Return to Hiroshima

by Bob Van Laerhoven

  Takeda marches along the corridor, a burning sensation in his chest, an overpowering rage as old as he can remember. It’s un-Japanese, but it’s stronger than himself. He turns on his heels, retraces his steps, opens the door to Takamatsu’s office and hears himself say stubbornly and squarely: “With all due respect, chief commissioner, I still think this is an important line of inquiry and that it needs investigation.”

  35

  Hiroshima – Sanctuary of the Brotherhood next to the Nishi-Honganji Temple – morning, March 14th 1995

  Only a fool would say this new direction was accidental. Reizo Shiga knows that he’s supposed to be surprised, but all he feels is intense satisfaction. He arrived in the temple tired and gloomy after his nocturnal literary experiment with the Belgian – which failed because of that coward Yori – but now he senses a surge of adrenaline clearing his mind. What he’s about to hear could work to his advantage, as long as he’s careful.

  Together with the other disciples, Reizo listens with a straight face to the undersecretary who had followed the usual prayer to the Blessed One with some staggering news. Shiga might seem serene on the outside, but inside the chaos is mounting. He’s always known the truth: his alpha waves are so powerful he’s capable of working miracles. The giant of a woman who calls herself Mitsuko did not find her way to the sad remains of his Suicide Club by accident. Mitsuko must have been drawn to the club by his alpha waves. The undersecretary of the Brotherhood has just instructed each disciple to be on his lookout for a woman. Mitsuko answered perfectly to the undersecretary’s description. He underlined the vital importance of his charge: “The command comes from the Blessed One in person. The woman is probably in Hiroshima. Whoever finds her must report back immediately and can expect to be invited to an audience with the Blessed One.” It was as if a powerful yet invisible gust of wind had raged through the sanctuary’s prayer room. One novice was stupid enough to ask a question: “Is she impure and a danger to the Brotherhood?”

  The undersecretary pouted, stormed through the rows of disciples and bowed stiffly from the hips in front of the novice who had posed the question: “Tell me, little brother. In the short time you have been taken up with kindness in our midst, have you amassed so much alpha-potential that you can see into the mind of the Blessed One? Or are you simply arrogant, intent on providing the Most High’s every command with your own commentary?” The boy, a bespectacled academic type, blushed and bowed his head as deeply as he could. The undersecretary looked around the room. “If you work hard at self-improvement a day will come when you will acquire telepathic insight into the plans of the Blessed One. Until that day, you must follow one single motto: obedience, obedience, obedience! I want you to scour the streets of Hiroshima with courage and determination. Search in groups of two; explore every corner of the city. If a group spots this woman, one brother should immediately report back while the other continues to follow her. Think about it: whoever finds her will be granted an audience with the Blessed One himself. A privilege novices like you can only dream of. Perhaps the Blessed one will reveal his astral powers, walk through a wall, levitate? Try to imagine what that might mean for your alpha-potential!”

  A collective sigh runs through the room. The eyes of the other novices are glazed. Reizo Shiga bows his head to camouflage the glint in his. As he watches the video recording of the Blessed One instructing the novices on how to generate the power to levitate, his thoughts scurry back and forth like a pack of hunting dogs. He tries to concentrate on the screen, listen to the Blessed One as he explains how much energy levitation requires, watch as the Blessed One undresses and sits in the lotus position wearing nothing but a loincloth. The eyes of the Blessed One, half blind in the polluted earthly dimension, but pools of light and energy in the higher dimensions where he spends most of his time, close as he bows is head and his long black hair falls over his face. His body quakes, his breathing becomes a rhythmic grunting. The Blessed One’s body judders up and down, faster and faster, the waves of energy surging through it more impressive by the minute. At a given moment, when he’s a metre above the ground, it happens: the Blessed One raises his head, appears to freeze in midair, stares at the novices, and slowly falls, as if weightless, to the floor. Although he knows that this is only the first step towards levitation, Reizo Shiga is disappointed. Did he witness a transgression of the established laws of nature, or a cheap trick used by yogi to give the impression they are levitating when in fact they are simply jumping up and down on the spot?

  He looks around the room surreptitiously. The faces of the others, waxen in the light of the video screen, appear narrower, excessively smoothed by absolute admiration and docility. A couple of the faces belong to ex-members of the Suicide Club who only two months earlier had followed Reizo Shiga with the same blind faith as now the Blessed One. Shiga senses a desire for revenge bubble to the surface. He glances furtively at the undersecretary, who is also staring at the screen, expressionless, like a sheep. How can a senior member of the Brotherhood with reputedly superior alpha powers not sense Reizo Shiga’s blasphemous thoughts?

  Reizo Shiga feels his body tingle. The answer is simple: his alpha-potential is unfathomable; it’s been there all his life; nothing else can explain it. If he develops that potential, no matter how, he’ll be able...

  The thought suddenly comes to him that Mitsuko must be very precious to the Blessed One, if even novices are being sent out to look for her. As sacred tea is distributed, made from the hair of the Blessed One to help speed the novices to a higher astral plane, Reizo Shiga is unable to suppress a new thought: why, why can’t the Blessed One find Mitsuko himself if his astral powers are so advanced?

  36

  Hiroshima – Funairi Hospital – Xavier Douterloigne –

  morning, March 14th 1995

  After the swirling colours that made him feel sick and the piercing noises sharp as razors, came blackness. Xavier Douterloigne has lost control of time and space in his head. He’s eight years old and imagines he’s back in Ypres, at the industrial poultry farm run by his grandfather on his mother’s side. Thousands of chickens are scurrying around on the floor of the dull grey poultry house. Their cheeping grates in Xavier’s ears. He chases after them, excited, determined to catch one, caress it, cuddle it. The rubber boot on his left foot lands on a yellow stain. It wriggles, crumples, oozes blood, slime. Xavier begins to sweat. He feels the pain of the crushed chick under his boot. He’s carried the pain of that childhood incident all this time and now it’s got him by the throat. It catapults him through time, arms and legs outstretched as if he’s on a cross, until all movement ceases.

  That’s how Anna must have felt.

  When fate struck its final blow, Anna was wearing a dress as yellow as a cornfield.

  And it was his fault.

  37

  Hiroshima – Suicide Club squat –

  Kabe-cho – Mitsuko –

  morning, March 14th 1995

  Did it really happen? My father raping me? Did it really happen? Doesn’t a woman with a phantom pregnancy live in a world of her own making, a world she thinks is real?

  But the fabrications of the mind are contradicted by the body. I can still feel the pain in my belly, the fever that kept me in bed for days with my father at my side, a silent ghost staring out of the window at the sea and not at me. We didn’t exchange a single word: our bodies seemed frozen in time.

  Still, this morning my doubts are like pebbles tumbling down a steep incline. Can I describe my father to my own satisfaction? What happened to all that time I spent alone, more or less, with Mayumi? My mother? Can I picture her face? I must have been about ten when she committed suicide. My father told me she committed suicide, that I wasn’t witness to it. Yet I can still see her looking back, high on the ramparts surrounding the island, her hair tossed by a stiff sea breeze. I hear something screaming at me, a confession or an oracle
. Scenes in my head, like those in the manga comics that are lying scattered on the floor in this old building. Reizo says they’re the “literature of tomorrow”. Or scenes in my head from a film I saw when the cinema on Hashima was still intact? Captive on my futon, surrounded by the breathing and groaning of people awaking from sleep, I panic when I feel me slipping away from myself. I try to remain calm and the fear slowly subsides, but a residue of doubt about my own mental stability lingers. I should seek help. Is it possible that my unusual metabolism is also affecting my mind? Didn’t the same thing happen to my father? Since the day I found his birth records on Hashima, one hypothesis after another has plagued me. If you saw my father you wouldn’t believe your eyes. Almost seven foot tall, head like a block of stone, hands and feet abnormally large, long neck out of proportion with the rest. The medical term for the condition is acromegaly. But does that explain his extraordinary powers of attraction? The light in his eyes, the expression on his lips, the way he uses his classical, poetic Japanese to seduce people, his berry-red lips? The way he moves his imposing body, which sometimes, in certain positions and at unguarded moments, can appear fragile?

  Does acromegaly explain how my father thinks? I haven’t a clue what drives him. He always played his cards close to his chest and wallowed in the aura of mystery that surrounded him.

  Yesterday I had an unexpected conversation about my father with Reizo Shiga. He had just returned from a meeting of what he called “the Brotherhood”. His pupils were dilated, his movements fast, pointed, exaggerated. His saliva spattered all over the place. One minute his body was limp, the next it jolted and jiggled as if electrified. He asked if I still saw my parents. In an impulse I told him about my father, fortunately without mentioning Hashima. My description excited him. He wanted to know more: “What a character!” That’s Reizo’s mantra: everyone has to be a character in his novel. I realised I’d told him too much and tried to distract him. Easy enough since he was high. I asked him what kind of literature he wanted to write.

  “Literature is about the violence within us that leads to death.” He puffed on his cigarette and inhaled deeply. The shoddy surroundings of the decrepit factory hall were in complete contrast to his aristocratic demeanour.

  “Why?”

  He seemed surprised at the stupidity of my question, straightened his shoulders, his yellow crest. “Writers are like God. They love their characters, but take pleasure in the suffering they put them through. They torment themselves through the puppets they create and in the midst of the torment they discover a sort of rage, the rage you need to create. There’s a lot of sadomasochism in the universe and literature has its own fair share.”

  A far-fetched hotchpotch of an answer, I figured, but I was happy enough that I’d managed to change the subject. I kept my face even. But I couldn’t deny that his ideas made me think of my father. I realized that I had seen a sort of rage in him when I was a child, a rage that had terrified and attracted me all at once.

  “The Eros and Thanatos principle,” I said. He made a dismissive gesture: “Fuck that old crap! Have you read Gide?”

  I had to admit that I had never heard of Gide. Reizo continued self-satisfied: “French writer. Published Les Caves du Vatican in 1914. One of the characters throws a complete stranger from a moving train for no reason at all. People saw it as an illustration of the existence of free will. But they were wrong: the character wanted to have a free will so much that he was willing to do anything to prove it: the rage of imperative desire. It motivates every writer. That’s why, my dear Mitsuko, writers are the most amoral creatures alive.”

  The most amoral creatures alive.

  Because of imperative desire.

  I repeated his words aloud. He burst out laughing, brayed that I’d walked right into his trap.

  I watched him for a while. He examined his nails, threw back his head, lit another cigarette. Then he grinned at me, bristling with hate and lust and compassion.

  If I had been more attentive, smarter, I would have seen that same expression in my father’s face long ago.

  38

  Doctor Kanehari’s private clinic – Futabanosato –

  Dr Kanehari and Rokurobei – March 14th 1995

  Dr Kanehari rolls his eyes. It’s all he can do.

  “Are you familiar with shi-e, doctor?” says the voice behind his right ear. “Probably not. You’re young, modern; our old and venerable Japanese culture is probably a stranger to you. Shi-e is one of the kegare or ‘impurities’. It represents the impurity of death. What many people don’t know: shi-e intensifies when we live a dishonourable life and die as a result. The body of such a person deserves only to be spat upon.”

  A long silence follows. Kanehari can hear the blood pounding in his ears.

  “You might want to ask yourself why I’m taking such a personal interest in you,” the voice muses. “I have a network of people who do all sorts of things for me, who prepare things for me, just as I have people who are preparing this nation of ours to take its place once again as the mother of all countries. It’s not just coincidence that the old name for Japan, Yamato, means ‘the land on top of the pyramid’.”

  The voice falls silent. Dr Kanehari has no idea what’s going on. Twenty minutes earlier, two policemen appeared at his door to question him about a young woman who had visited his clinic. Kanehari let them in and before he knew it they had overpowered him and tied him to his own operating table. The door opened. He heard a rustling sound. Someone was standing behind him, leaning over him. It made him shiver. A voice spoke to him. Kanehari did his best but couldn’t place it. The same elusive voice now continues: “And the present name for our country, Nihon, surely you know its meaning?” The doctor has nothing to say; the voice continues unruffled: “Source of the Spirit. In prehistoric times, Kanehari, the Japanese ruled the world. The evidence is indisputable.”

  A long bony finger taps the doctor’s left cheek. Kanehari can smell it. As if the flesh is burning.

  “The symbol of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen was the chrysanthemum. The Egyptians treated their pharaohs like gods, supernatural beings in human form. The symbol of our imperial family, who we traditionally honour as gods, is the same chrysanthemum. Proof if proof were needed that the Japanese race has its roots in the beginnings of time. The chrysanthemum is my symbol, Kanehari, and that of my daughter who visited you here. Do you get my drift, doctor?”

  Kanehari gulps, moves his head to one side.

  “My daughter consulted you. You told her she had a phantom pregnancy. She refused to believe you. You sent her away. What kind of doctor are you? Have you no eyes? Have you no ears? Surely you were able to diagnose my daughter’s affliction?”

  Tears appear in Dr Kanehari’s eyes. An arm, long, with thick knobbly ligaments enters his field of vision. Words are whispered in his ear. Then he panics, bites his tongue. A pair of hands, broad, out of proportion, take hold of the doctor’s head. A face hovers above him. Kanehari opens his eyes wide and then closes them.

  “Do you understand why you must die?”

  A pinkish froth appears in the corners of Kanehari’s mouth.

  “Death is a problem, don’t you think?” The voice has dropped in pitch, sounds like crickets on a summer night. “We should be aware of our mortality at every moment of our lives. It’s what transforms our existence into a continuous stream of choices.”

  The voice laughs, heartily, with a hint of self-mockery. “You’ve made your choices, I’ve made mine. When the gods decide to punish us they first drive us insane then they kill us. But I was treated like a god from the day I was born. How do you punish divinity? Let me tell you: with lucid insanity. As a result I’ve spent my entire existence struggling with the same question: what kind of life should I live? ”

  Beads of sweat roll over the doctor’s temples. Powerful lights blind him. The straps holding him down are tig
ht.

  The man behind Kanehari stands up straight. His voice sounds further away. “During my years of isolation I studied the magnificent laws of the universe and then I explored the hidden features of butoh from the perspective of depth psychology. If the laws of entropy and the feigned insanity of butoh, our most elevated dance form, are so similar, what does that tell us? That affliction is fundamental and universal. We devour each other, driven by the misery we afflict on ourselves. I devoured myself for years. But I finally concluded: if I’m a god, I’m also fated to be a demon. I withdrew from the world, embraced immobility, now I’m on the hunt. What am I hunting? My destiny, the pinnacle of self-affliction.”

  Dr Kanehari wants to object, argue back, tell the man behind him that his bizarre monologue is a manifest sign of mental illness. The gag in his mouth prevents him.

  “How to live?” The voice sighs. “It’s my obsession. But in your case, Kanehari, the tables are turned. How to die? Death in butoh is the essence of thinking and being, a magical moment to be savoured with respect. Do you know who died with a smile on his face? The great Sergei Diaghilev. ‘It’s not wasting any time...” were his final words. Do you know what the worst thing is? Dying slowly! What do you think? Do you deserve a quick death? I don’t think so. Most of our deeds in this world are futile and passing, ripples on a pond as it were. But there are moments in a man’s life when his deeds seal his fate. That’s what happened to you, Kanehari. Submit to your fate with dignity.”

  Kanehari tugs like a man possessed at the straps holding him to the operating table. The veins in his neck swell and he shakes his head back and forth.

  “That’s not the reaction I was hoping for,” says Rokurobei.

  A broad bony hand with fingers like drumsticks draws the scalpel across Dr Kanehari’s throat. The doctor gags, gasps for air. Rokurobei examines the depth of his incision and calculates how long it will take for death to claim him victim. Kanehari deserves an hour, he muses, before he chokes in his own blood.