Return to Hiroshima

by Bob Van Laerhoven

  Rokurobei grins. Adachi closes his eyes. He finds it hard to write the man off as a fairground freak when he’s so close by.

  “The imperial family is a rat’s nest. When I survived against expectations and started to grow up, they saw me as a threat. I was disfigured, a mockery to the emperor’s divine status.”

  “The doses of somatropin were far too high. They caused gigantism and organic deformation.”

  “Exactly. In those days they knew very little about the correct use of growth hormones, especially on young children. I grew into an abomination. There were plans to have me murdered, but my father thwarted them. He was fascinated by his pup. He watched as the growth hormone treatment turned me into a giant and was captivated by dreams and phantasms about eternal life. Thanks to him I was able to lead the life of a shadow. Don’t you think that’s funny, Adachi? The Japanese wallow in formality and are inclined to think themselves superior, but no other people on the planet has so many secret cesspits as we. Our sense of military superiority is nothing short of pompous. In other countries they would have reacted very differently to a deformed prince.”

  “Perhaps, but your response to it all was to create a perverted myth and start to live it.”

  “Typically Japanese yet again, doctor. But who knows, there may be a hint of truth in that myth. They say that Rokurobei – the serpent neck – has the power to shed his skin. I’m sixty-five, but look at my hair and my smooth skin.”

  Adachi looks his executioner in the eye one last time and decides to pull out all the stops. “Does the serpent neck rape his own daughter?”

  The head pulls back abruptly, almost hitting the sun bed. Adachi waits. Then, that smile again. There is no fast deliverance. The head comes close again; Adachi notices for the first time that the face is covered in makeup. Tiny beads of sweat trickle down oily cheeks. Under the makeup the skin is pockmarked.

  “Mitsuko made that story up. It’s not even a question of lying. She believes all her fantasies to be true.”

  “I saw the baby your daughter left at the Peace Monument in my autopsy room.”

  “So I heard.”

  “I know the chief commissioner is helping your organisation.”

  “The Japanese police are a bunch of derailed imbeciles. The biggest collection of tyrants, blacklegs, traitors, degenerates and nail-biting weaklings the world has ever seen.”

  “No wonder the yakuza and the police work so well together,” Adachi whispers. He can feel the ropes tightening around his body. His intellect refuses to believe he’s about to die. Not this way. At the same time a deep sense of resignation has taken root in him, as if someone had just pumped his arm full of anaesthetic.

  “My name is Norikazu,” says the man crouched beside Adachi after a long silence. “Respect that name, doctor, it represents my true self.” He looks at the doctor out of the corner of his eye, unexpectedly coy. “I never laid a finger on my daughter. Mitsuko has lived for years in her own make-believe world. She has a tumour in her brain. I consulted the appropriate doctors, Adachi; I did my duty. It’s inoperable and it’s going to kill her. The doctors bombarded me with jargon: schizoid personality disorder, or words to that effect. They suggested pills, but they didn’t help, not enough at least. It’s not only the rape fantasy. She tells anyone who’s willing to listen that we live on Hashima Island, but it’s not true. I use the place sometimes, but it’s not my permanent abode. How old do you think my daughter is?”

  The doctor coughs. “What kind of a question is that?”

  “I suggest you answer.”

  “Yori told me that she and Mitsuko were roughly the same age, early twenties.”

  “Mitsuko is forty-one.”

  “Does this sort of idiotic crap entertain you? If I’m to die, at least tell me the truth.”

  “Mitsuko was born on Hashima, that at least is true. Her mother gave birth to her in 1954. Throughout the pregnancy, I was convinced there would be something wrong with her because of my faulty genes. It was nine months of agony. I wanted to spare my child the humiliation I had endured in my youth, whatever the cost. The old network of patriots known as Unit 731 was still active in those days. I engaged former military doctors who had performed certain tests in Manchuria and ordered them to transform my daughter into a superwoman.” The mafia boss’s face seems pensive, is if he still doesn’t understand what went wrong.

  Adachi clears his throat: “A superwoman? If present day science isn’t capable of such a thing, why should I believe it was possible back then?”

  Rokurobei narrows his eyes. “We thought it was possible, doctor. In fact we were convinced of it because Unit 731 had reported a major breakthrough to the military leadership during the war. The doctors had adapted an ancient Chinese method. Anthropologists use the word emperor for Chinese leaders stemming from the pre-Xia period thousands of years ago, but the character that is used to refer to these leaders actually means ‘demigod’. They were renowned for their unparalleled skills and their incredible, inhuman lifespan. The Unit 731 doctors had poked around in Manchurian mythology during the war and concluded that the ancients had used a special preparation of montmorillonite to pass on their legendary lifespan and supernatural powers to their offspring.”

  “Green clay.” Adachi can’t help laughing, in spite of the situation.

  “Have you forgotten how humans were created? The gods fashioned us from clay.” Adachi finds it hard to understand why the man is going to so much trouble to tell him this far-fetched story when he’s about to die.

  “Female and male babies were treated according to the Huang-Di method in which green clay, montmorillonite, played a major role. The doctors who treated Mitsuko combined it with hormone cocktails. It all had to be done before she reached six months. We were convinced it would work.”

  “Why are you telling me this nonsense?”

  “Because it’s the truth, doctor, no matter how incredible that may seem.”

  Adachi grins, but the increasing pain in his body turns his grin into a grimace: “You know what they call the serpent neck, don’t you? The Lord of Lies. Very appropriate if you ask me.”

  “I’m a born liar, I admit it. But even a born liar needs the truth now and then. Isn’t it sad that the truth can sometimes appear more deceitful than a lie?”

  Adachi doesn’t answer, simply shakes his head as if he’s talking to an irrational child.

  “I repeat: Mitsuko is in her forties. The Huang-Di worked: her body aged slower than that of an ordinary person. But the method hadn’t been perfected. Mitsuko grew big and strong, but there was something amiss with her brain. The combination of hormones and montmorillonite had caused the cells in her brain to multiply out of control. The method was devised for the ancients, doctor. They were much closer to themselves and to nature than we are. Modern human beings are apparently unable to cope with the magic of earlier days. You don’t believe me? That’s up to you. But sooner or later science will try to create a demigod once again. It’s part of us, doctor. We’re hardwired to reach beyond ourselves.”

  “You can lie as much as you like, but the fact remains that the deformed son you sired by your daughter is in cold-storage in my morgue.”

  “Did you notice it had been embalmed?”

  Adachi nods.

  “It was my firstborn. Mitsuko took it from the island,” says Norikazu. “My son was embalmed at the end of 1945 in a secret military complex on Okunoshima Island. I commanded it myself. The dry air in the mine on Hashima helped keep the body intact. I was almost sixteen in those days, doctor Adachi. The child was sired with a Chinese pinyin, a female prisoner of war, one of hundreds assembled as material for medical and psychological experiments. I was curious about her. She was roughly my age and she reminded me of someone I had been very close to. But I also despised her. As a sixteen-year-old I was extremely nationalistic, arrogant, proud. The Japan
ese race was unsurpassed and I was its future. I was completely convinced of it.”

  Norikazu leans towards the doctor, their faces almost touching as is his wont. “You can’t imagine the life I’ve led. You would need the imagination of a novelist, and even then you would fail. The things I’ve done can only be described as inhuman. But I don’t share your human nature, doctor. The divinity of the emperor is a malady that plagues our soul, Adachi, a need that will haunt us forever, both the Japanese people and the imperial family. My younger brother Akihito, the first emperor without official divine status, tolerates the life I lead as long as I continue to use my underground organisations to work for its restoration. Behind that deadpan, super-respectable mask of his, Akihito hates the politicians and the lip service they pay to democracy in this country of ours. We’re not democrats and we never will be. Our emperor is forever an akitsu mikami, a superior human being in whom the divine status of the spiritual world is represented to perfection. That’s the way it has always been, and it’s never going to change.”

  The ropes tighten further round Adachi’s body. The police doctor’s face has turned red and he is wheezing. His eyes close, open, close, open. Norikazu throws open his jacket to reveal a knife in a sheath. “Tell me where Mitsuko is and you’ll die quickly, I give you my word.” The man laughs, his bizarre, sharpened teeth reminiscent of a cartoon shark. “That sounds so old-fashioned and I’m painfully aware of it. But if we don’t stick to the old-fashioned values what have we left, Adachi? Where is our contempt for death? Isn’t honour a value worth dying for?”

  The doctor coughs. “Spare me the melodrama, Norikazu.”

  The yakuza removes his uv goggles. Now their faces are almost touching. Pinpricks of light and darkness dance across his eyes. “I presume your behaviour is intended to convince me that you’re not afraid of dying, good doctor.”

  “I’m afraid of the pain,” says Adachi.

  “Then save yourself from it.”

  “I don’t know where your ‘mythical’ daughter is. You have Yori, but you can ask her as much as you like, she won’t be able to help you. Yori ran away from a squat used by a group of kids called the Suicide Club. Mitsuko moved in with them shortly before Yori left. Yori stole her belongings, including your birth certificate and the notes written by the imperial physician who treated you. That’s all we know. How many times do I have to repeat it?”

  “Takeda?”

  “I saw him yesterday. He went to the meeting with Takamatsu. After that, he was supposed to follow me here but he didn’t.” Adachi says nothing about Takeda’s plans to go to Becht’s hotel room.

  “You know that Takeda betrayed you?”

  “If that’s another lie intended to make me talk then I’m going to have to disappoint you. I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Takeda said to Takamatsu: I’m not alone. That got our cunning commissioner thinking. And his first suspect was you, the eccentric inspector’s only friend. When I heard from Takamatsu that you had prepared the corpse of the baby found under the Peace Tower for autopsy, out of the blue, after days of waiting, I knew enough.”

  “Your daughter didn’t approach the police if that’s what you’re thinking. It only takes one little stone to start an avalanche. That’s what happened.”

  “Sometimes life indeed is like that.” The man gets to his feet. “Farewell, Adachi.”

  The police doctor grits his teeth, says nothing.

  The mafia leader turns on his heels as if he’s suddenly thought of something. The uv light has affected Adachi’s eyes and conjures a halo around Rokurobei, a dark amorphous cloud.

  “A careless young man claimed this evening that he had imprisoned my daughter in a place I will never find. He confessed this just before he died. That’s why I believe him. I’ve had his friends interrogated, but none of them was able to tell me where my daughter is. Do you believe me when I tell you that I love her more than life itself?”

  Adachi nods. He is exhausted. A reverberating light-headedness plagues him. He hopes he will soon lose consciousness. His eyes close.

  The voice next to his face makes him jump.

  “I think you deserve this, in spite of everything,” says Norikazu. “Your courage is many times greater than I could have imagined.”

  The knife plunges into Adachi’s liver and is jerked sideways. Adachi’s body lunges in spite of the ropes, but to no avail. His fettered feet sway back and forth like a fish on dry land.

  The voice is still close; it penetrates the searing pain.

  “With shibari it would have taken at least another hour for you to die. Now? A few minutes...”

  Its compassion sounds genuine.

  100

  Hiroshima – the Suicide Club squat –

  Kabe-cho – Takeda and Becht –March 15th 1995

  Takeda has his duty weapon at the ready. He feels ill-at-ease in the darkness of the squat. Beate is waiting by the stairs. The place appears abandoned. The personal belongings of the young folk who used to live here are scattered across the floor, as if someone had recently rummaged through them. Takeda peers through the iron-barred windows and tries to picture what life was like for the people whose protest against society took shape in this building. It reminds him of the fact that he had always been obedient and compliant on the surface, in spite of the many contradictions inside. A dark irregular stain on the floor in the right hand corner of the room attracts his attention. He crouches to get a better look. Congealed blood. A large quantity. Beate walks in uninvited. “I heard something downstairs,’ she whispers.

  Takeda walks towards her, brings his lips to her ear. The smell of her jasmine perfume doesn’t prevent him from observing how fine and fragile her ear is. “Stay here.”

  He descends the stairs on tiptoe. He notices that the door on the ground floor that was locked before is now half open. He heads for the door, sees that it leads to a cellar. He hears noises downstairs, stuff being shifted around. He makes his way down with the barrel of his gun pointing upwards. A single light bulb illuminates the cellar space. Metal filing cabinets corner off part of the room and he hears noises behind them. He approaches, slowly, cautiously. A man is stuffing a computer into a rucksack.

  Takeda takes aim: “Police.” The man is young, probably in his late teens. He’s thin and his face is covered in acne from excessive use of speed. He steps back in shock and bumps into a filing cabinet. “It’s not what you…” he says.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “My name is Sho. I…”

  “Are you a member of the Suicide Club?”

  “Eh… Yes.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “The club was disbanded. There were disagreements.”

  “Where is Reizo Shiga?”

  The junky lowers his eyes. “He… He’s gone. We don’t know…”

  Takeda moves closer and looks him in the eye. “You’re lying.”

  To his surprise the young man starts to sob. “We found him dead! He was headless. We didn’t want any trouble.”

  “Calm down. Control yourself. Tell me what’s going on.”

  The boy tells Takeda his story in fits and starts. A couple of club members had come back to the building the previous night in the hope of scoring some drugs from Reizo’s extensive supply. They found his decapitated body in a pool of blood in a corner of the main room. The head had disappeared. They had panicked, certain that the authorities would blame them for the killing. So they dumped the body in the rubbish chute in the old restaurant in the hope that no one would find it. They did their best to get rid of the blood stain and then went looking for drugs. They found nothing and left. But Sho had come back because he remembered that Reizo Shiga had a brand new computer in his workshop. If he could sell it he could score.

  Takeda forces Sho to bring him to the rubbish
chute in the restaurant on the first floor, beneath what used to be the machine room. Takeda only has to take one look. The body is visible in the midst of the trash.

  “Get out of here, now,” Takeda barks at the boy. “And never come back.”

  Sho races to the exit. Takeda follows his narrow frame. The boy is old for his age. The inspector asks himself what the parents of such children go through. If he had had a child, he or she would have been the same age as the young junky heading for the door.

  The inspector makes his way upstairs. Beate is sitting on an old chair in the middle of the room. She seems small, lost. The photographer has been asking herself how she got into this nightmare. The chronological puzzle is the easiest part. She’s used to thinking in pictures and the pictures are clear. It’s the why of her emotions and the stubbornness with which she’s clinging to Takeda in this gloomy situation that surprises her.

  The inspector tells her what happened.

  “We should drive to Adachi’s place,” he concludes.

  The diminutive German woman looks him in the eye. In the beer-coloured light of the main room she looks like a nervous cat. “But what about Reizo’s computer? Is it still working? Maybe he left some kind of clue.”

  101

  Hiroshima – Dr Adachi’s apartment beside the Peace Tower

  – Rokurobei and Yori – March 15th 1995

  With her bowed head and naked back, Yori is the picture of subordination. The tattoo on her back glistens metallic through the sweat on her skin. Rokurobei rests his hands on her shoulders, covering them completely.

  “So you call yourself ‘Mitsuko’s best friend’? How long did you know her? A couple of days? Three?”