Bob van Laerhoven - Return to Hiroshima

She’s startled by a thud. She turns and walks away. Two thuds. A third. A drumming sound against metal.

Then she hears shouting, in Japanese. The voice sounds desperate.

She quickens her pace.

The voice switches to Dutch. Beate worked with a female midget from Amsterdam once, a highly intelligent and charming model who’d overcome the fact that she – as she put it – was imprisoned in a body not much taller than a metre. One evening, after an exhausting photo session in which Beate had locked her in a cage among the stray cats and dogs at a local kennel, the woman hit the bottle and had one drink too many. At three o’clock in the morning, she peered down at Beate from an attic bar, fixed her with bleary eyes and whispered: “Help. Help me.” Beate hears the same words now.

Xavier has managed to crawl to the side of the van and is kicking against it with both feet. Again, and again. He’s shouting, without even knowing what. The urge for life that he seemed to have lost for a while after Anna has come back with a vengeance. His mind is deflating like a balloon, focusing down on that one desire. It feels like drowning. Is he imagining things, or did he hear something? He takes a deep breath, his throat raw from yelling.

“Wie sind Sie, bitte?” A woman’s voice.

It sounds distant, as if a stretch of water is in the way. No time to think.

“Hilfe!”

Looking back later, Beate will marvel at her own decisiveness. Now, she’s acting on instinct. She can hear a man’s voice with a Dutch accent screaming for help in her native German. She tugs at the back door. It’s locked. She looks in through the window on the driver’s side. Something’s moving behind the seat. The riverbank is covered with smooth stones. She grabs one, and then on second thoughts grabs another. She hurls a stone at the driver’s window. Nothing. She lifts the heavier one, takes a few steps backwards this time, and throws it with all her strength. A crack. She runs back to the shore, pumped with adrenalin. She’s not thinking of the consequences of her actions, convinced that the man in the van needs help. She grabs the heaviest stone she can find, and this one smashes the glass. Reaching inside carefully she pushes the handle of the door. It swings open. She gets in, wriggles to the back of the van between the two front seats. It’s empty, except for a strapped figure on the floor.

My father used to say: we are the future, they are the past.

My father used to say: of course you’re not human, you’re more than human. Cloaked in his protective armour of fevered activity and revenge, he made me feel invisible. I thought no one could see me – me, Mitsuko, the woman inside this shell.

Crow, a sixteen-year-old boy, did see that woman. He drew her out of herself with his lopsided smile, his gangling, funny gait, the way he always seemed to be conducting an unseen orchestra with his constantly moving hands.

I soon started to treasure the stolen hours we spent together, twice or three times a week. Without him, I felt like I was walking in a void. He was very frank. He told me he was a runner for my father’s gambling joints in Nagasaki, and mentioned names of American Mafiosi that I later looked up. The kings of the American underworld were a recent fascination of his. He talked about Capone, but also told me stories about less famous men like Joseph Pistone, Lucky Luciano and Vincent Gigante. Crow talked about their sense of honour, and about the corrupt politicians and police, who he believed were much worse than the criminals. The men in his stories had only one goal, one resolution: to work their way up, and overcome their fears whenever they had to. Crow was determined to do the same. He didn’t say so, but I could tell: I want to reach an important position in your father’s organisation, then you and I can… I trembled at the thought, a shudder ran through my body from tip to toe, or was it a tingle?

Sometimes I would spy on the crew of his boat, watching him and the other men unload the goods. He was pale, almost as white as a doll, his limbs long and bony, and a film of sweat made his skin look translucent in the sun. Gradually, as the months went by, I felt myself blossoming. We talked about things I hadn’t even known were on my mind, such as love and death. Eventually, I talked about sex. He told me without hesitation that he’d hired a baita with his first wages as a gambling runner. He was only fifteen at the time. “It wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be,” he concluded with a shrug.

“What had you hoped for?”

We were sitting close to the observation post that we’d started calling “our spot”. From here, the highest point of the island, we could easily see anyone approaching. Though my father must have seen me with Crow when he came to find me after the Yuzonsha meeting, he hadn’t said anything about it. Nor about the incident with the camera.

Crow turned his face to the sun. His skin looked translucent again. “I’m not sure. Perhaps that she’d like me. But she seemed… wary.” He looked at me. “I forgot to caress her. That’s what I’d meant to do. But maybe she wouldn’t have liked it.”

He sat in silence. “At least you’re not a virgin anymore,” I said. Sitting next to me, he pulled up his right knee, rested his arms on it and peered at me over his shoulder. “And you?”

I felt a lump in my throat and couldn’t do anything but nod. I realised at that moment I was hoping he would ask if I would allow him to caress me. Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders and said: “Someone will come, I’m sure of it – a sweet woman like you.”

I clenched my teeth.

My thigh muscles tensed.

Surprise. A childless woman reading late at night, in a chair, by lamplight. She’s reading one or another rag, doesn’t lay a finger on inspector Takeda’s books. Or perhaps? He actually knows little about her. She can be a bitch at times. Mostly she’s respectful. Takeda looks at her bowed head. She’s greying, like him; with her it’s much more visible. Her body is wrapped in a nightgown. He knows her body, although it’s been a long time since they shared a bed. Wiry in recent years, a little withered at the edges, creases behind the knees, between the breasts (small, once pert), her broad pelvis now bony, her legs too short. It wasn’t so obvious before, when her proportions were pleasantly rounded, agreeable, a little flirtatious. Does Takeda still love her? He wouldn’t know. He values her coldblooded obstinacy and her stubborn attitude to fate. She treats him with respect, as a man should be treated. What’s he doing with his hand? He’s holding it over her head, to caress her hair, in a sudden surge of… of what? She looks up, her eyes calm and placid in the lamplight, a tad reserved, verging on distant. Takeda withdraws his hand.

“What are you reading?”

She smiles almost imperceptibly: “The usual news.”

He takes a quick look at the article. Photos of a scorched facade. A smouldering corpse being carried out by rescue workers. Fifteen people dead in a “video box” in Osaka. Video boxes are porn shops where customers can rent tiny coffin-like rooms, relax in an armchair and watch porn undisturbed. It was three in the morning when the place burned down, but it was almost full at the time. Labourers who’ve missed their train or don’t want to go home often spend the night in a video box. It’s cheaper than a capsule hotel. Takeda knows all about them, has used them more than once.