Bob van Laerhoven - Return to Hiroshima

“Do you know the Star Wars saga?”

Beate smiles. “That’s one of my weak points. I’m crazy about space opera. And I’ve seen every episode.”

“They’re based largely on Japanese mythology. The background idea has its roots in what we nowadays call chanbara in fight movies, usually the warrior’s mythical struggle with fate occasioned by some minor event and by unexpected bonds between people who’ve never met before.”

The photographer sticks out her chin. She seems smaller than she really is in the passenger seat of the car. “ Star Wars has a happy ending,” she says stubbornly. She looks out at the busy street. There are no pedestrians. She wants to ask Takeda: how strong are those unexpected bonds? But she keeps it to herself.

“That’s why the saga was such a success here. We’re not used to happy endings.”

They’re making painfully slow progress. With every metre his knuckles get whiter on the steering wheel. From the side his deep-set eyes and the skin around the robust eye sockets seem strained.

“What’s the matter, Akio? You look anxious.”

“I was thinking about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.”

Beate isn’t surprised that he keeps changing the subject. At that moment, the inspector is more preoccupied with himself than with the predicament he’s presently in. “A cyberpunk novel, if memory serves,” she answers. “By… by…”

“Haruki Murakami. I read it in English hoping it would improve my fluency. I can’t remember much about it to be honest, just that it was complicated and dark. Some of the characters lived in a strange city surrounded by a wall and an impenetrable forest. The inhabitants of the city weren’t allowed to have a shadow. I still remember how I found that such a pitiful idea for someone who was supposed to be a great writer. But to my surprise the image stayed with me, haunted me, as if it had latched on to something inside me. And now I feel as if a shadow lived my life instead of me, while I was imprisoned in a city surrounded by a wall and an impenetrable forest.” The inspector looks at her apologetically and then smiles: “I’m gibbering, I know it. The last forty-eight hours have left me feeling like a tsukimi specialist.”

Beate raises her eyebrows. “How do you say that in English?” he asks. “The best I can think of is ‘the art of moon gazing’. The ancients used to stare at the full moon until they reached a state of transcendence. At that moment they saw the universe as it really is. It was so scary and confusing that it drove many of them mad.”

Before she knows what she’s doing she runs her finger over his cheek, an intimate gesture, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He doesn’t pull away; he just blinks for a second or two, surprised. “You’re not mad, Akio,” she says “You’re just sad.”

Rokurobei has a habit of getting close to his victims. He now does the same with Adachi as he did with Dr Kanehari and Reizo Shiga. In the light of the uv lamps, his enormous, angular, slightly crooked head appears nothing short of monstrous.

“By saying I’m the son of a concubine I presume you’re trying to make me angry, doctor, in the hope that I will hasten your death. Smart, but not smart enough. You know as well as I do that the children sired by the emperor with a concubine are officially registered to ensure their right of succession to the throne. I was scrapped from the register because I was sickly , not because I’m the son of a mistress.”

“I read the documents.” Adachi’s voice is little more than a whisper. “The doctors were convinced you would die before you were six months old. The imperial physician experimented on you on his own initiative. He gave you the growth hormone somatropin, among other things. In those days they had to harvest it from the pituitary glands taken from fresh corpses. How many Manchurian prisoners of war had to die to keep you alive, kotaishi?” On Adachi’s lips the word for “crown prince” sounds like an insult.

Rokurobei grins. Adachi closes his eyes. He finds it hard to write the man off as a fairground freak when he’s so close by.

“The imperial family is a rat’s nest. When I survived against expectations and started to grow up, they saw me as a threat. I was disfigured , a mockery to the emperor’s divine status.”

“The doses of somatropin were far too high. They caused gigantism and organic deformation.”

“Exactly. In those days they knew very little about the correct use of growth hormones, especially on young children. I grew into an abomination . There were plans to have me murdered, but my father thwarted them. He was fascinated by his pup. He watched as the growth hormone treatment turned me into a giant and was captivated by dreams and phantasms about eternal life. Thanks to him I was able to lead the life of a shadow. Don’t you think that’s funny, Adachi? The Japanese wallow in formality and are inclined to think themselves superior, but no other people on the planet has so many secret cesspits as we. Our sense of military superiority is nothing short of pompous. In other countries they would have reacted very differently to a deformed prince.”

“Perhaps, but your response to it all was to create a perverted myth and start to live it.”

“Typically Japanese yet again, doctor. But who knows, there may be a hint of truth in that myth. They say that Rokurobei – the serpent neck – has the power to shed his skin . I’m sixty-five, but look at my hair and my smooth skin.”

Adachi looks his executioner in the eye one last time and decides to pull out all the stops. “Does the serpent neck rape his own daughter?”

The head pulls back abruptly, almost hitting the sun bed. Adachi waits. Then, that smile again. There is no fast deliverance. The head comes close again; Adachi notices for the first time that the face is covered in makeup. Tiny beads of sweat trickle down oily cheeks. Under the makeup the skin is pockmarked.

“Mitsuko made that story up. It’s not even a question of lying. She believes all her fantasies to be true.”

“I saw the baby your daughter left at the Peace Monument in my autopsy room.”

“So I heard.”

“I know the chief commissioner is helping your organisation.”

“The Japanese police are a bunch of derailed imbeciles. The biggest collection of tyrants, blacklegs, traitors, degenerates and nail-biting weaklings the world has ever seen.”

“No wonder the yakuza and the police work so well together,” Adachi whispers. He can feel the ropes tightening around his body. His intellect refuses to believe he’s about to die. Not this way. At the same time a deep sense of resignation has taken root in him, as if someone had just pumped his arm full of anaesthetic.

“My name is Norikazu,” says the man crouched beside Adachi after a long silence. “Respect that name, doctor, it represents my true self.” He looks at the doctor out of the corner of his eye, unexpectedly coy. “I never laid a finger on my daughter. Mitsuko has lived for years in her own make-believe world. She has a tumour in her brain. I consulted the appropriate doctors, Adachi; I did my duty. It’s inoperable and it’s going to kill her. The doctors bombarded me with jargon: schizoid personality disorder, or words to that effect. They suggested pills, but they didn’t help, not enough at least. It’s not only the rape fantasy. She tells anyone who’s willing to listen that we live on Hashima Island, but it’s not true. I use the place sometimes, but it’s not my permanent abode. How old do you think my daughter is?”