Tokyo Year Zero (33 page)

Everything too late…

‘Here it is,’ I tell him and show him the address of an inn in my notebook and its location on my map. Now I lead Ishida up the slope out of town towards the address. We find it easily –

The Beautiful Mountain Inn…

The detached hotel faces the road and there is still a light on in the porch, moths smashing into the glass which covers the bulb, mosquitoes biting into our foreheads and our necks as we open the door to the inn and apologize to the maid for the late and abrupt nature of our unannounced visit, offering her some of the rice Detective Ishida has brought from his home –

Dark outside, dark inside…

The maid scurries off with the rice and our papers and returns with an older woman who thanks us for the rice and copies down our details. The woman tells us that we are too late for an evening meal, that these days they need a day’s notice to buy and prepare meals,
that we are also too late to use the bath, that they heat the bath water only when they have a day’s notice and then only once a day –

No bath. No late night snacks. No sake. No beer…

‘But there will be breakfast,’ she tells us.

The older woman then instructs the younger maid to show us to our room, our room which the woman assures us is the best room that they have, and so we follow the young maid down a dim and humid corridor of unlit alcoves and shuttered windows –

Now the maid unlocks and slides open a door –

Now the maid switches on the light –

And I wish she had not…

The screens have been shredded to strips and the tatami are crawling with bugs, the mosquitoes eating us raw as Ishida and I sit down at a low table beneath a small electric bulb to count the cockroaches, the maid putting out our futons and our bedding, apologizing for the smell and the temperature but assuring us it is better, much better, to keep the windows closed at this time of year –

‘Thank you,’ we say as she bows to wish us goodnight.

*

In insect silence, they gather in the
genkan
of our house to watch me leave.
This is defeat
. They watch me put on my boots.
This is defeat
. They follow me out of the door of our house.
This is defeat
. They follow me down the garden path of our house.
This is defeat
. They stand at the gate to our house.
This is defeat
. They watch me walk away from our house and they wave.
This is defeat
. They watch me walk down our street and they wave.
This is defeat
. Every time I turn around.
This is defeat
. Every time I turn around.
This is defeat…

‘Please remember us. Please don’t forget us, Daddy…’

For my wife, for my daughter and for my son –

Defeat. Defeat. Defeat. Defeat…

For my father and for my mother –

Defeat. Defeat. Defeat…

For my elder brother –

Defeat. Defeat…

This defeat that lasts for every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year –

I am one of the survivors…

This is surrender. This is occupation –

One of the lucky ones…

This is defeat.

*

We have washed our faces and we have pissed. We have taken off our trousers and taken off our shirts. We have said goodnight and switched off the electric bulb. Now I lie awake and wait for Ishida to fall asleep. Until I hear his breathing begin to slow –

Until I hear him sleeping deeply now –

It is oven hot and pitch black…

I turn slowly and quietly onto my chest. I move off my futon and onto the tatami mats. I crawl with the bugs and the cockroaches across the floor, across the room towards his knapsack. Now I ease open the bag and I search around inside –

Something cold, metallic…

I take out the gun. It is a 1939 army-issue pistol. It is loaded. Now I raise the pistol in the dark. I aim and I point it at Ishida –

I could kill him here. I could kill him now…

But I lower the pistol. I put the gun back inside his knapsack. I close the bag. I crawl back across the floor, back across the tatami to my own futon and my own knapsack. Now I open the bag –

I have to sleep. I have to sleep…

I take out the pills that Senju gave me. Not Calmotin tonight. Senju had no Calmotin. But Senju has a hoard –

Veronal. Muronal. Numal…

Senju always has a stock –

I do not count.

Tochigi Prefecture, 89°, very fine

Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton
…

The sound of hammering, the hammering on a door –

Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton
…

I open my eyes. I don’t recognize this ceiling –

Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton
…

Now I recognize this room, and this door –

Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton
…

I get up.
No Ishida
. I go to the door –

Ton-ton. Ton-ton
…

I don’t open it. ‘Who is it?’

‘The Kanuma police…’

I curse and I curse again
…

I slide open the door –

‘I am Tachibana, the chief of police for Kanuma,’ says the small, fat, youngish man who now bows. ‘Pleased to meet you –’

His uniform too tight. His buttons polished too bright
…

‘Detective Minami,’ I tell him. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

Has he spoken to Tokyo? Has he heard about Fujita?

Tachibana says, ‘I am sorry to have woken you…’

‘Don’t apologize,’ I tell him. ‘It was difficult to sleep with the heat and all the insects. I should have been awake hours ago…’

Tachibana says, ‘We were expecting you in Kanuma but…’

‘My mistake again. I am sorry. I should have called you…’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ laughs Tachibana. ‘The telephones are often down; you probably wouldn’t have got through to us.’

He has not spoken to Tokyo, not heard about Fujita
…

‘Have you met Detective Ishida yet?’ I ask him –

Tachibana shakes his head. ‘Your colleague?’

He hasn’t met Ishida, not spoken to Ishida
…

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘He’s here somewhere…’

‘He might have gone for his breakfast…’

Now I ask Tachibana, ‘How did you know we were here?’

‘Inns are obliged to report all guests,’ laughs Tachibana again. ‘Even guests from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.’

Welcome to the countryside! Welcome to Tochigi!

I smile now and I nod and I say, ‘Of course…’

‘I’ll wait for you in the entrance, inspector.’

I bow again and I excuse myself. I turn back into the room –

The room dark. The windows and the screens still closed –

I close the door.
No Ishida
. I look at his folded-up futon –

His knapsack gone
. I go over to my own bag. I open it –

I root around inside until I find the boxes and bottles –

I count all the pills.
Enough
. They are still there –

Now I lie back down. I close my eyes again –

I still itch and so I scratch.
Gari-gari
…
I want to forget these dreams
…

I sit back up again and I open up my bag again.
In the half-light
. I root around again until I find my notebook, until I find my pen.
I cannot forget these dreams
. I must write them down.
In the half-light
. These dreams, these half-things.
I cannot forget
. These things I dream, these dreams I remember; all these half-things I remember –

These things that don’t make sense, these things that do
…

Now I put my notebook away and I put my pen away –

I go into the small toilet. I piss. I wash my face –

I get dressed. I itch and I scratch again –

Gari-gari
. I itch. I scratch.
Gari-gari
…

I pick up my bag. I leave the room –

I walk down the corridor –

The corridor still dark
…

Ishida is here now –

His knapsack
…

Ishida sat at the low table in the entrance to the inn, talking with Chief Tachibana, nodding and smiling along to his conversation. They both stand up and bow when they see me and Detective Ishida says, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I went looking for breakfast without you…’

I no longer know who this Detective Ishida is. This man
…

‘That’s all right,’ I tell him. ‘I must have needed the sleep.’

Has he spoken to Tokyo? About Fujita? About his orders?

‘I tried to wake you,’ nods Ishida. ‘But you were dead.’

This man I don’t know. This man I don’t recognize
…

Now Tachibana asks me, ‘Would you like some breakfast?’

‘They have
miso
soup,’ says Ishida. ‘You should have it.’

I shake my head. ‘I’m not very hungry, thank you.’

Who is this man who calls himself Ishida?

Tachibana nods. But Tachibana says, ‘You’ve paid for the breakfast. You should eat something while we talk…’

‘I am fine, thank you,’ I tell him but this Chief Tachibana is already on his feet, walking over to the reception desk, banging on the wood and shouting for my breakfast to be brought out –

I don’t look at Ishida. Ishida doesn’t look at me –

No one is who they say they are
…

Tachibana comes back over. Tachibana sits back down. Tachibana picks up his briefcase. Tachibana opens it up. Tachibana takes out two thin files. Tachibana places the two files on the table –

One marked
Baba Hiroko
, the other
Numao Shizue –

‘Excuse me for interrupting,’ says the young maid, the same maid as last night, as she puts down a bowl of rice-porridge topped with a thin slice of pickle on the low table before me, then a second bowl of green leaves floating in some miso-flavoured water, and now places a pair of chipped chopsticks beside the two bowls of food –

I suddenly feel very hungry. I apologize to Tachibana and Ishida. I excuse myself as I begin to eat the cold porridge and the pickle, to wash them down with the tepid brown soup and leaves –

I am a stray dog, his house lost and his master gone
…

I swallow. I say, ‘Tell us about Numao…’

‘She was a local Nikkō girl,’ he says, opening the file out on the table. ‘On the evening of the second of December last year, she told her family she was going to visit her friend’s house. She never arrived there and she never returned home. Just over one month later, on the third of January this year, her body was found –

‘Numao Shizue had been stabbed to death.’

I put down the chipped chopsticks. I wipe my mouth and I say, ‘I thought Numao was found on the thirtieth of December?’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ says Tachibana. ‘Yes, you’re right, of course.’

I ask, ‘Was there any evidence at all that she’d been raped?’

‘None,’ says Tachibana. ‘She was found fully clothed.’

I lean forward. I push the file away. ‘It’s not Kodaira.’

Tachibana bows his head. Tachibana nods his head –

I tell him, ‘Kodaira Yoshio only murders for sex.’

‘There are some other cases,’ he tells me –

I ask, ‘Do you have the files with you?’

‘No, they are back at Kanuma.’

Back at the police station
…

‘All right,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you. We’ll take a look at them later but, for now, we have two requests to make of you…’

‘Please,’ he says. ‘We are here to help you…’

‘We’d like to visit a girl named Okayama whose mother is an acquaintance of Kodaira Yoshio. We’d like to talk to her and anybody else who may have met Kodaira up here. Then we’d like to examine the site where the body of Baba Hiroko was found…’

‘Of course,’ says Chief Tachibana, getting to his feet now. ‘These places are not far and I have a small truck we can use. I’ll bring it round to the front while you settle up with the inn.’

I nod my head. I say, ‘Thank you for your help.’

Tachibana gathers up the files from the table and puts them back in his briefcase. Tachibana then bows and leaves us.

I wipe my mouth again. I wipe my neck.

‘He seems very helpful,’ says Ishida.

‘Because he’s afraid,’ I tell him –

‘Afraid of what…’

‘Does he need a reason?’ I ask him. ‘This is Japan. This is the twenty-first year of Shōwa. The Year of the Dog –

‘Everybody is afraid, detective…’

Now Ishida suddenly asks, ‘What happened to your hair?’

I rub my scalp. I say, ‘I shaved it a few days ago…’

‘But it’s growing back grey,’ says Ishida.

I touch it again. I shrug my shoulders –

‘I almost didn’t recognize you.’

*

The truck is ancient and small and there is an old policeman in the driving seat in a frayed and soiled cap. Tachibana gestures for me to sit up in the front on the small seat to the left of the driver while he and Ishida climb into the back where there is some corrugated iron and what look to be carpenter’s tools. The driver starts the truck –

Now I hold on tight as off we set. No windscreen or hood, the
daylight is blinding, my eyes squinting as the sunlight illuminates the Tochigi countryside; this Land of the Living. This Land of Plenty –

There are mountains. There are trees. There are fields –

There are leaves and there are flowers here –

There are rivers and there are streams –

There are greens and blues here –

In the Land of the Living –

There are colours.

*

The truck labours up the side of one small mountain and down its other side and then up another until it pulls up outside a detached house that faces out onto the road and we all climb out. There is a dog asleep in the shade of the wall but it is still tethered to a pole –

It is not a stray, its house not lost, its master here
…

Black and large, better fed than most of the people of Tokyo, I watch its belly rise and fall, its eyes closed, tongue hanging out –

‘That lazy dog is a guard dog,’ laughs Chief Tachibana.

‘Do you get much burglary round here?’ asks Ishida.

‘There are always the Scavengers,’ nods Tachibana. ‘And before that were the Chinks, always escaping from the factories…’

‘He’d have been a hunting dog, then,’ says the driver.

Tachibana looks at the dog and laughs again. Then the chief excuses himself as he goes into the house ahead of us –

The old driver lights a cigarette and tells us, ‘A lot of them old hunting dogs are running wild now, in packs…’

Tachibana returns with the mother of the Widow Okayama, who bows and welcomes us as Tachibana introduces us and explains to the old woman why we have come as Ishida and I apologize for the early hour and abruptness of our visit, calling on her unannounced.

The mother of the Widow Okayama bows again and invites us into her house. The mother is very old and her granddaughter is not here today. But the mother is not alone. An old man is sat in the empty fireplace. The mother of the Widow Okayama rents this house from this man. This man named Koito. This man Koito doesn’t usually much like the police and he doesn’t usually much like city folk. The mother of the Widow Okayama doesn’t really remember anyone called Kodaira Yoshio but this man Koito remembers him –

‘I liked Mr. Kodaira because he was born round here, born up in Nikkō. He came here a number of times hunting for supplies –

‘He was a friendly fellow was Kodaira, very friendly. He always had money to buy with or things to exchange, did Kodaira. I introduced him to a number of other people round here, folk I knew would be willing to trade with a local fellow like him…’

I ask him for their names and their addresses –

‘I know it’s not strictly legal,’ he says, looking at Tachibana. ‘But everybody does it. If they didn’t they’d starve…’

I ask him again for names and addresses –

‘Not all as lucky as the likes of you…’

I hate the countryside. I hate it
…

I crack my knuckles and I ask him for their names again, their addresses. I ask him one last time and now Koito sighs and begins to list the names, the names of local farmers and their families, every local farmer, every family he can think of, he can remember –

Kashiwagi, Kiyohara, Fujisaki, Yoshimura
…

‘How many times did Kodaira come up here?’ I ask him but this man Koito shrugs his shoulders and says he can’t be sure, he didn’t keep a record, did he? Then I turn to the old grandmother –

The grandmother asks again, ‘Who is this Kodaira?’

Dr. Nakadate estimated that the second body in Shiba Park had been killed sometime between the twentieth and the twenty-seventh of July, and the advertisement found in the pocket of her dress was dated the nineteenth of July, so I want to know if Kodaira Yoshio came here again after the nineteenth of last month, if he was here and what he brought, what he brought and exchanged
…

I turn back to Koito. I ask, ‘When was his last visit?’

But Koito just shrugs his shoulders again and says he can’t be sure, that he doesn’t keep records, does he? But now I crack my knuckles again and I lean forward and I hiss, ‘Then think!’

‘Her granddaughter would know better than me,’ he says. ‘There may have been times when he was here and I was not, for all I know, and it was her he came to see anyway…’

And the grandmother asks again, ‘Who is this man?’

I need to speak to the granddaughter but they don’t know where she is or what she’s doing though they swear she will be back tonight, that she will be here if we come back tomorrow…

‘We’ll be back then,’ I promise them.

*

The Kashiwagi family lives further up the same mountain.
He walks behind me
. There is only so far the truck can go so then we walk, Tachibana showing me the way, Ishida walking behind –

He walks behind me. He walks behind me
…

Up the mountain and through the heat –

No one is who they say they are
…

Through the insects and their teeth –

No one is who they seem
…

The Kashiwagi family makes fuel for the hand-warmers that are used in the winter. Last winter was the worst winter on record. The Kashiwagi family made a lot of fuel for hand-warmers last winter. The Kashiwagi family also made a lot of money last winter. And a lot of visitors called upon the Kashiwagi family last winter –