Return to Hiroshima

by Bob Van Laerhoven

  Dr Adachi lives in a 1960s apartment block with a steel staircase on the outside. The building only has two apartments, an unheard of luxury in today’s Japan, and is half hidden behind a couple of electricity poles and a trio of cedars.

  As he gets out of the car and makes his way to the back, it dawns on inspector Takeda that there are cracks in his life that risk causing his apparently calm exterior to collapse at any moment. An inexplicable melancholy washes over him. He looks up at an armada of white butterflies fluttering around the cedar trees. He then turns to Yori’s gloves.

  She senses him looking and holds up her right hand, limp at the wrist like a swan with a broken neck: “The dragon bit me.”

  57

  Hiroshima – Dr Adachi’s apartment near the Peace Tower –

  Becht, Takeda, Adachi and Yori – March 14th 1995

  “There was a time I would’ve laughed at that theory of yours,” says Dr Adachi with the affected circumspection of an experienced drinker. “But in today’s circumstances, nothing surprises me. You should try to remember that the attackers may have had another motive. Commissioner Takamatsu is a career man and if you ask me he’s capable of just about anything. But this?” Dr Adachi delicately swills his Scotch. He was a single malt man until the crisis forced him onto cheaper blended whisky. With the composure of a born boozer he’s managed to conceal from both women that he’s already had a skinful. Takeda had called him from Tenchou-san’s restaurant. Without explaining why, he had asked the police doctor if he would be willing to accommodate both women in his apartment. For how long? He didn’t know. Not long. Adachi had laughed and then barked into the phone: “You know they’re safe with me.”

  “What are you going to do now?” the police doctor continued. “Takamatsu is expecting a report on the attempted murder of the Belgian tourist before the end of the week. Don’t arouse his suspicions.”

  “I’ll be there and he’ll have his report,” says Takeda. “I appreciate your help, my friend, more than you know.”

  Adachi’s gaze softens: “Outsiders need to help one another in this anthill we live in, Akio. But remember: a goldfish that jumps out of its bowl into the sea shouldn’t think it’s a shark.”

  Both men start to laugh. Adachi is well known for contorting old sayings and putting on a wise face in the process.

  “And the women?” Adachi continues. “The onna is a hibakusha.”

  “I only noticed when she said ‘the dragon bit me’ and showed me her hand. She was always wearing gloves.”

  “She’s a bit young to be using such an expression. Must be second generation.”

  “I guess so. Her boyfriend is mixed up in this whirlpool of events somewhere.”

  “Reizo Shiga, the nephew of the murdered bank manager? Are you going to have him traced?”

  “Yes. The other woman, the German...”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” says Beate Becht to Takeda’s back. Takeda turns. The German may have a timid personality, but she appears determined. She doesn’t seem to have much interest in Adachi’s sparsely furnished living room, mostly red and white, Scandinavian. Adachi is proud of his taste in interior design and likes to be complimented on it. But Becht only stares at Takeda.

  “Mr Takeda,” she says. “This situation is pretty strange, don’t you think? Are you hiding something from me?”

  “What makes you think that, miss Becht?”

  “First: the two men who were with you in the toilet ran out of the place as if the devil was on their heels.”

  Takeda raises an eyebrow. “And second?”

  The photographer takes a deep breath: “When you came back from the toilet where the men, according to you, were having an argument, you didn’t only seem agitated, you’re zip was still open.”

  Takeda raises his eyebrow even further.

  Becht clears her throat: “I can’t imagine that someone like you – how should I put it? – would return from the toilet in such a state because of some banal argument that didn’t involve you.”

  Dr Adachi, who had lived in America for a number of years when he was young and spoke excellent English, explodes with laughter.

  58

  Hiroshima – in the tunnels beneath the Suicide Club squat – Reizo and Mitsuko – March 14th 1995

  When I see how nimble Reizo is with the sword I realise I’ve underestimated him. At the same time I feel reassured. What he’s doing is more of a circus act than a threat. But the fact that he’s using a shinken – a sword sharpened and ready for battle – is still unnerving. Reizo traces a complex figure of eight in the air. The point of the shinken stops at my left nipple. He is calm. I can see it in his eyes through the mask. He’s different when he’s wearing a disguise. Reizo has blond hair and listens to American death metal music, but when it comes to the crunch he can’t let go of the old patriarchal traditions.

  “Aren’t you afraid of my father?” I ask, surprised at the hoarseness of my voice.

  “At this moment I’m afraid of no one.” I’m having a hard time understanding this boy. There’s clearly something seriously wrong with him put I can’t put my finger on it. It’s clear he’s drugged at the moment.

  Perhaps he can see my hesitation: “I’ve suffered all my life. It took me years to come to terms with being different, being special. My only ambition is to create a universe in a book form that reduces reality to rubble. I want to be a deconstructivist role model.” What’s all this drivel about? He’s determined to be unpredictable, contradictory, affected and a genius all at once. Words are all he needs; inner cohesion isn’t important as long as the content is mysterious enough. I think I can smell what ails him: Reizo’s experience of the world is based on signs he alone can interpret. He drinks himself into a stupor on his own words, just like Hitler and Mussolini. It’s Reizo’s way of controlling the world. It transforms him into a character you can’t pin down. If I’m to have any chance of escape I’ll have to find a way to meet him in his own world.

  “You sound like my father,” I say. I try to inject admiration into my voice. I’m convinced his short term memory is damaged. He wasn’t afraid of me back in the storeroom, in spite of the beating I gave him this morning. I hope he doesn’t remember that I wasn’t exactly faltering about his writing talent. “My father says the human race is on its way out, that it’s time for a new version. You should meet him. You both have a lot in common.”

  I had the impression earlier that he was in awe of my father. Now he just shrugs and slips the sword back into its sheath with elegant taito. I’m certain he’s good enough to draw it again in an instant so I keep my arms at my side. The mask gives his face a glassy, impassive look. I presume it also gives him the self-assurance he would otherwise have to feign by fencing with words. “I guess your father should have done this more often,” he says. I feel a sudden smack on the side of my head, hard, dizzying, as he hits me with the sheath of his sword. I want to throw myself at him, but the sheath stabs my stomach. I gag, bile fills my mouth, and I fall back, shaking my head in astonishment. What did I do wrong?

  “I don’t need your father,” he says. “I need your life.”

  He takes off the storm god mask and winks at me as if we’ve just shared a good joke.

  59

  Hiroshima – Dr Adachi’s apartment next to the Peace Tower –

  Takeda and Becht – evening, March 14th 1995

  Desolation takes hold of Takeda as he leaves Dr Adachi’s apartment and starts the engine of his patrol car. The way he looks at the world has completely changed in less than a couple of days. Takeda reflects on what Yori had to say about Reizo Shiga. And about what his mother once said: “The Japanese will do anything to bring structure to their lives, society, reality. But the same structure conceals phenomenal forces of insanity and unbridled lack of control the likes of which you can’t find elsewhere.” The expres
sion on her face at the time made him remember her words. That and the word unbridled, a curious word when you think about it. As if the Japanese were like horses, bridled, restrained, until the moment the reins are suddenly severed.

  Perhaps his mother had been right. Takeda has spent his entire life proving his mother wrong. When he was a teenager, he despised her because she had been a japwhore. She invented the word herself. She would have been better off dead, the target of one or other Japanese bullet. Then he would never have been born... then there would’ve been no nameless sadistic soldier to father him or a mother who could barely conceal her disgust when she looked at him. Takeda changed his attitude later in life and pretended to be proud of his origins. But deep inside he still wrestled with the fear that his father’s genes might surface one day.

  A tap on the window on the driver’s side made him jump.

  Beate Becht is standing next to the car in the sober black miniskirt she put on for the restaurant.

  “So what are we looking at?” asks the German. “A Japanese variant of the Red Army Fraction or just a couple of goons? By the way, thanks for being so honest back in the restaurant, inspector, and for your concern. But I don’t really have anything to do with this case, do I.”

  “I still need to be sure,” says Takeda. “That’s why I’ve decided to bring in Reizo Shiga. Thanks to Yori I now know where the Suicide Club is.” Listen to yourself, he thinks. Inside I’m breaking down at a rate of knots, but on the outside I’m still the perfect Japanese cop.

  “Why did you tell me the whole story?”

  “You put me on the spot,” says Takeda dryly. “You have a good eye for... eh... details.”

  She laughs and touches his arm for an instant in a gesture of reconciliation and consolation.

  “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  “You know how proud the average Japanese man can be.”

  “You aren’t the average Japanese man, inspector.” Was she flirting with him? Maybe she was still suffering from shock after everything that had happened. Takeda’s police work has taught him that people are much more vulnerable than they like to think. This German woman’s slender, stringy build and delicate joints makes her appear fragile, but he’s convinced in the meantime that she’s capable of more than she would probably admit.

  “What a day,” says Beate. She gestures with her head in the direction of the police doctor’s apartment. The setting sun casts a halo of light around her head. “But if I understood her right, Yori’s days are always hectic. I couldn’t live like that. Or perhaps...” She laughs. “There’s this sense of excitement, d’you understand?” She sees the look in his eyes and blushes. “Yori inspires me.”

  Takeda wants to leave. What’s holding him back? Inspiration can wait.

  Instead he asks: “Why do you think Yori is innocent?”

  Beate blinks, feels cornered, but pulls a stubborn face: “My gut tells me. But you wouldn’t understand that, would you, inspector. You’re a man of facts, if I’m not mistaken?”

  The word “no” is on the tip of Takeda’s tongue, but he backs down and agrees.

  “I often see images when I look at people,” says the photographer. “There’s probably something wrong with me.” The inspector has the impression that he can taste her loneliness. Or is it his own? He can’t help noticing yet again how driven and focussed he feels when he takes risks, when he goes against his training, pushes his position to one side, ignores his innate docility. He’s curious to know what images the photographer sees when she looks at him.

  “What do you make of Yori?”

  The German hesitates for a moment. “She stumbled into my hotel room in a state, sobbing, confused. She reminded me of the young mother in one of my father’s books, the same tears in her eyes. I was flicking through it only yesterday; a bizarre photo of the corpse of a baby taken here in the city in 1945 by Satsuo Nakata, just after the bomb. My father and Nakata were friends. He put together a penetrating collage of the incident based on pictures taken in the still burning embers of the city. The mother, badly burned, then the corpse, misshapen and bloated, like a lump of putty in the charred rubble, then a close-up of a chrysanthemum painted on the child’s left heel. The father, a young artist, had painted the flower on his little son’s body as an indictment against the emperor. In Japan, the chrysanthemum is the symbol of your emperor’s ‘divinity’, inspector. Where I come from they’re associated with cemeteries.” The photographer makes a dismissive gesture. “I don’t know why that image came to mind. Perhaps it has to do with a photo I saw on the front cover of one of your magazines, just two days ago, a photo of a deformed dead baby. I was struck by the similarity between the two photos although there’s fifty years between them. I remember my father telling me that the father of the dead baby in Nakata’s collage had made a clay replica of his dead son in 1958, with the same chrysanthemum on his heel, and placed it at the foot of the Peace Monument. Little was made of what he did. People preferred to sweep that kind of thing under the carpet back then, because it was still seen as pointing the finger at the imperial family. Perhaps someone heard about it and left this new dead baby as a reminder of the incident. My photography is based on signs, inspector. That’s why I’d like to take a picture of Yori under the monument with a replica of such a baby in her arms. But perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this. Just like my father you’ll probably think I’m too eager to mimic reality and call the result art.”

  Beate Becht takes a step back when Takeda scowls, opens the car door and returns in great haste to Adachi’s apartment.

  60

  Hiroshima – Funairi Hospital –

  Xavier Douterloigne – evening, March 14th 1995

  “How’s the patient doing, doctor?”

  “I think we need to keep him in a coma for a couple of days more. He’s not out of the woods, but there’s hope. He mumbled a few words earlier, in Dutch I guess. If you ask me he’ll pull through. Whether the poison from the Irukandji has affected his brain is another matter. But, let’s say I’m optimistic.”

  “Why?”

  “When he was talking there were tears in his eyes. Sadness is one the mind’s higher expressions, honourable colleague.”

  * * *

  So what happened exactly? Month after month the same question, from friends, acquaintances. Compassion from some, others suspicious. Xavier Douterloigne couldn’t answer them. He wanted to, but something was standing in the way.

  What was there to say? That it was his fault his sister Anna had ended up in a wheelchair and committed suicide six months later?

  His parents had urged him not to think such thoughts. It was fate, there was nothing else to it. It was sheer accident that Xavier was there when it happened.

  They wanted to protect him, their darling son, he was sure of that.

  But for him the decision was made: he was to blame. His parents didn’t want to tell him how she had died. It only made him more determined to find out. He started by calling Den Ommeloop, the home where Anna had been staying since the accident. He made an appointment and met up with one of her counsellors, a bearded young man with glasses and an oily voice. Xavier came straight to the point and asked how Anna had committed suicide. The counsellor blinked at the word. He told him that Anna had been having trouble moving her arms in the last few weeks before her death as a result of her damaged nervous system. She could no longer get out of the wheelchair by herself, in spite of the fact that she had even been able to walk a little at the beginning, albeit with difficulty and a lot of assistance. But she hadn’t been unhappy, the counsellor told him. She had made friends in the home. Xavier listened patiently, but had to bite his lip when the man told him that they weren’t certain Anna’s death was suicide. “We think it may have been a simple household accident,” he added. Xavier asked him to explain. The counsellor responded with another question: “Didn’
t your parents tell you it was probably an accident?” Xavier informed the man that his parents were thoughtful and considerate people and that they had wanted to spare him in spite of their own pain, but he still insisted on knowing how Anna had ended her life. They pussyfooted around the topic for a while. “Do I have to force my parents to tell me? Is that what you want?” said Xavier finally. “They’ve been through enough. It’s your duty to tell me what happened.” The man stared at him and his defensive wall slowly but visibly melted. He nodded. His voice sounded flat, as if his vocal cords where under pressure. “There was a birthday party. It was busy, lots of people milling around. There was a deep fat fryer in the kitchen, industrial size. Everyone was wearing party hats and singing, clapping, that sort of thing. Anna disappeared into the kitchen without anyone noticing. The fryer... hot oil everywhere... no one saw it happen.”

  There was a long silence. Xavier got to his feet and thanked the man. On his way to the door he turned and asked. “Is that what killed her. Burns from the oil?”

  The man pursed his lips and heaved a deep sigh. “The police found a melted cigarette lighter next to what was left of her wheelchair.”

  Another long silence. The blood had drained from Xavier’s face and he was about to leave when the counsellor stood up: “Can I ask you something? How did Anna end up in a wheelchair? She always refused to talk about it.”