by Jeremy Bates
At the end of the wing I arrived at a largish common area. Two dozen or so inmates were seated at tables. Some were watching TV together, others playing Japanese chess or keeping to themselves. I spotted Ugo Ndukwe in a far corner, reading a book. I sat down in the seat next to him.
“What are you reading?” I asked him.
“Shhh,” he said, his eyes flicking between the uniformed guards standing watch strategically around the room. “Lower your voice, my friend.” He closed his book to show me the cover. It was Stephen King’s Needful Things. “You are only allowed three books in your cell at any one time,” he told me quietly. “I take the fattest ones from the library I can find so they last me until I am allowed to exchange them.”
I said equally quietly, “The only book I have is that stupid rule book. Have you read it?”
“Of course I have. I have been detained here for the last three years. I know the rules like the back of my hand.”
“They are extreme, no?”
Mini Vin Diesel shrugged. “You are in Japan, my friend. Discipline is instilled in Japanese from a very young age. It is fundamental to their sense of integrity and order and group-thinking. The discipline you find in here is an extension of that mindset.”
“Those rules go far beyond discipline. No talking, no looking around, no sitting against the wall in your cell…”
“The purpose of this detention center—and all Japanese prisons—is not merely to punish its prisoners. It is to rehabilitate them, to make them better people, so they will not commit another crime. The rules are very harsh, yes, but they are not cruel. Once you accept them, you will appreciate them, because you will feel safe. In my time here, no other prisoner has once touched me. Yes, the guards yell at you if you break a rule, and in the case of a serious violation, they will give you shobash. But they do not carry guns. You don’t have to fear being killed here.”
“That is a comfort,” I said sardonically.
An old man several tables away was watching me with a smile on his face.
I stared at him until he closed his eyes, though the smile remained in place.
“Who is that?” I asked, nodding in the old man’s direction.
Ugo Ndukwe looked. “His name is Toshio Takata. As a child, he was pulled out of the rubble of his home when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.”
“What is he doing in prison?”
“He stole a sandwich, went to the nearest police station, showed the cop the sandwich, and told him he stole it.”
“Why would he ever do that?”
“He wanted to get arrested. He was broke and could no longer afford his rent or bills. In prison he knew he would receive a bed to sleep in and three square meals a day.”
“A mere sandwich got him thrown in here?”
“Japanese courts treat petty theft seriously. That sandwich, however, only delivered him a one-year sentence. So after he was released he took a knife from his kitchen, went to a park, and threatened a woman.”
“Mon Dieu!” I said, studying the old man, whose eyes remained closed. He was small and slender, his skin dark and leathery. He looked like a frail Buddhist monk—not like a knife-wielding criminal. I mentioned this.
“Oh, he didn’t hurt the woman,” Mini Vinny assured me. “He simply waved the knife at her, hoping she would call the police. She did. And now he’s a repeat offender.”
“Are there others like him in here?”
“Many. Japan might be a remarkably law-abiding society, but the basic state pension is very hard to live on, forcing a lot of the elderly to turn to crime to get a free ride in prison.”
“What about their children? It is tradition in Japan for them to look after their aging parents.”
“It used to be. But many young people in the provinces have moved to the cities, leaving their parents to fend for themselves. And in the larger cities like Osaka and Tokyo, rent is so expensive, and the living spaces are so small, there is no room to accommodate one’s mother or father.”
I shook my head, still looking at the smiling old man.
“If you ask me though,” Mini Vinny said in a conspiratorial way, “I don’t think our friend Toshio is in here due to financial hardships, like he claims. I think he’s lonely. His parents are dead, his wife is dead, his only child died in an accident, and he has lost contact with his two younger brothers.” He shrugged. “In prison not only does he receive room and board. He also has company.”
Ugo Ndukwe and I conversed until a bell rang, signaling the end of unstructured time, and all the prisoners returned to their cells. Inside mine, I changed out of the jumpsuit and hung it neatly on the provided hanger. Wearing only my undergarments, as I’d been given no pajamas, I consulted the rule booklet.
A section titled HOW TO SLEEP read: “During sleeping hours follow these rules: (1) Sleep in your designated place. (2) After lights are out, leave clothing, books, and other recreation material in its designated place. Do not read, talk, or stand up and walk around the room. (3) Do not cover your face with the blanket or futon while sleeping. (4) Do not, on your own accord, use the blanket as a sheet or wrap the blanket or sheet around your waist.” The rest of the rules pretty much prohibited any activity other than sleeping so as not to disturb others. The final one was the most ridiculous of all: “You must sleep quietly.”
Thank God I wasn’t a snorer.
Chapter 16
At what I presumed to be nine o’clock in the evening, the light in my cell was dimmed but not turned off, most likely so the guards could make sure I wasn’t breaking any of the inane sleep rules.
As quickly as a man on an anesthesia drip, I was out. I wasn’t sure how long I slept for, but at some point during the night I woke to find a guard shaking my shoulders.
“What…?” I said, sitting up and wondering through a film of fatigue if perhaps I’d been snoring after all.
“Come,” he said.
“Where?” I asked.
“Come!” He yanked me to my feet.
I dressed in my jumpsuit and went ahead of him out of my cell, where a second guard waited. They took me to a room on the prison’s first floor not unlike the one in which I had my medical exam.
Inside it Jaws awaited me.
“Sit,” the beefy man commanded.
I sat. “What is happening—”
“Shut up, 232!”
I clamped my jaw closed.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
“The Tokyo Detention House,” I said.
“Do you know why you are here?”
“I—” I was about to tell him once more that a mistake had been made, but he didn’t appear to be in the mood for such an answer. “I have been arrested for passport fraud.”
“And?”
I tried to remember the other charges he had told me. “Providing false statements and false information?”
“Are you asking me?”
“I am telling you what you told me.”
“Are you guilty of these crimes?”
“No,” I said simply.
Jaws scowled. “Unfortunately for you then, 232, this is going to be a very long night.”
∆∆∆
Over the next few hours Jaws, another investigator and a prosecutor took turns interrogating me. They used various degrees of coercion, extortion, leading questions, and brute force (Jaws shook me by the collar of my jumpsuit while screaming in my face on three occasions). None of these tactics were meant to get to the bottom of my passport situation (as Supa-san and Wakako Shimizu had at least endeavored to do), but to elicit an apocryphal confession that I was guilty of my alleged crimes.
I remained resolute in my assertion of innocence, and when I was finally taken back to my cell, the courtyard was bathed in rosy morning light.
Despite being bone-weary, I knew I could not return to sleep.
Roll call would be commencing shortly.
∆∆∆
When it was my turn to call
out my prisoner number I shouted, “232!” I did not raise my eyes this time, but I could sense the guard standing on the other side of my door as surely as a prey animal could catch the scent of a predator upwind.
Then the door opened and the guard came over to me. But instead of ordering me to stand so he could search me, he said, “I know you are guilty. Everybody knows.”
I said nothing, though it chilled me to know Jaws was instructing rank-and-file guards to do his dirty work for him. How far was the asshole going to go to elicit a forced confession?
The guard seized the sleeve of my jumpsuit and tugged upward. “Sit straight!”
I grunted but straightened my back as much as I could.
He pushed me down, so my rear pressed into my heels. “Sit straight!”
“I am!” I said.
“Don’t talk!” He yanked me sideways. “Sit straight!”
I tried to regain my balance, but as I did so he pushed me the other way, and I fell to my side.
“Seiza position!”
“You pushed me!”
“Don’t talk!”
He kicked me in the side.
And I knew I was about to snap.
I’d been the recipient of unlawful intimidation and abuse all night, and I was exhausted, furious, and fed up.
The guard kicked me again
“Stupid bastard!” I exploded, reverting to French in my fury. “I shit down your neck, you shit sausage son of a mole!”
Releasing the string of insults felt good.
The repercussions were not.
∆∆∆
I remained locked in my cell for the next hour or so, missing breakfast, before five guards with sanguinary bedside manners escorted me to a different cell in an older wing of the facility. It was damp, moldy, infested with cobwebs, and reeked of urine. It was also gloomy due to a semi-solid plastic panel covering the exterior of the window, filtering the natural light into depressing hues. The tatami mats were rotting in places. All the furnishings had been removed save for a filthy mattress. The guards forced me onto the mattress and told me to sit in the seiza position once again.
Deciding I’d rebelled enough for one day, I obliged.
I remained on my knees, my hands on my lap, facing the door, all morning. I was allowed a brief reprieve to eat lunch—about half the allotment of rice and soup I’d received the day before—and then I was back in my favorite pose, Zen-like on the outside, agonizing on the inside.
In truth, I don’t know how I managed getting through those twelve hours or so, especially without using the toilet once, but somehow I did (the bugs crawling around on the walls and floor at least provided me some company). When it was announced over the PA system that it was time to prepare for bed, I could barely contain my anticipation.
The current guard outside my door—they had been rotating shifts throughout the day—entered the cell. He read from a piece of paper: “Your rewards have been suspended for three weeks. Your privilege of reading and writing has been suspended for three weeks. Your work duty will be confined to your cell for ten days. You will receive a reduction in food for seven days. If you act against the rules of the prison again, you will be remanded to solitary confinement for two months or less. You are permitted to sleep now.”
He left.
∆∆∆
I loathed to lie down on the disgusting mattress without a clean sheet separating it from me, but I didn’t have one (or a pillow or cover, for that matter). I laid down squeamishly on my back, looking up at the ceiling. I thought I’d be asleep as soon as I closed my eyes. That wasn’t the case. In fact, I couldn’t sleep at all, even after the lights in the cell were dimmed. I found it hard to believe I’d only arrived in this hellhole yesterday morning. It felt like an eternity already. I couldn’t fathom how Ugo Ndukwe had coped with being locked up here for three years. And that crazy bastard Toshio for wanting to be locked up here. There had to be a better alternative to poverty or loneliness than this.
I needed to reclaim my freedom. ASAP. Spending my coming days isolated in a cell would not only be soul crushing but a colossal waste of my time. I was a busy man. I had a life outside of these concrete walls. I had to smooth over the details for the whisky tasting dinner on Thursday in Ginza. I had to confirm the guest list and fill the spots of those who couldn’t make it. I had to collect the cartons of whisky from the distributor. All of this and more should have been started yesterday. What were my contacts going to think when I didn’t get in touch with any of them? What would happen to the event? What would happen to my job? My boss wasn’t going to be happy when he received news that Gaston Green had gone AWOL. Surely he’d understand and forgive when I could explain what happened to me. Yet still…I took great pride in my work, in my professionalism, and this incarceration was unnecessarily pillorying my reputation.
Even as I allowed these thoughts to gain strength and direction, I also couldn’t help think I was worrying about my hat blowing off while standing in the path of a tornado. I had not forgotten the reason I was in prison in the first place. My passport was invalid, allegedly because the country to which it belonged did not exist. And after spending a large chunk of my sequestered day pondering this seemingly impossible conundrum, I had been able to draw only one conclusion that didn’t involve mental illness.
What had begun as a whimsical and outrageous thought had slowly fattened into a hungry worm, working its way ever deeper into the apple of my mind, solidifying there, for the more I suspended my prejudices and disbeliefs, the thought actually seemed almost reasonable, providing a unified explanation for all the turbid questions surrounding Flight JL077, why my name was absent from the passenger manifest, why the record of the ticket I’d purchased was not on the airline’s computers, why my check-in suitcase could not be accounted for, why I could not find Taured on a map, why I was unable to place a telephone call to my mother, and why both a petite woman and an obese man had each occupied the seat next to mine at different times during the flight.
And that whimsical and outrageous thought was this: At some point during Flight JL077, I had slipped between the cracks of the cosmos into a dimension that was not my own yet parallel to it in almost every way—with the glaring exception that my motherland, Taured, did not exist.
∆∆∆
At some point that night I was woken by two prison guards and once again whisked off through the prison to the interrogation room on the first floor.
“Hello, 232,” Jaws said when I entered, smiling broadly to show off his cavern of stalactites. “Do you know where you are…?”
Chapter 17
I’d only closed my eyes for perhaps a half hour when the 6:45 a.m. wake-up bell rang. I groggily forced myself to my feet. I stowed my mattress and used the toilet. Then I assumed the dreaded seiza position. While waiting for the roll call to commence, I gently probed my face with my fingertips. My bottom lip was split and my left cheek swollen and sore, both injuries courtesy of Jaws, who’d slapped me during the late-night/early-morning interrogation.
“Do not lie! The more you lie, the heavier the punishment. Tell the truth! Do penance for your crimes!”
“I have done nothing!”
“Admit your guilt, 232, and this will be over!”
“Have you ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?”
“You are guilty! You will go to hell so long as you continue to lie!”
“No, monsieur, you will go to hell for being a corrupt oyster dick—”
Slap!
In the distance I heard inmates shouting their prisoner numbers. Since I was now in a cell isolated from the others, I waited until a guard banged on my door before reciting my number. He didn’t enter to search me, presumably because I had not yet been allowed to leave the cell.
I gobbled down my breakfast (served again alongside a toothbrush and a small tube of toothpaste), brushed my teeth (doing my best not to aggravate my split lip), and waited anxiously to discover what my work duty woul
d be.
About thirty minutes later a guard carrying a large basket entered my cell.
“Sit,” he told me.
I sat on the mattress.
He set the basket in front of me, crouched, and withdrew a pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks and a paper sleeve. He slid the chopsticks into the sleeve and set the completed product on the ground.
I peeked into the basket and saw a whole lot of chopsticks and several stacks of paper wrappers.
Let the fun begin.
∆∆∆
At first I counted each pair of chopsticks I slid into their paper home, but by the time I was in the hundreds I could no longer keep the numbers straight.
While my hands worked on autopilot, I thought of my son Damien, missing him more than I’d ever believed possible. I thought of Blessica, the pleasant memories of her. I thought of my mother and brothers, the enjoyable occasions we’d spent together over the years. I thought of friends I had not kept in touch with, and those I had. I thought of vacations I had been on, parties I had attended, books I had read, anything to serve as a diversion to the mind-numbing boredom—and the dark specter of the very big elephant in the very tiny cell.
I was not a scientist; I was a pragmatist. Consequently, the possibility that parallel universes and alternate realities existed did not fill me with awe; it frightened me viscerally. Because whenever my mind inevitably fixated on this quandary, I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to my family and friends living in Taured. If the country didn’t exist in this dimension, did that mean they didn’t exist here also? Or were they well and fine, living life as usual, only in a country called Andorra?
And what of me?
