The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories

by Kyotaro Nishimura

  “And you believed him?”

  “Of course. He’s famous, after all. You’ve heard of Kyo Sasanuma, haven’t you?”

  Taguchi nodded. He was a popular young author. Taguchi had even read his short story “One Debauched Morning” in a magazine. He could still recall the strangely upbeat account of a top executive being drawn into a world of sex and gambling. A subject once considered degenerate had been converted into an adventure, and Taguchi had found it quite thought-provoking.

  “It was him,” Mineko said proudly. It was as if she thought that just having such a famous friend conferred status on Sakakibara himself. Taguchi was amused by her naïveté, but said nothing. “So if the police think Sensei’s the murderer, they’re making a big mistake,” she added conclusively.

  “Maybe,” replied Taguchi noncommittally.

  Mineko was evidently devoted to Sakakibara. She appeared entirely unembarrassed by her absolute belief in him.

  Taguchi believed only facts. Yet it was also the facts that troubled him. Mineko had witnessed how Sakakibara had stood up to the yakuza to save Kazuko, so that was probably a fact. There was a strong possibility that what she had said about him saving a child was also a fact. The image of Sakakibara that such facts conjured just did not fit with the image of him that Taguchi had created in his mind over the past two days. The Sakakibara that carried a collection of Baudelaire’s poetry even when going to a bar to drink; who hung the pompous sign “Contemporary Poetry Appreciation Society” on the door of his room in that rundown apartment block; and who lied that he had been detained at a demonstration when actually he had been arrested for shoplifting: these three facts described a young man who was the very picture of vanity. It did not seem possible to square this image of Sakakibara with Mineko’s depiction of him.

  And then there was also another image: that of Sakakibara the murderer.

  How on earth could these three profiles fit together?

  I guess establishing the motive is going to be the key to this case…

  The following afternoon, after first confirming by telephone, Taguchi visited Kyo Sasanuma at his home in the exclusive Aoyama district. He lived in a twelve-story upmarket condominium, but his compact two-bedroom condo was a far cry from the sumptuous lifestyle Taguchi had imagined from the author’s work.

  Sasanuma looked sleepy, as if he had been working through the night. To Taguchi’s query, he replied dryly, “Sakakibara and I studied French literature together at university. We often stayed up all night discussing it. Has he done something wrong?”

  “I just want to know what sort of person he is. Tetsuya Sakakibara, that is. I guess you would know?”

  “Depends what you mean by ‘know,’ really. Some would say it’s impossible to understand another person.” Sasanuma gave a short laugh.

  “I suppose.” Taguchi did not resist. Instead he tried another tack.

  “Is it true that he was hit by a car while saving a child?”

  “Yes, it’s true. It was in our fourth year at university. Sakakibara, myself, and another guy I’ll call ‘N’ were walking along when a kid of three or four ran out into the street. A truck was coming from the opposite direction. At times like that your brain tells you that you have to save the kid from danger, but your body doesn’t react. Of course, you also feel fear. But Sakakibara never hesitated for a moment. He saved the kid, but he got his left leg injured.”

  “Is he brave?”

  “Sure. At least, I couldn’t do what he did. I always put myself first, I’m afraid. I’m too much of a snob.”

  “But you’re a popular author, while he’s an unknown poet who has to sell cheap fifty-yen collections of his work on the street just to eat. The way I see it, you’re a winner and he’s a loser.”

  “That’s because we live in a complicated age. I myself really can’t say who is the winner and who is the loser. For all I know, he might be the winner. There are times I long for his way of life. I get the feeling that he’s free, and to be free you have to be true to yourself.”

  “Is he true to himself?” A shadow of irony flashed across Taguchi’s eyes.

  Sasanuma was quick to note this and, looking rather puzzled, he commented, “It seems you have a rather different view of him.”

  “If I’m honest, yes I do. But that aside, may I ask you to explain in what way Sakakibara is true to himself?”

  “Hmm, let me think,” Sasanuma folded his arms and thought a while. “Not long ago he was arrested at a demonstration against the US–Japan Security Treaty. It’s not just that he’s anti-establishment, he happens to have the honesty to translate it into action. I, on the other hand, might be daring in my novels, but in real life I’m the very picture of conservatism.”

  “Did he tell you he had been at the demo?”

  “Yes. In fact, when he was released I went to Kamata police station to pick him up. I developed a bit of a complex about it at the time. He later wrote a poem about the demo. It’s a great poem.”

  Still seated, Sasanuma reached out and took a familiar-looking mimeographed poetry collection off his desk. Opening it up to a page near the middle, he said, “The title is ‘The Flash.’ It’s a little reminiscent of the Resistance poetry of the French poet Éluard. It’s really a masterpiece.”

  Taguchi had never heard of Éluard. But he did know that Sakakibara had lied, and had written a poem about a demonstration he had never been to.

  “If I told you it was a lie, what would you think?”

  “A lie?”

  “What if he hadn’t been at that demo? For example, if he had been arrested for some other crime such as theft, yet had lied to you that he had been arrested at the demonstration? What would you make of that?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sasanuma gave a tight smile. “Surely he has no need to lie about something like that. I’m just some half-baked minor celebrity so I have to consider my position. I have to put on a show to sell myself. Making subversive comments, in my case, is just a publicity stunt. But he’s different. He isn’t afraid of anything. There’s no need for him to lie.”

  There was no trace of irony in his voice. Taguchi did not refer to the demo again, and changed the subject. “Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

  Naturally, he was not expecting Sasanuma to answer in the affirmative, but he was hoping to get some kind of clue to Sakakibara’s nature in his answer.

  “Sakakibara capable of murder?” repeated Sasanuma, and then burst out laughing. “I can easily imagine him helping someone. But killing someone? No, it really doesn’t fit.”

  “That’s the Tetsuya Sakakibara that you know.”

  “Is there another, different Tetsuya Sakakibara?”

  “I reckon there might well be.” Taguchi glanced at the book of poetry on the table.

  He pictured the tiny, airless room; the mimeographed poetry collections that sold for fifty yen; the grubby, unmade bed—this was the environment Sakakibara lived in. For anyone with a modicum of ambition, such a living must be unbearable. Every day must be a series of humiliations.

  The telephone rang. Sasanuma nodded briefly to Taguchi before picking up the receiver. It appeared to be about a piece he was writing for a magazine, for he laughed and said, “I’m thinking of going to Bangkok tomorrow to research it.”

  Taguchi felt a buzz in the air, utterly unlike the mood in Sakakibara’s room. There was not even a phone there. Even if there had been, he was unlikely to receive any calls from magazines asking him to write for them.

  Taguchi was just walking into his office, when a call came from Detective Suzuki.

  “Sakakibara’s right by Hachiko,” said Suzuki. The bustle of the street was audible through the receiver. “He’s been here for almost an hour now, selling his poetry books. Well, he’s just standing there in silence holding a cardboard box with a sign saying, ‘Please buy a book of my poems.’”

  “Has he sold any?”

  “Just one in the last hour. The kid who bought i
t looked as though he was still in high school. So what now?”

  “Um,” Taguchi glanced at his watch, the receiver still tucked against his ear. It was just after four. Sakakibara would probably be there for a little longer. Taguchi decided he wanted to see what he looked like as he stood there. “I’m on my way over,” he said, hanging up.

  The overcast sky still threatened rain, but the area around Hachiko was thronged with the usual young crowd. Taguchi entered the police box by the station where Suzuki was waiting.

  Suzuki glanced out through the glass window towards Hachiko, and murmured to Taguchi, “He’s still out there.”

  Sakakibara’s skinny figure was visible in the stream of people. He was simply standing there hugging his box of books. Every now and again, he took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. Hardly anyone paused before him. A group of three schoolgirls walked past, and then turned around whispering something amongst themselves, but in the end they made no move to buy one.

  Shibuya was a well-known hangout for young people, and there was a swirl of energy around Hachiko. Sakakibara alone appeared left behind. He looked not so much lonely as somewhat forlorn and plaintive.

  Taguchi took the book he had bought from Sakakibara and placed it before Suzuki. “Want a look?”

  “I don’t understand poetry!” Suzuki scratched his head, then suddenly his expression turned serious. “Can’t we arrest him?” He looked at Taguchi. “He has to be the murderer, right?”

  “Right. He is the murderer,” agreed Taguchi calmly. “But we don’t have any proof.”

  “But surely he hasn’t got an alibi?”

  “Yoshimuta didn’t have an alibi either, did he? And what’s more, if we arrest him now, there are plenty of witnesses ready to testify in his favor. Everybody and his uncle seems to believe he’s a great guy. We haven’t a hope of winning. The biggest problem is a motive. Right now, we still don’t know why he killed Kazuko Watanabe.”

  “Perhaps he was in love with her? Then she went and told him she was marrying someone else, so—”

  “No, no,” Taguchi shook his head. Sakakibara was still standing there vacantly. How many would he sell in a day like that? “I thought of that. But if there had been anything like between them, we would have got at least a hint of it during our investigations. But there’s been nothing. It’s like he said, to him the victim was just another girl who deserved to be loved, nothing more. That’s why he bragged to me that it was a crime without a motive. Hang on—”

  “What is it?”

  “Why did he harp on about the motive?”

  “Didn’t he say there wasn’t a motive?”

  “Same difference. He was concerned about the motive. Why was that?”

  “If we discover what his motive was, we’ll arrest him. Perhaps he was scared of that?”

  “That’s what I thought. But it’s not that. He isn’t scared of being arrested, but he is extremely afraid of the motive being discovered. That’s why he’s so concerned about it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me put it like this. It’s a pretty special motive that would utterly disgrace him if it ever became known. Now that would explain his actions, but—”

  Suddenly a disturbance broke out in the vicinity of Hachiko.

  It was a fight.

  A couple of youths were shoving and poking a man of around sixty years old. It seemed the older man had knocked one of them on the shoulder, and they were using this as the pretext for a quarrel.

  Passersby had formed a wide circle around the three, but nobody made any move to intervene. The old man himself looked grubby and rather sly, hardly the type to attract sympathy, while the youths both looked like yakuza hoodlums in their sunglasses and sandals.

  Taguchi and Suzuki immediately rushed out of the police box, but just as they reached the crowd Taguchi held Suzuki back, “Wait a moment.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I want to see what Sakakibara does.”

  According to Mineko, Sakakibara had been beaten up when he had tried to help Kazuko when she was being stalked. And Sasanuma had told him how Sakakibara had injured his leg trying to save a child from being run over. These two incidents conjured an image of a righteous person incapable of standing back and watching someone else’s misfortune. They had even claimed he was incapable of murder. But Taguchi had not witnessed either of those incidents himself.

  Therefore, he wanted to make sure with his own eyes. If Sakakibara really was a righteous person, surely he would not be able to ignore this old man being roughed up by a couple of hoodlums?

  Taguchi observed Sakakibara over the shoulders of the crowd.

  Sakakibara was watching the quarrel. He looked worried. He frowned, sighed and looked away, then looked back. He seemed to be struggling with an invisible force.

  “How about an apology, huh?” demanded one of the thugs, roughly shoving the old man’s shoulder. The old man staggered and fell heavily onto his buttocks. The other one grabbed his collar and pulled him up again.

  “You too old to know how to say sorry?” He gave the old man a resounding slap on the cheek.

  The old man made no attempt to defend himself, repeating over and over again, “Sorry! I’m sorry.”

  The color drained from Sakakibara’s face. His expression was pained, as if he was personally to blame for the old man’s beating. The first one punched the old man again.

  “Let’s break it up!” yelled Suzuki in Taguchi’s ear, as if he could not bear it any longer. Just at that moment, Sakakibara laid his cardboard box to one side, and slowly entered the fight circle. Skinny and dragging his left leg, he was not at all a heroic figure.

  Going up to the pair, he said, “Cut it out” in a shaky voice. He was clearly terrified. Even so, he was trying to stop the fight.

  The pair glared at him. “What have we here?” grinned one.

  “Stop bullying the old man.”

  “Asshole!” The other one suddenly kicked Sakakibara’s butt from behind, with the agility of a habitual fighter. As he fell, the other one laid into him. It was a rout. Sakakibara just curled himself up into a fetal position.

  So they’d been right about him?

  Taguchi felt more and more puzzled. Was Sakakibara really such a righteous person? If he was—

  “Boss! We’ve got to stop them!”

  At Suzuki’s words Taguchi snapped out of it and, yelling, “Stop that right now!” charged his stocky body through the crowd.

  Sakakibara was so severely bruised that Taguchi took him to a nearby hospital.

  The doctor who examined him diagnosed cracked ribs and ordered him to remain immobile, but lying there in bed Sakakibara was surprisingly cheerful.

  “That’s a strange face you’re making,” he said, looking up at Taguchi. “I suppose you’re shocked I would do something like that.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “You’re lying,” Sakakibara gave him a searching look. “You’re puzzled. And you think this is all an act. You think I made a show of helping that old man because knew I was being tailed. You think a vicious murderer wouldn’t do anything to help anyone, don’t you?”

  Taguchi merely laughed. Sakakibara seemed drunk on his own words. Nodding to himself, he continued, “But unfortunately it wasn’t an act. I helped him because I had to. It had nothing to do with whether you were following me or not. When I see something like that, I simply can’t ignore it. I’m not particularly proud of myself for having saved him. On the contrary, I’m embarrassed by it.”

  “I know.”

  “What the hell do you know? Nothing, that’s what.”

  “It’s true that I was puzzled to begin with.”

  “Surprisingly candid of you.”

  “But not now. I’ve been trying to understand you. At first glance, you seem complicated, but actually you’re simply a type.”

  “Now you’re lecturing me in anthropology?”

  “No, more l
ike my own experiential philosophy. When you went to break up the fight, you were so scared you were shaking.”

  “So? What are you trying to say?” Sakakibara’s expression hardened. “Well, you’re right—I am a coward. A total wimp. Anything wrong with that?”

  “No,” smiled Taguchi. After asking permission to smoke, he lit up a cigarette. “I’m a coward too. But normal people don’t try to help if they’re scared. At most, they would just call the police, but you steamed in to help even though you were shaking with fear.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t have done it?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m talking about your character. You’ve got a pretty fascinating personality. You seem to be in thrall to a sense of duty. Today, too, you were bound to help the old man through a sense of obligation. You even seem obsessed with that duty. People usually run away when they’re afraid, but you charge in to help because you’re afraid.”

  “What an interesting opinion you have, far more intriguing than a university lecture.”

  “At worst, it gets to the point that you even lie to deceive yourself and other people. No doubt you believe that poets have to have an anti-establishment mindset. Or perhaps I should say, you’re in thrall to that belief. You felt you had a duty to oppose the Security Treaty. But in fact, the day of that demo you were arrested for shoplifting—how mortifying! The normal thing would have been to keep quiet about it, but you went overboard with that sense of duty and lied that you had been at the demo. Not only that, you even wrote a poem about your experience. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to live with yourself.”

  Sakakibara reddened. It seemed Taguchi had hit him where it most hurt. Taguchi slowly stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “So what do you think? Maybe it wasn’t such an interesting talk?”

  “What the hell are you on about?” Sakakibara chewed his lip and glared at Taguchi. Taguchi smiled.

  “I just wanted to get you to confess. You’re so full of yourself, defying the police to arrest you. But we will get you. And what’s more, your own personality will prove fatal to you. You’ll be the cause of your own downfall.”