And what did Mr Policeman do? He completely ignored her and fell fast asleep. Later in the night she heard him dreaming, muttering and growling, angry and sad, snorting like a bull. Beate Becht lay sleepless at his side, her body heavy and limp, like a lump of clay.
In the morning he behaved as if nothing had happened. She followed his example.
Beate sits on a bench on the platform.
She’s convinced Takeda left the station when he saw she wasn’t paying attention to him.
She has a feeling he planned all this after their morning conversation on one of the okonomiyaki diners in the centre of town.
* * *
“Yummy.”
“Okonomiyaki is the Japanese pizza.”
He sat opposite her, motionless, not hostile. For Beate, his broad face with the deep furrows either side of his robust nose was impossible to read. He took a bite of his okonomiyaki, its base covered with meat, seafood, vegetables and buckwheat noodles fried on a flat grill. He seemed to be waiting for something.
A hint might help: “I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”
He looked at her with his deep, dark eyes. She stared back at him. Was that regret? Hidden sadness? She hoped it was, but she wasn’t sure. She regretted her own insensitivity. His wife had only been dead for a day and she had tried to seduce him. She figured it would be better to start the conversation with something else.
“I spent the entire night picking over this crazy situation.”
Takeda made a dismissive gesture.
“I still can’t believe that our mafia boss is a rejected crown prince.”
He returned his okonomiyaki to his plate and wiped his fingers with his napkin. He ate like a farmer. She loved that.
“I’m pretty sure the birth certificate Yori gave us isn’t a fake.”
“It might be authentic, but can we be sure it’s his? If everything Yori told us is true, the prince was in poor shape when he was born. Would the physician have dared act against the will of the emperor?”
“I’m not sure it was against the emperor’s will. Maybe he persuaded the emperor that this was the right thing to do. Children change people.”
“But...”
“You don’t know how we think or feel. You’re not Japanese.”
She tried to keep it light. “You’re not the full pizza yourself.”
His eyes narrowed. He picked up his okonomiyaki and took a serious bite. He seemed to be thinking.
“Whatever: even if Norikazu isn’t the crown prince, he still has a lot of power, at least in this prefecture. He had no qualms about killing Adachi, a police doctor, and liquidating Nagai Shiga, an economist known throughout the country, in a pretty spectacular way. Have you seen what the papers are saying about Nagai Shiga’s death? They’ve found a new scapegoat.”
Beate shakes her head.
“They’re claiming he was murdered by hired killers brought in by property developers who’ve been milking the crisis for hakomono contracts.”
She only has to raise an eyebrow.
“White elephants; enormous infrastructure projects organized by the government to help alleviate the crisis. They’ve been insisting for years that corrupt politicians and senior civil servants have been assigning such projects to companies asking ridiculously high prices. Japan’s facing its biggest crisis since the Second World War and Shiga lashed out on TV and in interviews against this sort of practice, pointing the finger at a bunch of fat cats getting rich at the expense of the taxpayer. That’s why the theory that he was taken out by people from the construction sector sounds so plausible.”
“Have you seen anything about poor Adachi?”
“Not yet. But I bet the journalists will be fed some story or other about the doctor being queer and having a penchant for darkrooms and playing the slave. A sex game that went wrong, they’ll say.”
“And that’s proof enough as far as you’re concerned that Norikazu is who he says he is?”
“It’s proof enough that he has contacts at different levels and in different domains. Not exactly rocket science when you remember that he apparently has chief commissioner Takamatsu in his back pocket.”
“But you’re still a free man. It all seems pretty quiet in that department.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good sign.”
“But I still find it hard to believe he’s the rejected son of the emperor.”
Takeda suddenly leans closer, his eyebrows pinched. He’s more put out than angry, but his face is enough to make her pull back.
“This is Japan. What we believe is one thing, what we do is another.”
* * *
His words now haunt her mind. What did he mean by them?
She had said: you’re still a free man. She’s not really sure what Norikazu knows about her role in the affair.
This means that Takeda isn’t interested at all in her fate.
Why did she say she was in love with him?
She has no answer.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Like the inspiration that spurs her on when she’s taking photos in her studio.
It’s like being on speed.
You can do whatever you like.
A quiver runs through her, starting in her groin and spreading out to her entire body.
She hears destinations being called in Japanese and English.
Should she get on a train and close her eyes, let it take her away, far from here?
111
Hiroshima – Prince Norikazu –
the burning city – August 6th 1945
Wisps of smoke wafted from the prince’s ripped clothes and shoes. His body felt as if it was made of tinder wood. Where his gaze once fell on the buildings of Hiroshima, he could now see the horizon on every side. A smoking, burning horizon, jagged, irregular, daubed with shades of stone where the fires had burnt themselves out. A bizarre sense of satisfaction took hold of him: he had often dreamed of a world as deformed and misshapen as himself. His wish had come true. He had encountered delirious people on his path through the rubble, some badly burned, others deranged. One of them had screamed that the Americans had used a ‘death ray’. Norikazu had assured them that a new Emperor of Japan would soon be at the head of an army of supermen. They all ran past him like headless chickens, cackling from fear and pain.
Above him: a dark, turbulent sky, riddled with red flames.
In front of him: a tottering woman, her right eye the size of a pomegranate. A man with shards of glass in his head, lurching, ready to fall.
Beside him: a naked man, his crotch charred to the bone, holding a rain pipe to his scorched genitals and muttering incomprehensibly.
There were patches of pale yellow in the black sky. The thick clouds of smoke slowly dispersed. The firestorm raged on towards Hiroshima Station.
To his right, in the smouldering ruins of a wood built house, he saw a dead baby, its skin the colour of pastry that has been left too long in the oven. The black-red blotch on its right heel drew Norikazu’s attention. He moved in, leaned closer. It wasn’t a blotch. Someone had painted the imperial chrysanthemum on the child’s heel. Norikazu peered closely at the symbol, his eyes parched and smarting. He could hardly believe what he saw, but he was convinced this was a sign he could not ignore. He took the tiny corpse in his arms. It was as hard as stale bread. The misshapen prince carried it away from the fire, the smoke and the countless dead.
112
The Hiroshima-Kyoto motorway –
inspector Takeda – March 16th 1995
He had done the right thing to leave Beate Becht behind, Takeda repeated over and over. At this time of day, the motorway to Kyoto is relatively quiet, the motorway busses carrying tourists to and from Kyoto being its primary users. He’s paid the toll and is planning to ar
rive in Kyoto in five hours, give or take, where he intends to leave the rental Mazda and take the shinkansen train to Tokyo. He hasn’t called for an appointment with the members of the Public Security Commission. He figures it’s too risky. One of the members could easily be a puppet working for Norikazu. He plans to make his appointment at the very last minute to limit potential leaks to an absolute minimum. Takeda presumes that – for security reasons – they won’t let him speak directly to the senior members of the commission responsible for supervising police services and that he’ll have to work his way past some lesser civil servants first. But he’s still convinced that a single glance at Prince Norikazu’s birth certificate will be more than enough to set the bureaucratic wheels in motion.
Takeda knows that the Commission doesn’t have a good reputation. A couple of years earlier they were given a severe dressing down by the UN Commission for Human Rights because of a corruption cover-up involving senior police officials. Ms Evatt, chair of the UN Commission, lambasted the Japanese government for maintaining two different kinds of law: strict rules for the man in the street, and not so strict for the police, the politicians and the industrialists.
Takeda is well aware that the Commission might want to sweep the entire affair under the carpet and propose a little horse trading. He can live with a little horse trading. That’s the reason he decided not to bring the photographer along... the only reason.
She’ll make the most of her situation, he figures. Once she’s back in Germany she’ll take a good look at her photos and force herself to believe they’re stage-managed; bizarre, alarming, dark, sombre, like her earlier work.
He failed to mention when they first met what he had read about her in Yomiuri Shimbun: her alcohol and drugs problem, the suicide attempt a year earlier that she survived by the skin of her teeth, the widely publicised and highly ambiguous affairs with both men and women. Now that he knows her better he finds it hard to believe it’s all true, but a reputation is like a visiting card: the first impression is what counts.
He’s also convinced that westerners are too principled, certainly when it comes to situations elsewhere in the world. A headstrong loud-mouth could completely sour any meeting with the Commission.
Takeda has another reason for acting as he did. He’s thought long and hard about what he wants from the Commission in return for discretion: transfer to a quiet part of the country, somewhere remote, promotion and perhaps a change of identity. He wants an office job with a good pension. Takeda’s had enough of the grief. He doesn’t want a career. He wants to end his existence in peace, settle scores with his sexual demons, his suppressed thirst for blood, his uncontrollable anxiety. The pressure that settled on his shoulders the day he turned twenty-seven, traced his father and did what he did to him, has to go once and for all.
113
Hiroshima – the Righa Royal Hotel –
Becht and Norikazu – March 16th 1995
Beate Becht opens her hotel room door. The suite seems faded and grey, as if she had returned to the place of her birth after years of absence to find it covered in dust and mould. She makes her way to the bedroom. A tall man is lying on her bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.
“They tell me I have no sense of humour,” says the man in perfect English. “I beg to differ. I have a highly developed sense of satire, but my situation has been so ghastly for so long that I no longer dare to admit it. Do you understand, Miss Becht?”
Becht hears the bedroom door close behind her. She’s trapped in a room with the same killer she had described that morning to Takeda as a psychopath with delusions of grandeur.
Norikazu gets to his feet. Becht is one metre sixty-four and the difference in height is overwhelming. She can smell popcorn. Not completely unpleasant, but still sickly and slightly nauseating. A huge, bony hand settles on her shoulder, hot as a slice of grilled sirloin. “Let’s have a civilised conversation between civilised individuals, Miss Becht. I may not look very civilised, but I assure you I am. Does it feel as if you’ve been living in a dream these last few days? No need to answer: I can see it in your eyes.”
Beate Becht doesn’t respond. The blood is pounding in her temples. The man in front of her has a soporific aura about him. Reality seems to take a step backwards.
“Recent events have pushed me to my limits. I’ve always been able to present myself as a hibakusha to explain my appearance, but I’ve had far too much public exposure of late.”
Beate Becht wants to ask Norikazu if he’s planning to kill her, and if so how, but the words refuse to come out. The hand slips beneath her chin and gently tilts her head upwards.
“You’re intimidated. At this moment you think I can intimidate anyone because I’m the legitimate crown prince. But nothing could be further from the truth. I used to have the support of people with power and influence in the prefecture, both in everyday society and its underground counterpart, if you get my drift. But a certain bank executive I was expecting to deliver capital resources dating back to the Second World War had the foolishness to invest the money elsewhere while I needed it in cash to – how shall I put it? – pay my suppliers. Under the counter cash, so to speak. Money for useless bridges and airports, for empty roads and other major infrastructural projects the government is putting out to tender these days as if there was no tomorrow. Projects worth millions of yen, you understand, destined to find their way into a variety of pockets. The executive of whom I speak, who was, until then, one of my partners, left me facing serious difficulties. I have a small army of followers, but officially I’ve been dead for years and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m also blessed, to some degree, with a sense of realism. In addition to the crazies surrounding me and their bizarre sects – a national plague if you ask me – I have a number of ultranationalists at my disposal, all of them very useful, but some dumb enough to have their neo-fascist inclinations tattooed on the foreheads, so to speak.”
“Yori said your daughter told her you’re at the head of a powerful organisation.” Beate is surprised at her own voice, so hoarse, so tense.
“Yuzonsha?” The man focused his dark lizard eyes on Becht and smiled, exposing his pointed teeth. “Mitsuko, a poor soul unable to cope with reality, spent her entire life thinking I was a god who only had to snap his fingers and Japan would be under his control. Ironically enough only the first part is true: I am indeed a god. But a fallen god, Miss Becht, is the worst of his kind: he harbours hard feelings. He frets over what he has lost and is determined to get it back whatever the cost. And if that doesn’t work he protects what he has left. Inspector Takeda is intent on destroying the latter with his reckless behaviour. He happens, by chance, to know a little too much about me.” Beate opens her mouth to speak. A long index finger touches her lips. “Don’t you understand, Miss Becht? Officially I haven’t existed for fifty years. An underground network of patriots supports me. If the authorities get to hear Takeda’s story and see my birth certificate they’re bound to start an investigation. I can only hide in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I stand out too much elsewhere. Takeda will also inform the authorities that I have an operations base on Hashima Island. How long do you think it will take them to find and arrest me? And what do you think they’ll do with me? They’ll dump me in an institution for the rest of my days. The things I have done, Miss Becht, have been a matter of self defence and nothing more.”
“So you raped your daughter out of self defence, I suppose?” she blurts before realising it. She’s shocked by her own reaction. It feels as if the floor beneath her has suddenly disappeared. But she can’t take it back. She’s going to die here, in this room, and the best she can hope for is that her end will not be the same as Adachi’s.
Both hands now rest on her shoulders. She looks up at his face. It seems out of kilter and she notices to her surprise that her words must have hurt him. He lets her go and sits on the bed, his long arms
over his knees. “I never laid a finger on her. Mitsuko is the only person I ever loved...”
“Where is she then? She ran away from you.”
“That’s not true. It’s in her head, all of it, the world around her, everything.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“She ran away when we were in Nagasaki. I wanted her to try out a new treatment. I kill out of self defence, but Mitsuko cannot control her urges. In her world, with her brains, every choice is heartrending. When she finds herself faced with doubts or powerful emotions, her world collapses and she loses control. Did you hear me? Mitsuko is a poor, wandering soul and I have always done everything in my power to help her heal.”
“So where is she now?”
The giant shakes his head. “Untraceable. My men have been looking everywhere. A junkie told me he had her “in his possession”. He said this just before he committed suicide. Should I believe him? Must I believe him?”
Seeing Rokurobei this way saddens her: “I don’t believe you. Dr Adachi did an autopsy on your stillborn child...”
He smiles and the sight of his contorted mouth silences her.
“Miss Becht, I cannot have children. I took the baby to which you refer from a burning house in Hiroshima fifty years ago. I had the corpse embalmed to remind me of who I am and what I have become.”
“Mitsuko...”
“I repeat: Mitsuko is not my biological daughter.” He folds his weathered hands like an old farmer looking back over his life. “Mitsuko is the daughter of the only man I considered my friend. He was like a father to me and protected me for years. He was a proud soldier in the imperial Japanese army who started a new life after the war with a new identity. His daughter was born when he was getting on in years. He was in perfect health at the time, but a month later he was dead. I raised Mitsuko as my own. I love her as a father loves his daughter. But from the very start she was different from other children. She lived in her own world with her own rules and regulations, a world outsiders found incomprehensible. Her mental illness went from bad to worse and there was nothing I could do. She was still only twelve when she killed Mayumi, a woman I paid to look after her when I was away. As a result of this needless murder, which she committed in a state of total mental chaos, I was forced to get rid of Mayumi’s father. The man was threatening to go to the authorities, but he had worked for me for years and he knew I would never allow such a thing. Shortly before she ran away from me she killed a boy she thought was in love with her. Every time someone got close to her she was faced with a choice, and because of her obsessive neuroses her choices were always black and white, all or nothing. Am I to blame? I’ve asked myself that question so many times, thousands of times. Is it because of the life I have led? Perhaps she couldn’t cope with being the daughter of a legend. She started to keep a diary in her teens. She told me about the things she wrote in it and after a while I was curious to know more. She wrote, Miss Becht, about things she imagined had happened to her in a language only she could read. She used characters similar to those used in ancient Chinese. What else is there to say?”
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