by David Peace
*
It is still early but the Keiō Hospital is still busy; queues through the gates, queues to the doors, queues in the corridors. I walk through the gates, through the doors and down the corridors; past the queues, past the patients and past the gurneys to the elevator. I push the button –
I hate hospitals. I hate all hospitals. All hospitals …
I step inside. I press another button. The doors close –
I have spent too long in hospitals …
I ride the elevator down in the dark –
I have spent too long here …
The doors open. Light returns –
In the half-light …
I walk past the tiled walls of sinks, of drains, the written warnings of cuts, of punctures, down the corridor to the mortuary and the autopsy room. I knock on the door to the office –
‘Yes,’ shouts Dr. Nakadate from inside –
I open the door. I step into his office –
The smell of death, then disinfectant …
Dr. Nakadate sat at his desk, his face unshaven, his eyes red –
‘What happened to your hair?’ he asks. ‘It’s gone grey.’
‘I almost didn’t recognize you…’
I say, ‘I’ve brought you some souvenirs from Tochigi…’
Dr. Nakadate puts down his pen. He shakes his head –
I put the knapsack down on his desk. I open it up –
I take out the clothes. I take out the bones –
Nakadate looks at them. Then he looks up at me. ‘Kodaira?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘But I think it’s going to be hard to prove, unless he confesses when faced with the evidence we have…’
Dr. Nakadate asks, ‘Why? Where’s the rest of it?’
‘Utsunomiya,’ I tell him. ‘There are three cases but only one of them was ever treated as a crime. I have asked Utsunomiya to send any remains and any reports they can find here to you.’
‘What are the names of the victims?’ he asks.
‘These bones here were taken from the scene where the body of a woman named Ishikawa Yori was found in September last year. The Kanuma police believe Ishikawa died in June. Then, at a second site, I found these pieces of clothing which I believe belong to a girl called Nakamura Mitsuko, who was reported missing last July. Just last month, Kanuma police found a skeleton which I believe to be hers, though I have not seen the autopsy report. However, I am going to take these pieces of clothing to her family to try to confirm her identity. The third case is that of a young woman named Baba Hiroko who was murdered in January this year…’
Nakadate stops writing. Nakadate nods.
‘You know about that one?’ I ask. ‘Then I can also tell you that we found no evidence to connect Kodaira to a fourth case, that of a Numao Shizue and which had been forwarded to us by Nikkō.’
‘You’ve been very busy, detective,’ says Dr. Nakadate now. ‘Don’t tell me that you’re after a promotion…?’
‘So you heard what happened to me?’
‘Yes,’ says Nakadate.
‘Who told you?’
‘Chief Kita himself,’ he says.
‘When did you see him?’
‘When I took him the Miyazaki Mitsuko autopsy report.’
‘You told me you were going to wait a few days…’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he says. ‘But I had no choice.’
I have no choice. I have no choice …
‘There’s always a choice,’ I hiss –
‘Not this time,’ says Nakadate. ‘The Public Safety Division came here asking to see all reports involving the Kempeitai…’
‘So you gave them the Miyazaki autopsy report?’
‘No,’ he says. ‘I gave it to Chief Kita.’
‘And what did Chief Kita say?’
‘He already knew about it.’
‘But he hadn’t connected it to Kodaira?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Nakadate.
‘Did Chief Kita say what he was going to do about it?’
‘He said they would question Kodaira about it.’
‘What about Chief Inspector Adachi?’
‘What about him?’
‘Did Chief Kita say anything about Chief Inspector Adachi and the Miyazaki case?’
‘No.’
‘Did the Public Safety Division ask you about Adachi?’
‘No.’
‘So what did they ask you about then?’
‘Kempeitai cases,’ he tells me again.
‘About me?’ I ask him –
Nakadate nods –
‘What…?’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he says again. ‘But they have statements. They have witnesses, detective. There was nothing I could do…’
I had no choice. I had no choice. I had no choice …
In the corridor of tiled walls and written warnings, I push the button and I wait for the elevator to come. Dr. Nakadate bows. Nakadate apologizes again. He wishes me luck and then he asks –
Finally he asks, ‘What will you do now?’
‘I have debts to pay,’ I tell him –
‘You owe them nothing…’
‘Not to the living,’ I say. ‘Debts to the dead.’
*
The last streetcar hit a youth and a woman jumped in front of a train so the streetcar is late and the trains have stopped and so I am stood in the queue next to a woman of about fifty in a pair of brown monpe work trousers similar to the rotten pair in the knapsack on my back. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. To my left is a youth of about fifteen or sixteen. There is a tear in the shoulder of the coarsely woven factory uniform he is wearing and beneath the visor of his army cap his eyes are closed and his jaw hangs open, his body swaying slowly back and forth in the morning heat, back and forth. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Back and forth, back and forth until, just as it seems he’ll fall forward flat onto his face, the youth pulls himself up –
‘Is he drunk or is he sick?’ asks the woman –
‘Probably just tired and hungry,’ I say.
The woman leans across me. She puts a hand on the youth’s shoulder. She asks him, ‘Are you all right? Where are you going?’
The youth does not answer. The woman asks him again –
This time the youth says, ‘I’m going to Ueno.’
‘Then you’re on the wrong side,’ says the woman. ‘You need to go and wait on the other side of the road for Ueno. Over there…’
The youth stares at the streetcar stop on the other side of the road. But he does not move. Under his cap, he closes his eyes –
‘Over there,’ says the woman again. ‘Can you see?’
Now the youth’s jaw hangs open again.
‘You’re on the wrong side,’ the woman persists –
But still the youth doesn’t open his eyes.
‘This bus won’t take you to Ueno…’
The youth sways back and forth again.
Now she turns to me. ‘He’s going the wrong way.’
I nod. I say, ‘But it makes no difference.’
*
I walk down the street to the Nakamura house but keep on past it and do not stop until I reach the corner. Then I stand there and I stare back at the house, the bad news I bring in the knapsack on my back. Now I turn and I walk back down the street towards the house. I stop in front of the latticed door to the entrance. I reach up to open it but it is locked and will not move. I knock on the doorframe but no one comes. I knock again, louder this time, calling out in apology –
‘Who’s there?’ asks Nakamura Mitsuko’s father.
‘Detective Minami,’ I say. ‘From the Metropolitan Police.’
I hear his slippers in the genkan. Then the door opens –
‘I am sorry to disturb you,’ I say. ‘But I have some news…’
Nakamura Mitsuko’s father does not ask me what kind of news I have brought them. Nakamura Mitsuko’s father does not ask my anything. He just nods once and inv
ites me into their house –
These things I have brought. These things I will leave …
I feel sick as I take off my boots, nauseous as I follow Mitsuko’s father into the reception room at the front of the house, as I set down my army knapsack, as I sit down on the tatami across the low table from Mitsuko’s father, as I open the knapsack –
The pain I have brought. The pain I will leave …
I take out the rotten pair of brown monpe trousers. I take out the pale yellow blouse. Finally, I take out the elliptical-shaped ammonite brooch. I place each of the items on the table before him –
Nakamura Mitsuko’s father reaches out his hand –
I tell him about the skeleton in the woods …
Mitsuko’s father picks up the brooch –
I tell him about the cypress trees …
He brings the brooch to his chest –
I tell him where she is now …
He holds the brooch there –
How she’ll soon be home …
He bows his head –
‘She was my only daughter,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’
*
I sit down on a pile of broken concrete. I take out a cigarette. I light it. There is a row of barrack housing on the other side of the road. I watch a young woman hanging out a futon from one of the second-floor windows. I watch her beat the futon with a stick, dust coming off. Every now and again she turns to say something to someone inside the house. She says it with a smile or a song in her voice. But now the woman sees me watching her and quickly pulls the futon back inside the room and closes the window. I see her peep again at me from inside the room, a small child in her arms, her eyes filled with hate and fear. I want to ask her who she thinks she is to look at me with such contempt, such fear, to ask who raised her up to look down on me. But I look away from the window. I look down at my boots, my soldiers’ boots. There is the corpse of a pregnant collie dog lying on its back just a metre or so from my right boot. Its stomach has been split open by some other animal. Half-rotten but fully formed puppies have been dragged from out of her stomach and savaged, staining the soil and the stones a deep, dark and bloody red. Now I stand up. In the Year of the Dog, I sweep dirt and dust over the black dried fetuses with the side of my soldier’s boot –
Masaki, Banzai! Daddy, Banzai!
*
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I walk through Kyōbashi Ward. I come to the battered board fence, the huge pile of rusty iron and the cabin with its glass door and tin roof. Behind the fence, two men in labourers’ clothes, one short and one tall, are carrying the small stool and the empty packing cases out of the cabin. I go through the opening in the boarding into the scrapyard. I say who I am and ask if Kobayashi Sōkichi is around –
In the sunlight and shadows, the white and the black …
‘Don’t you know?’ asks the tall one. ‘He died yesterday.’
‘Mr. Kobayashi is dead?’ I repeat. ‘How did he die?’
‘He was killed about eight o’clock last night,’ says the man. ‘He’d gone in his truck to pick up some scrap in Ōmiya and on the way back his truck turned over on a narrow bridge. Both Kobayashi and the other man who was with him were killed…’
‘I heard one of the Victors’ trucks ran them off the road,’ says the shorter man. ‘That they couldn’t get out of the way…’
‘You don’t know that,’ says the tall man. ‘It’s just gossip.’
‘No, it’s not,’ says the short one. ‘This old man who lives by the bridge, he saw the whole thing and made a statement to the police and he said that there was a convoy of four or five US army trucks heading for the bridge, which is just this old wooden bridge, that it is so narrow that it’s impossible for two vehicles to pass, and that the US army trucks were sounding their horns and flashing their lights but Kobayashi’s truck was almost on the bridge, so he couldn’t turn back but the US army trucks were coming too fast and so it looked to this old man like Kobayashi tried to pull over at the side of the bridge but that the first army truck that came across the bridge, it clipped Kobayashi and sent his truck rolling right down the banking…’
‘And he told all this to the Ōmiya police?’ I ask –
‘Yes,’ says the short man. ‘But the police said there was nothing they could do, not when it’s Shinchū Gun…’
I shake my head. I thank them for telling me the details of what happened. I ask if I might step inside the cabin for a moment –
They nod. ‘We’re just here to tidy things up.’
Now I step inside the cabin. The old colour postcard of the Itsuku-shima Shrine is still tacked to the wall. The potted sakaki tree sat on the butsudan before the three framed photographs; the three photographs and now one small candle burning on the shelf –
‘Perhaps he’s already just another ghost…’
Now I kneel down before the butsudan. I make my report –
To the three photographs and to the burning candle –
I tell them I have found justice for Hiroko –
I promise there will be vengeance.
I stand back up. I take the old colour postcard of the Itsuku-shima Shrine down from the wall. I turn it over. It’s from Hiroko –
A school trip in a happier time …
I put the postcard in the pocket of my jacket. I walk back out of the cabin, into the sunlight and the scrapyard, the two men still talking, the taller man saying, ‘You live through all that he lived through, you survive all that he survived, the war, the bombs, the fires, you survive all that just to die in a stupid traffic accident…’
‘It doesn’t make sense, does it?’ says the short one –
‘Except when your time comes, it comes…’
I thank them again and then I step back through the boarding and out into the street. I look at the buildings going up, the offices and the businesses, and I think about Kobayashi’s son, still chopping wood on the Amur River, not knowing his father died in a traffic accident at eight o’clock last night, not knowing his aunt died of a broken heart, not knowing his cousin was raped and murdered, not knowing he is better off dead, he’s better off dead, better off dead –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
*
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I am hungry and I am starving. I need a drink and a cigarette. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I walk through another makeshift market, through its stalls and its stands. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I stop before a stall where a young woman is selling sweet potatoes. I stare at the potatoes and now at the woman –
Her sunburnt skin and her short skirt …
The frayed hem of her skirt hiked up, the woman sits on a crate with one leg crossed over the other –
‘Are you just going to stare up my skirt, old man?’ she asks. ‘Or are you going to buy a potato…?’
I blush now and I look away.
The woman uncrosses her legs and stands up. She wipes her face and she wipes her neck. She looks at me and she laughs –
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘They’re just two yen.’
I take out the money and I hand it to her –
‘Help yourself,’ she laughs now.
I pick up a sweet potato and I begin to walk away. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I glance round at the woman but she has already sat back down on her crate, one leg crossed over the other –
Her sunburnt skin and her short skirt …
And now I see him; I see him among the crowds, among the stalls; caked black in rags and filth, his face and his hands covered in blisters and boils, the boy is weeping pus and tears. I keep walking through the crowds, through the stalls. I glance back again. I see him again, among the crowds, among the stalls, caked black in rags and filth, covered in blisters and boils –
He walks behind me …
I keep walking. I am hungry and I am starving. I need a drink and a cigarette. I itch and I scr
atch. Gari-gari. I turn a corner and I turn another. I glance back over my shoulder but I cannot see him. Now I stop walking. I sit down in another ruin, among another pile of rubble. I bite into the potato –
It is cold, it is old …
But it still tastes hot, it still tastes fresh to me. Now a shadow falls across my face and hands and I look up. The boy is stood before me, caked black in rags and filth, covered in blisters and boils, just centimetres before me –
He points …
His belly distended, his bones protruding, he smells of rotten apricots. Now he raises his hand and he points his finger at me –
His yellow eyes, stained a deep, dark and bloody red …
I start to break the sweet potato in half, to give him one half, but the boy snatches the whole potato out of my fingers and now, with his other hand, he throws dirt and dust into my face –
Dust into my eyes as he turns and he runs –
Runs away weeping and laughing –
Tears and pus, Ha, ha, ha, ha …
Daddy, Banzai!
*
I knock on the door of the old wooden row house in Kitazawa, not far from the Shimo-Kitazawa station. There is no answer. I knock again. There is still no answer. I try the door. It is not locked. I open it. There is silence. I step inside the genkan. The kitchen is deserted –
I call out, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Murota? Excuse me…?’
But there is still no answer, still only silence –
I take off my boots. I step inside the house. I walk across the old tatami mats. I go through the shabby curtain that partitions the downstairs. Nothing but stale air and shadows –
Nothing but shadows here …
I go up the steep, narrow wooden stairs. There are two rooms, one at the back and one at the front of the house. The room at the front is the larger one. There is a chest of drawers stood in one corner on the dirty mats. I open the drawers. They are empty. The window in the back room has been left open. There are mosquitoes here. There is also a closet but, again, it is empty –
Nothing but shadows now …
I go back down the wooden stairs. Back through the shabby curtain. I stand in the kitchen. There are mosquitoes here too. The smell of old meals. Murota Hideki and the woman who called herself Tominaga Noriko are long gone –
No one who they seem …
