by David Peace
Darling, please don’t, darling, please stop…
Prizing back the shutter, forcing open the shutter, with a crack in its wood, another crack from the sky, he pulled open the shutter, then Murota Hideki stepped into the house –
Darling, please, it will do you no good…
In the house of the man, he stood and he listened, in its shadows, to its silence, the shadows of the man, the silence of the man, standing and listening, the rain falling on the roof, the roof of the house, rain dripping, dropping somewhere in the house, and then he groped, began to grope and to search, through the shadows, through the silence, along walls and over furniture, groping and searching until he found a candle, a candle in a stand. He put his hand in his pocket, took his lighter from his pocket, and he lit the candle, picked up and held up the candle, its flame flickering, wavering as he turned around the room, the candle in its stand in his hand, illuminating the room and its walls, its walls and furniture, a western table and two chairs, a dust-coated bottle of wine and a glass, an unfinished meal on the table, the food on the plate, too bone hard, rock dry even for the roaches now, the cockroaches which scuttled among the centipedes in the traffic of the matting, lizards twitching on the walls, fleeing from his own shadow, the monster of his own shadow, moving along the walls, moving toward the door, sliding open the door –
Please, it will do you no good…
Moving from one room to another, through one empty, musty room to the next, shielding the candle and its flame with the fingers of his other hand, looking into the farthest corners, all of the closets, he went from room to room, the rain falling on the roof, the roof of the house, rain dripping, dropping somewhere in the house, the house of the man, dripping, dropping behind a door, the wooden door –
It will do you no good…
The wooden door at the end of the corridor, the wooden door to a detached wing of the house, he slid open this last wooden door, the smell of camphor so strong it stung his nose, made his eyes smart as he held up the candle, the flame of the candle, his eyes blinking, blinking then wide as he looked into the room, stepped into the room, staring around the room, its walls of photographs, its walls of maps, its walls of diagrams, around and across the room he stared and he moved, this once spacious room made small by stacks and stacks of books, books and documents, piles and piles of documents, books and documents and a diorama, on a large piece of wood which lay on top of legs of books and documents, the diorama a scale model of a river and an embankment, a bridge and tunnel, a railroad bridge and tunnel, railroad tracks passing over and under each other, across the bridge and through the tunnel, a black, die-cast model of a D51 steam locomotive coming through the tunnel, pulling a train of freight cars, through the tunnel and down the tracks, down the tracks toward a man, a little model man lying on the tracks, dead on the tracks –
Shu-shu pop-po, shu-shu pop-po, shu-shu…
In the smoke from the candle, the smell of the camphor, Murota Hideki stepped back from the diorama, away from the model, the model of the crime scene, and turned to the desk, the desk of the man, a rosewood Chinese desk, spartan and bare but for a chipped and cracked celadon vase of dead, dry flowers and a bookstand of teak, a sheaf of manuscript paper open on the stand, open and waiting, waiting for him –
Potsu-potsu, potsu-potsu…
The rain coming in through the roof of this room, the rain dripping in a corner of this room, Murota Hideki held the candle over the bookstand, over the manuscript, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses lying on the papers, one thick brow of their frames pointing up, waiting for the man, the author to return, return to his desk, return to his work –
Zā-zā, zā-zā, zā-zā…
The rain pouring in through the roof of this room, the summer rain in the corner, falling in the corner, running down the walls, Murota Hideki put down the candle, down on the desk, he picked up the glasses, laid them down to one side, the candle flickering, its flame guttering, Murota Hideki picked up the sheaf of papers, up from the stand, in the guttering of the flame, the dying of its light, Murota Hideki held the pages in his hands, turned the pages one by one, one by one he turned them back, back, back to the title, and at the death of the light, at the edge of utter darkness, Murota Hideki read the title of the work, the title and its authors –
Natsuame Monogatari, or Tales of the Summer Rains, by Kuroda Roman, with Shimoyama Sadanori.
6
Minus Ten to Minus Six
June 25–June 29, 1964
Sima Qian [c.140–c.86 bc], author of the Shiji [Records of the Grand Historian], was a man who remained to live on in shame. Whereas any man of high rank would not have cared to survive, this man did. Completely driven to bay, fully aware of the base and disgusting impression he gave others, even after his castration, he brazenly went about the task of living on in our world of red dust, feeding and sleeping on a grief that day and night penetrated his entire body, tenaciously persisting in writing the Shiji, writing it to erase his shame, but the more he wrote, the greater was the shame that he felt. Yet perhaps it is easier to go on living in shame than we might imagine, for I, too, am living on in shame…
After the defeat, the surrender, then occupation, as the days became weeks became months became years – already my heart in peaceful times had cracked / now I walked a road more desolate each day – the holes in my roof, nests of moonlight and rain, the clothes on my back, the skin on my bones, bed and breakfast for fleas and for lice. Still, as the ghostly genius counsels: stay drunken till the end of your days, for none pour wine on the earth over Liu Ling’s grave. And so I would powder my face, paint a smile upon my lips, don my least-worst suit and, blowing on my imagined dragon flute, beating on my made-up drum of lizard skin, stride out into the city.
Though it is perhaps hard to believe or even imagine now, in those occupied days that occupied city was filled with a hunger for books, a thirst for words, and thus had the air of a boom town in a gold rush for writers and translators. But while my brothers of the brush, my pals of the pen seemed to discover nugget after nugget, strike vein after vein, as ever I dug up only gravel, washed only sand, my prose rejected, my poetry even mocked. Fortunately, GHQ had to approve every single word before it could be published, thus every single word had to be translated into English, and so though no publishers would commission me to write articles for their magazines, they would on occasion – no doubt having exhausted all other options – call upon me to translate the words of my contemporaries into English; such were the dry bones on which I was forced to suck, the stale crumbs on which I had to subsist. Still, suck and subsist I did, and those occupied days, that occupied city were debauched and decadent, if one knew which stone to look under, which hole to go down, particularly if one did not pay much heed to what or with whom one drank; beggars, as they say, cannot be choosers. And so, having panhandled some meager advance on a commission for a translation from some publisher or other, with my powdered face, my painted smile, I would immediately begin looking under the stones of the street, going down the holes of the city, seeking to turn bones and crumbs into tobacco and drink, drink, drink…
Yet those among us who follow the Way of the Cup know its currents and tides can carry us on streams and down rivers sometimes strange and often dark. So it was one night in the early summer of their year nineteen hundred and forty-nine, so it was my empty little cup and I washed up in a place much stranger and darker than I had ever been or seen before…
The day had started out blandly enough, even quite fortuitously. I had recently taken to dashing off “true-crime” books at the insistence of a certain Mr. Shiozawa, the owner of the publishing house Shinpi Shōbō. The first of the books had done reasonably well and, that afternoon, I had submitted the manuscript of a second such book. Mr. Shiozawa seemed in a celebratory mood, first proposing we toast delivery of the manuscript with a whisky or two from the bottle he kept in his office,
then, encouraged by me, I admit, we adjourned to Bar Bordeaux in Ginza. From there, having become both drunk and hungry, he extended his largesse to dinner at Hachimaki Okada, and, of course, I was only too happy to partake of all that venerable old establishment had to offer, savoring as much of their fine sake as I could before it was time for them to close. Yet though the night, as they say, was still quite young, by now Mr. Shiozawa could barely stand and, had he not been in such a state, had he not been egged on by me, no doubt he would never have invited me to join him in one last drink…
So it was we staggered through the streets of Ginza, their traffic and their lights, toward Hibiya Park, then weaved our way along the paths of the park, among their trees and their shadows, through the park, then out onto the street, across the street to the government buildings, those ministries of finance, construction, and justice, where, somewhere among there, we came to a flight of stone steps at the side of one building, steps descending down to a door, a gray metal door with no handle or sign. Here at the foot of these steps, here before the door, Mr. Shiozawa fumbled through his pockets, found and opened his wallet, and took out what appeared to be a piece of metal, the size of a name card, yet blank and razor thin. First glancing back up the steps, then winking at me, he turned back to the door, bent down, and slid the piece of metal under the door. Moments later, the door opened inward and two smartly dressed, well-built men – Asian, but not Japanese, I thought – greeted us, handing back the metal card to Mr. Shiozawa, who then led the way down a bare, concrete corridor to another flight of steps descending down to another door, this one made of polished wood and which opened as we approached. Once again, two smartly dressed, well-built men – one man Japanese, the other Eurasian – greeted us, along with the sounds of music and conversation, the smells of tobacco and drink, and the sight of another room at the end of another, but much shorter, corridor. Again, Mr. Shiozawa led the way down this short corridor, this one softly carpeted and lit, toward the room of music and conversation, tobacco and drink. At its threshold, Mr. Shiozawa stopped, turned, put a hand over his mouth, and whispered, “Welcome, welcome to the Shikinjō, Sensei…”
The Shikinjō – the aptly named Forbidden City – was more than a club, more than one room, being many rooms of many things; an underground labyrinth of low-lit nooks and alcoves, all branching out, off from a large central cavern with a long, well-stocked bar running the length of one wall, its floor space filled with tables and chairs, a stage at the end, the far end, the style a curious collision of an English hotel bar and a Bavarian bierkeller, with the ambience of a Chicago speakeasy in old Shanghai, a mood accentuated by the Zhou Xuan lookalike up on the stage, backed by her Japanese band, singing “Crazy World” as waiters in stiff white jackets went from table to table, hostesses in kimonos or gowns fluttering from patron to patron –
Ah yes, the patrons! For, yes, it was the patrons – the mix of members and their guests – that were the sight which almost stopped one in one’s tracks to the bar. For in those occupied days in that occupied city, East only ever met West on her knees or her back, but here…well, here they mingled toe to toe, sat cheek by jowl, whispering mouth to ear, slapping backs and shaking hands, with a nod and a wink, in a society of…well, yes, rogues: former Imperial Army officers, bureaucrats, politicians, businessmen, and yakuza – men I’d thought purged, imprisoned, some even dead – all rubbing shoulders with American officers and civilians, all swapping stories and name cards, sharing jokes and contacts, raising glasses, proposing toasts to the New Japan, same as the Old Japan, their underground lair, its smoke-filled air crackling and hissing with electricity, yes, black electricity…
“Do try not to stare, Sensei,” whispered Mr. Shiozawa at the bar, handing me a glass of fine old American whisky. “This is, after all, a place not to think but to drink…”
“How right you are,” said I. “How very right you are.”
And so drink we did, we did, straight whiskies then Sazerac cocktails, we drank and we drank, first with rye whisky then mixed with cognac, mixed as they should be, drunk as they should be. And as we drank, we drank, the waves of whisky, the currents of cognac, carried our cups down different streams, on diverging tides, and so it was, it was, I found myself lost in a nook, an alcove, at a table of men, four serious men, men and their cards, their cards and their cash, their packs of cards, their stacks of cash, sipping my Sazerac, watching them play –
“Join us,” said the man who was the bank, a respectable-looking Japanese man of about sixty, offering me a deck of cards. “We’re playing Faro. Anyone can play…”
“Anyone but a writer such as I,” said I. “For I am as poor as the proverbial church mouse…”
“Church mouse, my ass,” laughed the only American at the table, dressed in his army uniform, his captain’s hat pushed back on his head. Between the hands, while he waited, he’d take his pistol from its holster and twirl it around in his fingers. When he had his fresh deck, then he’d tilt his chair back on two legs, chewing on his cigar as he studied his cards. He appeared to have stepped straight from a Hollywood western, but for one detail: he did not drink. “Hell,” he laughed. “I thought all you Japanese writers lived in big old fancy houses down Kamakura way.”
“Regrettably, sadly, not I,” regrettably, sadly said I.
“Hell, pal,” laughed the American again. “Then you must be the last goddamn poor writer left in Tokyo, my friend.”
“If only I were,” said I. “Were the last writer…”
And it was then, yes, then, an evil, vicious plan began to congeal in the dregs of my intoxicated, poisoned brain. Perhaps it was his reference to Kamakura; yes, yes, it was the mere mention of Kamakura which conjured up a vision of my contemporaries, my rivals, in their Kamakura homes, their beautiful houses, swanning up to Tokyo to further feather their nests, their already soft and silky Kamakura nests, with yet another commission, another advance, then strutting around town, peacocks in a wasteland, preening and posturing, their pockets bulging, wallets too fat to close, eating and drinking, bellies ballooning, bladders bloated, then taking the last train, the last train of the night, the Yokosuka line, back to Kamakura, all sat together, in the last car, in their little social club, drinking and laughing, bitching and gossiping, counting their lolly, their loot, in their so-called little Last Club, in the last car of the last train of the night –
“If only that last train, its last car,” slurred I with an evil, vicious burp, “if only it were derailed, overturned, they would all be annihilated, all be erased, then truly I would be the last writer, all my troubles, my sorrows at an end, an end…”
“Say no more,” said the American with a nod, with a wink, gesturing with his thumb to the two Japanese men sat to his right. “These pals of mine, they’re old hands at bombs on the tracks, the derailment of trains. There’d be no slip-ups with the cops.”
“Really,” whispered I, as wide-eyed I peered into the shadows to his right, at the two Japanese men – one with a patch for an eye, the other with a scar across his cheek – resurrected rōnin, spectral spies, puffing on their cigarettes, their cards to their chests. I coughed, cleared my throat, then said, “Forgive me, for I do not wish to appear ungrateful, but surely a bomb on the tracks would attract too much speculation, no?”
“But obviously,” said the man who was the bank, “people would assume it to be the work of the Reds.”
“Hell,” laughed the American. “Bases loaded the way they are now, might be just the home run we been looking for, hit those goddamn Commie bastards right out of the park – BOOM!”
I coughed again, cleared my throat, and said again, “Forgive me, gentlemen, please, I fear my drunken, idle –”
“Or perhaps start with something more subtle,” said the man with a scar from the shadows to our right. “One by one?”
“Can be done, yes,” said his pal with the patch.
&
nbsp; “Yeah,” said the American, nodding and smiling. “Yeah, sow seeds of anxiety, reap fear and paranoia…”
“Tell us,” said the man who was the bank, looking at me. “If you had to name just one of your contemporaries, your rivals, one writer you wished would cease to exist, then what name would you tell us, whose name would you give us?”
“What a question,” exclaimed I, attempting to rise from my chair at this table in this nook, this alcove in hell, this ugly hell, that selfsame ugly hell which once gaped before Doctor Faustus himself. But as with the poor doctor, so with foul me, for it was too late, too late, much, much too late –
“Tough question, right,” cackled the American devil, gripping my arm, pinning me back down to my seat in this hell. “But come on, man, spit it out – spill!”
“Yokogawa Jirō,” whispered, whimpered I.
“An excellent choice,” said the man who was the bank, nodding at the American. “The man is degenerate and perverse, Jack, and would serve as a lesson to all.”
Captain Jack had his pistol in his hand again, tapping its barrel on the edge of the table, musing aloud, “But how?”
“Stage it as a suicide,” said the man with the scar from the shadows to our right. “A very public suicide…”
“We lure him, we abduct him,” said his pal with the patch. “Then inject him and sedate him…”
“We wait until it’s night, for the last train of the night,” said the scar in the shadows. “We lay his body across the tracks, then let the train do the rest…”
“Hell, yeah,” said Captain Jack, his head nodding, his pistol nodding, gesturing to the other three men, the other three men and I, foul and evil, vicious I, gesturing for us to raise our glasses, our glasses in a toast: “TO BLOOD ON THE TRACKS!”
