Patient X

by David Peace

  All now dead.

  And Ryūnosuke despaired for Yasunari. But then, at that very moment, he heard the very voice of his friend and Ryūnosuke turned; he blinked; he blinked again; he rubbed his eyes with his handkerchief and blinked again. But yes! Yes! It was true! Here, here among all this destruction, here among all this death, here was Yasunari, alive and unhurt, walking towards him across the rubble, coming towards him through the smoke, in animated conversation with Tōkō Kon, another of their friends –

  ‘Kawabata-kun,’ exclaimed Ryūnosuke, ‘I was certain you must be dead! Sure you must be a ghost …’

  ‘Everyone is a ghost now,’ laughed Yasunari. ‘Or an orphan.’

  Yasunari and Tōkō Kon were walking up to the Yoshiwara to see what had become of the old pleasure quarter, and they urged Ryūnosuke to join them. And as they picked their way through the wasteland, Yasunari never stopped jotting down his impressions in his notebook, or recounting his recent adventures and observations –

  ‘In the moments after the first great shock, before the fire consumed my lodgings, I was able to salvage some bedding. And so, last night, I slept on that in the park. I even managed to construct a mosquito net. And then who should crawl under the net beside me, but my landlord’s wife and her child.’

  But when the three friends came upon the Yoshiwara quarter, even Yasunari fell silent in the face of what they saw there.

  The Benten Pond was now a cauldron of five hundred corpses, bodies piled upon bodies, some burnt and some boiled. Muddy red cloth was strewn up and down the banks of the pond, for most of the dead were courtesans.

  Ryūnosuke stood among the smouldering incense, his handkerchief pressed to his face, his eyes fixed upon the corpse of a child of twelve or thirteen years. Ryūnosuke looked away, up at the sky, his eyes smarting with the smoke and the sun. He wanted to cry out, to scream at the gods:

  ‘Why? Why? Why was this child ever born, to die like this?’

  And again, as he had many times before, Ryūnosuke saw the image of Christ on the cross, and again he heard the words that haunted him:

  ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’

  Beside Ryūnosuke stood a young boy of a similar age to the corpse. The boy was staring at the body, too. He stifled a sob, he looked away. But his older brother grabbed his arm, gripped his face and scolded him, ‘Look carefully, Akira. If you shut your eyes to a frightening sight, you end up being frightened for ever. But if you look everything straight on, then there is nothing to be afraid of …’

  Suddenly, Ryūnosuke felt the eyes of the young boy upon him. Ryūnosuke turned to smile at the child. But when their eyes met, the boy hid his face in the folds of his older brother’s clothes. Ryūnosuke turned on his heel and marched off, thinking, It would have been better had we all died.

  *

  Viscount Shibusawa has said that we should think of this earthquake as a heavenly punishment. There is surely no one who remains unscathed by this disaster, but looking back upon the deaths of his own wife and child, and then to others whose houses remain undamaged, who would not be surprised at the injustice of such heavenly punishment? It is better to forgo belief in heavenly punishment altogether than to believe in a partial heavenly punishment, and to recognise nature’s cruel indifference to us as humans …

  Before the disaster, during the summer, when Oana and I were staying in a cottage at the Hirano-ya Bessō in Kamakura, over the eaves of our room were trails of wisteria, and between the leaves we could see some purple flowers here and there; to see wisteria blooming in August seemed like something from a chronicle. But not only this, looking out at the garden from the window in the bathroom there were Japanese roses blooming, too. Moreover, and stranger still, in the pond of the garden of Komachien, their irises and lotuses were all in full bloom, too …

  Thinking of the wisteria, the roses and the irises all blooming in August, I came to believe nature must have gone mad. And every time I saw someone, I spoke of a cataclysmic convulsion of nature occurring now, changing the heavens and moving the earth …

  Yet no one took me seriously; Masao Kume just smirked at me, mocked me, and said, ‘You are just making Kan Kikuchi even more nervous.’

  Oana and I arrived back in Tokyo on August 25, and the Great Earthquake happened eight days later; now Kume greatly respects my prediction: ‘Before, I’ d simply wanted to argue against you as a pose. But, in fact, your prediction has come true.’

  Yet if I’m honest, I must confess I did not believe my own prediction.

  Nature is cruelly indifferent towards humanity. The earthquake did not differentiate between proletarian and bourgeoisie, the good and the bad; it’s just as Turgenev wrote in his poems –

  In the eyes of nature, humans are no different from insects …

  *

  After the disaster, on the way back to Tabata, passing through Iriya, under a tangle of scorched electric lines, beside streetcars burnt in their tracks, Ryūnosuke suddenly heard the voice of a child by the side of the road, the child playing in the rubble, the child singing, My Old Kentucky Home …

  In a trice, the song of this child overcame the spirit of negation which had gripped and overwhelmed Ryūnosuke: Yes, thought Ryūnosuke, there will always be those who say that art is excess and surplus to our existence. And it is true, when your head is on fire, you do not think how best to represent the flames. Just as when you take a piss or have a shit, you maybe don’t think of Rembrandt or Goethe. Yet surely what makes humans human is always this excess and this surplus we create, which gives us our dignity, which helps us to transcend and to sing a song no quake or fire can ever destroy …

  But then, approaching Nippori, Ryūnosuke fell in step with a policeman. As the two men walked, Ryūnosuke questioned the policeman at length about the earthquake, about the fires and about the various rumours of crimes and insurrection that seemed to still fall from every passing mouth, hanging in the air with the smoke and the odour of death, that stench of rotting apricots.

  The policeman, impressed perhaps by Ryūnosuke’s helmet, was talkative but confessed that while he knew many had been accused of malicious or revolutionary acts, he himself had seen no evidence of any such deeds.

  Just outside Nippori station, Ryūnosuke and the policeman came across the body of a man tied to a pole, his head beaten in, his body horribly mutilated, with a sign around his neck which declared he was both a Korean and an arsonist. The man must have died by inches, and even now, perhaps hours after his slow death, as Ryūnosuke and the policeman stood before him, another passer-by approached to whack the corpse with a rolled-up parasol. This passer-by now turned to Ryūnosuke and the policeman; he thanked them for their good work, bowed and then sauntered off, swinging his now-bloody parasol as he went. The policeman shook his head; he urged Ryūnosuke to take care, bade him farewell, and then walked on.

  After the disaster, in the twilight, Ryūnosuke remained transfixed before the body of the Korean, the ground beneath him still rising and falling. And as Ryūnosuke stared at the body of the Korean, at all the bodies of the dead, as he stared across this city of rubble, across this city of smoke, everywhere he saw gears and wheels, translucent against the earth, luminous against the sky, turning and spinning, grinding and screaming.

  Now four crows landed on two adjacent tilted, twisted poles. They stared first at the corpse, then at Ryūnosuke –

  Ryūnosuke took off his helmet, Ryūnosuke bowed his head. The biggest crow lifted its bloody beak heavenwards and cawed once, twice, a third time, and then a fourth.

  After the disaster, the official record stated that the Great Kantō Earthquake had had a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale, that it had started at 11:58 a.m. on September 1, 1923, and had stopped after four minutes.

  Ryūnosuke did not believe the official record. Ryūnosuke believed the earthquake had not stopped, would never stop. Ryūnosuke knew the disaster was still-to-come.

  *

  All who bear the
name of socialist, whether a Bolshevik or not, appear to be considered a threat. Especially at the time of the recent Great Earthquake, many seem to have been cursed this way. But, if we are speaking of socialists, Charlie Chaplin is a socialist, too. If we are to persecute socialists, shouldn’t we persecute Charlie Chaplin as well, then? Imagine that Chaplin was killed by a military police lieutenant. Imagine that, while doing his duck-walk, all of a sudden he was stabbed to death. No one who has gazed at his figure on the screen could possibly not feel indignant. If we were to project this indignation to the present situation … Anyway, the only thing that is sure is that you, dear reader, are on the blacklist, too …

  ‘Saint Kappa’

  If you want to live a comparatively peaceful life,

  it is best not to be a novelist.

  ‘Ten Rules for Writing a Novel’,

  Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, May, 1926

  Late in the morning of July 15, 1927, the second year of Shōwa, I received a telegram from Ryūnosuke Akutagawa asking me to come as soon as I could to his house in Tabata, Tokyo. I was surprised, to say the least.

  I had seen very little of Akutagawa since his last visit to Nagasaki, which was over five years ago now. Remembering that visit, that time, was as though viewing scenes from someone else’s life. My rubber business in Malaysia had gone bankrupt, and I had lost everything. Last year, I had moved to Tokyo, the remote and cheaper outskirts of the city, hoping to make some kind of living through writing and publishing, hoping then to turn my financial loss into a personal gain, if nothing else, fulfilling my long-held literary ambitions. And though my wife and I were far from comfortable, I had managed to publish two books on the art and history of Nagasaki. Yet even here, on the outskirts of the capital and its literary circles, I had not seen much of Akutagawa. From what I had heard, he himself had not had the best of times either, and these rumours were confirmed on one of the rare and last occasions I had seen him, four or five months ago.

  Earlier this year, towards the end of winter, Kaizōsha had thrown a party at the Kabukiza to celebrate the success of their Enbon series of one-yen books and, between the performances, I was in the corridor smoking when, suddenly, Akutagawa came rushing up to me, gripped my shoulders in both hands, pushed me up against the wall and said, ‘I can’t bear it!’

  ‘What,’ I said, shocked at his words, his actions and his appearance; he looked so frail, almost emaciated, his cheeks hollow and his nose even more pronounced, his face a pale blue and his lips a sickly red, with his hair long and falling over his forehead. In truth, he appeared the replica of one of those caricatures he had often drawn of himself as a Kappa in Nagasaki.

  ‘When I caught the train from Kugenuma today,’ he said, opening his eyes as wide as they would go, as though about to share the strangest story in the world, ‘the landscape along the tracks was burning red!’

  ‘Really,’ I asked. ‘Was somewhere on fire?’

  But Akutagawa didn’t answer, his eyes downcast now, yet smiling to himself, suddenly looking up again, then back down again, then up at me, until at last he said, ‘You know my brother-in-law committed suicide?’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and nodded. ‘I heard.’

  ‘It really is unbearable … I still haven’t been able to settle the matter. There are so many things to sort out … I can’t stand it any more …’

  There, in that dim, narrow corridor of the Kabukiza, his shoulders, his whole body seemed weighed down with the burden, his face so exhausted, so isolated and so pained, yet almost childlike in his agony and despair.

  I put a hand on his shoulder, gently patting him, and said, ‘Yes, we seem to have reached the age when such things fall on us, caring for our older relatives, yet still supporting the younger ones …’

  ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘I just can’t bear it.’

  ‘But what choice do we have,’ I said, less as a question and more as a fact, thinking of my own financial problems, knowing the mental burdens were enormous, and I continued, as much to myself as to Akutagawa, ‘But if we constantly think of our situation as a burden, then it really does become unbearable. It’s surely better just to accept it all as part of the natural order of things as we age, and that now our turn has come around …’

  Again, Akutagawa didn’t answer; again, his eyes downcast, still smiling to himself, leaning against the wall of the corridor, smoking cigarette after cigarette; I couldn’t even be sure he had heard what I’d said and, as the bell rang for the next performance, as people began to go back inside the auditorium, as I said goodbye, once again urging him to do his best to endure the situation, as he looked up at me with his wide but beautiful eyes, I remember thinking, wondering what on earth they saw, those beautiful eyes, when he looked at this world, burning red along the tracks …

  And that winter night was the last contact I had had with him, until his sudden telegram that summer day, and so, as I made my way from the western outskirts to Tabata, it was with some degree of trepidation.

  Uncomfortable and weary from the heat and the journey, I arrived at the Akutagawa house late that afternoon to find one of the maids showing out Dr Shimojima. Dr Shimojima was widely known and respected in haiku circles, but he was also the family doctor for the Akutagawa household, and so I was naturally concerned to see him. However, the doctor’s call had been a purely social one and he proudly showed me the signed copy of Akutagawa’s latest book, The Folding Fan of Hunan, which he had just been given. Feeling somewhat relieved, I was then shown up to the second floor and into Chōkōdō, the name Akutagawa had given to his study, and which could be read as either ‘Clear River House’ or ‘Sumida River House’.

  Inside Chōkōdō, Akutagawa was seated on the floor at his writing desk, drawing those thin, black, reptilian figures with one hand and chain-smoking with the other, his hair long over his face, his eyes on the paper.

  I coughed and said, ‘Good afternoon, Sensei.’

  Akutagawa looked up at me blankly, trying to place me, then nodded, then smiled and said, ‘Ah, Nagami-san, you came. And on such a very hot day, in such unbearable heat. Thank you …’

  ‘Thank you for inviting me, Sensei.’

  Akutagawa stood up. His yukata was loose, his underwear clearly visible and very grey, and his body beneath seemed even more emaciated. He walked over to one of his many piles of books and papers. He picked up an envelope, then handed it to me and said, ‘If it’s not a great burden and inconvenience for you, I’d like to entrust this manuscript to you.’

  Of course, I gratefully received the envelope and started to open it.

  ‘I’m sorry to be so abrupt and demanding,’ said Akutagawa, ‘but if you are inclined to read the shabby story contained inside that envelope, I’d be most grateful if you would do so later.’

  ‘Of course,’ I replied, ‘and thank you. I am honoured, Sensei.’

  ‘The honour is mine,’ said Akutagawa. ‘And if I could beg one last honour, would you stroll with me a while, allow me to treat you to some tea and sweets?’

  And so that summer day, the two of us strolled through the twilight until late in the evening, spending some hours in one particular sweet parlour. Sadly, I cannot now recall all our conversations, all Akutagawa said that night. However, I do remember one moment, as we were both indulging in a second bowl of sweet-bean soup, when Akutagawa stifled a yawn and then suddenly said, ‘I’m having such terrible trouble sleeping, you know.’

  ‘Yes, it happens to me, too, from time to time,’ I said. ‘But usually after too much caffeine and tobacco.’

  Akutagawa looked forlorn as he said, ‘Would that were true for me, too. In my case, I am being haunted by a horrible dream. But forgive me, it’s such a bore to have to suffer the dreams of others …’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘If in any way it may help you to share such a horrible dream, then by all means please do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Akutagawa. ‘Well then, in this dream, in a deserted, ruined and wasted garden, the
re is an iron castle with iron grilles on its narrow windows. Inside the iron castle, there is only one room. In the room, there is only one desk. At that desk, a creature who looks like me is writing in letters I cannot read a long poem about a creature who in another room is writing a poem about another creature who in another room is writing a poem, and so on on, and so on …’

  ‘And you’ve had this dream more than once?’

  ‘Every night,’ sighed Akutagawa. ‘The dream recurs, it never ends, but I can never read the poem. That is the most terrifying aspect; eternally, I will never be able to read the poem …’

  I did not know what to say, nor can I now recall if in fact I did say anything. But I do remember thinking, that explained why Akutagawa was so keen to stay out so late, so reluctant to return home that night to sleep.

  It was well past midnight when I returned to my own home. However, my curiosity outweighed my tiredness, so I opened up the envelope, took out the manuscript, and I began to read, to read and to read …

  Kappa: A Postscript

  Late one morning, I received a telegram from Tock asking me to come as soon as I possibly could to his house.

  Early on, after I had first found myself in the land of the Kappa, I had been befriended by a student called Lap. In turn, Lap had introduced me to Tock; Tock was a poet, and I often went to visit him as a way of passing time. I would always find him smoking and writing at his desk in his study, among his books and his papers, Kappa texts and Human texts – Jonathan Swift and William Morris, Hirata Atsutane and Kunio Yanagita, Oscar Wilde and Anatole France – so many texts, so many more, Tock surrounded by pots of alpine plants, a female Kappa sat in a corner of the room, silently knitting or sewing. Tock seemed not to have a care in the world, always greeting and welcoming me with a big warm smile, and we would sit for hours, talking about the life and art of the Kappa. Tock had very strong opinions and views on art, insisting art should be unfettered by any rules of life, art being purely for art’s sake and therefore the true artist should first and foremost be a Super-Kappa, existing beyond good and evil. Tock was not alone in holding such views, and he would occasionally take me to the Super-Kappa Club. In this salon, under bright electric lights, I found all sorts of other Super-Kappa: poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, painters, musicians and sculptors, both professional and amateur. Long into the night, they would smoke and drink and talk and shout and argue and fight about life and art, the meaning and worth of the one and the other. More-often-than-not, at the end of such an evening, Tock and I would stagger off arm in arm, slowly making our way home, occasionally even singing a song or two. As I say, Tock always seemed the most carefree Kappa I knew, and I could not imagine what had prompted his telegram, and so I hurried as fast as I could to his house.