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  39

  Hiroshima – the Suicide Club squat –

  Kabe-cho – Mitsuko – morning, March 14th 1995

  The dreams I’ve had since I moved in to this old warehouse seem more real than the life I’m trying to remember. The ground beneath my feet is kicked away and I’m carried off on a tide of memories the colour of mud, flashes of the past that confuse me. I’ve a feeling that the other members of the Suicide Club don’t trust me. I dissect their every snigger as if my life depends on it. Behind all the light-hearted badgering and the group ethic they’ve developed – perhaps without even realising it – there’s a whirlpool of sexual tension, hidden jealousies and power games. It makes me turn in on myself all the more. There’s little come and go between myself and the other young people here, except with Yori. But even then there’s something contradictory about her. Yori is affected and unpredictable, but she can also be incredibly kind and sensitive. She apparently spent the night somewhere else, as did Reizo. I haven’t a clue where they are. I dozed off for a moment during the night and dreamt that Yori kissed me. It wasn’t the kiss that woke me with a start, but the tongue that the dream-Yori traced across my cheek and propped into my throat. It turned out to be forked and pale, like the tongue of a lizard I surprised under a stone as a child on Hashima Island.

  Now I’m exactly the same as that lizard: I’m sitting under my stone, hiding, not daring to come out. The members of the Suicide Club have dispersed once again, chattering like sparrows, to steal, cheat, manipulate, live off the street for the rest of the day. I stay behind on my own, scared to go out.

  My existence doesn’t seem to parallel the reality that’s now trying to take hold of me with brute force. I just had a look at Yomiuri Shimbun and saw pictures of the people who died during the spectacular bank raid in Hiroshima. The headlines read: crisis makes bank robbers merciless.

  One of the victim’s lifeless faces was a Yuzonsha. His name was Tomio Shiga, the ceo of one of the biggest banks in Japan.

  Shiga. Isn’t that Reizo’s surname?

  Coincidence?

  40

  Hiroshima – Harry’s Bar – Ebisu-cho – police doctor and Takeda – lunchtime, March 14th 1995

  “The only place in the city you can get a decent margarita.” Police Dr Adachi takes a satisfied sip from his glass. The dreary, poorly lit café is reminiscent of a classical 1950s hotel bar, with wood panelling and dark red carpets, a huge bar in the form of a horseshoe and barmen squeezed into immaculate suits rumbaing as they shake their cocktails.

  Adachi is crazy about kitsch. Takeda is staring absent-mindedly at a bunch of noisy tourists who waggle into the place one after the other like geese. He prefers the working-class districts to downtown Hiroshima where the hip and trendy have their fun, but he forgives Adachi this minor peculiarity, which he apparently needs to make him feel eccentric.

  “I need another one after what you told me,” Adachi continues, winking at the barman. He peers at Takeda through the fringe of lank hair hanging over his eyes. He thinks his haircut makes him look younger. Takeda has spotted that Adachi fancies one of the barmen, young, porcelain features, self-assured smile. “It was stupid of me to go back and confront the boss,” he says. “Takamatsu’s young and didn’t get where he is now by accident. The man’s a shark and he’s got a serious appetite.”

  “And a big mouth with teeth made of steel,” Adachi adds. His expression turns serious: “You’ve heard them clanging together often enough, Akio. So what happened to your self-control? Tut, tut.”

  The men only use each other’s first names when they’re alone together.

  “I couldn’t control myself. He had no reason to humiliate me like that.”

  “Pig-head half-caste Dutchman.” The police doctor laughs thinly. “But you’re right: there’s something weird going on. The bank raid is too big a case for the local boys, yet the National Guard doesn’t seem to be interested. The same kind of thing happened ten years ago... a political murder if memory serves. After a couple of months it went off the radar.”

  “A cover up? You’re kidding me.”

  “Akio, the people are running about like headless chickens, afraid for their jobs, their homes, their wages. They’ve a lot more to worry about than a bank raid, no matter how spectacular.” The doctor pulls a goody-goody face. “Maybe they’re jealous of the booty.”

  “That’s what makes it so strange: the amount that was stolen hasn’t been made public. The National Guard are keeping it to themselves.”

  “In line with worthy tradition, the Keisatsu-chô have appointed a local officer to coordinate the investigation. And guess who they picked?” Adachi grimaces. “One more reason to handle Takamatsu with kid gloves: Ki o tsukero yo, be careful.” The police doctor takes a look at his half-empty glass, picks it up, then returns it to the bar. “Crime figures are on the rise, more than 100% this year, and the public think we’re a bunch of lazy power-mad bastards. Let me give you a piece of advice. We’re all being screwed over by the monster they call the Economic Crisis. A friend of mine who works at Tokyo University under professor Toshihiro Ihori, the big economics brain, told me that the government’s spending more money than ever before. They’re pumping billions into public works, but it’s not helping us out of the economical dip.” Adachi sips at his glass. “Now we’ve got bridges but no cars to drive across them and airports without planes to land on them.”

  “And the country is crawling with politicians and underworld gangsters cashing in on the show,” Takeda grunts.

  “Fat and horny for power.” Adachi narrows his eyes. “At moments like this it’s safer for small fish like us to stay out of harm’s way.”

  “You don’t know your own people,” says the inspector. “The Japanese always pretend to be yes men, that they don’t like to rock the boat, but at heart they’re a bunch of anarchists.”

  “Exactly!” The doctor lifts his glass as if to say cheers and empties it in a single gulp. “But only if we think it’s worth it, on the quiet, in the dark. The hidden face of Japan, Akio. You still don’t get it, do you? How long have you lived here?” Adachi turns serious again, but there’s still a hint of cunning is his eyes. “Just like we don’t know the hidden face of Akio. Am I right?”

  Takeda looks over Adachi’s shoulder at some people at the bar. “There’s nothing hidden about me. My mother brought me up with clear principles; don’t trust anyone / life can screw you at any moment / today your best friends, tomorrow you devour each other / always be on the look...”

  “Friends don’t devour each other, Akio.” Adachi seems genuinely hurt. Takeda looks him in the eye. The police doctor is short, almost puny, delicate, his facial features blurred as if he’s withdrawn deep inside himself. Yet there’s still something dignified about him, a readiness to see things as they are.

  “Not my words, Daichi, my mother’s. She tried to brainwash me at every turn. Can you blame her after what she’d been through?”

  “She filled her child to overflowing with fear,” says Adachi. “You can blame her for that.”

  “Not after...”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “She always said: you don’t understand. You can’t. You had to be there to understand.”

  “It’s not fair that you had to share her fear and her pain, that she blamed you for it all in a sense.”

  Takeda smiles, almost imperceptibly. “She didn’t exactly love my ‘father’, don’t forget. I was destined for the latrine, just like my half-brother.”

  “Treating a child like that is just criminal.” Adachi speaks with great authority, although himself childless.

  “But I can’t blame her.”

  “You have to.”

  “Why? Your father laughed at you and despised you because you were gay. He did everything he could to dominate you, but he never experienced the camps, he
was never raped by a guard and all the rest of it. He’s to blame for his actions, but I can’t say the same for my mother.”

  Adachi blinks nervously. When anyone, even his friend, mentions his father, he senses danger lurking behind his back. In such moments, he wishes he could be smaller than he already is. He takes a deep breath, adjusts his glasses.

  “My father couldn’t bear the idea that his son was a ketsuman. Ketsuman, ass cunt, ketsuman, ass cunt, he would scream at me, right in my face, his lips twisted with disdain. That’s wrong, I agree, but I was a disappointment as a son. You were anything but, yet your mother still treated you like shit...”

  “She didn’t insult me, she took care of me. It was only when I caught her looking at me unawares, in silence, that I knew what she was thinking.”

  “That’s worse than a frustrated father who slaps you around and screams at you because you don’t live up to his expectations.”

  Takeda beckons the bartender with a wink. The man seems indifferent, has an arrogant expression on his face, purposefully takes his time. The condescending attitude of café staff is a recent trend in the bars in Hiroshima and elsewhere in Japan. “Live up to your own expectations, Daichi, and leave the past for what it is,” says Takeda.

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “I can’t forget my past.”

  Adachi wants to ask him why the abrupt answer, but Takeda doesn’t give him the chance and orders another round of drinks yakuza-style. The barman drops his superior facade, bows, and scurries off to prepare the order.

  “If I’d told him to get a move on because I’m a policeman he would have laughed in my face.”

  Adachi smiles. “But because he thinks your mafia he’s off like a rabbit with a kilo of gunshot in its ass. You haven’t changed, Akio. And you still know how to change the subject when you think you’re being backed into a corner. Allow me to repeat my question: what about you?”

  “Guilt.”

  Silence. Adachi takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes, and puts them on again as if he wants to get a clearer look at his friend when he asks his next question: “I haven’t mentioned this for years, but does that guilt of yours have anything to do with the man you tracked down more than twenty years ago, the man behind the military id-tags from WWII? You gave me them when I was working at the Ministry of Health and asked me if I could help you find him. Is that what it’s about?”

  Takeda stares at his friend, astonished. “So you... for all these years...”

  “I had a hunch, Akio, nothing more. A hunch. You should have seen yourself when you asked if I could find that soldier. The hate was seeping out of your pores. Don’t you remember? It seemed like a reasonable request, but your eyes couldn’t lie.”

  “Then you know what I did.”

  “No, I don’t, and I don’t want to know.” The doctor tosses back half his drink.

  “My life became one big lie from that day on,” says Takeda.

  “Wrong. I hate to use clichés, but this one fits: from that day on you started to convince yourself that your life was one big lie.”

  “I was a young policeman. What I did was...”

  Adachi holds up both hands. Takeda falls silent, shakes his head: “The bastard deserved it, but it’s like a millstone round my neck.”

  “If he deserved it then so do you,” says Adachi cryptically.

  Another silence. The moment empties like a balloon, turns gaunt like winter skin.

  “So you figured what I was going to do but you still helped me?”

  A hint of a smile appears at the corners of Adachi’s lips. “Friends don’t devour each other, Akio.”

  Takeda blinks. “I think it’s time I left the force, Daichi.”

  “You’ve been saying that for years.”

  “This time I mean it.”

  “How long have you been a policeman? More than twenty-five years? You would be crazy to give it up now. We might not get a fortune at the end of each month, but the pension makes up for it. Can’t you just close your eyes to all the crap? Japan’s not the only place with problems. The world’s a mess. The economic miracle’s gone up in smoke. What’ll you do if you resign? Night-watchman, on a subsistence wage?”

  “I remember the early days,” says Takeda. “I didn’t make it to university, remember. It took blood sweat and tears to make sergeant, then assistant inspector, then inspector. But I never forgot what our instructor hammered into us at the academy: protect and serve. And what did I do?”

  “Protect and serve.” Adachi holds his glass up to the light of a lamp behind their table and eyes the contents as if it’s a prism. “Protect and serve. Sure. But the question is: who?”

  “Exactly,” says Takeda. “I used to know the answer to that question, until a couple of years ago. Now I’ve no idea.” The inspector gets to his feet, the ruddy glow of a heavy drinker on his puffed veiny cheeks. “And do you know what’s worse, Daichi? It wasn’t him, it wasn’t my father. I got the wrong guy.”

  41

  Hiroshima – the Suicide Club squat –

  Kabe-cho – Yori, Reizo and Mitsuko – March 14th 1995

  The voices are loud and stroppy. They make a deep impression on me. They sound familiar, as if I’ve heard them before, when I was young and shy. It’s almost noon, but I must have dozed off and I’m still exhausted from the previous night. I try to concentrate and recognise the voices. Reizo and Yori are rowing again. It quickly turns nasty, below the belt, an explosion of pent-up anger meant for something else, something long past. I can’t help thinking that something changed yesterday, that the Suicide Club is now falling apart. These people are like shadows that merge at given moments but have little effect on one another. They preach an alternative society, but in fact they’re only interested in themselves. The group has been plagued by an ongoing power conflict. One part of the club moved to another squat. The other, three members, is lying here like me on an old mattress, staring at the ceiling as if nothing’s wrong, but I hear the dull thud of a fist hitting someone’s body. Yori screams. I jump to my feet and before I know it I’m standing in front of Reizo pushing him back with my hand on his chest. Yori is lying on the floor, simpering, holding her bleeding nose. Reizo’s in a state, calls her darashinai, dissolutely, a slut who screws around with blonde foreigners. He roars at the top of his voice that Yori has sabotaged a unique literary experiment and that she thinks his novel is pathetic. I grab his arm. Reizo leers at me through keyhole eyes and kicks me in the gut. He’s fast, his muscles are like springs. I feel bile rise from my stomach and gag. I grab him instinctively by the throat, shake him back and forth until his eyes reach the same level as mine. Two members of the Suicide Club are standing to my left. I can’t remember their names. They nudge and prod each other, shake their heads. I realise I’ve lifted Reizo from the ground. Disgust, at him and at myself, wells up inside. I toss him aside and he lands meters away after tumbling over a huge slab of mica on trestles we’ve been using as a table, library, and hobby area. He stays where he is, his back on the floor, groaning, pulling up his knees.

  Yori is on her feet. She rests her hand carefully on my belly. She’s wearing shiny black gloves today, artificial leather. I’ve never seen her without gloves on. Maybe she doesn’t like the idea of touching naked skin, especially mine. Everyone’s afraid of the dragon, the miscarriage. I can hear my father’s voice as if carried on the wind. “You can’t hide or deny who you are.” I want to push Yori away but she beats me to it: “Mitsuko, you’re bleeding.” She’s not staring at my stomach, where I can still feel Reizo’s kick.

  She’s staring at my crotch.

  42

  Hiroshima – Takeda on his way to

  Righa Royal Hotel – March 14th 1995

  In his car on the way to the Righa Royal Hotel where he’s scheduled to question a German photographer about the bizarre incident wi
th the young Belgian tourist, Takeda suddenly feels dizzy and his heart rate surges. He shakes his head. The main boulevard is awash with neon ads that burn night and day. Slithers of light flutter like streamers either side of the car. Nausea invades his stomach and bowels. He and Adachi had only had a couple. Surely not enough to make him sick? An illogical memory bubbles to the surface: the hurricane that threatened to carry him away as he stood on the beach on Hokkaido Island near the Suttsu city, just seven years old. After years in a concentration camp in the Dutch East Indies, his mother was, as she put it, “addicted to nature”. She loved to walk, long and lonely, and she always took her little boy with her without paying attention to his complaints or his sore feet. In Takeda’s memory, the bay of Suttsu is nothing but blue: the water paler than the deeper metallic blue of the surrounding mountains. It was the kind of location that looked down on you, made you feel out of place. The gusts of wind, the infamous Suttsu-dashi caused by the narrow, less than twenty kilometre stretch that separates the bay from the Sea of Japan and the mountains that funnel the ocean winds, were like punches from an invisible boxer. Takeda was terrified one of them would throw him into the water. The wind whistled like a steam train, and every new gust made him grab his mother ever tighter. To the seven-year-old’s dismay, Barbara Gerressen paid no attention to him. Rather she spread her arms as if she was stretching and screamed above the howling wind. Takeda couldn’t make out what she was saying. He dug his nails into her leg but she seemed not to notice, absorbed as she was by an emotion the young Takeda didn’t understand, although he could feel it. His mother’s entire body seemed to be abuzz. The boy was overcome by a terrifying rage: why did his mother refuse to protect him?

  He was angry because he felt as if he was riveted to her.