by Tobias Hill
Sometimes Tomoyasu’s mother confused him with his father and tried to kiss him passionately, her bony hands shockingly strong on his arms. On other days she would ignore him, refusing to look at him. It made him remember the farmhouse, his mother looming in the bedroom doorway, a dark shape shouting. He’d left her alone with two servants and enough to pay them. She’d died when one of the maids left a window open. A black solitary wasp had blown in, looking for a place to nest. She’d died trying to kill the wasp.
He’d buried her in Seven Stone Children Cemetery. It had been a very hot day, air rippling over the new gravestone, so that Tomoyasu had been unable to cry. No one had cried, but then there hadn’t been many people. So many had been killed in the war. He was the last member of his immediate family.
He had taken what money was left and moved into Kobe. It came to two years’ wages as a Company labourer. Kozo had told him it would be enough for a complete tattoo. He gave Tomoyasu the tattoo artist’s address: ‘Tree-Flower Street, opposite the noodle-stand, next to the stone carver.’ Many days he did nothing but sit at the noodle stall, watching the tattoo artist’s workshop. Horicho the Third was successful enough to sit outside most days, playing mah-jong and eating eel with his neighbours, a jeweller and a temple sculptor. The man was heavy, not like a sumo wrestler but like a thug. On the dog-days of July he would leave the door of the workshop open during appointments. Tomoyasu would crane to watch him straddling the bodies of clients. Leaning into his incisions like a fisherman gutting tuna.
It was almost the end of July before he’d visited Horicho for the first time. The wad of money had lodged uncomfortably against his chest. The door had been wide open. He’d called out to announce himself, ducked in and taken off his shoes. The long workshop had been deserted. It was an old building, well-made, the wooden beams and tatami mats impregnated with the pungent smell of Japanese ink. He’d called out again, ‘Excuse my rudeness …’ When no one had come out he’d turned to go. Standing behind him in the doorway had been Horicho. The heaviness of his epicanthic folds made his eyes appear strained tight with some emotion: anger, pain, calculation. Tomoyasu had bowed clumsily.
‘Please excuse me, I thought you must be inside.’ The tattoo artist had said nothing. He hadn’t bowed either, and Tomoyasu had been confused by his rudeness. ‘I would like a tattoo. A complete tattoo. I have money.’
‘Is it good money?’ The man’s voice was deep and flat, so that Tomoyasu hadn’t known if he was angry or sullen. ‘Yes, yes of course. Good money.’ He’d reached into his jacket and taken out a white envelope, sealed with ornate ribbons and fat with banknotes. He’d held it out automatically. The tattooist had made no move to take it.
‘Why is it good money?’ Horicho had said. He’d shouldered past the younger man, switched on a radio; Japanese folk-music. ‘What?’ Tomoyasu had taken a step back into the workshop. Horicho had been pouring himself a glass of plum wine from an earthenware bottle. He’d spoken with his back turned.
‘Did you steal it?’
‘No!’
‘Did you earn it?’ He’d turned round, watching Tomoyasu without blinking, glass in hand.
‘I – no.’
‘Then why is it good money?’ He’d swigged the wine. A woman had come out silently from the back of the house and kneeled beside him without acknowledging Tomoyasu. ‘What’s your family?’
‘The Kurasakis, outside Kobe, towards Kakogawa. Rice farmers.’
The tattooist had shrugged, disdainful. ‘Not Company.’ The woman had disappeared into the backroom again with Horicho’s glass. He’d sat down on the raised edge of the mats and taken off his socks.
‘I know you. Friend of the Ishikawa boy, Kozo, ain’t you? You’ve done a bit of Company work with them I suppose. But the Ishikawas, ah’ – he’d grinned, wide mouth revealing gold dog-teeth – ‘Company for three generations. Four including the boy. He’ll do well, like his father. Good business they do in that dock bar, loyal too. Not proud like you, farmer’s boy. Loyal.’
He’d stretched, pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his navy-blue happi coat, lit up. Tomoyasu had stood at the door. He’d realised his thighs were trembling with the effort of standing straight. Briefly, he’d remembered the day at school, the Sports master screaming in the cold, half-lit hall. Then the tattooist had been getting up and coming forward, blocking off the room. ‘My grandfather worked here, did you know? Horicho the First. Tattooed the Tsar of Russia. King George the Fifth of England, too. A dragon on the king’s left arm. Only the best foreigners. That was long before the war, of course, so he didn’t know any better. Me, I don’t like the feel of foreign skin. But “only the best”, that I like. Only the best Japanese. He was an artist. So am I. What makes you think I’d tattoo you, farm boy?’
He’d been too close to Tomoyasu now, proximate enough to threaten. Tomoyasu had felt his composure giving way, his anger growing out of proportion to events. He’d stared back at the shorter man and bowed again, stiffly. ‘I must apologise for wasting your time, sir. Please excuse my extreme rudeness in leaving now. Goodbye.’
As he’d come back out into Tree-Flower Street, he’d heard the radio being turned up behind him. The sound of wooden flutes had followed him across to the noodle stall. He’d sat down, ordered a beer and a bowl of chilli-ramen. The smell of pine sap had been very strong from the street-trees, and cicadas had begun to hiss in the high branches. He’d eaten slowly to accompany his thoughts, watching the doorway.
He worked wherever the Company needed him; as a bouncer at the Ishikawas’ dockside bar, as a stallholder at the festivals. The pay was bad but he took pleasure from belonging. Sometimes he would wake abruptly in his narrow bedsit with an image in his mind of the foreman, Kawai-san, who they called ‘Older Brother’. The image came with a feeling of total security. It was like the warmth from a hot bath in winter. It seemed to fill him and radiate outwards like steam, he could almost see it in the dark. He would lie on the mattress, feeling the heat through his skin. Some nights there would be earth tremors, and the ground’s quick shudder would make him feel even safer, like watching rain through a closed window.
On the day after the Star Festival the shopkeepers were out in Tree-Flower Street, clearing up the debris of toffee-apple sticks, bottletops, paper flowers, bunting inscribed with love poems. A banner leaned against a stone Kannon figure outside the temple sculptor’s house. On the white board were painted a princess and a peasant, Vega and Altair, the Star Lovers. Horicho was holding the placard steady while the sculptor pried out the last nails. Tomoyasu stood under the pines, watching. When the sculptor nodded to him and grinned he took up one end of the painting, held it firm.
‘Good, isn’t it? Don’t you think? I was just thinking I might put it away for next year, It’s so fine.’ The sculptor was a talkative man. His wide-set ears, teeth and tanned skin made him look like a Japanese monkey. ‘My daughter’s, it is. Pretty girl. Talented too, as you can see. Makes bean-paste cakes that’re just, mm’ – he closed his eyes and grinned, eyebrows raised, then laughed infectiously. He wore the baggy blue dungarees common among artisans, and a Cartier watch with a wide steel band. ‘About your age, too. Perhaps they should meet, eh? Horicho-san? Don’t you think they’d make a couple?’ The tattooist grunted an affirmative and stood back, dusting his hands. He bowed fractionally to Tomoyasu. ‘Kurosaki-san, good morning. I saw you at the stalls last night. Working hard, hm. What can I do for you?’
‘I was hoping you would do me a favour?’
‘A favour? That’s a pity. My friend Kawai-san told me you’d be wanting a tattoo. If you want a favour, go to the favourist. Eh?’
A joke; Tomoyasu smiled carefully. The tattooist smiled back, a bleak, flat expression.
‘I would like a tattoo, sir.’
‘Good. Better.’
‘I have some ideas, for the designs. I saw a carp-boy once, can you do that? Then, there was a Company man last night with a woman on his chest. I like dragons,
too –’
Horicho swore, shook his head. ‘You’re an idiot, boy. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t work on you. I don’t think you’ve got what it takes to be a Company man. There’s a selfishness about you, things you keep to yourself, you don’t share your feelings, I don’t like that. Maybe you don’t feel at all. And you’re an idiot, like I said. But Kawai-san wants you tattooed, he has plans for you. So listen.’
He pointed at a block of small-grained granite, uncarved, which stood next to the Kannon. ‘What do you see? Quickly, too. I’ve got another customer this evening.’
Tomoyasu shook out a cigarette, looked at the block as he lit a match. He drew in the smoke and sighed it out, suddenly dizzy and confused. ‘A rock. A grey one.’ He shrugged.
Horicho nodded at the sculptor. ‘What about you?’ The man sat up straight, as if a schoolmaster had just asked him a trick question.
‘Me? Oh well, I wouldn’t know. Unless you really wanted my opinion, yes, but I’d need to look at it again, mm?’ He scratched his temple, tugged at his nostril hairs, squinted with his head on one shoulder. ‘Well, if you really wanted my opinion, I’d say it was a tortoise. Thick-legged, rough-carved. Nothing too slick and polished, maybe for a shrine, you know? A nature god. Nice with a bit of moss on it, you know the kind of thing? A tortoise, sure.’
The tattooist leaned back against a stone lantern, gazed at Tomoyasu. ‘Well then. This is what I see. No carp-boy. One dragon, maybe. You don’t have the brains for two. A lot of carmine, less green or gold, so it’ll take at least a year, this – if I work faster you’ll get cadmium fever from the red ink. Some bodies die from that.’ He pushed himself upright, glaring at the younger man. ‘And on the chest or the back, something big. Not too clever, not too pretty. Something that doesn’t give up. Stubborn. But today we’ll start on the left shoulder. Then if the pain’s too much, you can hide it away under a workshirt. Go back to your potatoes and rice.’
He turned to go. Tomoyasu stood in the sunlight. The chant of the cicadas and the nicotine smoke filled his consciousness and for a moment he felt outside himself, unable to move. This is fear, he thought. The tattooist turned back sharply. In his hand he held a bunch of bamboo needles, hollow and stained the colours of rust, verdigris, charcoal. ‘Are you ready?’ Tomoyasu nodded. He followed the tattooist into the workshop.
Outside, the sculptor walked around the unworked block of stone. Then he went to the door of his shop. Tools hung from rice-twine thongs on the inside of the door. The sculptor took down a heavy hammer and a wide-bladed chisel. He went back outside and stood over the block. He sang for a while to help him think. Then he stopped singing. He squatted down beside the rock. The sun was hot on the fine grain of the granite. Sweat made his face bright and fierce. Angling the blade, he began to cut away at the design inside the stone.
4: Snapshots
Keiko Yamada
4–11–2
Forest Heights
One River District
Kobe 7
1 October 1993
Dearest Yasuhiro,
I’m so sorry, my love. Ken rang this morning and I’ve been trying to get you all day but there’s no answer. Are you all right? Have you been fishing and walking? But please call me when you get this. I want to come up, if you want me to. Do you want me to? Please don’t be ashamed of this. They are wrong; you were right. They should be ashamed. You are a better policeman than any of them and you always will be. Ken says so, too. He says they were scared of your courage.
Mother and Father are very shocked. Father says he will talk to our district councillor if you want him to. I wasn’t sure if you would – what shall I tell him? And Mother wants you to come and stay. She says she feels as if you are family and she wants to make sure you are all right. I want to, too. You were trying to identify the Trailer Man for so long, I know how much it meant to you and the job and everything. Will you come? Yohei is at boarding school now, so there’s plenty of room and it’s so quiet! We probably couldn’t sleep in the same room, with my parents here, but there’s lots of nice fields here (I don’t make much of a chaste Japanese maiden, do I? Oops. Oh well) and the sea’s warm even in autumn. I think you’d like it. Maybe it would be good for you.
Also, I have an idea(!). Do you remember my friend Akiko, who will work at the new Kansai airport? She says there are vacancies for six security officers, and that she could arrange for you to get an interview, if you wanted it. And, if you worked as security for a year or so, you could get training as a customs officer! Would you like that? If you want me to, I can find out more from Akiko (she’s so kind). I know it won’t be the same as being a constable, but it’s sort of the same, isn’t it? Yasuhiro, please ring. I have all these questions and I want to hear you talk.
Do you think you should tell someone what’s happened? Like a journalist? Because you were right all along, weren’t you, about the police respecting the Yakuza, letting them use their own laws. I think even journalists from abroad would be interested. I’ve got it – you can be a famous Yakuza expert! Except then we would have to go abroad too. Do you think it’s safe for you now, Yasu-chan, to stay in Hokkaido? Maybe it would be better if you stayed here. Just for a while, if you don’t want the airport job.
It’s so beautiful here, now. Don’t you miss the Kansai autumn? When I get the train to work, the hills are all pomegranate-coloured with autumn trees, and the sun is hot too. The way it shines through the leaves is like the stained glass in the Protestant churches here in Kobe, do you remember them? And yesterday Mother bought Osaka-noodles and we cooked them with spring onions and chicken from the garden – tasty, huh? Come down, Yasuhiro – and ring me soon!
Love,
Keiko XXX
*
(Message recorded on the answerphone in Flat 622, Azabu Mansions, Otaru City, Hokkaido, belonging to Yasuhiro Abé. The message is undated, the eleventh on a full tape.)
[Tone.] Hello Yasuhiro? It’s me, Keiko, are you there? I think you are, I bet you’re listening to that horrible traditional music again and drinking beer! So I’m just going to talk and hope you pick up the phone. So, are you OK? I wrote to you but you probably haven’t got it yet, I only sent it yesterday and I think I missed the post. I was just ringing to, you know [pause] talk. Anyway. I’m fine. Actually I’m not. It’s been two weeks now since you called me, since we spoke, did you know? And with everything that’s happened, too, I mean the Yakuza might have followed you and I wouldn’t know, you could be lying there right now with blood and … [rising voice; pause].
So I’m feeling worried. It would be really nice if you picked up the phone … [pause; sigh]. Well anyway, let me tell you about today – maybe you’re just on your way home from somewhere now, yes? So I’ll keep talking.
Well, today was really boring! Except that at lunchtime I went to the international library and read the newspapers in English. Princess Diana is coming to Japan soon. I know you’re not so interested in that. What else? Um. Did you get the earth tremor last week? So many this year! I was in the bath, just soaping myself down, I’m sure you can imagine… and the water just shook, you know like when you put down a mug of tea too hard? Like that. So many, people hardly notice them. They say there’ll be a big one round here soon, though … an earthquake, I mean, not a mug of tea! Will you ring me, Yasuhiro? Please? I’ll be at home all night. Don’t worry about the time if it’s late. Just ring. Bye. [End of message.]
*
Keiko Yamada,
4–11–2
Forest Heights,
One River District,
Kobe 7
6 October 1993
Dear Yasuhiro,
Ken will leave this in your hall. So you’ll see it when you get back. He had your spare key, and he phoned me and we talked about what to do. No one has seen you for a week, Yasu-chan, we’re all so worried. You didn’t answer my letter or messages. So I called Ken. I don’t know what he’ll find. That scares me. You’re scaring me.
&nb
sp; Ken said call the police straightaway. I know you’d hate that. If we called the police and then you were hiking on Rebunto Island. Or did you find something out, Yasuhiro? About Trailer Man? You know I want that to happen more than anything. I just need to know you’re OK. OK? Anyway, Ken is going to call me when he gets to your apartment and if it doesn’t look like you’ve gone hiking, he’s going to call the police. We’d have to, Yasuhiro. There’s no one else to call.
But if it looks like you’ve just gone off by yourself, Ken will leave this by the shoe-rack or on the fridge, with the magnets – he has to work, so he can’t wait for you. And when you get home, you must call me. Will you do that? I’m sure you’ve been hiking. I hope you had a good hike.
Love,
Keiko
*
FAX FROM: Hong Kong Transport Police, 010 53 994 3434. 19 October 1993. ATTN: Chief Con. Murasaki. RE: Missing Person (Yasuhiro Abé), PAGE(S): 1.
Sir,
According to our records, a Mr Yasuhiro Abé, passport number 921277 1, entered Hong Kong via JAL flight H0177 from Sapporo City at 6.15 a.m. on 2 October 1993. His Japanese passport allows Mr Abé to stay in Hong Kong without a visa for up to three months. We have no record of him having left the country by air. Neither do we have any record of him at any of the registered hotels, and there is no data to suggest he has used a personal credit card, made a collect call, driven a car in Hong Kong City, or dealt with a public bank while in this country.
You imply that Mr Abé may be attempting to travel without interference from you or the Japanese mafia. I should point out, firstly, that Missing Persons are few and far between in this country – citizens are closely monitored. Hong Kong is not a place to lose oneself. I suspect Hong Kong was a stopover for Mr Abé, not a final destination.