by David Peace
‘Hayashi Jo is dead,’ I tell him. ‘They pulled him out of the Shiba Canal early this morning.’
Bound and nailed…
Senju lowers the revolver. He smiles. ‘That’s lucky for you.’
‘How’s it lucky for me?’ I ask. ‘There’ll be an inquiry.’
‘But it’s lucky you gave me the name of a dead man.’
‘He wasn’t a dead man when I gave you his name.’
‘So you say now,’ laughs Senju. ‘So you say.’
‘But if I knew he was dead, why would I give you his name?’
Senju raises the revolver again. Senju says, ‘Because dead men don’t say very much, do they, Detective Inspector Minami?’
I curse him. I curse myself. And I curse my dependence…
I bow before him. I apologize to him. I tell him, ‘Hayashi was nailed to a door. I thought you might have killed him.’
‘So you came down here to arrest me, did you, detective?’
I bow to him again. I apologize to him again. I shake my head and tell him, ‘No. I came down here for the Calmotin.’
Senju reaches under the table. Senju brings out a small box –
‘And here you are,’ he says. ‘Sweet dreams, detective.’
I apologize again. I thank him. I take the box.
Senju Akira throws some banknotes across the table at me. Now Senju says, ‘But I still need a name, detective. Understand?’
I nod. I bow again. I apologize again. I thank him again –
‘A name from the living, not the dead…’
I start to shuffle backwards across the mats but then I ask, ‘What are you going to do about the market? About the Formosans?’
‘They tell me they’ve not finished with me,’ laughs Senju.
‘And what did you tell them?’ I ask. ‘What did you say?’
Senju raises the gun again. ‘I just told them the truth –
‘I told them I’ve not even begun yet…’
*
We have not found her name. I stay away from Atago police station. I stay away from Room #2. We have not talked to her family. My men will not be eating good food. My men will not be raising their glasses. We have not connected her to Kodaira. They will not be taking off their ties. They will not be singing their songs of victory. We have not got a confession. They will be asleep at their borrowed desks. Their stomachs will still be empty, their dreams still lost –
Our case not closed. Our case never closed…
I push my way off the train. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I go through the ticket gate at Mitaka. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I follow the telegraph poles down the road to my usual restaurant, half-way between the station and my house –
But in the half-light, I can’t forget…
‘There have been more men looking for you,’ says the master. ‘They’ve been in here almost every night…’
No one is who they say they are…
I shrug my shoulders. I take off my hat. I order yakitori and a whisky. I put the glass to my lips. I knock it back –
No one is who they seem to be…
‘In here every night asking questions…’
It burns. I cough. I order another –
‘About your wife and children…’
I leave it. I leave the bar –
I walk and then I run –
I run up the road –
The house is dark. The house is silent. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck. I take out my key and I open the door. The rotting mats. The house smells of boiled radish. The shredded doors. The house smells of DDT. The fallen walls. The house smells of pain –
The pain I have brought them. The pain I have left them…
I place the money and the food in the genkan –
The money and the food; the blood money…
I step back outside. I close the door again –
The blood money and the blood food…
I turn away. I walk away –
The tears in my eyes…
I hear the door open –
Tears of blood…
I start to run, to run away, away again.
*
I think about her all the time. Her head slightly to the right. In a white half-sleeved chemise. I think about her all the time. Her right arm outstretched. In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress. I think about her all the time. Her left arm at her side. In her pink socks. I think about her all the time. Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. Her white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. I think about her all the time. My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs –
‘I look like bones,’ says Yuki, in the half-light –
In the half-light. I open the box of Calmotin –
I swallow some pills. In the half-light –
The dead are the living, the living are…
In the half-light. I close my eyes –
‘Does this umbrella become me…?’
‘I can’t remember the umbrella,’ I tell her. ‘But I remember your hair, your freshly dressed chignon tied up in threads.’
‘And you followed me,’ she smiles. ‘You followed me.’
Another flash of lightning. Another clap of thunder…
‘You were afraid,’ I say. ‘You reached for my hand.’
‘Worried you were lost. Worried you would lose me.’
She turns down the alleyway, crosses the little bridge over the ditch and waits for me before the reed awnings of her row-house…
‘You returned my umbrella then beat the rain from my coat.’
‘Your Western clothes were really very wet,’ she laughs –
The thunder is in retreat now but the rain falls harder still, bouncing off the buildings and our bodies in a shower of stones…
‘You were worried about my clothes, so you invited me in.’
‘I was only being polite,’ she says. ‘What else could I do?’
She leads me into a back room screened off by a lattice of unpolished wood and a curtain of long ribbons and little bells…
‘You wiped your bare feet while I untied my foreign shoes.’
‘But you wouldn’t take your coat off,’ she laughs again –
And sits me down at the long charcoal brazier as she then begins to make tea, her left knee drawn up to her left breast…
‘Was that well-water?’ I ask her again. ‘Or tap-water?’
‘You were more worried about typhoid than syphilis,’ she says. ‘Is that why you never drink the tea in my house…?’
Now she wipes oil from her forehead with a piece of clear paper and then goes off through the curtains to the wash basin…
‘You would have been twenty-three or twenty-four,’ I say. ‘And the skin on your face had been spoilt and dulled by cosmetics.’
‘But my lips were red,’ she says. ‘And my eyes were clear.’
I can still see her through the ribbons, beyond the bells, bowing to wash her face, her kimono pulled back over her shoulders, her shoulders and breasts even whiter than her face…
‘You were always alone,’ I say. ‘Weren’t you afraid?’
In the half-light, she does not answer me. In the half-light –
Her face to the wall. To the paper. To the stains –
In the half-light, Yuki sleeps. In the half-light –
‘Black! Black! Here come the bombs!’
I cover my ears. I close my eyes –
‘Cover your ears! Close your eyes!’
In the half-light, she is startled and wakes, clutching her hair. Now she sees a length of her hair has wound itself around my neck –
‘My hair only grows when we sleep together,’ she smiles –
I swallow some more pills. I close my eyes again –
‘But I don’t want to sleep,’ she whispers into my mouth. ‘Why do we have to sleep? Why should lovers ever have to sleep?’
‘A love that never sleeps would send us mad.’
‘We never slept
before,’ she says. ‘When sleep was selfish.
When sleep was for the demons. When sleep was for the dead…’
procession, the coffin decorated with the images of snakes, the chief mourner in a hat of coarse hemp as the women howl with the yellow wind through the electric wires. The soil blows, the sun pales as I lie among the corpses. Sixty Calmotin, sixty-one. Chinese officers stuff their mouths with melon under the huge Sun in the Blue Sky flag atop the peeling red-lacquered gate. We watch them from behind our sandbags. Their soldiers in their grey uniforms throng the streets, overturning stalls and stealing goods. We watch them from behind our barbed wire. They chew food as they saunter around the city. We watch them in our khaki uniforms. They spit skin and bones into the faces of the local Chinese. We watch them with our machine guns. They love plunder, they love violence. A shot rings out. They knock over altars, they yank open drawers. Another shot. Beggars and coolies run towards the shots. The Chinks are robbing the Japanese. Women with bound feet and children with plaits flee. The Japs are raping the Chinese. Two grey armoured vehicles speed up the street. The Chinks are murdering the Japanese. Nationalist cavalrymen gallop south through the city. The Japs are murdering the Chinese. Bullets fly from the second-floor windows of Western buildings. Artillery sounds. Barefoot Japanese men run down the streets, their shirts unbuttoned. Cannons fire. Prostitutes pour out of the Yung-hsien-li district. Windows shatter. A woman in red satin falls to the ground. My son said he would cut his own throat! Houses are burnt. Mine too! Refugees cower in halls. A true Japanese man! Men lose their wives. Run! Mothers lose their children. Hide! A wire birdcage lies trampled in the street. No! This is how it starts, among the corpses. Seventy Calmotin, seventy-one. The disarmed soldiers in their grey uniforms groan and cry like animals, their hands tied behind their backs in the barbed-wire stockade. Hundreds of them, sat on the ground before the fixed bayonets of just five of our unit as our artillery thunders on until dawn. Then there is only smoke, now only rumours. Two hundred and eighty Japanese settlers massacred, say the Japanese newspapers. Japanese women stripped naked, treated with unspeakable savagery, and then butchered. Tales of stakes thrust into vaginas, arms broken with clubs, and their eyes gouged out. Houses looted, schools burnt. The mutilated corpses of three Japanese are unearthed in a field northeast of the railway bridge, six more by the water tank. Their ears have been sliced off, their stomachs stuffed with stones. Eighty Calmotin, eighty-one. Now the airplanes appear, dropping black bombs on Chinese districts and the street fighting ends. The air is thick with flies. For two days we drink sake and wander through the city. The stench of rotten apricots. We count the Chinese corpses but soon give up. Dogs wag their tails among the dead. We take photographs but run out of film. Beggars sleep among the bones. We find Chinese families still hiding in their houses. Two hundred and eighty Japanese settlers massacred, say the Japanese newspapers. We separate the men from the women. Japanese women stripped naked, treated with unspeakable savagery, and then butchered. The young from the old. Tales of stakes thrust into vaginas, arms broken with clubs, and their eyes gouged out. Masaki, Banzai! Daddy,
6
August 20, 1946
Tokyo, 87°, cloudy
Night is day. I open my eyes. No more pills. Day is night. I can hear the rain falling. Hide from sight. Night is day. I can see the sun shining. No more pills. Day is night. I close my eyes. The corpses of the dead. Night is day. The good detective visits the crime scene one hundred times. No more pills. Day is night. The white morning light behind the black Shiba trees. In the long, long grasses. Night is day. The black trees that have seen so much. No more pills. Day is night. The black branches that have borne so much. The dead leaves and weeds. Night is day. The black leaves that have come again. No more pills. Day is night. To grow and to fall and to grow again. Another country’s young. Night is day. I turn away. No more pills. Day is night. I walk away from the scene of the crime. Another country’s dead. Night is day. Beneath the Black Gate. No more pills. Day is night. The dog still waits. Another country. Now night is day.
*
They are all awake now. No Fujita. They are all hungry still. No Fujita. They are all waiting for me. No Fujita. Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda yawning and scratching their heads. No Fujita. Nishi, Kimura and Ishida with their notebooks and their pencils out –
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘By now you all know that the suspect named Kodaira Yoshio has confessed to the murder of Midorikawa Ryuko,’ I tell them. ‘But, unfortunately for us, Kodaira Yoshio claims to know nothing about the second body, our body. Now I don’t believe him…’
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘But first, we need to find her name…’
No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Now we know she was alive enough on the nineteenth of July to clip an advertisement from a newspaper,’ I tell them. ‘And we know that Dr. Nakadate estimates she was murdered sometime between the twentieth and the twenty-seventh of July…’
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Now remember, investigation is footwork; so let’s take these dates and a description of the suspect Kodaira Yoshio and go back to Shiba to ask if anyone has seen a man like this?’
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘With a girl dressed like ours?’
No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Between these dates?’
No Fujita.
*
I take a different route back up to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Ton-ton. The air is more humid than ever. Ton-ton. The hammering louder than ever. Ton-ton. I want to wash my face. Ton-ton. I want to wash my hands. Ton-ton. I step inside the Hibiya Public Hall. Ton-ton. I wish I hadn’t. Ton-ton. It is the inaugural convention of the Congress of Industrial Unions. Ton-ton. The now-shabby lobby of this once-grand hall is filled with counter-intelligence agents and military policemen, foreign journalists and Japanese snitches, their paperclips in their lapels and an extra ration of cigarettes. Ton-ton. Young men selling Akahata. Ton-ton. Young men whistling ‘The Red Flag’. Ton-ton. I want to wash my face. Ton-ton. I want to wash my hands. Ton-ton. I walk through the Shinchū Gun armbands and the press-corps badges. Ton-ton. The auditorium is dark and airless, packed with men standing and sweating, either staring or shouting at the large stage. Ton-ton. No cigarettes in here. Ton-ton. No extra rations. Ton-ton. The stage is decorated with banners demanding that workers fight for a forty-hour week, oppose mass dismissals and battle against the remnants and resurgence of militarism and nationalism. Ton-ton. In front of the banners sit a dozen men behind a long table, all of them tall, all of them lean, all of them bespectacled. Ton-ton. They bow deeply before the hall. Ton-ton. They introduce themselves. Ton-ton. They bow again. Ton-ton. They sit back down. Ton-ton. Then the speeches begin. Ton-ton. These tall, lean and bespectacled men unbuttoning their jackets and loosening their ties, clenching their fists and waving their papers –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘There are those that say, even many here in this hall today, both Japanese and Occupier, that labour should not be militant, that labour should not fight. But I ask you today, is it not our democratic right to organize and defend our jobs? Is it not our democratic right to teach our fellow workers to tell an enemy from a friend?’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The Yoshida government and the American Occupiers declare that since Japan is now suffering from the consequences of defeat, all internal differences must be forgotten, all labour disputes postponed. But when have capitalists ever welcomed disputes?’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The Yoshida government is a zaibatsu government. It is a government hostile to labour sponsored by an occupation hostile to labour. Things are the same now as they have always been –
‘New uniforms but the same old politics!’
; Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The tactics of the present campaign against members of the Communist Party by the Yoshida government and the American Occupiers are the same tactics that were used by the fascists and the militarists during the war years. It shows the meaninglessness of their words, words such as freedom, such as rights, such as democracy…’
‘The red flag, wraps the bodies of our dead…’
‘Labour gives capital everything. Capital gives labour nothing!’
‘Before the corpses turn cold, the blood dyes the flag…’
‘All workers must unite! All workers must fight!’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I find the bathroom. The toilet. The sink –
I wash my face and I wash my hands –
In the warm, rust-coloured water –
I leave the building –
Ton-ton …
Outside the Hibiya Hall, a former communist is stood upon a soapbox. Ton-ton. First the man weeps as he recalls the political folly of his youth. Ton-ton. Then the man rails as he denounces birth control as the Victors’ way to sterilize and eradicate the Yamato race. Ton-ton. Now the man calls for three banzai cheers for the Emperor –
‘Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!’ he screams, stood upon his box against a wall still decorated with a mural of a Japanese bomber –
‘Let’s Boost Plane Production for an All-out Attack!’
There are red flags in the trees of Hibiya Park –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I want to wash my face again –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I want to wash my hands –
In the Year of the Dog.
*
I am late, again. Chief Inspector Adachi is standing on the steps outside Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Inspector Adachi is looking for me. Adachi is waiting for me. He is asking me, ‘So where is Detective Fujita today then, Detective Inspector Minami?’
‘I just left Detective Fujita back at Atago,’ I tell him. ‘Detective Fujita is leading the Shiba investigation in my absence.’
Inspector Adachi asks, ‘So you say you’ve just come from Atago, have you? And you say you’ve just seen Detective Fujita?’