Tokyo Redux

by David Peace

  * * *

  —

  These hours, first hours, in cellophane, they pass, pass into days, in cellophane, these days, first days into weeks, wrapped in cellophane, these weeks, first weeks, had you wrapped in cellophane: in Shimbashi, the Dai-ichi Hotel, in your tiny, cramped room; in Nihonbashi, the Mitsui building, in your cramped, tiny office, they had you wrapped in cellophane: part of the process, the cellophane, the waiting, all part of the process, the waiting in cellophane: the hotel bugged, the office bugged, you know, you know: just do your job, your day job: Diplomatic Section, Economic Liaison Section, where you compile and file reports, charts, and graphs, all then sent on to Washington and the State Department, but all first routed through Mac’s military staff: Mac and his men, they are distrustful, disdainful of you soft-sell boys who spent your war in Foggy Bottom: but by the time you arrive, in the summer of nineteen hundred and forty-eight, DipSec is largely staffed by Foreign Service careerists, with even a sprinkling of rabid anti-Communists, and the hostility and suspicion, the violent prejudice of GHQ and SCAP is beginning to wane: everybody singing from the same hymn sheet, Red Purge and Reverse Course, at least in public, if you want to keep your job, your day job: so you read the newspapers, the financial pages, you study balance sheets, reams and reams of corporate balance sheets, and write reports on de-concentration, the dismantling of Japanese conglomerates and cartels: hour after hour, long day after long day, for damp week after damp week, hot month after hot month: in cellophane, that summer in cellophane, waiting and patient, all part of the process –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  At twilight, most evenings, you go back to your tiny, cramped room at the Dai-ichi Hotel in Shimbashi: at first you take the bus, the bus provided for Occupation staff, but then, every now and again, you choose to walk: the city was still a battered city then, a city of black markets, prostitution, and poverty, and there are evenings, many evenings when you return to your room and you sit down on the edge of your bed and you weep: you weep for the men and boys who beg for cigarettes and chocolate outside the PX stores, for the women and girls who sell their bodies and their hearts beneath the railroad arches, in the shadows of the parks, weep for the destruction of this city, the ruin of its people: yes, you weep, but you study, too: in your room, which no longer seems so tiny and cramped, you study the language and the culture, the people and their history, in the secondhand books you find in Kanda and Jimbōchō, in the ventures you begin to make on your days off: to Tsukiji and Ikebukuro, but, more often than not, to Ueno and her park, the mortuary temples and graveyards close: all weeds and neglect, their fences broken down, you spend hours among the graves and their ghosts, their stones and their moss, gently trying to uncover their veiled engravings, to understand their melancholy testimonials, again in and through tears, your tears and theirs, their occupied tears –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  They are weeping and you are weeping, weeping but waiting, waiting and watching, watching and testing: on these ventures you make, you are testing the waters, watching for watchers: in the stations, on the platforms, you often let the first train leave without boarding, bending down to tighten your shoelace, then you wait until every other passenger has boarded the next train, then slip on board just as the doors are closing: two stops later, you alight and catch a train in the opposite direction, the long way round the Yamanote line to Ueno, the advantage, the beauty of the circle that is the Yamanote line, round and round you go, getting on and getting off, testing these waters, watching for watchers –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  Until you are sure, as sure as you can ever be, that you are not being watched, or watched no more if you ever were: and so as late summer passes into early fall, lying on your hotel bed, you decide you’ve waited long enough, been patient long enough, patient and cautious enough: you get up from your bed, take your briefcase from under the desk, open the case, carefully take out the two files from the case, then sit down at the desk: you switch on the lamp, light a cigarette, then warily open up the first file, vigilantly looking for the hair you had plucked from your head, had then placed in the file: the hair is there, still there, fair between the pages of the file: you stare down at the hair as you smoke, read again the words under the hair, then put out the cigarette, close the first file, and open the second file, find the second hair you plucked and placed there, still there, still there: you take Waley’s Genji from the line of books propped up on your desk, open the book, turn to the chapter called Yūgao, find the page and the paragraph, its description of a shabby street, a secluded house, its lines and its words: you turn back to the file, then back to the book, from the file to Genji, then back to the file, decoding the file and translating the text until you’re sure you’ve checked enough: you close the file, you close the book, put both files with their hairs back in the briefcase, the case back under the desk, then return Waley’s Genji to its place in the line of books propped up on your desk: you get back up from the desk, go back over to the bed, then lie back down on the bed and wait: in the smoked, dimmed light, reciting your lines, rehearsing your part, learning your lines, learning those lies, your story, all lies: on the short, narrow hotel bed, not sleeping, just waiting, waiting for when the curtains will crack, their edges gray, then whiten, opening day, tomorrow: tomorrow the day the show will truly begin, the day you will visit the House of the Dead.

  * * *

  —

  Yesterday, the Emperor’s morning temperature had gone above thirty-eight degrees for the first time since September 19 and he had received another transfusion of 200cc of blood without white cells after further signs of internal bleeding had been noticed. By the time of the evening news conference, the Emperor’s condition was stable and he seemed to have improved; his temperature had fallen to 37.4 degrees, pulse rate was eighty-four beats a minute, blood pressure was 134 over 56, and respiration rate eighteen breaths a minute. Kenji Maeda, head of the Imperial Household Agency’s General Affairs Division, said the Emperor’s high temperature could be attributed both to inflammation of the upper part of the digestive system and to the reaction of the Emperor’s blood to donor blood. Since September 19, the total amount of blood given to the Emperor was 5,715cc.

  You hear that, said Donald Reichenbach, glancing at the bedroom door as he wiped his fingers on a piece of tissue paper. 5,715cc of blood – that means they must have replaced every drop of his imperial blood!

  An oxygen cylinder had also exploded outside the room where the Emperor lay gravely ill, but the eighty-seven-year-old monarch was undisturbed by the noise. Palace officials said a plumber working on renovations in the Imperial Palace Hospital was seriously injured when the cylinder exploded as he was inspecting the grounds. However, a palace official said, His Majesty apparently never even heard the explosion.

  Oblivious to the end, said Donald Reichenbach as he carried the plate, the tissues, the knife, and the mug over to the sink. He washed and dried then put away the plate, the knife, and the mug as he listened to the rest of the morning news: news about the defeat of the Pinochet government, then the vice-presidential debate between Senators Bentsen and Quayle.

  Defending his qualifications, Quayle had said he had as much experience as John F. Kennedy had when he sought the presidency. Bentsen had shot back, Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy –

  He turned off the radio as he went into the bedroom, thinking of Stanford, a morning in Stanford, for it was morning on the Pacific Coast when Kennedy was assassinated. He had been invited over to give a series of lectures on classical Japanese prose, had gone ahead with the morning lecture as planned; it would have been impolite not to have done so, he had thought then, thought now. But the students hadn’t agreed, all those healthy, good-looking sons and daughters of California, sullen in their blue-eyed grief, pouting at his poor taste. He smi
led and took down a cardinal necktie from the rack in the closet, then giggled as he turned to Grete sleeping on the bed and said, Now, now, don’t be jealous, Gre-chan dear, but Papa’s got a luncheon date, must look his very luncheon best.

  But he stopped smiling and giggling when he carried his clothes back into the living-dining-kitchen room, stopped before the radio-cassette player on the dining table. Richard Strauss had again replaced the morning news, but it was the Vier letzte Lieder, his Four Last Songs, of all things, of all things. Breathless again, heart riven again, in tears again, he sat down again, at the table again, clutching, cradling his clothes in his arms as Schwarzkopf, Szell, and the Berlin RSO carried him through “Spring,” “September,” “When Falling Asleep” to, finally, “At Sunset”: Through sorrow and joy, we have gone hand in hand; we are both at rest from our wanderings now above the quiet land. / Around us, the valleys bow, the air already darkens. Only two larks soar musingly into the haze. / Come close, and let them flutter, soon it will be time to sleep – so that we don’t get lost in this solitude. / O vast, tranquil peace, so deep in the afterglow! How weary we are of wandering –

  He let go of the clothes in his arms, wiped his face, his cheeks and his eyes with the fingers of both hands, then reached to turn off the radio, but the radio was already off…

  is this perhaps death?

  * * *

  —

  In the small mirror above the small basin in the corner of the hotel room you shave, your eyes on the reflection of your neck, your cheeks, your chin, and top lip in the mirror: you wash your face, dry your face, then pick up your comb, straighten your hair, your eyes on the reflection of the teeth of the comb, the hairs on your head: you change your clothes, then straighten your necktie back in the mirror, your eyes on the reflection of the knot in the cloth, the tie around your neck: you know you are avoiding your own eyes, your own eyes in the mirror, not wanting to look into your own eyes, to see the anxiety in your own eyes, the fear in the mirror: you turn away from the mirror, pick up and put on your jacket, take your hat from the hook on the wall, the briefcase from under the desk, then you leave your hotel room, turning once to lock the door: you go down the corridor to the stairs at its end, take the stairs down to the lobby, then walk through the lobby, out of the Dai-ichi into Shimbashi: a late September morning, still sultry and warm: the light already different, the day already different, but the routine remains, must always remain, part of the process: the process is the routine, the routine is the process: you go into Shimbashi station, up to the Yamanote platform, let the first train leave without boarding, bent down to tighten your shoelace, then wait until every other passenger has boarded the next train and slip on board just as the doors are closing: two stops later, at Tokyo station, you alight and catch a train in the opposite direction, back the way you came, back through Yūrakuchō to Shimbashi, on through Hamamatsuchō and Tamachi to Shinagawa: at Shinagawa, you get off again, cross to the other side of the platform, let the first train leave again without boarding, bent down again to tighten your shoelace, then wait until every other passenger has boarded the next train again and slip on board just as the doors are closing again: two stops later, at Hamamatsuchō, you get off again and leave the station, sure as can be you are not being watched, not being followed: you walk through Daimon to the grounds of Zōjō-ji temple and the Taitōku-in, another of the city’s mausoleums for the Tokugawa shōguns, six buried here: but here, unlike in Ueno, the mausoleum and the temple were all burned, destroyed in the air raids of May, 1945: three years later, the grounds of Zōjō-ji, its National Treasures are still all ash and ruin, huge scorched trees lying still where they fell, their roots to the sky, branches charred, leaves lost: in the sullen, silent air, under the gray, overcast sky, you walk through this field of ash and ruin, round the remains of the temple and mausoleum, through other graves, overgrown with bamboo grass, weeds, and neglect: but you do not linger here today, not among these graves, not with their ghosts, their stones, and their moss, not today: today you must push on, through and in tears, your tears and theirs –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  You emerge on the other side, the other side of these dead and their graves, out onto Avenue B: you stop by the side of the road, and you wipe your eyes, and you wait, and you watch, checking again you are not being watched, not being followed: an Occupation bus passes down the street, you turn away, then look back: bicycles and pedicabs pass in front of you, a cart filled with night-soil led by two oxen passes the other way, but no one emerges from the shadows behind you, the ground of the dead: you weave across the road, between the bicycles, the odd truck, then wait again, on the other side, you watch again: again no one emerges from the shadows across the road, the place of the dead: you turn away, turn off the main road, down a side road, into Morimoto-chō: a cluster of alleyways and houses, some large, some small, some burned, some not, some rebuilt and some not: a patch of waste ground here and there, where a house or a shop had once stood: through this patchwork of destruction and reconstruction you walk: the occasional smell of a household fire, a breakfast being cooked, the sudden sound of bedding being beaten and aired, monpe-clad ladies sweeping the mats of their houses, turning away when they see you coming, retreating back into their houses until you’ve passed: round the corners, at each corner, you stop, you turn and you wait, you watch: checking again and again you are not being watched, you are not being followed, until you come to the place, you come to the house: but you do not stop, you keep on walking: past the house, that secluded house, to the end of its street, its shabby street, round the corner you go: then you stop, and you wait, and you watch, then you walk on: back round the block, to double-check, then once again, to triple-check: no one is watching you, no one is following you: back down the shabby street, back to the secluded house, behind a stone wall, damp and tall, a wooden gate, plaited and warped: now you open the gate, and you step through the gate, into the garden, untended, unweeded, onto its path, half hidden, half lost, then you close the gate, turn back to the garden, and look up at the house: a two-story house, once painted yellow, now faded with weather and war, scorched black in part with soot from a fire, its shutters hanging broken and open, no glass in its second-floor windows, dark sockets in a pale skull: it is watching you, waiting for you: the yellow house,

  the House of the Dead –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  You walk up the path, half hidden, half lost, approach the house, its front window, watching you, waiting for you: you shield your eyes, peer in through the glass, see a thick mattress on the floor, a table, three chairs, and a cabinet: you turn from the window, scan the garden, untended, unweeded: see the stacks of flowerpots, big ones and small ones, all chipped or broken: you walk over to the pots, bend down, and begin to search: under one stack of upturned, damaged pots you find a small mound of loose soil and ash: in this pile of dirt you find the key: you pick up the key, stand up, and walk to the door of the house: you put the key in the lock, turn the key in the lock, then the handle: you open the door and step inside, you step inside: inside the yellow house, the House of the Dead, you swallow but do not speak, do not call out: you stand in the doorway and listen: you hear the house breathing, hear the house murmuring, whispering –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  You step into the hallway, close the door behind you: before you is a broken staircase and the hall: down the hall, to the right, a small, empty room, a kitchen and a toilet that both still function, still work: to the left, the large front room: you go into the front room, flick the light switch on and then off again, the electricity connected: you see the telephone, the radio on the wide table: you pick up the handset of the telephone, the telephone connected: you turn the radio on and then off again, the radio working: everything still working, everything still functioning, still connected –

  Sā-sā, rei-rei…

  You pull a chair from under the table, turn the chair to
face the window, then sit down: in the yellow house, this House of the Dead, you sit and you wait, wait for them to come, come back again, return –