Bob van Laerhoven - Return to Hiroshima

“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.”

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.

In his car on the way to the Righa Royal Hotel where he’s scheduled to question a German photographer about the bizarre incident with 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.

Because he couldn’t move without her.

Reizo is gone. Looking for drugs as usual, Yori said. As usual. Her words are simmering with both anger and sadness. The others have also scattered. My scuffle with Reizo appears to have worked as a catalyst. The group is falling apart completely. Or maybe I’m imagining things and they’re just hungry, went out for a bite to eat. These people hate society, but they still believe in the law of the jungle and the profit principle. They think they’re different, but they’re not. From the moment I arrived here I made sure anything I had of any value was well hidden. If they find out what I have they’ll steal it. But in spite my suspicions, I just broke my own rule. I told Yori much more than I should have. I hope she doesn’t betray my confidence. After the confrontation with Reizo I ran outside to the parking lot in front of the Suicide Club and tried to regain my self-control. I was finding it hard to breath. A sense of sickening abnormality took shape in my mind, filling me with both panic and desire. The clawing heaviness of my bizarre life had me by the throat. The thirst for blood I had felt during the fight with Reizo made it hard for me to think straight. I had to face the facts: I couldn’t avoid reality, but I didn’t know how to divide it up into neat digestible portions. Most of us live our lives with our eyes downcast, bound hand and food to established rituals. A tough layer of surface skin protects people from life’s more toxic influences, but I don’t have such protection. My nerves are exposed like foam on a restless sea.