Return to Hiroshima

by Bob Van Laerhoven

  Xavier smiles, fishes ¥5000 out of his trouser pocket and slips it into the collection box. He’s 25 and just graduated from law school, but it helps when your parents have been diplomats their entire careers and dote on their son. Fifty dollars wouldn’t even pay for a single night in the kind of hotel he’s used to.

  The woman’s gestures seem weightless and remind him of Anna.

  “Thank you. Your world will never be the same.”

  “The world has changed enough for me already,” Xavier Douterloigne quips in Japanese.

  The woman, all flowing motion, languid and theatrical as if stepping through mist or water, falls silent. At that moment he notices that she’s quite young. And very high.

  “Your Japanese is very good.”

  “I lived in Tokyo for sixteen years, left when I was nineteen. My father was a diplomat. It’s been a while. I’ve forgotten most of it.”

  “You’ll be talking like one of us again in no time.” She pats Xavier lightly on the chest, almost tenderly. “But will you ever think the way we do?” He notices her arms are tattooed with a flaming, yellow-blue interplay of plants, demons and dragons. He looks at her cleavage. The leotard leaves much of it uncovered, revealing the picture of an angel reaching up to her collarbone. The heavenly creature’s elegant garment – a hagoromo – is lying in a sad little heap at her feet. Xavier smiles, pointing at the tattoo: “Your fallen angel won’t be able to fly any more. Her feathered kimono is lying on the ground.”

  “The tenshi theme; reassuring and classical, even by Japanese standards,” the young woman smiles. “The fallen angel demurely accepts her fate. Not mine, though.” She turns and takes off her coat. Her back is naked to the waist. It’s mauve, purple, black, orange and green. Her skin glistens through pale tattooed bubbles that look like fish eggs, scalloped shells, an earthworm, leaves. It all serves to frame a wild-eyed young woman with a knife between her teeth and a classical geisha headdress on her pinned-up hair; her lips on the handle are blood-red, her eyes fiery and sensuous.

  “The work of a master tattooist,” Xavier says politely.

  The woman turns around again. “Amazing symbols, don’t you think? She was once an angel. Now, she’s a killer whore. She stabs her prey in the back. She never misses.” She points a tapering index finger in his direction. He holds out his palms with a smile. “I wouldn’t dare contradict a member of a gokudo gang,” he says light-heartedly, deliberately using the old-fashioned term for “the extreme path of the chivalrous organisation” which the yakuza gangs like to apply to themselves. Xavier Douterloigne doesn’t have much of a sense of danger. He realised that one night when he was 18 and was waylaid at the River Meguro in Tokyo by members of a bosozoku, a motorbike gang of young thugs who weren’t afraid of wreaking havoc now and then in the respectable foreigners’ districts. Xavier’s father had told him that more than a few police officers secretly sympathised with these gangs and their fundamentalist belief in the superiority of the Japanese race. Even so, he didn’t feel particularly threatened when they surrounded him. He’d talk his way out. But before he could say a word, the first blows fell. Xavier wiped the blood from his nose and quickly struck an effeminate pose. He “confessed” that he was gay. They immediately left him alone. For inhabitants of kami no kuni, the divine country, there was no honour in beating up an effeminate man, even if he was a foreigner. Xavier had always been good in remembering such details of Japanese culture.

  The young woman leans towards him as if wanting to tell him something in confidence. He bends forward automatically, bringing his ear close to her lips, her chest gleaming just inches away from his eyes. “I’m hungry,” she lisps. “Do you have any more money?”

  13

  Hiroshima – Suicide Club squat – Kabe-cho – Mitsuko –

  night, March 13th-14th 1995

  I’ve spent a night and a day in this old warehouse, home to a group of young drop outs unable to run the financial rat race. I keep myself to myself as much as possible and the others think I’m weird – an English word they’re fond of – but I’m still a perfect fit in this embittered company: they’re exuberant, unpredictable, and aggressive, and they’re my age. I told much the same lie as I told Dr Kanehari – that I had to flee my devoutly Islamic husband because I’d had a secret affair. If he finds me, he’ll kill me, and that’s why I’m trying to avoid going outside for the time being. I’ve lost my faith and refuse to wear my veil any more. My unusual appearance is the result of a glandular condition I suffered as a child.

  The whipped cream girl who brought me here is called Yori. She says she’s a street artist. She lives with dozens of others in this abandoned warehouse in the old part of town. After nabbing my ¥200 for the whipped cream, she took off her mask. Her mouth was made for talking, and she kept making quotation marks in the air as if she was teaching me a code I had to learn urgently. The economic crisis had forced her and her friends “to do business”, she told me. None of them worked for an employer. “Our parents refuse to understand that we don’t want to be wage slaves for ten hours a day, unbelievable, no?” Yori sounded light-hearted, but a grating undertone had crept into her voice. A giggly bitterness made her next comments sound a bit forced: about a mother who “still lived in the 19th century and had developed a hernia from constantly bowing to her husband”, and a father who “excelled in standing stiff as a rod, military fashion”. Yori was coarse and funny, but also a little tragic. She seemed ashamed of her family, but I sensed that her exaggerated cheerfulness and the street entertainment that gave her an income were holding back a tidal wave of frustration, an energy that was consuming her from within. I went along willingly all the same. She invited me to join her gang, to be part of the Suicide Club. The name contained more than a hint of juvenile provocation, but as irony would have it I had considered suicide myself in only the past few hours. I didn’t mention it. Exhausted after an all but sleepless night at the hotel, I accepted the offer of a bed in their “fortress”. We crossed a busy, winding road that looked like a crazed funfair of neon lights. One of the billboards reads Mitsukoshi in huge letters, a flash of phosphor. Then there was a giant clock, blue, yellow and green, an explosion of colours lighting up the date, March 12th 1995, with a shower of sparkling fireworks before it displayed the time: 02.15 a.m. I also remember seeing a tram twisting over the street like an enormous serpent of light. It seemed to come out of nowhere – I put that down to exhaustion. Then we reached the inner-city, the narrow streets, the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere, Yori walking ahead of me, grey lines on the asphalt road, a grubby blue house, a flight of stairs going up, a room, its windows stark and square, the smell of paint, oil and old wool, mattresses on a concrete floor. Then a shiver running through my bones, sleep taking hold of me, and nothing more.

  Nothing, except a day and a night full of memories and doubts. One of the youngsters, Yori’s boyfriend, claims to be a writer. He woke me up after that first night. Or should I say, he shook me vigorously till I woke. Roughly my own age, with boyish good looks, slight but sinewy, a thick head of hair dyed bright blonde and gelled up in stiff spikes. He didn’t waste words: “You’re exactly what I was looking for!” He turned to a young woman at the window, grabbed her by the nose as if she was a dog, and shook gently: “Yori, you’re my inspiring muse! This must be fate!” It took a while before I remembered that the girl who’d brought me here was called Yori. She was playing a game on a hand-held electronic gadget, deeply engrossed, and didn’t seem interested in us at all. She didn’t flinch when her boyfriend took her by the nose. She was wearing a light grey ensemble this time: short skirt, pleated blouse with puff sleeves, yellow gloves halfway up her arms. It made her look innocent and childlike at first sight. The young man introduced himself as Reizo Shiga and asked me to get up. I did as he asked and looked down at him. He circled me, inspecting me like an animal ready for market. His name suited him: it meant cool, more or less.
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br />   “You’ll be one of the main characters in my book,” Reizo said. “Perhaps you’ll be the only one to survive on the island where they take the teenagers, to film them fighting duels like gladiators in the arenas of ancient Rome.” His movements were rapid and angular, but he spoke in a drawl. The back of his hand was covered in cuts. Arena? Duels? What was the boy going on about?

  “You’ll be my tragic heroine,” Reizo continued enraptured. “And you’ve given me an idea for the title: “The Girl who Committed Seppuku.” He looked pleased. “The title alone will cause controversy. A woman committing ritual suicide like the warriors of old is a frontal attack on one of the most commonly misunderstood symbols of our patriarchal society.”

  I don’t trust all this strutting and posing. Reizo is a damaged young man who enjoys humiliating others. His fashionable appearance conceals a dangerous hysteria. I wonder when he finds the time to work on his novel. He talks about it endlessly, but I’ve yet to see him write a single word. The fragments he tells me about remind me of extreme manga. Full of sex and violence. You can see he hates society. Reizo is always going on about how his novel is structured. “It’s complicated yet logical, like honeycomb, or a dna helix. Everything is connected with everything else. Borrowed time. Squandered time. That’s why I have to help the reader. God is omnipresent, even in the smallest part of himself. Only humans need chronology; without it they’d go mad.” I listen to his drivel with a straight face, I don’t want any trouble. Most of the members of the Suicide Club seem to be pretty self-centred. There’s a constant coming and going in the community room, which used to be a machine shed. Yori is often out, too. I had hoped she would become a friend, but her initial interest in me has flagged. Or perhaps her attitude is part of the group’s rituals. For the time being, the advantages of being part of this constantly squabbling community outweigh the disadvantages. I’ve got a roof over my head and the opportunity to decide what to do with my life.

  Imagine flagpoles in the middle of a desert, their flags torn and tattered; that’s what my life feels like.

  14

  Hiroshima – Sanctuary of the Brotherhood next to the Nishi-Honganji temple – night, March 13th-14th 1995

  So many bodies, so closely packed together, for such a long time, pressed into the consecrated space of the Hiroshima sanctuary; the temperature is rising, the bodies sweating. The Blessed One has prohibited air conditioning because of its negative influence on alpha waves. Despite the sweltering heat, there’s no unpleasant odour; the disciples of the Blessed One don’t stink like the unclean. Their bodies have reached a higher astral level than those of ordinary people. Reizo Shiga, whose hair – stiff with gel and dyed a yellow blonde – has already attracted disapproving glances from the undersecretary leading the meeting, is trying to look devout and get through the service on his best behaviour. Certain that the undersecretary will comment on his appearance after the service, he’s prepared his response: In the company of the unclean, you have to lure them into your trap, win their confidence by pretending you’re one of them, so that their final annihilation will go as smoothly as possible. A large screen on the altar is showing a video of the Blessed One welcoming a new disciple at the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Tokyo. Reizo Shiga hears the same words that welcomed him three months ago. “Cast off your old, polluted body,” says the Blessed One after the new novice has kissed his ruby ring. “Today, you will shed your skin. Your old family has disappeared. The blood that tied you has been cleansed and renewed. Your new family consists of tens of thousands of brothers and sisters, and it will grow until the end of time.” The eyes of the Blessed One, as good as blind to worldly light but shining milky white like celestial pearls, look up from the novice now kneeling before him, and gaze into the hall through the screen. He raises a finger to heaven, his face as rigid as a puppet’s and his lips moving constantly. “Today, I was asked an interesting question by a young brother. He asked me: ‘Master, what do you mean by annihilating the unclean? Do we have to kill them all? Is that allowed?’ I told him to look into his own heart and cleanse himself before attempting to understand the answer to that question. Unless our emotions are pure and clear, we cannot grasp the concept of death. Yet the solution to this ethical problem is simple and logical: if by killing unclean beings you elevate them to a higher plane of existence, they will be happier than if you allow them to continue their miserable and spiritually empty life. However, such judgements can only be passed by someone who can fathom the process of rebirth and the transmigration of the soul. Anyone who does not have the ability to see what happens with the soul after death may not take a life. I, Shoko Asahara, have followed the path of the Mahayanas, and I am telling you that my heart is filled with compassion, its only aim is the deliverance of damaged, lost, suffering souls. Train your body and soul rigorously in accordance with the principles I have revealed to you. Free your soul, and you will understand what I mean.”

  Reizo Shiga is gazing at the screen in awe, just like the other novices. He hides his envy. The man possesses powers Shiga can only dream of. Despite the limitations of the video screen, powerful alpha waves emanate from the Blessed One and shower his followers like a rain of golden light, sending them to their knees. Reizo Shiga, kneeling like the others, vows that he will not rest until he has acquired the same power.

  Then the undersecretary takes over. After some singing he recites sayings of the Blessed One, which the disciples are to learn by heart. Next, tasks are appointed to help the Brotherhood achieve swift domination over the soiled earth. Great things are set to happen, but caution must prevail, as the corrupt police and the government of Nippon are especially affected by the virus of decline that has been plaguing Japan for the last decade. Alertness, secrecy, patience, diligence and unconditional obedience to the Blessed One are more vital than ever. Adhering to a strict training regime is the only way to achieve the alpha quotient that offers enlightened members of the Brotherhood the prospect of taking a step towards the Blessed One. They will then be able to will the molecules of their body to disintegrate and pass through walls like ghosts, just like the Blessed One himself. Distance will become meaningless to them, as they will have the power to project their astral bodies to any place they deem necessary. The undersecretary produces a black box with two buttons and an antenna. “With this latest invention, our Ministry of Science has made it possible to put one of the Blessed One’s visions to practical use. This teleporter is directly connected to the Blessed One’s prayer mat, transmitting sublime vibrations whenever the master recites a mantra in meditation. The Blessed One has authorised me to distribute ten teleporters to the best disciples of Hiroshima. Summon all your forces to compete for this precious device. It will boost your alpha potential enormously!”

  As Reizo Shiga steps down from the Takanobashi tram, hours of exhausting yoga exercises, meditation, and tests to gauge his pain threshold behind him, his brain is throbbing with alpha energy. He’s confident that he’ll be one of the ten to secure a teleporter. On his way to meet his girlfriend Yori, he crosses the main road and walks through the red-light district of Mitsukoshi. A woman, young, slightly tipsy, emerges from a love hotel. There’s something about the way she walks that reminds Reizo of the other streetwalkers. Her handbag is silvery, glittering. She’s leaving work early today, probably because she realises she’s had too much to drink. Reizo Shiga follows her and watches her closely. On the corner of the street, close to a lamppost, he strikes. He’s done this many times in the past months. He knows for certain that he’s good at it, perhaps the best. He was surprised by his own brutality first time round, but the woman’s bloodied face only urged him on, like coke bubbling in his veins. Since then, Shiga has developed a fast and effective technique: a sharp blow to the shoulder with his elbow, paralysing the arm that holds the bag, while yanking down the strap with his other hand. The girls are usually too startled or frightened to react. Sometimes they’re drugged and they gaze
at him goggle-eyed, pupils dilated, swaying on their legs. Reizo Shiga knows he can use more violence – and get more satisfaction – if he doesn’t rob girls on the street, where he needs to be fast, but this will have to do for the time being. His latest victim is tough. She slaps him and screams. There’s no time to think. The alpha energy he built up in the sanctuary is discharging. Shiga butts her with his forehead. She reels backwards, hits the back of her head against a lamppost and sinks to the ground, unconscious. He snatches the bag and makes his getaway. “Where are the police when you need them?” he mutters with a grin. Nothing can beat this overwhelming feeling of power, this buzz of pure consciousness. Further down the road he starts rummaging in the bag without slowing his pace. He finds a large amount of yen, more than he’d dared hope for, and more than enough to score a couple of times.