Bob van Laerhoven - Return to Hiroshima

But the fabrications of the mind are contradicted by the body. I can still feel the pain in my belly, the fever that kept me in bed for days with my father at my side, a silent ghost staring out of the window at the sea and not at me. We didn’t exchange a single word: our bodies seemed frozen in time.

Still, this morning my doubts are like pebbles tumbling down a steep incline. Can I describe my father to my own satisfaction? What happened to all that time I spent alone, more or less, with Mayumi? My mother? Can I picture her face? I must have been about ten when she committed suicide. My father told me she committed suicide, that I wasn’t witness to it. Yet I can still see her looking back, high on the ramparts surrounding the island, her hair tossed by a stiff sea breeze. I hear something screaming at me, a confession or an oracle. Scenes in my head, like those in the manga comics that are lying scattered on the floor in this old building. Reizo says they’re the “literature of tomorrow”. Or scenes in my head from a film I saw when the cinema on Hashima was still intact? Captive on my futon, surrounded by the breathing and groaning of people awaking from sleep, I panic when I feel me slipping away from myself. I try to remain calm and the fear slowly subsides, but a residue of doubt about my own mental stability lingers. I should seek help. Is it possible that my unusual metabolism is also affecting my mind? Didn’t the same thing happen to my father? Since the day I found his birth records on Hashima, one hypothesis after another has plagued me. If you saw my father you wouldn’t believe your eyes. Almost seven foot tall, head like a block of stone, hands and feet abnormally large, long neck out of proportion with the rest. The medical term for the condition is acromegaly . But does that explain his extraordinary powers of attraction? The light in his eyes, the expression on his lips, the way he uses his classical, poetic Japanese to seduce people, his berry-red lips? The way he moves his imposing body, which sometimes, in certain positions and at unguarded moments, can appear fragile?

Does acromegaly explain how my father thinks? I haven’t a clue what drives him. He always played his cards close to his chest and wallowed in the aura of mystery that surrounded him.

Yesterday I had an unexpected conversation about my father with Reizo Shiga. He had just returned from a meeting of what he called “the Brotherhood”. His pupils were dilated, his movements fast, pointed, exaggerated. His saliva spattered all over the place. One minute his body was limp, the next it jolted and jiggled as if electrified. He asked if I still saw my parents. In an impulse I told him about my father, fortunately without mentioning Hashima. My description excited him. He wanted to know more: “What a character!” That’s Reizo’s mantra: everyone has to be a character in his novel. I realised I’d told him too much and tried to distract him. Easy enough since he was high. I asked him what kind of literature he wanted to write.

“Literature is about the violence within us that leads to death.” He puffed on his cigarette and inhaled deeply. The shoddy surroundings of the decrepit factory hall were in complete contrast to his aristocratic demeanour.

“Why?”

He seemed surprised at the stupidity of my question, straightened his shoulders, his yellow crest. “Writers are like God. They love their characters, but take pleasure in the suffering they put them through. They torment themselves through the puppets they create and in the midst of the torment they discover a sort of rage, the rage you need to create. There’s a lot of sadomasochism in the universe and literature has its own fair share.”

A far-fetched hotchpotch of an answer, I figured, but I was happy enough that I’d managed to change the subject. I kept my face even. But I couldn’t deny that his ideas made me think of my father. I realized that I had seen a sort of rage in him when I was a child, a rage that had terrified and attracted me all at once.

“The Eros and Thanatos principle,” I said. He made a dismissive gesture: “Fuck that old crap! Have you read Gide?”

I had to admit that I had never heard of Gide. Reizo continued self-satisfied: “French writer. Published Les Caves du Vatican in 1914. One of the characters throws a complete stranger from a moving train for no reason at all. People saw it as an illustration of the existence of free will. But they were wrong: the character wanted to have a free will so much that he was willing to do anything to prove it: the rage of imperative desire . It motivates every writer. That’s why, my dear Mitsuko, writers are the most amoral creatures alive.”

The most amoral creatures alive.

Because of imperative desire.

I repeated his words aloud. He burst out laughing, brayed that I’d walked right into his trap.

I watched him for a while. He examined his nails, threw back his head, lit another cigarette. Then he grinned at me, bristling with hate and lust and compassion.

If I had been more attentive, smarter, I would have seen that same expression in my father’s face long ago.

Dr Kanehari rolls his eyes. It’s all he can do.

“Are you familiar with shi-e, doctor?” says the voice behind his right ear. “Probably not. You’re young, modern; our old and venerable Japanese culture is probably a stranger to you. Shi-e is one of the kegare or ‘impurities’. It represents the impurity of death. What many people don’t know: shi-e intensifies when we live a dishonourable life and die as a result. The body of such a person deserves only to be spat upon.”

A long silence follows. Kanehari can hear the blood pounding in his ears.

“You might want to ask yourself why I’m taking such a personal interest in you,” the voice muses. “I have a network of people who do all sorts of things for me, who prepare things for me, just as I have people who are preparing this nation of ours to take its place once again as the mother of all countries. It’s not just coincidence that the old name for Japan, Yamato , means ‘the land on top of the pyramid’.”

The voice falls silent. Dr Kanehari has no idea what’s going on. Twenty minutes earlier, two policemen appeared at his door to question him about a young woman who had visited his clinic. Kanehari let them in and before he knew it they had overpowered him and tied him to his own operating table. The door opened. He heard a rustling sound. Someone was standing behind him, leaning over him. It made him shiver. A voice spoke to him. Kanehari did his best but couldn’t place it. The same elusive voice now continues: “And the present name for our country, Nihon , surely you know its meaning?” The doctor has nothing to say; the voice continues unruffled: “Source of the Spirit. In prehistoric times, Kanehari, the Japanese ruled the world. The evidence is indisputable.”

A long bony finger taps the doctor’s left cheek. Kanehari can smell it. As if the flesh is burning.

“The symbol of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamen was the chrysanthemum. The Egyptians treated their pharaohs like gods, supernatural beings in human form. The symbol of our imperial family, who we traditionally honour as gods, is the same chrysanthemum. Proof if proof were needed that the Japanese race has its roots in the beginnings of time. The chrysanthemum is my symbol, Kanehari, and that of my daughter who visited you here. Do you get my drift, doctor?”

Kanehari gulps, moves his head to one side.