Patient X

by David Peace

  And with these words Yasukichi left Ryūnosuke standing before the grave, in the green grove, at the dark frontier, in his raincoat, his Western umbrella propped up against the granite fence which enclosed the grave of Natsume Sōseki, Kanzan and Jittoku cawing and fighting with each other, screaming over his head, the tenant of the grave whispering to him –

  ‘How can we escape, except through faith, madness or death …’

  *

  A new year, a new start. A new life, the writer’s life. You have resigned from the Naval Academy, you have signed an exclusive contract with the Osaka Mainichi newspaper. You will move back with your wife to live in Tabata with your adoptive parents and Aunt Fuki, and leave this house behind. In Kamakura, by the sea, with its lotus pond, with its bashō plants. The rain on the pond, the drops on the leaves. On the pond and on the leaves. The quiet life, that quiet life. No more, no more. In the bathroom, in the mirror. You stare at your face, your skin and your skull. You stick out your tongue, you pull down your lower eyelid. Turning on the light, turning off the light. Here and then gone, gone and then here. You are the magician, you are the sorcerer. In your tuxedo, in your top hat. On the stage, before the box. The lights in your face, the saw in your hand. You flex the blade, you test its teeth. You set about your work, the saw through the wood. You saw and you saw, you saw and you saw. You drop the saw, you part the box. The box in half, the man in half, the man inside, sawn in two. On the edge of their seats, the audience gasp. You push the box back together again, and you stare down at the wound in the wood. The drum roll, the audience waiting. Rolling again, still waiting. On the stage, before the box. You stare down at the wound, you search for the spells. To make the box whole, to make the man whole. On the stage, before the box. The man sawn in two, the man in two halves. The man you are, this man is you. The man who smokes Golden Bat, the man who smokes Shikishima, the man who abstains, the man who drinks, the man who is faithful, the man who cheats, the man who is a good father, the man who is a bad father, the man who is a good son, the man who is a bad son, the man from the East, the man of the West, the man who believes, the man who does not, the man who lies, the man who lies; this man, these men, these men are you, these men are me, these men are us. But we lack the spells, for we lack the will. So we cannot put ourselves together again, you can never put me together again.

  The Yellow Christ

  About ten years ago, for the sake of art,

  I was in love with Christianity – above all, I loved Catholicism.

  Even today, in my memory, I have a vivid image –

  of the Japanese Temple of the Holy Mother in Nagasaki.

  But I was nothing but a crow,

  pecking through seeds already sown,

  by Hakushū Kitahara and Mokutarō Kinoshita.

  ‘Man of the West’, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 1927

  In nineteen hundred and nineteen, in the eighth year of Taishō, I am waiting; waiting for the morning with open eyes, for the house to wake and rise, waiting for the smell of miso soup, for the taste of oatmeal, milk and boiled eggs, waiting for the touch of newsprint, to read the news of the price of rice, always the price of rice, the price of rice and …

  JAPAN’S LAST EFFORT ON RACIAL DISCRIMINATION

  Will Ask Powers to Make Declaration Separate from Covenant, Recognising Principle of Equality

  ADOPT DRASTIC STEPS IN KOREA

  Situation Grows Worse – Tokyo Decides on Stern Measures

  THE DEVASTATION IN YOKOHAMA

  3,700 Buildings Burnt, 20,000 Are Homeless, 50,000,000 Yen Loss

  EARTHQUAKE IN TOKYO

  An earthquake was felt in Tokyo at 9:53 o’clock yesterday, lasting about two minutes. The centre was off the coast of Kinkazan, 120 miles from Tokyo.

  PERSONAL AND LOCAL

  Mr Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 27, and Mr Kan Kikuchi, 31, the esteemed men of letters, will leave Tokyo this morning, Sunday 4th May, for Nagasaki and are expected to return later this month.

  … waiting to shave, to wash and to dress, to put on my coat and pick up my hat, to stand in the genkan, to put on my shoes and pick up my cases, to say goodbye to my family and wife, and leave this house, to leave my house, the taxi waiting, to cross the city, to get to the station, to stand on the platform, to wait on the platform, to wait for Kikuchi, to meet Kikuchi, to board the train, the Super Express, to leave this city, this city behind, for Tokyo to fade, to fade and to vanish, to speed and to speed, through this land, to watch the cities come and go, their factories and chimneys to pass us by – Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Okayama, Hiroshima, Ogōri, on to Shimonoseki, to cross the Tsushima Strait by ferry to Mojikō, then on through Kokura on to Hakata – station to station through station to station, I’m waiting, I am waiting; waiting to see the sun on the bay, the rhombus kites soar in the sky, swallows dart over roofs, ducks sail under bridges, bananas and mikans piled up by the roads, the Holy Mother Temple high on the hill, so high on the hill, so tall in the sky, waiting to climb, to climb that hill, to follow in the steps, the steps of the masters, of Mokutarō and Hakushū, those steps of the masters in the steps of the Master, and the songs they sang, O the songs they sang, waiting to hear, to hear those songs, waiting to sing, to sing those songs, to hear and to sing those songs, myself …

  I believe in the heretical teachings of a degenerate age,

  the witchcraft of the Christian God,

  The captains of the black ships, the marvellous land of the Red Hairs,

  The scarlet glass, the sharp-scented carnation,

  The calico, arrack and vinho tinto of the Southern Barbarians:

  The blue-eyed Dominicans chanting the liturgy who tell me even in dreams

  Of the God of the forbidden faith, or of the blood-stained Cross,

  The cunning device that makes a mustard seed as big as an apple,

  The strange collapsible spyglass that looks even at Paradise.

  They build their houses of stone, the white blood of marble

  Overflows in crystal bowls; when night falls, they say, it bursts into flame.

  That beautiful electric dream is mixed with the incense of velvet

  Reflecting the bird and beasts of the world of the moon.

  I have heard their cosmetics are squeezed from the flowers of poisonous plants,

  And the images of Mary are painted with oil from rotted stones;

  The blue letters ranged sideways in Latin or Portuguese

  Are filled with a beautiful sad music of Heaven.

  Oh, vouchsafe unto us, sainted padres of delusion,

  Though our hundred years be shortened to an instant, though we die on the bloody cross,

  It will not matter; we beg for the Secret, that strange dream of crimson: Jesus, we pray this day,

  bodies and souls caught in the incense of longing.

  … ‘Jashūmon Hikyoku’, the ‘Secret Song of the Heretics’; to hear it myself, to sing it myself and believe it myself, to believe it myself, a man of the East at this gate to the West, this tapestry of East and West, this ‘Little Rome’, my ‘Little Rome’, my Nagasaki; for my Nagasaki, I am waiting …

  *

  Tokutarō Nagami was waiting in the genkan of his family’s large house in Nagasaki. He was anxious and he was nervous, and he had been waiting a long time. His guests were supposed to have left Tokyo on April 30th, arriving on the first of May. However, they had been delayed and had not left Tokyo until yesterday, May 4th. Furthermore, adding to his anxiety, adding to his nerves, he had never met his guests before. Their visit had been arranged through an elder mutual acquaintance, Kōichirō Kondō, and so he knew his guests only by reputation, and by their works.

  In the genkan, Tokutarō Nagami sighed and looked at his watch again: it was almost six o’clock. He knew he should have gone to the station, he knew he should have met their train. However, Mr Akutagawa had been so apologetic for the delay, for the inconvenience they were causing, so determined not to put him to any further trouble, and
insistent that they would take a taxi from the station to his house. Yet still there was no sign of them. He knew he should have met their train, he knew …

  Now Nagami heard the sound of an automobile, its brakes and its doors. He called for the servants, he opened the doors to the genkan and he went down the garden path to the gate of the house.

  Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was standing in the street, a suitcase in his hand, another at his feet, a coat over his arm and a hat in his hand. He was wearing a fashionable Western suit, with a white shirt and a dark tie, and traditional geta on his feet. His hair brushed back and long, his face was tired but smiling, an apologetic smile –

  ‘I am so very, very sorry to have kept you waiting,’ said Akutagawa, bowing deeply, ‘and for all the inconvenience I have caused you. But thank you for your kindness and for your hospitality. I am Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and I am very pleased to meet you.’

  ‘I am Tokutarō Nagami,’ said Nagami, bowing, ‘and I am very pleased to meet you, too. Welcome to Nagasaki, and welcome to my house.’

  Akutagawa bowed again and said, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But may I ask’, said Nagami, glancing up and down the empty street outside his home, ‘what has happened to Mr Kikuchi?’

  Akutagawa smiled again, his apologetic smile, and said, ‘I am afraid, soon after we passed through Kobe, Kikuchi began to complain of a severe headache. He was concerned he had not yet fully recovered from the attack of Spanish flu he had only recently suffered, and worried he would infect me again, for I have already been stricken twice, and feared he might bring the epidemic to your own house. And so he alighted the train at Okayama, intending to head to Sanuki, which is the place he was born.’

  ‘How terrible,’ exclaimed Nagami.

  ‘Really,’ said Akutagawa. ‘I have heard it is quite charming.’

  ‘No,’ said Nagami. ‘I mean, how terrible that Mr Kikuchi is so ill. I only hope he managed to make it to Sanuki …’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Akutagawa. ‘There is a beautiful symmetry, is there not, in returning to the place of your birth in order to die?’

  ‘Well, I sincerely hope and pray it does not come to that,’ said Nagami, staring at the cold and blasé man of letters before him.

  Akutagawa smiled, then said, ‘I am sorry, sincerely. I should not make such jokes when we have not met before. I have worried you unnecessarily. For all his talents, Kikuchi is a worse hypochondriac than even me. I suspected all along his headache was the result of too much conversation, and too many cigarettes, in the confines of our carriage. And when I reached Mojikō, my suspicions were confirmed. A telegram at the terminal informed me that our Lazarus has risen from the dead, and is once more making his way to Nagasaki, though he plans to spend tonight in Onomichi.’

  ‘Oh, what a relief,’ exclaimed Nagami.

  Akutagawa smiled again, his apologetic smile again, and said, ‘Sincerely, I am sorry to have alarmed you so, Mr Nagami. Please forgive me …’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Nagami. ‘In fact, I must apologise to you, making you stand out here in the street, answering my questions, after you have travelled the length of the country to be here. Let us get you inside, Sensei …’

  Nagami led his guest through the gate and through the garden, into the house and into the room he had had prepared. ‘I hope this room will be both comfortable and interesting for you. During the early years of Meiji, this room was used for meetings between the magistrates of Nagasaki and the trade ministers of England. I only hope it will be adequate.’

  ‘It is more than adequate,’ said Akutagawa. ‘Thank you.’

  Nagami smiled, relieved, and said, ‘You are most welcome. And a bath has already been prepared for you. And though I know you must be exhausted by your journey, I hope the bath will refresh you, and you will join me then for dinner. I hope it will be to your liking and taste, but I have arranged a Nagasaki shippoku dinner to welcome you …’

  ‘I am sorry to have put you to so much trouble,’ said Akutagawa. ‘But thank you. I very much look forward to such a dinner.’

  ‘You are too kind,’ said Nagami. ‘The food will be nothing much, but I look forward to seeing you in an hour so …’

  Now Nagami left his guest to the maids, and went back to his study to pace and to prepare, rehearsing his conversation, practising his lines, hoping not to bore his visitor from the capital, picking up the celebrated works of this famous author, rereading a passage here, a passage there …

  ‘It is an honour to welcome you to my home,’ said Nagami, seating his guest before one of the red round tables on the tatami mats in the main dining room, the red round table filled with dishes of Chinese origin, dishes of Portuguese origin, Dutch and Japanese. ‘This is our shippoku dinner, and you may eat from these dishes in the order you prefer. But our custom is to first begin with an ohire soup and a short speech from the host …

  ‘And so please, let us begin with the soup …’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa.

  After the soup, after his short speech, having introduced each of the dishes to his guest, and while they ate, Nagami then said, ‘I must say, I greatly admired your recent Life of Saint Christopher. It is a stylistic tour de force, so impressive in the way in which you use the language of the Japanese translation of Aesop’s Fables by the sixteenth-century Jesuits.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa. ‘It is the only work in which I myself have any confidence and, in truth, I am finding it hard to move on from. But I feel the same way about this pork, it really is quite delicious …’

  Nagami smiled. ‘Thank you. If you are so taken with the tōbani, I must ensure you taste one of the dōngpōròu buns in our Shinchi Chinatown. But going back to your Life of Saint Christopher, I feel it is at least the equal of Monsieur Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony …’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa again. ‘You are too generous, though I believe La Légende de Saint-Julien to be the better work and a story that has been a greater influence. I fear, though, the quality of your local sashimi will be a bad influence, deterring me from ever eating the fish of Tokyo again!’

  Nagami laughed. ‘Now you are being too generous, Sensei, thank you. But you have written a great number of stories on a Christian theme, so many wonderful stories, and so may I ask from where your interest stems? Were you yourself raised in a Christian household, Sensei?’

  ‘No,’ said Akutagawa. ‘No, not even a particularly religious house in any sense. However, it was and is a superstitious house, and I am told, though of course I do not recall, that I was abandoned as a baby on the steps of a Christian church in Tsukiji, to be found by a certain Bishop Williams, who handed me over to one of the managers of the dairy shops owned by my father, and who then returned me to my parents as a foundling …’

  ‘How fascinating,’ said Nagami.

  ‘You may say so, it may sound so, but the whole charade was an attempt to protect me from the ill omens of my parents’ age at my birth. And, I have to say, it was an attempt which seems to have been wholly futile.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Nagami. ‘And forgive me then for being so insistent, but do you think that is from where your interest in Christianity comes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Akutagawa, a melancholy smile upon his lips. ‘Perhaps the bishop did baptise me before returning me. Perhaps that would explain why then I have always felt drawn to the Bible and its tales …’

  ‘Yet this is your first time in Nagasaki, is it not?’

  ‘It is,’ said Akutagawa. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Nagami, ‘in a story such as your Death of a Martyr, you write so convincingly, so realistically of this place and its history.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa.

  ‘I must confess, the references to ancient local sources at the end of the story had me foolishly scouring the Prefectural Library, until I realised these texts had been but a part of your fiction, a most believable deception.’

  ‘Then I mus
t apologise,’ said Akutagawa. ‘It was not my intention to make a fool of my reader. Only to entrance them with the tale.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nagami, now rising from his low red round table, ‘you succeeded, and admirably so, I must say. But now, if you are not too tired, before retiring for the night, may I trouble you to visit my own library, to show you some of the trifles I have collected, bits of local colour …?’

  ‘I would be delighted,’ said Akutagawa. ‘Thank you.’

  Nagami led Akutagawa from the dining room, down a corridor, to his library and study, the lamps already lit and waiting. And there, one by one, Nagami showed Akutagawa various pictures, books and objects; Hasami porcelain and vidro glass from his collection of Nagasaki objets; a painting of a Dutch house at Hirado, a plate depicting a Dutch ship anchored in the bay, old books illustrated with scenes of life in Dejima.

  Akutagawa was very taken with the glassware, but naturally seemed most interested in the relics from the city’s Christian past, particularly a white porcelain statue of the Bodhisattva Kannon, about a foot in height, which had been worshipped in secret as the Virgin Mary by Japanese Hidden Christians during their long, long years of persecution.

  ‘How rare are such statues,’ asked Akutagawa, turning the figure over in his hands, examining it intently. ‘Are they hard to come by?’

  Nagami shook his head. ‘White statues such as this are relatively common. More scarce are the ones carved in black ebony.’

  ‘Really,’ said Akutagawa, looking up from the figure. ‘There were black robed Marys?’

  Nagami nodded. ‘Oh, yes. In fact, I have seen one, but only once. It belongs to the family of a friend of mine from university. It was quite beautiful, about the same height as this one, the body carved from black ivory but with a face of white ivory and a touch of red coral on the lips. And the necklace which hung around its neck was styled after a Christian rosary with a cross, and the cross itself was inlaid with gold and blue shells.’