Return to Hiroshima

by Bob Van Laerhoven

  Memory is a monstrous thing: I can remember various moments in my youth when I witnessed his supernatural powers at work. It was only after I read the reports of his personal physician that I realised the truth, or should have realised the truth. I’m twenty-one, and even now I still catch myself doubting.

  I spend the entire night struggling to settle scores with my past. The lonely existence I shared with my father seems to have more control over me now than ever before. I realise that this very characteristic, so difficult to put into words, is what makes my father so intangible: he’s like a creature you encounter in a dream, yet at the same time he’s pure reality.

  I fret over what to do next. The old power networks my father exploits might only operate undercover, but they’re still to be feared. Rokurobei will deploy every soldier in his shadowy army to find me. I talk to him in my imagination and beg him to leave me alone. He remains unmoved, like an old pagan temple. My thoughts return unwilled to the baby that had filled my belly. I’m no longer sure it was real.

  But I still felt it.

  I talked to it.

  I shared my pain and my shame.

  The creature was tiny and kind. It understood. It forgave.

  It was a universe of comfort.

  Dr Kanehari insisted that it had never existed. His glasses flickered an unambiguous message, but I was unable to decipher it.

  9

  Hiroshima – Dai-Ichi-Kangyo Bank –

  night, March 11th/12th 1995

  The night security team arrives at the Dai-Ichi-Kangyo bank at 11pm. The security officers are taken aback by the thick mist in the lobby. First they find their two dead colleagues, then some members of the evening shift lying in their own excrement, surrounded by vomit. Their tongues are swollen, their faces contorted, the pupils in their dead eyes barely visible. They call the police. Moments later they’re overcome by violent spasms and nausea. By the time the first police officers arrive, the night security team are writhing on the floor, gasping for breath, spitting out chunks of undigested food. Appalled by what they see, the police pay little attention to the abnormal humidity. The security cameras have been destroyed. There are no recordings. The police officers feel unwell. They too are overcome by cramps. Within six minutes the cramps make way for uncontrollable bouts of vomiting. Eyes bulge, collapsing lungs heave in an effort to supply their bodies with oxygen. One of the officers manages to warn his colleagues over the walkie-talkie. A huge police presence assembles in front of the bank. The neighbourhood is shut down. It’s almost morning when a special team in protective clothing from the national security police discover what caused the poisoning: acetone cyanohydrin mixed with water and sprayed into the air using atomizers. On contact with water, acetone cyanohydrin separates into highly inflammable acetone and highly toxic hydrogen cyanide. The security police find the containers with the water valves. They discover the corpses of the assembled bankers in the meeting room. Here too the security cameras have been destroyed. After a provisional investigation, the members of the elite unit announce that the bank’s safes have not been tampered with. Only a detailed investigation can confirm their report, however, since rumours abound that the Dai-Ichi-Kangyo Bank is involved in all sorts of shady financial dealings. The local police insist on leading the investigation, but the National Guard disagree. Friction ensues. Inspector Takeda is assigned to a special group under the leadership of chief inspector Hirasawa.

  The inspector calls his wife. It’s going to be late. She takes his message with the politeness of a civil servant at an office window.

  Takeda fiddles with a toothpick in his mouth. He thinks about the past. He thinks about the present. He thinks about everything at once.

  He focuses: the dead baby under the peace monument is still preying on his mind. Why?

  10

  Hiroshima – Mitsuko walking through the streets – Mitsuko and

  Yori – evening, March 12th 1995

  I’m wandering through the streets of Hiroshima again like a headless chicken, having decided, when I awoke this morning, to stay at the hotel until I had a plan. As the evening approached, my restlessness made it impossible to wait any longer. The walls were closing in on me so I left the hotel. I’ve been walking around aimlessly for over an hour. I cross a main road and follow it to the river. Couples are sitting on benches. They start kissing when they think no one’s looking, and grope around in each other’s clothes. I look at the renowned silhouette of the Peace Memorial looming up against the setting sun, relic of an era my father always called “the great humiliation”. The words filled me with awe as well as a feeling of insecurity because of the theatrical grimness with which they were spoken, as if I sensed he was feeding his phenomenal pride with an ever-increasing hatred. I find an empty bench, sit and look out over the river. In my teens, I often fantasised about my mother. I pictured her launch herself like a seagull from the ramparts surrounding Hashima Island, invariably dressed in a gown that billowed around her like wings of gossamer as she fell. I tried to feel the blow that cracked open her body on the rocks; I watched her being seized and carried off by the sea. The last thing I’d see of her before her demise was a slender hand. The daydream always ended with the question: was my father to blame for her suicide? Was it even suicide? Why had he told me so bluntly that she had “leapt from the rocks, unable to accept her fate”? Should I make more of an effort to understand his abruptness because of this sad event? I had too little to go by; youthful fantasies were my only clues. Many times the hand I saw sticking out above the waves in a gesture of goodbye was my own. On such occasions, I’d see the daydream through the eyes of my father, a powerless god destined to grieve forever.

  I’m startled by a voice behind me: “Holy oxygen you need, and fast... just what the doctor ordered, Missy, just admit it.”

  I turn around. Behind me is a young woman around my own age. She has painted glittery wings around her eyes and her hair is brushed forward over her forehead. It has a metallic red sheen and ends in an untidy fringe just above the wings. She’s wearing a surgical mask and is pointing a spray can at my face. The can is covered with rice paper, the words “laughing gas” spelled out in stick-on kindergarten letters. Her peculiar dress reminds me of a Louis XV ball gown. She smiles at me, gesturing “money” with her thumb and index finger. She’s wearing gloves, bright red wool; must be very warm in this temperature. She points at my chuddar. “No matter what you believe in, everyone needs holy oxygen.” Why does she call her laughing gas holy oxygen? I assume she’s high, if her easy carefree movements are anything to go by. I don’t know much about “alternative youth culture”. In my view, it’s a bit pretentious. All that hyperkinetic effort to distinguish yourself from the rest of the crowd! I stand, hoping that my height will put her off, but the opposite happens: she laughs admiringly and steps closer as if we’re sisters sharing a secret.

  “What an impressively tall girl you are! Well, do you want it or don’t you? Only 200 yen.” She points the spray can at me as if I have no choice. Confused, I grab a bundle of banknotes and peel one off. She puts her hand on my arm. I pull it away quickly and she steps back a pace, a little hesitant for the first time. “Open your mouth,” she says, pocketing the note. I obey reluctantly. She sprays my mouth full of whipped cream.

  11

  Hiroshima – metropolitan police headquarters – Fukuyamakita – inspector Takeda and police doctor Adachi – March 13th 1995

  Meetings, an endless succession of meetings; protocol, etiquette, bowing to superiors, whose judgement must be accepted without question and whose orders must be executed; Takeda will never get used to it, his Japanese skin is not thick enough. Police commissioner Takamatsu has issued strict orders: everyone is to join forces and find the perpetrators, or at least suspects, of the gas attack on the Dai-Ichi-Kangyo bank. But what about the dead baby under the Peace Memorial, and the anger, hate and pai
n it radiates? A footnote for the statistics, later.

  Not as far as Takeda is concerned.

  The district police headquarters appears to function like a tightly organised anthill. But inspector Takeda knows that this surface efficiency is a sham. Order? Discipline? He can see the mistrust in the eyes of his colleagues as they exchange glances at the karaoke bar after work. The music can’t drown out the whispering behind the scenes. Insinuations are batted about like ping-pong balls, reputations are dragged through the mud, ties are loosened and eyes turn red.

  Takeda doesn’t care. He tries to see behind the masks people wear. What he finds there drives him further into isolation. From his earliest childhood, Takeda has had a gift he himself refuses to recognise. Others call it his “second sight”. Takeda’s wife thinks it’s a result of the constant fear his mother lived in for so many years. Takeda’s spouse thinks her husband inherited that fear and that it makes him less human, more like an instinctive animal. For Takeda this sensibility is nothing more than a bunch of inappropriately stimulated nerve endings. It bothers him from time to time, but not always. Sometimes, when he touches someone, he can feel a residue of intense emotion. Not every time, he’s happy to admit. It usually happens when he’s not expecting it, but he can sometimes induce it if he concentrates hard. This damned sensitivity makes Takeda as alert as a hundred-year-old giant tortoise. He treats his wife like a contract: with punctuality, decency and a minimum of emotional commitment.

  The murder cases he works on are his main passion. For him it’s not about justice, it’s about making contact with criminals in the interrogation room. Takeda doesn’t really understand why this is so important to him, but it’s powerful, like sexual desire.

  In the lift to the basement, Takeda pictures the police station as a symbol of Japanese society. The visible part functions according to strict rules and fixed behaviour patterns. The invisible part, the underground level Takeda is now entering, is belligerent, intoxicated, filled with an addiction to death.

  Takeda can smell Dr Adachi’s menthol cigarettes as he walks down the dreary brown corridor. Their sharp odour helps disguise the liqueur Adachi guzzled at lunchtime. A couple of years ago, before the “Bubble” as the economic crisis is colloquially known, Dr Adachi owned a Porsche 911. But then the stock market crashed spectacularly and the police doctor lost millions of yen in the space of a couple of months. He now drives one of the force’s Toyotas and has a drinking problem. Adachi counts himself lucky that the mayor of Hiroshima thinks it’s important to have a police doctor on permanent duty. He’s also happy with the massive autopsy room the mayor had installed beneath police headquarters five years ago. Takeda knows that the mayor didn’t invest in this shiny, modern facility, complete with cold storage for the corpses, out of a conviction that murder cases should be solved. On the contrary. With the support of every senior police officer, all of them obsessed with keeping crime statistics as low as possible to boost their chances of promotion, the mayor quietly instructed the alcoholic doctor to report as few crime-related deaths as possible, unless the case was as good as solved and would enhance the reputation of the force in the press. The commissioner and the mayor see the autopsy room as a great improvement. In the past, bodies that appeared not to have died of natural causes were taken to hospitals, where information could easily be leaked to the press. Despite the violent yakuza gangs based in the city, Hiroshima is still presented to the outside world as the City of Peace, where people care for one another rather than smash each other’s brains in. The press only dares enter the prefecture headquarters on official occasions. The basement is out of bounds.

  Takeda, who considers Dr Adachi to be one of his few friends because they’re both seen as outsiders, often wonders whether the man is happy with this situation. Adachi likes to pretend that his work requires the sensitivity of an artist, diligently exploring all the possibilities that might allow him to conclude that the otherwise suspicious looking corpse lying on his dissection table died of natural causes after all. The mayor and the chief commissioner are satisfied.

  The inspector walks into the autopsy room, into the familiar smell of formalin and disinfectant. Drunk or sober, Adachi insists on cleanliness. The police doctor, with his square features and thick-lensed glasses, never gives a straight answer. When they’re both on duty, their manners are formal. You never know who’s listening, and etiquette is important. “Murder, inspector? Hard to tell. I haven’t been able to perform an autopsy yet. All I got was a quick look at the body. The victims of the bank robbery get priority. But if I’m pressed I would say the mother was exposed to radioactive isotopes and the child was stillborn. I didn’t see any signs of physical violence on the body. Then again, it was so badly mutilated that only an autopsy can provide a definite answer.”

  “Radioactive isotopes?” Takeda repeats.

  “Yes, you heard me, maybe from depleted uranium. But that’s just a guess.”

  “I don’t know anything about isotopes,” the inspector says drily. The doctor shrugs: “Under normal circumstances, depleted uranium with a low level of radioactivity doesn’t pose a health risk. It’s used as counterweights in lifts, for example. But the substance itself is chemically poisonous. The Americans used grenades containing depleted uranium in the Gulf War. When they explode, uranium particles are released and combine with oxygen. The resulting uranium dust is poisonous when inhaled. It can trigger cancer or metabolic disorders, even years later. Women have a greatly increased chance of giving birth to children with congenital defects. Do you know what Gulf War Syndrome is?”

  “I’ve heard of it. American servicemen suffering from some unknown condition or other? I thought it wasn’t officially recognised.”

  The doctor allows himself a crooked smile, revealing a set of false teeth that shine unnaturally in the brightly lit room.

  “The American government is trying to deny it, producing all kinds of contradictory research reports. But the scientific fact remains that veterans are five times more likely to develop cancer, and female veterans three times more likely to have a miscarriage or offspring with congenital defects. I’ve seen the pictures. Their defects and the state of their skin resemble those of your abandoned baby.”

  “Is the child Japanese?”

  “Not a shadow of a doubt. Inspector Takeda, in the light of recent events, don’t you think it may be wiser if the case were...”

  “So I’m looking for a female Japanese Gulf War veteran who secretly gave birth to a baby then dumped it underneath the Peace Memorial. After all, none of the hospitals has reported the birth of a malformed child.”

  Adachi looks at the inspector long and hard. They’ve been friends for many years. Like many Japanese, he finds sarcasm difficult to grasp. It’s one of those things that mark Takeda out as foreign.

  “That’s not what I said, inspector. I said it was probably not murder. I mentioned depleted uranium because the baby’s birth defects bear a close resemblance to those of Gulf War babies, but “normal” genetic defects from either the mother or the father could also lead to such serious malformations.”

  “The body was covered with origami cranes. Seems like a symbolic act to me.”

  The doctor takes out his menthol cigarettes, peers into the box and then slips it back into the breast pocket of his immaculate white coat.

  “Not the only one,” he says. “The corpse has been embalmed. Meticulous craftsmanship. If kept dry, it’ll still look the same in a century.”

  12

  Hiroshima – Central Station – Xavier Douterloigne and Yori –

  evening, March 13th 1995

  Xavier Douterloigne arrives from Tokyo station on the shinkansen at 10.19 p.m. The high-speed train has only recently started running at this late hour, but quite a few passengers are making use of it. Douterloigne navigates his way through the crowd and into Hiroshima-Ekimae station. He didn’t enjoy his s
hort stay in Tokyo. In the space of six years the city has changed into a voracious metropolis full of neon lights and people in a hurry. Not exactly a positive evolution. Hiroshima station is spacious, modern and efficient. It’s busy, despite the time of night, and very noisy. After what happened to his sister Anna, Douterloigne feels the world could do with more silence. He heads towards the exit. The heat and humidity hit him hard as he emerges onto the street, but it’s familiar. Outside, he stops to take in the city skyline – a typically Japanese architectural cacophony. The City of Peace smells of wet cement, a hint of sea air, and spices. On the other side of a small square, against the sharp contours of a trio of cypresses, Douterloigne can see pink spindly cranes in front of a criss-cross of electricity lines. He starts walking, past run-down houses with faded façades and rusty air conditioning units, and a shop selling health drinks, magazines, manga comics and excessively cheerful-looking pink pigs with short elephant snouts. Their impish eyes look like innocence itself. Hiroshima feels like a house you return to, only to find it has fallen into disrepair in your absence. Compared with Tokyo, the city looks provincial, at night even dingy.

  Douterloigne first visited Hiroshima with his parents 13 years ago. His sister Anna was still able to walk then. He remembers Peace Square, how huge it was, and the Japanese school children in neat rows, wearing blue uniforms that hurt the eyes. They were waving little Japanese flags.

  Four coloured lights appear further down the road. They’re flashing on and off in sequence: purple, blue, yellow, green. Douterloigne doesn’t stop. It’s not in his nature to be afraid, and he reminds himself that Japan likes to pose as a safe country, though he knows better. A moment later, he can see the outlines of a person wearing a peculiar outfit. Coming closer, he can make out a girl in a black leotard, a short batwing coat and glittering thigh- length boots with stiletto heels. She’s wearing a mask that Xavier finds both endearing and sinister. It resembles a Venetian mask, but with two thin, springy antennas attached to either side and tiny light bulbs on the end – the feelers of an insect woman. The lights bob up and down in rhythm with her stealthy gait. The woman stops in front of Xavier, looks up at him and smiles. She’s wearing delicate lace gloves and she moves her hands with grace. Xavier knows from experience that Japanese women are keen on Westerners, especially the tall and the blonde. He sees them as arrogant children at heart, easy to please and ready to flatter. The masked girl says: “Beware, sir, aliens will land on Peace Square on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. They will look like huge salamanders with gigantic, bulbous heads, and they will devour everyone.” Her English isn’t perfect. She giggles, evidently convinced of the originality of the text she has just rattled off. Xavier assumes she rehearsed it. The girl holds out a collection box adorned with pictures of fiery-eyed salamanders against an ominous background. “You are guaranteed to survive if you make a donation, as we, the honourable members of the Suicide Brigade, have a secret weapon that can stop these bloodthirsty aliens in their tracks. Unfortunately, they won’t be here for quite some time, and as life in Japan is getting terribly expensive, we’re left hungry, like all seers, prophets of doom and magicians.” She laughs as Japanese girls do when they think they’ve told a good joke.