Patient X

by David Peace

  To last forever …

  ‘And this one is the brain of a businessman,’ the doctor is saying, but you are staring out of the window, staring at a brick wall stained with moss, broken glass bottles embedded along its top; to keep people in, to keep people out?

  ‘For some reason I know not,’ you tell the doctor, ‘I feel closer to the sister I never knew than to my mother. But if Hatsu was still living, she would be over forty, and maybe she would look as my mother looked, in that upstairs room, puffing on her pipe, drawing fox-faced people.’

  The doctor nods, smiles and says, ‘Please do go on …’

  But you do not go on. You do not speak. You do not tell him that you often feel there is a woman in her forties somewhere watching over your life; a phantom not exactly your late mother, not exactly your dead sister. And probably it’s just the effect of nerves wracked by coffee and tobacco, but perhaps there is the ghost of a presence somewhere, giving you occasional glimpses of itself and a world beyond this world –

  Some-where, over-there …

  The anniversary of your sister’s death is the fifth of April. The anniversary of your mother’s death is the twenty-eighth of November. Her posthumous name is Kimyōin Myōjō Nishin Daishi.

  You cannot remember the anniversary of your birth father’s death, nor recall his posthumous name.

  3. ‘Father / Chichi’

  You are eating spoon after spoon of ice cream in the Uoei restaurant in Ōmori, and your father is saying, pleading, ‘Come back, Ryūnosuke. Leave that house in Honjo, and come back home with me. You will want for nothing, Ryūnosuke. Here: have another bowl of ice cream …’

  Your mother mad, your father busy, he gave you away. He gave you away to your mother’s brother, Akutagawa Dōshō, and his wife Tomo, a childless couple. And you are glad he gave you away, you are happy he gave you away. But he does not leave you alone, he does not stay away; he tries to take you back, to steal you away, with bananas, pineapples and ice cream. ‘Here, son, here: have another bowl, and another …’

  Your father was in the dairy business and, apparently, quite successful, ‘able in word and ingratiating in manner’, as Confucius said. But he was also a very short-tempered man, a man who had seen military service, who had fought in the Boshin War of 1868, fighting with the Satsuma rebels against the Tokugawa at Toba-Fushimi, who had fought and won; your father was not a man accustomed to losing, to accepting defeat –

  So much gained for some …

  ‘One more time,’ he bellows, face red.

  You are in your third year of Middle School, and you are playing wrestling with your father. You have thrown him easily with your speciality judo throw, the ōsotogari outside thigh sweep, and sent him sprawling. But your father springs to his feet again, his arms spread and squaring up, advancing towards you now. Again, you throw him too easily, much too easily –

  So much lost for others …

  ‘Another go!’ he shouts.

  You know he is angry. You know if you throw him again, you will have to wrestle him again, endlessly until he wins, all the time his temper rising, his attacks becoming more aggressive. And sure enough, he comes at you again, and you are grappling again. And so now you let him wrestle with you for a while, a little while, before falling, deliberately falling back onto the floor, deliberately losing, deliberately a –

  ‘Loser,’ your father gloats. ‘Loser!’

  As you get back to your feet, as you dust yourself down, as your father struts about the room, you glance at your mother’s younger sister, the woman who is now your father’s second wife, who has been sat there watching you both wrestle, and she smiles at you now, and she winks at you now, and you know she knows, she knows you let your father win, you let your father have this day. Just this day, one last day –

  ‘Father hospitalised …’

  You are twenty-eight years old and you are teaching in Yokosuka when you receive the telegram. Your father has the Spanish flu. You travel to Tokyo. You sleep in the corner of his hospital room for three days. You are bored beside his deathbed.

  On the fourth day, you receive a call from your friend Thomas Jones. He is about to leave Tokyo and he invites you for a farewell dinner at a geisha teahouse in Tsukiji. You leave your father, hanging onto his life by a thread, and set off to the teahouse.

  You have a most enjoyable evening in the company of four or five geisha. Around ten o’clock you leave, and you are heading down the narrow stairs to the waiting taxi when you hear a soft, beautiful, feminine voice calling after you, ‘Ah-san …’

  You stop on the stair. You look back up towards the top of the staircase. One of the geisha is staring down at you, her eyes fixed on yours. You do not speak. You turn back, going through the door, out into the taxi.

  All the way back to the hospital, you are thinking of the geisha’s fresh, young face, her hair set in a Western style, and her eyes, her eyes. You do not think once of your father, dying in the hospital.

  He is waiting impatiently for you. He sends your two aunts outside the two-panel decorative folding screen by his bed. He beckons you towards him, gripping your hand, caressing and stroking it, and he begins to tell you of things-long-past, things you knew nothing of, of the time when he first met your mother, of the years they had been married, of how they had gone shopping together for a tansu storage chest, of when they had ordered sushi to be delivered to the house. Inconsequential things, trivial things. But as he tells you these things, as you listen to these things, you feel your eyelids becoming hotter and hotter, and you see the tears flowing down his cheeks, his emaciated and wasted cheeks, your own eyes filling with tears; confused and delirious now, your father is pointing at the folding screen –

  ‘Here comes a warship! Here comes a warship! Look at the flags! Just look at all the flags flying! Banzai! Everybody, banzai!’

  Your father dies the next morning, without much pain, without much suffering, or so the doctors assure you.

  You don’t recall your father’s funeral at all. But you do remember that when you were accompanying his body from the hospital back to his house, a great, full spring moon was shining down on the roof of the hearse as you crossed the city.

  4. Tokyo: A Mental-scape

  You hate the parents who gave you life, who gave you away, twice gave you away. But you love your adoptive family, who took you in, who gave you a home, especially your mother’s elder sister, your Aunt Fuki. You are happy with your adoptive family, you are happy with your Aunt Fuki; you are happy here, happy here in this happy house, this happy house next door to poverty –

  You love the streets around your house, the streets of Honjo, on the eastern bank of the Sumida River. There is not one single beautiful street, not one single attractive house in all of Honjo. The shops are drab, the road a swamp in winter and dust in summer and leading only to the Big Ditch. The Ditch floating with weeds, the Ditch stinking of shit –

  But this is the place you love: the Ekōin Temple, Halt-Pony Bridge, Yokoami, and the Hannoki Horse Ground; these are the places which will haunt you for the rest of your life, your thoughts and your dreams, their dusty streets, their flooded streets, their shabby houses and their open sewers, and their nature: roof-top grasses, spring clouds in puddles, the tall trees by the temples and the willows along the open sewers; this is the nature you will always love the most, the nature which lives faintly, subtly amidst all the artifices of our so-called human civilisation, blooming and flowering, with all its beauty, with all its brutality –

  With all its mystery …

  Every morning you walk through Honjo with your adoptive father, you walk and you talk, your heart bursting with joy, so happy and so curious, so filled with love, so filled with wonder, until, until –

  Until one morning, the early glow fading in the sky, you and your adoptive father are walking towards your favourite place, the Hundred-Piling Bank of the Sumida River. There are always fishermen here, and you like to sit and watch them fish as y
our adoptive father tells you stories of the fox-spirits he has seen on his walks, fantastic stories, magical stories. You reach the Hundred-Piling Bank, but this morning the place is deserted. The only things moving are the sea-lice crawling in the gaps of the stone walls of the broad bank. You start to ask where the fishermen have gone, why there are no fishermen today. Your adoptive father points down at the river, towards the water, and he says, ‘Look at that …’

  And you look, and you see –

  Below your feet, between the pilings, among the garbage, among the weeds, a shaven-headed corpse bobs up and down upon the waves, rising and falling, falling and rising, up and down, with the current, on the tide.

  You look away, you turn away, turning away into your adoptive father, hiding away in his coat. But he takes your arm, and he takes your face, and he says, ‘Look, Ryūnosuke! Look! You cannot turn your face from horror, you cannot look away from death. You cannot hide, you have to look. So look, Ryūnosuke! Look and see …’

  And now you look, and yes, now you see, see this place for what it really is, see this world for what it truly is: corpses floating in its rivers, hanging from its trees, bodies falling by its wayside, burning in its fires, the factories on both banks, these rows upon rows, the shacks upon shacks, these endless shacks, the railway tracks and the utility poles, its affluence and poverty, the satiated and the starving, all crawling in its gaps, bobbing up and down, rising and falling, pretending and pretending, pretending everything is fine, pretending everything’s all right, nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong: there’s no deceit, there are no lies, no lies, no lies. No smell of piss. No smell of shit. No smell of death. No cheap cake in a fancy box. No low-grade sake in an expensive bottle. No patched-up clothes, no patched-up screens. No chipped wooden desks, the baize worn thin and varnish gone. No faded red cushions, all threadbare and darned. No artifice, no pretence. No self-deceit. No fathers who are no fathers, no mothers who are no mothers. No scars, no scars across your heart, your broken, broken heart; all lies, all lies –

  And now, now you turn; and yes, yes, you run; faster than you’ve ever run before, faster than you’ll ever run again, down these dusty streets, past these open sewers, to your house and through your gate, through your door and up your stairs, to your aunt in her room, always in her room, behind her screens, always behind her screens, your face buried in her breast, your tears burning through her clothes, her arms wrapped around your back, her hands running through your hair, she is whispering, she is whispering, ‘There, there, Ryūnosuke. There, there, my dear, dear child. This is the world of men, this is their world of lies. But I am here, I am here. And I will never leave you, never leave you, Ryūnosuke. Never, never let you go …’

  Your face still buried in her breast, your tears still burning through her clothes, Fuki opens a book: Uji Shūi Monogatari. Fuki turns its pages, their oral folk tales. Not looking, not reading, Fuki says, ‘Mukashi, mukashi, three sisters lived in the Old Capital in their family home. Strangely, against all custom, against all tradition, the middle sister married first, the youngest next, but the eldest of the sisters never married. Why, we do not know, she would not say. But people whispered, as people do, of honour lost, of secret shame, a drunken uncle, a forced encounter. A child, was there a child? Given away, and lost to her? We do not know, she would not say, would never say. But with no husband of her own, the eldest sister lived on in the family home, tending to her father and her mother, her elder brother, too, her younger sisters marrying, her younger sisters departing, leaving her alone, alone in her room. And so in time, her father then her mother died, and her brother took a wife and brought her to the house. But still, still the elder sister lived on in the family house, alone in her room, in her room, alone in her room, until, in time, she too fell ill and died.

  ‘Her body was left in her room until her younger sisters returned, and with the rest of the household they then took her to the burning ground. But when they reached that place of smoke and ash, when they were about to unload the coffin from the carriage, in preparation for the usual funeral rites, then they noticed the coffin was strangely light, its lid ajar. Yes, the body was gone! All were shocked, for the body could not possibly have fallen out on the way to the burning ground. Yet still they retraced their steps to make certain. Of course, all the way back to the house, they found not a thing, not a trace. But on reaching the house, on entering her room, there she was, lying there alone in her room, lying there as though she had never moved.

  ‘Throughout the night, the family and the mourners discussed what best to do. At dawn, they put the body back inside the coffin and carefully sealed the lid, waiting then until dusk and another chance to proceed with the cremation. But when night finally began to fall, again they found the coffin lid open and the body lying on the floor in its former room. Now the family and the mourners were terrified, and still further frightened when they tried to move the body; they could not move her body. The body simply would not move. No matter how many tried, no matter how hard they tried. The body would not move. For her arms were roots, for her legs were roots. The bones in her ribs, the bones in her back. Planted in the floor, rooted in the ground. Her hair now twine, her hair now vine.

  ‘So there she was, where she meant to stay. You like it here, asked one of her younger sisters. All right then, fine; if that is what you want, then this is where we’ll leave you. But we are going to have to get you out of sight, at least! And so they took up the floor, and they made a hole, and yes, she was as light as air when they lowered her through the hole and into the ground.

  ‘And so here they buried her, under the floor, building a good-sized mound over her. But then the family and the servants all moved away, since no one wanted to stay on in a house with a corpse. And so, over the years, the house fell to ruin and eventually disappeared. Only the mound remained. But not even the common people seemed to be able to live near the mound. For people began to claim awful things happened there. And so soon, soon, the mound stood all alone. But in time, in time, a shrine was built upon it, and they say the shrine still stands there, over her rooted corpse.’

  In her room, always in her room, behind her screens, always behind her screens, your face still buried in her breast, your tears now drying on her clothes, her arms still wrapped around your back, her hands now smoothing down your hair, Fuki is whispering, she is whispering, ‘These are the stories you should know, Ryūnosuke, these are the tales I will tell you. To teach you of the world of men, to warn you of their world of lies. For all men are demons, Ryūnosuke, this world their hell. But don’t cry, Ryūnosuke, don’t cry, for I will protect you, I will save you. Protect you from these demons, save you from their hell. For I will never leave you, Ryūnosuke, never leave you, never, never let you go …’

  You love your Aunt Fuki. You love her more than anyone. She will never marry, she will live with you for the rest of your life. You will argue with her, you will quarrel with her. But you will never stop loving her –

  ‘I will never, never let you go, I promise, I promise …’

  Never stop loving her for the rest of your life –

  ‘And so do you promise me, Ryūnosuke? Promise you will never leave me, never leave me for the rest of my life …’

  In her room, always in her room, behind her screens, always behind her screens, in her arms, always in her reach, you nod and you say, ‘I do.’

  5. The House of Books

  In her room, behind her screens. You are a weak and sickly, cosseted child. Often constipated, often feverish. You are subject to convulsions, you are plagued by headaches. To constant convulsions, by perpetual headaches. A nervous child, a frightened child. Always frightened, always afraid: afraid of the dark, afraid of the light. The sun and the moon. The stars in the night, the clouds in the sky. The sky and the sea, the water and the earth. The ground beneath you, the land about you. The air you breathe, the very air you breathe. Afraid of the living, afraid of the dead. Always here, always there. T
he people who came before you once, the people who come before you still. The living and the dead, the dead and the living. People, people. Afraid of the people, so afraid of the people. The people and the world, their world and it all. Afraid, afraid, afraid of it all –

  Don’t be scared, Ryūnosuke …

  In the house, its other rooms. You are afraid, even more afraid. Afraid of the doors, afraid of the floors. That open, that tilt. The dust from the ceiling, the dust on the floor. Afraid of the tatami, afraid of the lamps. The old tatami, the dim lamps. The family altar, its mortuary tablets with their blackened gold leaf. The family shrine, its two earthenware tanuki sat on red cushions. They sit in a dark storage room, a candle lit before them. Every night, every day. You are afraid, you are afraid. Afraid of the screens, their peeling paper. Afraid of the windows, their looming shadows. The shadows and the whispers, the whispers outside and in –

  Don’t be scared …

  But in one room, in just one room. Upon the walls, above the door. There are prints and there are scrolls. From another time, a better time. And in the alcoves, and on the floor. There are books, so many books. From a different world, a better world. And in that room, in just this room. You are less afraid, much less afraid. First curious, intrigued. Then summoned, now seduced. By the pictures, by the scrolls. And by the books, by all of these books –

  Don’t be scared, they whisper. We can bring you to another time, we can take you to a different world. In their piles, in their rows. A better time, a better world, they whisper. Come closer, Ryūnosuke. Come closer and see. You walk towards the piles of books, you walk towards the rows of books. We will be your guard, we will be your shield. And you reach out your hand, now you take up a book. Your guard and your shield. And you open up the book, open up the book and see. Another time, a different world. You see, you see. A better time, a better world. This is the start, the start of it all …