12
August 26, 1946
Tochigi, 87°, fine
In the night, he shrieks. In the night, he howls. In the night, he wails. In the night, the grinding of teeth. In the night, the weeping of tears –
Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking. I can hear him crying. In his sleep. Not waking, not sleeping. I can hear him weeping. In my dreams. Not sleeping, not waking –
Ton.
Before the dawn, before the light, the dull thud upon the mat –
Ton.
The only sound as it hits the floor, just beyond my pillow –
Nothing before, nothing after, the dull thud on the mat –
Ton.
I lie on the futon and I do not, dare not move –
What was that noise? What was that sound?
Ton.
Ishida is awake now. I can feel him –
He asks, ‘What was that noise?’
Ton.
I turn over on the futon. I raise my head up. I look beyond my pillow. I can see it now. In front of the alcove –
It lies on the matting. It lies neck up –
Like an inverted, severed head –
The red camellia –
Ton.
*
It is dawn now and it is light. I get up from my futon but I do not wake Ishida. I take off my yukata. I pull on my undershorts. I put on my undershirt. I pull on my trousers. I put on my shirt. I gather up my jacket, my knapsack, my hat. I leave the room. I walk down the corridor to the reception area. There is no one here. In this place of shadows. The hearth deserted. This place from the past. I pick up my boots from the genkan. I squat down beneath the eaves of the inn. In this other century. I pull on my old army boots and I leave this inn –
This other country, so far from home …
I walk back towards the town, back towards the station; the first train must have already arrived as there are Scavengers walking past me out of town, mumbling and muttering and moaning –
Their clothes are almost rags, half of them have no shoes …
‘This is a bad place to buy anything, a terrible place…’
They are weighted down and they are sweating …
‘These farmers have us where they want us…’
The weight of the bundles on their backs …
‘They won’t take money, only goods…’
Dirty towels tied around their faces …
‘They’re getting choosier by the day…’
Or old yellow caps on their heads …
‘Used to be just fabrics or cloth…’
The weaker ones slowing down …
‘Now only jewellery will do…’
Falling behind the others …
‘Kimonos or shoes…’
Resting already…
‘It’ll be much better in autumn,’ they convince themselves –
But it’s not autumn yet, the tips of the branches still green –
The persimmons on the trees still to fatten and brighten –
To ripen, to fall and to splatter …
There is an old man still dressed in his civil-defence uniform sat down at a curve in the road. His trousers tied with a rope and his jacket already soaked through with sweat, he has propped his backpack up under a nettle tree and sits rolling a cigarette from old dog-ends, staring vacantly ahead at a clump of flaming daisies –
He looks up as my shadow falls on his face –
I ask him if we might share a match –
He nods and we share the light as he tells me, ‘The shoddier these matches get, the more expensive their price becomes…’
I nod and I agree. Then I start to walk away –
But the old man asks, ‘What time is it?’ I stop now and I turn back to him –
I ask, ‘Is your watch broken, sir?’
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
The man has taken out his pocket watch and is winding it up. The man shakes his head. The man shows me his watch –
The old man says, ‘It keeps stopping dead…’
This watch. This watch. This watch …
His watch says twelve o’clock –
Now I show him my watch –
I say, ‘It’s eight o’clock.’
‘I’m already late, then,’ he sighs. ‘Missed all the good stuff.’
I nod and I agree. I start to walk away again but again he calls after me and again I stop and I turn back to him as he asks me –
‘Do you know the roads around here, do you?’
I shake my head and I apologize. ‘I’ve not been here before.’
‘I think I came here once before,’ he says. ‘But that was with someone from the neighbourhood and so it must have been quite a time ago now. I think it was here. The war had started, I know that. But not the air raids. I’m sure it was before the air raids…’
I nod again but I don’t know what to say –
‘I lose track of the time,’ he sighs. ‘Because there’s no end, is there? They tell us that it’s over, that we’re at peace, but it doesn’t feel like peace, doesn’t feel like it’s ended to me. What about you?’
I shake my head. I say something like, ‘You’re right.’
‘I’m sixty-nine years old,’ he tells me. ‘What good am I to anyone any more? I might as well be dead and be done with it. But I remember when I could carry sixty or seventy pounds, no trouble…’
‘But you look like you’re doing all right to me,’ I say –
He thanks me and asks me where I am from –
‘Mitaka,’ I tell him. ‘What about you?’
‘Kinshi-chō originally,’ he says. ‘But not any more, of course. I tell you, I was lucky to get away with the clothes on my back. I’m staying with my daughter-in-law in Hakozaki now. But you can’t depend on anyone these days, can you? And now they say my son is dead, she’ll be looking to remarry and then what will I do …?’
I nod and I watch him untie the towel from around his face and wipe the sweat from his forehead and then from his neck –
Now the old man gets to his feet and he looks at me –
‘Forgive me,’ the old man says. ‘But are you ill?’
I shake my head. I say, ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You’re just very pale.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘I’m fine…’
I pick up his bundle for him –
I hoist it onto his back –
It is a heavy load …
‘Thank you,’ he says as he walks off. ‘And good luck…’
I raise my cigarette to wave and I watch him go –
‘Don’t give up,’ he shouts back. ‘Never!’
*
I walk up the clean little steps into Kanuma police station where the two officers behind the front desk bow, salute and welcome me back.
‘I have a message from Tokyo for a Detective Ishida,’ announces one of the two men behind the desk –
‘Thank you,’ I say as he hands me the piece of paper and I put it in my pocket and thank him again –
‘Is Chief Tachibana here yet?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Maybe he’s gone to the inn…’
‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll go for a walk…’
‘Where will you go?’ he asks me.
‘To the river,’ I say. ‘The…’
‘The Black River?’ he asks.
‘The Black River,’ I nod.
I walk out of the police station. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I walk down the clean little steps. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I walk across the road. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I turn down another road. I do not run. My pocket on fire. I see the Black River –
And now I run. My pocket on fire. Now I run. My pocket on fire. Now I run. My pocket on fire. Down the banking –
My pocket on fire. And then I stop –
I take out the piece of paper:
‘Leave Minami in Tochigi. Return to HQ. Inspector Adachi.’
Then, suddenly, a shout, ‘There you are, Inspector Minami!’
‘I look up. Tachibana and Ishida coming down the banking –
Ishida; I no longer know who this Detective Ishida is …
‘Thought you’d run back to Tokyo,’ shouts Tachibana –
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I just needed to go for a walk…’
‘Don’t apologize,’ says Tachibana. ‘I bet you’re not used to so much sake and good food these days, are you now, inspector?’
‘You were very generous,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘We’re all policemen…’
I look at Ishida as I nod, ‘All policemen…’
‘Where to first, then?’ asks Tachibana, clapping his hands.
*
The same ancient small truck. The same old policeman in the driving seat. Tachibana gestures for me to sit up in the front while he and Ishida climb into the back again. The corrugated iron and the carpenter’s tools gone today. The driver puts out his cigarette, straightens his cap and he starts up the truck as I hold on tight again –
I hate the countryside and I hate the people who live here –
This Land of the Grasping. This Land of the Greedy …
My eyes squinting in pain as the sunlight blinds me –
Everything black today. Everything black here …
The mountains black. The trees black –
No grey, no green and no purple …
No leaves and no flowers here –
There are no colours here …
Here, here, here, here –
In Kodaira country …
Here in Ōaza-Hosō, in Nikkō-chō, where our small truck now pulls up outside the family home of Kodaira Yoshio, the ramshackle, broken-down family home where the uncle, the aunt and the cousin of Kodaira Yoshio still live, still working for Furukawa –
The uncle, the aunt and the cousin of Kodaira Yoshio who know why we are here, who know why we will keep knocking –
Until the cousin finally opens the door to invite us in, in through their rotting door and filthy genkan, through their stinking, fetid kitchen and into their dark and humid hearth and home –
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
The aunt scuttling off on her hands and her knees down another dark corridor. The uncle cross-legged in the hearth with a pipe. The uncle is an old man. The uncle does not speak –
‘He hates the police,’ says his son, the cousin. ‘He thinks the police have got it in for him, got it in for our family…’
‘Shut up, idiot!’ shouts the uncle as he picks up his pipe and gets to his feet. He walks off into the other half of the room, closing the screen doors behind him, still shouting, ‘Idiot!’
‘What do you want?’ asks the cousin –
‘I want to know how often your cousin Yoshio comes back here,’ I tell him. ‘I particularly want to know how often he came back here in the last two years, the dates he came and the things he might have brought back with him. It’s important you remember…’
‘Well, that’s easy to remember,’ laughs the cousin now. ‘Easy because we never saw him. He never came back here…’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t believe you because I have already met six or seven other families near here who do remember that he came back, who do remember the dates and the things he brought back. So, I’ll ask you again, to remember…’
‘And I’ll tell you again,’ says the cousin. ‘He was never here. We heard he’d been back to Tochigi, but we never saw him.’
‘You never saw him?’ I ask. ‘He never came here?’
‘Why would he come here?’ asks the cousin. ‘We’ve nothing to sell him, nothing to buy from him. Why come?’
‘Because you’re his family.’ I say. ‘That’s why.’
‘He never came back here,’ repeats the cousin –
In the dark, humid hearth and family home –
‘That’s all I know, so that’s all I’ll say,’ the cousin says now. ‘If you want to hear more, just knock on any door in the village.’
*
His father was the eldest of the brothers, the neighbours tell us. He was a drinker, a gambler and a womanizer. He’d had a farm, he’d had an inn, the Hashimoto-Ya, the best in the village. But he lost them all through his gambling, his drinking and his womanizing. Even his horse. He ended his days at Furukawa Denki with the rest of them –
The father’s first younger brother worked there all his life, the neighbours tell us. He was a slow worker but he was never absent. He worked only nights and he handed over all his pay to his mother. He was a stutterer and an idiot and he was the best of them –
The second younger brother is the uncle you met, the neighbours tell us. He was once the most dangerous man in the village; drank heavily and carried a knife. He has been in prison. He is still a short-tempered and aggressive man, but now he rarely speaks.
The eldest brother of Kodaira Yoshio is not long dead, the neighbours tell us. He worked at Furukawa with the rest of them but he was fired because he stole from the other workers and he slept on the job. He went to Tokyo but soon came back, wandering from job to job, living off odd jobs and handouts. He was another one who rarely spoke. Even made his own wife and children eat their meals outside so he could eat in peace. In April last year he was arrested for stealing potatoes but he died before the case ever came to court –
His elder sister was much the same, the neighbours tell us. She worked at Furukawa Denki too, just like the rest of them. She married a man who was working there, but it didn’t last more than a year. Then she married a Korean, again for less than a year. She was often hysterical and always a liar and died in January this year –
He was a bad lad himself, the neighbours are quick to tell us. But he wasn’t the worst of the family. He was poor at his schoolwork, lazy and careless, but he never drank and he never gambled. He had the Kodaira family temper but he never fought with strangers –
It was a shock, then, when he killed his father-in-law –
He has a bastard son, the neighbours whisper to us. He must be about sixteen years old. Not a nice boy, a creep to the older kids and a bully to the younger ones. This was the son he had by the woman he had his affair with. This was the affair that made his first wife’s family ask him to divorce her. That was the request that caused him to attack her family and murder her father –
That got him sent to prison –
That broke his mother’s heart, the neighbours tell us now. For his mother was kind and honest, a loving and long-suffering woman –
‘But she lived her life in tears,’ they tell us. ‘In tears…’
*
These mountains and valleys, these forests and fields, all look the same to me. Up the side of one small mountain and down the other side, a short tunnel here, a longer tunnel there, then up and down another slope and along another narrow road until the truck stops outside another small farm set back from the road by another small ditch at the foot of another small mountain. Now, again, Tachibana climbs out of the back of the truck and goes inside the house while Ishida, the driver and I sit and sweat inside the truck until Tachibana returns with another old farmer and introduces us to Mr. Samura –
‘The man who found the body,’ he says. ‘Ishikawa’s body.’
Then the driver starts the ancient truck again and slowly, very slowly we climb up the narrow road that leads up the small mountain slope behind the farm until Mr. Samura nods and grunts and Tachibana calls out to the driver who pulls up on the mountainside –
‘This is where he found her,’ says Tachibana. ‘This place.’
Ōaza Mizuki-chi, Manako-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
Everyone climbs out the truck. Everyone wipes their faces, wipes their necks and looks back down the mountain at the patchworks of fields and ditches, of farms and houses, and then everyone turns back round to stare up into another wood on another slope of another mountain, up into more shadows and more trees –
More black trunks, their branches and their leaves …
Samura points into the woods, ‘It’s that way…’
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
Now Tachibana and I follow the old farmer as he clambers up off the narrow road and into the woods, pointing this way and that as he goes, mumbling things we can’t catch as the trees and their trunks stand closer and thicker together, Ishida following behind –
He walks behind me, through the trees …
Samura comes to a stop up ahead and looks round for us, shouting, ‘This is the place. This is the place. This is the place…’
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry again …
‘Last September,’ he says. ‘I was looking for leaves…’
Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …
‘Leaves to dry out and to mix with tobacco…’
Their branches and their leaves …
‘I trod right on her bones,’ he says –
Her white, naked body …
‘I’d smelt her too,’ he says. ‘As I was gathering up my leaves. But I’d thought it was an animal, same as when I first trod upon her bones, then I slipped, I fell and I saw it wasn’t no animal bones…’
‘I look like bones … I look like bones…’
‘I knew they were human bones…’
I turn round and around, among these trees and these branches, and I ask Samura, ‘Are you sure this is the exact place?’
Samura nods. ‘Can’t you feel her still …?’
Round and around, among these black trees and their trunks, asking Tachibana, ‘Was this place ever examined as a crime scene?’
Tachibana lowers his eyes. Tachibana bows his head –
‘Shit,’ I curse, again and again, as I turn round and around, the black trunks and their branches turning round and around –
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry …
As I drop to my knees to begin to search –
Digging and digging and digging…
To search, again.
*
‘Over here,’ shouts Ishida. ‘I’ve found something here. Look…’
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida …
Police Chief Tachibana and I clamber over fallen tree trunks and duck under broken branches to get to where Detective Ishida is on his knees, bent over the decaying log of another fallen tree –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu …
‘Look at all these,’ he says, standing and holding up bones, white and obviously human bones wrapped in rotting cloth –
Namu-amida-butsu …
‘This must have been where he hid her body,’ says Ishida, kneeling back down to peer under the log. ‘The bones the old man found last year had probably been pulled out of here by animals…’
I look back through the trunks and the branches, back over towards the road where the old farmer Samura has gone to wait and smoke with the driver. I turn back to Chief Tachibana and I ask him, ‘Which of Ishikawa Yori’s bones have you got listed in the file?’
Tachibana opens the Ishikawa Yori file. He flicks through the papers until he reaches the autopsy report. Now he begins to list aloud the bones they found here last year as Ishida and I lift up the decaying log, lift it up to stare down into the damp black soil at more cold white bones, cold white bones that were lost and now found –
Ishida and I on our knees, with our hands, to dig –
To dig and to clean. To clean and collect –
Her bones once lost and now found …
To put them in my army knapsack –
In my bag and upon my back …
‘We’ll take these back with us to Tokyo,’ I tell Tachibana. ‘Where I’ll give them to Dr. Nakadate at the Keiō University Hospital. But please, still try to track down the other bones that were found here and listed as belonging to Ishikawa Yori…’
‘They’ll be in Utsunomiya,’ says Tachibana –
‘Maybe,’ I tell him. ‘But it’s been almost a year since they were found and, because she was listed as ikidaore, Utsunomiya will probably have returned her remains to her family for cremation…’
Tachibana bows very low. ‘I am truly very, very sorry…’
‘Don’t be,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve done what we can for her.’
*
The truck goes back down the mountain and drops Old Man Samura back outside his farm. Then the truck labours up the side of another small mountain and down the other side, through one tunnel and through another, and then up another slope until it stops again outside the detached house of the mother of the Widow Okayama, the black dog still asleep in the shade of the wall, still tethered to its pole –
Not a stray, its house not lost, its master still here …
Police Chief Tachibana looks at the dog again but today he does not laugh. He excuses himself and goes into the house ahead of us again as the driver takes off his cap and lights another cigarette –
‘Not short of tobacco round here these days,’ says Ishida –
But the old driver doesn’t speak. The driver just smokes.
Tachibana returns with the mother of the Widow Okayama who bows once more and welcomes us again and invites us into her home as Tachibana tells us that the old woman’s granddaughter, the daughter of the Widow Okayama, is waiting for us inside –
Okayama Kazuko bows as we enter the house –
In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore …
Kazuko invites us to sit around the unlit hearth and offers us cold tea and apologizes that they have no snacks and we all thank her for her hospitality as we take our seats and we drink our drinks and we cannot help but stare at her face and her eyes –
Her worried face and her red, red eyes …
‘I am so sorry,’ she says. ‘My grandmother, my mother and I, we had no idea about the kind of man Mr. Kodaira really was…’
She is not a country person. She was born in the city –
She heard the bombs. She saw the fires –
She hands a box to Ishida and says, ‘These are all the things that Mr. Kodaira brought. These are all the things he gave me…’
There are tears in her eyes –
Tears down her cheeks –
‘I had no idea…’
Ishida opens the box. Ishida takes out a large arabesque-patterned furoshiki cloth, a bentō box, another wristwatch and an elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch –
Nakamura Mitsuko …
I stand up. I reach across. I snatch the brooch from Ishida –
‘The other body?’ I am asking Tachibana. ‘The unidentified body you mentioned yesterday? It must be Nakamura Mitsuko –
‘How far are we from where it was found …?’
But before Tachibana can answer me, Ishida has picked up the wristwatch and turned it over in his hand to read the inscription on its back and now he is holding it out towards me –
Another watch. Another stolen watch …
I take it from him and I hold it up –
This watch. This watch …
Up to the light and I read –
Tominaga Noriko …
‘I had no idea…’
The watch still turning in my hand. I had no idea. The hearth and the room turning. I had no idea. The house and the gate turning. I had no idea. Turning and turning and turning. I had no idea …
My hands in the dirt outside their house. Day is night. In the dirt on my hands and on my knees. Night is day. Turning and turning round and around. Black is white. Round and around in the dirt and the sun. White is black. Turning and turning round and around and cursing and cursing. No truth, only lies. Itching and scratching. Gari-gari. Itching and scratching. Gari-gari. Itching and scratching –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
Lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari …
The mountains and mountains of lies –
Gari-gari. Gari-gari. Gari-gari…
These lies that make no sense –
No one who they say they are …
No sense, no sense at all –
No one who they seem.
*
Detective Ishida has stayed behind with the daughter and the mother of the Widow Okayama to go through the dates of each of Kodaira’s visits, to list each day that he visited and each item he brought, to write down each of these dates, to catalogue each of these items –
My hands are still dirty. My knees are still bloody –
I itch. I scratch. Gari-gari. I scratch. I itch –
I am in the truck again, going up another mountain and down its other side, through another tunnel and up another slope, until we stop in front of another farm where Tachibana returns with yet another old man and says, ‘This is the man who found the skeleton.’
Then this old man leads us on foot up another small mountain and into the cypress woods behind his farm, this small mountain and cypress woods that his family have tended for generation after generation, and where, for generation after generation, his family have come to chop and to cut and to clear away the dead wood and branches so that their cypresses might grow, their cypresses through which Tachibana and I follow him now, between trunk after trunk until the old farmer comes to a stop up ahead and turns back round –
‘This is where I found it,’ says the old man. ‘Right here…’
Ōaza Fukahodo, Kiyosu-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
‘A month ago,’ he says. ‘A perfect skeleton…’
‘So there was no clothing here?’ I ask him –
‘None that I could see,’ he tells me –
And again I turn and I turn, round and around again, I turn and I turn, among the trees and the branches, I turn and I turn, round and around, among these trees and their trunks, I turn and I turn –
The cicadas deafening, the mosquitoes still hungry …
As I drop to my knees and begin to search –
Again and again, again and again …
To search on my hands and –
Again and again …
Again …
On my hands and my knees, among these trees and these branches, searching for the only daughter of Nakamura Yoshizo –
‘But what are you looking for?’ asks Police Chief Tachibana. ‘She was a perfect skeleton. There were no bones missing…’
Does he stand behind you in the queue for tickets at Shibuya?
‘No bones missing,’ I agree. ‘But where were her clothes?’
Does he befriend you with tales of farmers and cheap rice?
Her brown monpe trousers and her pale yellow blouse –
Do you go to Asakusa? Then the train to Kanasaki …?
Her sandals, her socks and her underwear, all near –
This is the way, he says. This is the way, he says …
Here among these trees, among these branches –
He walks behind you. He walks behind you …
To the neatly chopped logs piled over there –
His hair stretched tight against his scalp …
Through these trees and these branches –
But it’s not the way. Never the way …
On my hands and on my knees –
His skin tight against his skull …
I’m lifting up log after log –
He looms and he leers …
Looking for her clothes –
Kodaira, Kodaira …
Under log after log –
Looms and leers …
This one last log –
Here, here …
Here, buried deep in this pile of neatly chopped logs, one rotting wet pair of brown monpe trousers, one pale yellow blouse much better preserved through last autumn and winter to this spring and this summer, preserved and protected from the seasons and their weather by these neatly chopped logs, piled one on top of another among these well-tended cypress trees, in the midst of this small wood on the side of this small mountain, in this other world, this other country, so very, very far from home, his only daughter here –
This is where Mitsuko died on the twelfth of July, 1945 …
I am still on my hands and on my knees among the logs –
This is where Mitsuko was beaten unconscious …
On my knees and with my hands, I begin to dig –
This is where she was stripped and raped …
To dig and to clean. To clean and to collect –
This is where she was throttled …
To collect all the pieces of her clothing –
This is where she was killed …
To put the pieces in my knapsack –
This is where Nakamura Mitsuko died and then was raped again, again and again, raped and then robbed of her money, her wristwatch, her round silver spectacles and her brooch …
Her elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch …
To take them back to Tokyo –
The gift from a father to …
To take it back –
His only daughter …
Back home.
*
Detective Ishida climbs into the back of the truck and we all bow and thank the daughter and the mother of the Widow Okayama for their help and for their hospitality. Now we drive back down the mountain, then up and down another until we come back out into the valley, the Black River to our right again, the Scavenging Line still to our left –
More lines of people making their way back to the station …
But today there is no talk of city-folk. No talk of Scavengers –
Lines and lines of people with their supplies on their backs …
No talk of potatoes and rice. No talk of fleas and lice –
The bones of one dead girl and the clothes of another …
Today there is only silence in the front and back –
In an old army knapsack upon my knee …
They are looking out for us again, listening out for the sound of Tachibana’s battered old mountain truck coming to a stop outside their quaint old police station, uniforms running out to bow and salute and to welcome us back, Detective Ishida and I bowing, saluting and thanking them again. Then we follow Chief Tachibana up the clean little steps into his station where the two officers who are stood behind the front desk bow and salute and welcome us again –
‘I have another message for Detective Ishida,’ says one of the men. Ishida steps forward and takes the message –
Another message. The final message …
Ishida asking to use their telephone –
‘Leave Minami in Tochigi…’
Police Chief Tachibana leading me away, down the side of the front desk, along the corridor to his office where he talks about train timetables and the journey back to Tokyo and home –
Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …
There is another soft knock on the door now as Detective Ishida steps into Police Chief Tachibana’s office –
Detective Ishida; this man I don’t know …
Tachibana asks, ‘Everything all right?’
‘Everything is fine now,’ says Detective Ishida. ‘Thank you.’
*
The entire police force of Kanuma has accompanied us down to the train station, here to wish us a safe journey and to bid us farewell. Tachibana has even held up the departure of the train for us –
Now his officers bow and then he bows –
Tachibana apologizes for the failings of himself and his men. Then he bows again, thanking us for our hard work and our help –
‘And we hope to work with you again,’ he says –
Detective Ishida and I salute Tachibana and bow to him and thank him for all his hard work and for all the hard work of his men, for all his assistance, for all his generosity and for all his hospitality –
Police Chief Tachibana salutes and bows one last time –
Then, finally, Ishida and I board the Tōbu train –
The Kanuma police clearing a path for us –
The doors close and the whistle blows –
No seats, so Ishida and I are stood –
The locomotive jolts as it starts –
In the small of Ishida’s back …
Ishida and I stood pressed together again, both of us staring through a window without glass, watching Kanuma disappear –
In the small of his back, something cold and metallic …
I try to turn from the window, away from Kanuma –
This other world, this other country …
The carriage packed tight with people and their baggage, the people not meeting our eyes, afraid for their baggage –
We are the police. We are the law …
There is no glass in any of the windows but still there’s no air in this carriage, just the stench of soiled babies –
The stench of human shit …
‘This Tōbu Line train will stop next at Momiyama station,’ begins the conductor. ‘Then Niregi, Kanasaki, Ienaka, Kassemba, Shin-Tochigi, Tochigi…’
Suddenly Ishida says, ‘I want to get off at Ienaka.’
‘Leave Minami in Tochigi. Return to HQ…’
I ask him, ‘Why do you want to do that?’
Something cold and metallic …
‘I want to look over the Baba crime scene again,’ he says. ‘We found so much they had missed at the Ishikawa and Nakamura sites that I think we should look again…’
He walks behind me …
I have a bagful of bones, scraps of clothing on my back –
I curse him…
I nod. ‘If you’re sure that’s what you want to do…’
*
The sun is setting now and soon it will be dark in Ienaka –
The shadows of the mountains lengthening …
Ishida and I pass through these ticket gates for a second time in three days and walk out of the station into the town –
No one is here, no one here at all …
The town is deserted again as I lead Ishida up the slope out of town, past the Beautiful Mountain Inn where we stayed –
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
‘Are you sure this is the right way?’
I do not answer him because he knows it does not matter, because he knows it could be any woods on any mountain and so up and down we go, up and down again we walk until we come to another narrow road, perhaps the same narrow road up which Kodaira Yoshio led Baba Hiroko on the thirtieth of December, last year –
‘Are you sure this is the place?’ he asks again –
Nishi Katamura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
I do not answer him because it does not matter. I put down my old army knapsack. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck –
I turn away from the fields and the ditches –
I stare up into the woods on the slope of the mountainside, up into the shadows of the black trunks of the trees –
Their branches and their leaves …
I point up the slope. ‘It’s that way…’
Detective Ishida follows me now as I climb up off the narrow road and into the woods, waving away the mosquitoes and bugs with my hand as Ishida walks behind me –
He walks behind me…
Between the trunks, beneath the branches and over the leaves, I lead him towards the slight hollow in the side of the mountain –
Between the trunks, beneath the branches and over the leaves, he follows me to this slight hollow surrounded by fallen logs –
Between the trunks, beneath the branches and over the leaves, he walks behind me to this slight hollow in the side of the mountain, this hollow filled with broken branches and dead leaves –
He walks behind me through the trees to here –
He walks behind me, through the trees …
‘This is the place,’ I tell him but I do not turn around –
The cicadas silent now, the mosquitoes sated here …
In this place, in this hollow, I can hear him now –
Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …
I can hear him behind me. I can feel him –
Beneath the branches and their leaves …
I can hear him raise his army pistol –
I can feel him point it at my back –
I can hear him cock the pistol –
Cold and metallic …
Now I hear him shout, ‘Get down on your knees, detective!’ I do not speak. I do not turn around. I get down on my knees –
On my knees, in these woods, in this hollow, in this place –
I feel the nose of the gun against the back of my skull –
In this place, in this hollow, in these woods –
I close my eyes and now I see her face –
I see her face and all their faces –
Masaki, Banzai! Daddy, Banzai!
Then I hear him pull the trigger. Click. I hear him pull it again. Click. I hear him pull it again –
Click. Click.
And again –
Click –
Now I get up off my knees. Click. Now I turn around. Click. Now I take his pistol by its nose. Click. Click …
Now I have his pistol in my hands –
Bang! Bang! Into his face –
Bang! Bang! And again –
The stench of shit.
*
In this place, in this hollow, between these trees, beneath these branches, Ishida tries to open his eyes now as I bend down over him to wipe away some of the blood and now he tries to speak, to thank me, and I smile, a friendly man with my small acts of kindness, a smiling, friendly man who puts an arm around him and smiles again and laughs as he talks and he talks, talking about this and talking about that, telling me that and telling me this, this about that man and that about this man, and it’s like we’ve known each other all our lives, this crying, bloody man and this smiling, friendly man, like I’m his uncle, this smiling, friendly man, or even the father he lost so very young, but I know he does not feel so safe in this smile on my face, this one smiling, friendly face between these trees and beneath these branches, this desperate, defeated man who stares up at me now with pleas for mercy and pleas for forgiveness in his black and blood-soaked eyes in this place, in this hollow he does not know, this land, this country getting darker and darker, hour after hour, and now the day is gone and the mountain is gone and there is only this place, this hollow now, between these trees, beneath these branches, but still I smile and I smile, a smiling, friendly man between the trees, beneath the branches, in this hollow, in this place, but now my teeth are pointed and my eyes are hungry, my lips wet and tongue long –
Is this when my grip tightens? My words harden…?
My lips wet and my tongue long, I am not smiling now and I am not friendly now, this man with my pointed teeth and my hungry eyes, my wet lips and my long tongue whispering what I want from him now, in this place, in this hollow, between these trees, beneath these branches, telling him exactly what I want from him and he’s turning away from me now in this place, in this hollow, between these trees, beneath these branches, but I’m pulling him back and I’m slapping his face, punching his face and kicking his legs, and he’s on his hands and on his knees among the branches and the leaves, asking me to stop and begging me to stop and pleading with me to stop, to spare his life, to let him live, to let him get away but I cannot hear him asking, I cannot hear him begging, I cannot hear him pleading because I’m pulling him deeper into this place, into this hollow, this land and this country, putting a hand around his neck and another inside his chest and he knows what I want and he knows what I want and he knows what I want and he’s telling me to take it, begging me to take it, pleading with me to take it, to take it and then leave him alone, please leave him, please leave him alone but I’m squeezing his throat, I’m squeezing his throat, I’m squeezing his throat, snot in his nose and piss down his legs and shit from his backside, as I squeeze his throat tighter and tighter, this place blacker and blacker –
As black as his hair that will never turn grey …
Now you open your eyes and you know you are still living, lying on your back on broken branches and dead leaves in this hollow, in this place, you have survived, you are one of the lucky ones, bleeding and beaten on these branches and leaves, but you have survived, you are lucky and now you raise yourself up from these branches and leaves, but this is when you know you have not survived, you are not one of the lucky ones, when you see me sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, staring at you and smoking a cigarette, a once smiling, friendly man as I finish my cigarette and get up off the trunk of this fallen tree, walking towards you beneath these branches and over these leaves, putting the bullets back into your gun –
You try to speak but you cannot speak …
Because a once smiling, friendly man has your gun in his hand and now I’m putting it into your mouth –
Bleeding and beaten here …
Here on these branches and leaves in this hollow, here in this place, I pull the trigger of your gun –
Bang!
*
In the night, he shrieks. I walk back down the mountain. Leave Minami in Tochigi. This mountain of lies. Tell me who you are working for! I hear snatches of Ishida’s confession. Not sleeping, not waking. I do not run. Return to HQ. A man could live on this mountain. Tell me! Names and places and dates. In the night, he howls. I walk across the ditches and the fields. Inspector Adachi. A man could hide on this mountain. Tell me who wanted me dead! Ishida’s confession and Ishida’s lies. I can hear him crying. I do not run. Leave Minami in Tochigi. A man could renounce the world. Tell me! Ishida mumbles about Fujita. In the night, he wails. The whistle of a train coming down the line. Return to HQ. A man could forget the world. Tell me who ordered you to kill me! Ishida moans about Senju Akira. In his sleep. Now I run. Inspector Adachi. But I cannot forget this world. Tell me! Now Ishida lies and he lies about Adachi –
The bloody mouth from which the gag has been ripped …
Lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies upon lies –
In the night, the grinding of teeth, the weeping of tears …
It is time to come down from this mountain of lies –
I can hear Ishida crying. I can hear him weeping …
To come down from this mountain of bones –
In the half-light, I can hear them all …
It is time to go home.
*
I struggle but manage to get on board at the couplings between two of the carriages. I struggle but manage to get from the couplings into the freight wagon. The freight wagon full of people packed like cattle –
Human cattle. Human cattle. Human cattle …
There is a woman attacking a rice-ball, another crunching a pickle, little kids crying and old folk snoring, itching and scratching, gari-gari, the reek of human piss, the stench of human shit –
Human shit. Human shit. Human shit …
‘No luck at all,’ someone is saying. ‘Nothing at all…’
‘They’re all so rich now they’ve no need to sell…’
‘They keep the good stuff hidden out of sight…’
‘Or they just ask for whatever they want…’
‘They aren’t satisfied with money…’
‘Some of the older ones want a fuck and if you put some effort into it and promise to come back again, they’ll give you a quart for a hundred and fifty yen, not bad for ten minutes’ fucking…’
‘You could sell it in Tokyo for two hundred yen…’
‘Your rice and your cunt,’ they laugh, ha, ha …
I stare out of the wagon, between the boards –
There is no hindsight. No foresight …
Just blindness, just darkness –
Ha, ha, ha, ha! He, he, he, he! Ho, ho, ho, ho!