Money, money, money. And with money you can make MORE money. I supposed that's how the world has always worked. What does your God say about money?” Smith inquired.

  “In Shintoism, there is not one God. Everything you could lay your eyes on can be a kami (god). Generally, we thought them to be as much as 8 million.” He continued his explanation, spotting the surprise in Smith's countenance. “Our faith does not prescribe hard rules and our priests do not hand out moral judgments like those from the Western faith. Money, like everything else, could be created, obtained, exchanged, invested and divested so long as they were done with sincerity and honesty. These are the core values of Shintoism.”

  “Paying off a government official is definitely a form of public deception.”

  “Well, remorse usually comes too late. To live in an honored way, some of these men will die to atone.”

  Smith's forehead wrinkled in concern. He did not understand why Tanaka had made such a sudden introduction of death into what he thought was a lighthearted conversation between two men puffing away.

  “I could see it on their faces,” Tanaka smiled. He lay his half-smoked joint on the silver tray next to his computer and pulled up the latest news report on the DaiKe bribery scandal. A collage composed of the four men's headshots from their DaiKe website profiles had been uploaded online. Tanaka tapped the screen lightly with his fingers and picked up his cigarette again.

  “Ogawa, Hirano,” Tanaka told Smith. “Look at their eyes. The whites of their eyes above and under their irises were out of proportions. This is called Sampuku . They will die before they age. Ogawa has a wondering, shifty gaze in this picture. It is a sign of dishonest and opportunistic tendency. His lips curled down tells me he is always discontent.”

  “You're reading faces again.” Smith connected the dots together. “And Hirano?”

  “Hirano's chin is set too far back. The weak chin means weak personality. This alone is sufficient to conclude he won't make it through the ordeal.”

  “If you can see it, wouldn't their families see it too?”

  “If one has done something to tarnish the honor of himself and his family, I don't suppose they have much choice but to do what is left f
or them to correct their mistakes.”

  “And that would be to confess and go to jail for a very long time, or to hide forever behind a suicide.”

  “Thus saving the name of the family.”

  “It almost sounded like we are talking about The Hobbit. Here is Thorin Oakenshield and he must restore the kingdom of dwarfs and fight the five armies like men for the honor of his family name....” Smith's mind was getting more mixed up by the minute. The whitish wall was beginning to look like snows on Lonely Mountain.

  “Yes, this is what I was getting at. I don't think Ogawa and Hirano will have much time left before we found them hanging by a rope somewhere.”

  “And their families would encourage it?” Smith exclaimed. “That's absurd...”

  “The clues are all written on their faces. Face is born not made. Fate is not born but made. But Face wins most of the time, unfortunately. This has been my tragic observations.”

  “A major discovery. I feel like I had just landed on the moon and found out that it was the shittiest place, as the saying goes, on Earth.”

  “From an Earth where it was the place of desire for most men.”

  “Isn't it?” Smith chuckled randomly. “‘ Some of us are looking at the stars.' ”

  “But 'we are all living in the gutter.' ”

  The ventilated room had concentrated the effect of the joint on Smith. He pushed himself up from the swivel stool and said in a fussy haze that he had to leave and that Tanaka ought to take his barking dog out for a walk for the noise was bothering him. Both of them knew full well there was no dog. But Tanaka had become quite agreeing and imaginative himself when he was high. He fared Smith goodbye and slumped into a nap on the futon.

  45. A Moment of Contemplation

  It was awful. Truly awful. She should never have agreed to join the InterHRLA protest if it wasn’t for the fact that she would have been the only girl in the office not participating if she were to say no. She hated being different, she hated being left alone, and that had gotten her into this awful situation. She totally lost it in public like a raving lunatic and everything was captured and put on the internet.

  Not for a second did it occur to her that she would break down in front of the crowd. All of the women, like Misa, had psyched themselves up days in advance of the protest, having been briefed by the organizer what they were going to do. Yet neither the organizer nor anyone from the group imagined that people on the streets would react so negatively at the cause for their crusade. They were shamed for the public exposure of their bodies.

  Suddenly, a loud bang on the door and her front door was busted open. Hairs on her back stood up out of fear. What was that about?

  “Police! Don’t move!” One man shouted while pointing a gun at her. “Raise your hands so I can see them!”

  Her face contorted in fear. What had she done now to deserve this? Certainly what she did the other day doesn’t warrant the police busting through her doors like this, does it? Was she going to be arrested now for public indecency? Or was she being arrested for assault? She flailed her arms at someone – that much she recalled, but she didn’t hurt anyone, did she? She asked herself in panic.

  Behind the police who shouted order at her, in walk a couple of plainclothes detectives. Towards the end of the stream of men, she saw the reason for their presence here. Tatsu, her brother, his hands bounded by a pair of handcuff, was being shoved through the threshold of their shared apartment. His eyes were swollen and there were bruises on his faces. One of them dangerously close to his right eye. He looked up shamefully at Misa but he quickly casted his eyes down again.

  “Tatsu!” Misa rose from her chair at the dining table where she was writing her diary to walk towards her brother.

  “Sit down!” The policeman shouted at her, “and don’t move! Keep your hands in the air while we search your place!”

  “What’s going on, Tatsu!” Misa asked her brother.

  “Your brother has been arrested for possession of marijuana. We have a warrant to search this residence. Please co-operate!”

  “What have you been writing?” A plainclothes detective with a sour look leaned over to read her entry to her diary.

  Before Misa could reply, he had snatched her diary and started flipping the pages to scan its content.

  “Are these ledges for drug sales?”

  He threw the diary back on the tabletop and pointed at a table that she had drawn up and entered the names of her clients together with the date and time of their appointments on it.

  Misa stared vacantly at the pages on her diary. Her mouth hung open as her mind tried to formulate a response, her lips trembling.

  ***

  What made me happy?

  It was an extraordinarily difficult question to answer for Misa. She had very little memory of her past, not just the distant past such as her childhood which most people had troubles recalling, but also the recent past. This was the reason for her reticence. Unbeknownst to her, she had become quieter and quieter. It was not her natural disposition; she knew for a fact. However, she could not conjure up historical scenarios where she had behaved differently. Intellectually she knew any high school students would have gone through numerous classroom discussions, for example. However, she recalled none, let alone how she participated. Perhaps she did not participate, she explained to herself, which was why these memories did not exist.

  For someone without memory of the past, it was hard to have very personal conversations with others where inevitably some tidbits of their lives were supposed to be exchanged as a sign of trust, of compassion. It was not to say that Misa had no compassion. Compassion she had a great deal of, for she had a good imagination. She could imagine herself being in the shoes of others, of their happiness, of their pain. She could say the most comforting phrases to others who need them, but it made her feel guilty sometimes. Sometimes she caught herself totally convinced of a reconstructed reality built from things other people had told her. Other times she could not tell those were not her actual memories. Sooner or later she would forget even these fabricated memories. When she finally caught up with her problems, she decided the best thing was to keep her mouth shut so that no one would notice this girl, of no memory. A monster, among men.

  This was the reason why she kept a small leather bound diary, now sitting inside a ziploc evidence bag half a meter in front of her, on the desk in the interrogation room at the police station.

  She kept notes of everything in there. It was a practice exercise suggested from a self-help book she had read some time ago when she chanced upon it at the bookstore during some leisure time she had between her afternoon shift at the pachinko parlor and a meeting with one of her clients. The exercise was a simple one: jot down in a diary interesting events that happened each day and mark by the side of the entry one's mood with a happy, neutral or sad smiley. The aim was such that the person doing this exercise would, after a considerable amount of time, realized that there were wonders in everyday life and the total number of happy and neutral smiley often, in the unwavering optimism of the author, outnumber those of sad smiley. It had proven to be true by Misa's entry month after month. The tallying of smileys showed that she had a lot more to be happy about than to be sad about, despite the undying feeling of dread that constantly gnawed at her being despite the numerous moments of happiness, regardless of what was written down black and white in the boxes of her diary. Despite being none the happier, she now possessed the powerful knowledge that she could be, theoretically. Hence she kept the habit. She wrote entries religiously into the little black book every single day, goating herself into thinking that it would miraculously work one day. Perhaps when the numbers had finally reached a certain elusive threshold.

  In front of the desk stood senior officer Miyazaki with his back to her. His stood looking at the invisible colleagues behind the one-way mirror, smoking the last bit of his cigarette. Another minute passed, and he turned around to stubbed it on the tray on th
e desk.

  “Is it money?” He taunted, proposing a plausible answer to the question he posted to her earlier. “Easy money? Money from rich men like, let me see,” he unzipped the evidence bag and pulled out Misa's diary. “Yoshiyuki Chino, Teuro Eiichi and, well, well, Toshiaki Ono. That's a big fish.”

  “I don't know what you are talking about.”

  “He gave you a diamond ring, remember?” He held up her own diary in front of her eyes and pointed at it. “You drew it out. Colored it and everything. Nice looking ring it must be in real life.”

  “The picture meant nothing. It's just some random scribbles.”

  “I wouldn't be wasting my time here if these were random scribbles of a school girl daydreaming about her wedding ring in History class. Guess whether we have found this in your house or not?” Miyazaki taunted.

  “It was my birthday gift. Mr. Ono gave the ring to me as my birthday gift.”

  “What did you have to do in exchange?”

  “Nothing. I said it was my birthday gift. I guess I turned a year older.” Misa looked away from the diary and fixed her gaze on the cigarette dish. If she wanted, she could smash someone up badly with that metal dish.

  The officer threw her diary on the desk surface. Before Misa could react, he grabbed her jaw and yanked it towards his direction with his right hand. “Don't look away when I am talking to you, Miss Hayami.”

  It did not scare Misa. Loud voices, threats, a bit of force. These she could handle. She had come under a lot of pressure in her life, conscious of them or not, they had fortified her with immunity to what others would find frightful, like lying to an officer who had just knocked some teeth out of her brother. Yet not a bit of fear could be seen from her steady stare back at Miyazaki.