by David Peace
Is this where you met him? Is this him behind you now… ?
In his ancient winter suit that is far too loose beneath his frayed army coat with its Shinchū Gun armband, his hair tight against his scalp, skin tight against his skull –
Did he offer you a piece of bread? A rice-ball? Candy?
In that cold and desperate queue of cold and desperate strangers, pushing and shoving, this one smiling, friendly man, this one small, friendly act of kindness –
Did you eat it there and then? That one small gift?
Now he asks you where you are going, this smiling, friendly man and between your hurried, grateful mouthfuls, you tell him you are going to visit your mother in Nikkō. He asks you where your mother lives in Nikkō and you tell this smiling, friendly man about the Furukawa Denki apartments. Now he says he once worked for Furukawa and he tells you Nikkō is where he’s from and he tells you he knows a farmer from whom you can buy some very cheap rice, some rice to surprise your mother with, some rice to take back for your uncle in Kyōbashi. And he smiles and he smiles and he smiles, this friendly man with his small acts of kindness and he even makes you laugh, this smiling, friendly man in that cold and desperate queue, among those cold and desperate strangers, this smiling, friendly man he puts an arm around you now to guide you through the crowds, the pushing and the shoving, to shepherd you onto that train, among those cold and desperate strangers, this smiling, friendly man, he helps you to find a place to stand on the train among those desperate, hungry eyes, among the ringworm and the lice, on that train with its windows of cracked plywood and bits of tin through which blow the wind and the snow as the train crosses over the Sumida River and steams up through Kita-Senju, on and on, up and up the Tōbu Line –
Does he press against you now, on that cold, cold train?
All the way up and up the Tōbu Line he smiles and he smiles and he smiles and you laugh and you laugh and you laugh as he talks and he talks and he talks, and it’s like you’ve known him all your life, this smiling, friendly man, like he’s your uncle, this smiling, friendly man, or even the father you lost so young, for you feel so safe in his smile, this one smiling, friendly face on this cold, cold train, among these strangers, these desperate, defeated strangers who stare at you with their hungry eyes and their dried lips, their sunken cheeks and their frayed collars on this cold, cold train that takes forever –
Is his smile too close? Are his hands too free… ?
But now the train is pulling into Kanazaki and he’s telling you this is where you should both get off, that this is the quickest way to the farmer he knows, the farmer with the very cheap rice he’ll sell you, the rice for your mother, the rice for your uncle, and now you’re not so sure because you do not know this place, this land, and it’s getting darker and darker and darker but you’ve eaten his bread, taken his rice-balls and sucked on his candy, and now he takes you by your arm and leads you through these cold and desperate strangers, through the pushing and through the shoving, and off that cold, cold train and onto that cold, cold platform and now the train is gone and the platform is gone and you’re walking through the ticket gates and now the station is gone and soon the town is gone because you are walking and walking and walking away, minute after minute, hour after hour, and now the day is gone and the road is narrow, walking and walking and walking, and the mountains are dark and the fields are lonely and still he smiles and he smiles and he smiles, this smiling, friendly man, but his teeth are pointed now, his eyes hungry now –
Is this when his grip tightens? His words harden… ?
His lips wet and his tongue long, this man is not smiling now, this man is not friendly now, this man with his pointed teeth and his hungry eyes, his wet lips and his long tongue whispering what he wants from you now, in those woods or in that ditch, telling you exactly what he wants from you now and you’re turning away from this man, turning away from him now, on this narrow road, beside these lonely fields, beneath that dark mountain, below those black woods, but he’s pulling you back and he’s slapping your face, punching your face and kicking your legs, and you’re asking him to stop and you’re begging him to stop and you’re pleading with him to stop, but he’s pulling you off that narrow road and away from those lonely fields, up this dark mountain, into these black woods, putting a hand around your neck and another between your legs and you know what he wants and you know what he wants and you know what he wants and you’re trying to tell him to take it and you’re begging him to take it and you’re pleading with him to take it, to take it and then leave you alone, please leave you, please leave you alone but he’s squeezing your throat, he’s squeezing your throat, he’s squeezing your throat, snot in your nose and piss down your legs and shit from your backside, as he squeezes your throat tighter and tighter, the mountain darker and darker, the woods blacker and blacker –
As black as your hair that will never turn grey …
Now you open your eyes and you know you are still living, lying on your back on broken branches and dead leaves in a hollow in these woods, you have survived, you are one of the lucky ones, freezing and bleeding on these branches and these leaves, but you have survived, you are lucky and now you raise yourself up from the branches and the leaves, but this is when you know you have not survived, you are not one of the lucky ones, when you see him sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, staring at you and smoking a cigarette, this once smiling, friendly man who now finishes his cigarette and gets up off the trunk of this fallen tree, walking towards you over broken branches and dead leaves as he unbuttons his trousers again –
You try to speak but you cannot speak, you cannot scream …
Because this once smiling, friendly man has your scarf in his hands and he is pulling it tighter and tighter as the mountain turns darker and darker, the woods blacker and blacker again –
Freezing and bleeding and choking here …
Here on these broken branches and these dead leaves, here in this hollow, in these woods, on this mountainside –
As he fucks you again and again …
Beside those lonely fields –
Again and again …
Kodaira fucks the dead.
*
I hate the countryside. He walks behind me. I hate the countryside. Back down the slope. I hate the countryside. Back to the truck. I hate the countryside. Ishida walks behind me. I hate the countryside. Ishida says nothing. I hate the countryside. I say nothing. I hate the countryside. Tachibana says nothing. I hate the countryside …
I hate the countryside. I hate the country-folk –
By these ditches. In this terrible place …
There is nothing else to say.
*
Down the side of another mountain and into a valley, we follow the signs for Kanuma, a river to our right and a railway line to our left –
Lines of people making their way back towards the station …
‘Local people call it the Scavenging Line these days,’ shouts Chief Tachibana from the back of the truck. ‘Because the only people who ever use the trains on that line now are city people from Tokyo, up here to scavenge after our rice and our sweet potatoes…’
Lines of people with their supplies on their backs …
‘They’ve turned them into freight trains,’ agrees the driver. ‘No panes of glass in the windows, old boards for doors…’
Lines of people with their backs bent double …
‘Difficult to tell what’s human and what’s luggage…’
Lines of people under the setting sun …
‘The early morning trains are the worst, packed…’
Lines of people all reduced to this …
‘Infested as well, with fleas and with lice…’
Lines of people, beaten to this …
And on and on they drone, on and on about city-folk; how it was city-folk who had brought all these problems onto Japan, how it was all the fault of city-folk, but now city-folk demand and expect the country-folk to
help them and look after them when it was city-folk who had brought this mess on Japan, the city-folk who got us into this mess, and on and on they drone, on and on about city-folk –
I hate the countryside and I hate the country-folk …
But I’m not listening to them. I am looking out for Kanuma police station. They are looking out for us too. The Kanuma police –
They are waiting for us. They are waiting for me …
They are watching for us. They are listening out for the sound of Tachibana’s battered old mountain truck coming through the town towards their quaint old rural police station –
We are here. I am here …
The driver pulls up right outside the pristine police station, right outside the eight pristine police officers who have lined up in the sinking sun to greet us, to bow, to salute and welcome us to Kanuma police station. Detective Ishida and I bow back and salute and thank them and then we follow Chief Tachibana up the clean little steps and into his police station where two officers behind the front desk bow and salute and welcome us again to their station –
‘I have a telegram from Tokyo for a Detective Ishida,’ announces one of the two men. Ishida quickly steps forward –
I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse!
Ishida takes the telegram from the officer behind the desk. Ishida steps to one side to open and read the telegram –
My heart is pounding. My heart is pounding …
But Tachibana is taking me down the side of the front desk, leaving Ishida to his telegram, and leading me along a corridor to his office, telling me the local history of Kanuma –
I curse him! I curse him! I curse him!
Police Chief Tachibana sitting me down and promising me tea, searching for the other files, the other dead women he feels might have been murdered by Kodaira Yoshio –
Other women, other deaths …
There is a soft knock on the door now as Detective Ishida steps into the room, excusing himself –
Eyes blank, eyes dead …
‘Here we are,’ says Chief Tachibana, handing me two thin files across his desk. ‘In the face of any initial evidence to the contrary both these deaths were originally recorded as ikidaore, accidental deaths due to injury or disease, mainly because of the deterioration of the corpses. But, to be honest, I’ve always felt that there might have been more to their deaths than simple accident or disease and now, with this Kodaira suspect you have in Tokyo…’
I open the top file as he speaks, Ishikawa Yori…
‘Thirty years old and the wife of a tailor, Ishikawa was an evacuee living at Imaichimachi, Kami Tsuga-gun. She was last seen on the twenty-second of June last year, waiting for a train at Shin-Tochigi station and then travelling on a bus from Tochigi station to Manako station, which is near to where her body was found. We believe that Ishikawa died some time towards the end of June last year but her body was not discovered until…’
‘The tenth of September,’ I read –
‘Yes, the tenth of September,’ continues Chief Tachibana. ‘Thank you. An old farmer had gone up into the woods at Manako-mura to pick leaves to smoke as a tobacco substitute and that’s when he found the body, or the skeleton as it was by that time…’
‘But it was never treated as murder?’ asks Ishida.
‘Difficult,’ says Tachibana. ‘Because of the state of the body and also, of course, there are many animals in these woods.’
I pick up the second file. There is no name on this second file. I hold up the second file. I ask Tachibana, ‘And this one?’
‘Even more difficult,’ says Tachibana. ‘The owner of a small mountain at Kiyosu-mura, again this is Kami Tsuga-gun, he’d gone up onto the slopes to prune away some of the branches around his cypress trees and he came upon a perfect skeleton. This was only last month and we think the body may have been there for over a year.’
I ask, ‘Did you find out anything else about the body?’
‘Yes,’ says Tachibana. ‘The autopsy was conducted in Utsunomiya and although we were unable to determine the exact cause of death we do believe it to have been the body a young woman aged approximately twenty to twenty-five years…’
‘But again you had it listed as ikidaore?’
‘Yes,’ he says again. ‘Ikidaore.’
‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘You find many such bodies, do you?’
Tachibana nods. Tachibana says, ‘In the last three or four years, yes. Older people particularly, they come out here from Tokyo to scavenge and they get lost in the woods. They have never been out here before. In the summer, some simply collapse of exhaustion. Others, in the winter, lose their way and freeze in the night…’
‘But these two weren’t old,’ says Ishida. ‘You often get young women walking in your woods, dropping down dead, do you?’
‘They were younger, yes,’ says Tachibana. ‘But we do get younger ones, but for different reasons. Only two days ago, for example, in some other woods, we found the body of a twenty-three or twenty-five-year-old woman. Dead about one month and animals had been there but we know it wasn’t murder. It was suicide.’
‘How do you know?’ asks Ishida. ‘If animals…’
‘Well, this one had at least left us a suicide note.’
‘What did it say?’ I ask. ‘This suicide note?’
‘That she had lost all her relatives during the war. That she was completely alone. That she saw no point in living any more –
‘She was from Tokyo too,’ he says. ‘Mitaka.’
Please let my daughter’s eyes be open now.
*
Below another dark mountain, with its overhanging eaves and the shade of its hearth, this inn seems much grander than the one we stayed in last night. This place in the shadows. At the foot of the mountain, with its pond and its bridge in the garden round the back, this inn seems much older but is better maintained. This place from the past. This inn still accepts Ishida’s rice but they are able to offer us a hot bath in their bathhouse and the room we are shown seems much bigger and cleaner too, with its fresh mats and its rosewood table, the tasteful alcove and the red camellia in a celadon vase. This place from another century, this place from another country …
Because of the chief of the Kanuma police, because of Tachibana. He tells us he will join us for the evening meal. He promises there will be fresh food, and even some sake –
In this other country, in this other century …
Tachibana tells us to enjoy our baths, that the water will be hot now. Then he leaves us alone, Ishida and me –
In this place, so very far from home …
Ishida and me in this beautiful room, alone and silent –
No talk of messages from Tokyo. No talk at all…
Until Detective Ishida says, ‘Please take your bath first.’
*
The inn has been built around the garden and the room we have been given is at a right angle to the long plank walkway which separates the bathhouse from the main building. Sara-sara. It would also be possible to reach the bathhouse by crossing the small garden and the bridge over the pond, but I choose to walk across the planks, oak and zelkova trees to my right, the magnolia and camellia bushes in the garden on my left, listening to the sound of running water. Sara-sara. There is a room of toilets and basins before the door to the bathhouse. Sara-sara. The taps in the basins are all running and I can smell the scent of heated bathwater. Sara-sara. I open the door to the bathhouse and I step into the changing room. Sara-sara. It is dark and windowless in here, the only light coming from a small lamp in one of the corners. Sara-sara. The bathtub must be on the other side of the second door. Sara-sara. I unbutton my shirt. Sara-sara. I take it off. Sara-sara. I unbutton my trousers. Sara-sara. I take them off. Sara-sara. I am ashamed of this shirt and these trousers. Sara-sara. This shirt and these trousers that my wife has tended and mended, stitched and re-stitched. Sara-sara. I take off my undershirt. Sara-sara. I take off my undershorts. Sara-sara. I
fold and pile up these clothes. Sara-sara. I place them in one of the changing-room baskets. Sara-sara. I never want to wear these clothes again. Sara-sara. I pick up one of the clean white bathing cloths. Sara-sara. I go through the second door and I close it behind me. Sara-sara. The room is filled with steam. Sara-sara. The only windows are narrow and high in one of the walls and admit little light. Sara-sara. The bathtub though is big and raised. Sara-sara. I pick up a small wooden bucket. Sara-sara. I climb up the three small steps to the bath. Sara-sara. I fill the bucket with water from the tub. Sara-sara. Now I crouch down and tip the bucket of hot water over my body. Sara-sara. I find the soap and the brush and I begin to scrub myself clean. Sara-sara. Then I take another bucket of water and I rinse myself. Sara-sara. Now I climb the small steps for a third time. Sara-sara. Now I get into the bath. Sara-sara. I put my cloth upon the edge of the wooden tub and stretch myself out. Sara-sara. The water is hot. Sara-sara. The water is pure. Sara-sara. I do not itch. Sara-sara. I do not scratch. Sara-sara. I fold the bathing cloth into a small pillow. Sara-sara. I rest the back of my neck on the edge of the tub. Sara-sara. I close my eyes. Sara-sara. I listen to the sound of the running water. Sara-sara …
I am sleeping not waking, I am waking not sleeping –
Sara-sara. Sara-sara. Sara-sara. Sara-sara. Sara –
The sound of the running water has stopped –
I hear the door open. I feel the air change …
I open my eyes but there is only steam –
I think I see the figure of a woman …
I cannot stand. I cannot breathe –
The figure of a woman facing away from me, staring into a mirror that is not there, she is dressed in a yellow kimono with a dark-blue stripe, its skirts dripping onto the tiles of the floor, her hair tied up with silk threads which expose her pale neck …
The water is cold. The water is black –
The woman holds a hairbrush in one hand as she leans forward to stare at herself in the mirror, suddenly turning to face me now, dropping the hairbrush to the floor, ton, she puts her hands to her face and covers both her eyebrows –