Bob van Laerhoven: Return to Hiroshima

Xavier smiles, fishes ¥5000 out of his trouser pocket and slips it into the collection box. He’s 25 and just graduated from law school, but it helps when your parents have been diplomats their entire careers and dote on their son. Fifty dollars wouldn’t even pay for a single night in the kind of hotel he’s used to.

The woman’s gestures seem weightless and remind him of Anna.

“Thank you. Your world will never be the same.”

“The world has changed enough for me already,” Xavier Douterloigne quips in Japanese.

The woman, all flowing motion, languid and theatrical as if stepping through mist or water, falls silent. At that moment he notices that she’s quite young. And very high.

“Your Japanese is very good.”

“I lived in Tokyo for sixteen years, left when I was nineteen. My father was a diplomat. It’s been a while. I’ve forgotten most of it.”

“You’ll be talking like one of us again in no time.” She pats Xavier lightly on the chest, almost tenderly. “But will you ever think the way we do?” He notices her arms are tattooed with a flaming, yellow-blue interplay of plants, demons and dragons. He looks at her cleavage. The leotard leaves much of it uncovered, revealing the picture of an angel reaching up to her collarbone. The heavenly creature’s elegant garment – a hagoromo – is lying in a sad little heap at her feet. Xavier smiles, pointing at the tattoo: “Your fallen angel won’t be able to fly any more. Her feathered kimono is lying on the ground.”

“The tenshi theme; reassuring and classical, even by Japanese standards,” the young woman smiles. “The fallen angel demurely accepts her fate. Not mine, though.” She turns and takes off her coat. Her back is naked to the waist. It’s mauve, purple, black, orange and green. Her skin glistens through pale tattooed bubbles that look like fish eggs, scalloped shells, an earthworm, leaves. It all serves to frame a wild-eyed young woman with a knife between her teeth and a classical geisha headdress on her pinned-up hair; her lips on the handle are blood-red, her eyes fiery and sensuous.

“The work of a master tattooist,” Xavier says politely.

The woman turns around again. “Amazing symbols, don’t you think? She was once an angel. Now, she’s a killer whore. She stabs her prey in the back. She never misses.” She points a tapering index finger in his direction. He holds out his palms with a smile. “I wouldn’t dare contradict a member of a gokudo gang,” he says light-heartedly, deliberately using the old-fashioned term for “the extreme path of the chivalrous organisation” which the yakuza gangs like to apply to themselves. Xavier Douterloigne doesn’t have much of a sense of danger. He realised that one night when he was 18 and was waylaid at the River Meguro in Tokyo by members of a bosozoku , a motorbike gang of young thugs who weren’t afraid of wreaking havoc now and then in the respectable foreigners’ districts. Xavier’s father had told him that more than a few police officers secretly sympathised with these gangs and their fundamentalist belief in the superiority of the Japanese race. Even so, he didn’t feel particularly threatened when they surrounded him. He’d talk his way out. But before he could say a word, the first blows fell. Xavier wiped the blood from his nose and quickly struck an effeminate pose. He “confessed” that he was gay. They immediately left him alone. For inhabitants of kami no kuni , the divine country, there was no honour in beating up an effeminate man, even if he was a foreigner. Xavier had always been good in remembering such details of Japanese culture.

The young woman leans towards him as if wanting to tell him something in confidence. He bends forward automatically, bringing his ear close to her lips, her chest gleaming just inches away from his eyes. “I’m hungry,” she lisps. “Do you have any more money?”

I’ve spent a night and a day in this old warehouse, home to a group of young drop outs unable to run the financial rat race. I keep myself to myself as much as possible and the others think I’m weird – an English word they’re fond of – but I’m still a perfect fit in this embittered company: they’re exuberant, unpredictable, and aggressive, and they’re my age. I told much the same lie as I told Dr Kanehari – that I had to flee my devoutly Islamic husband because I’d had a secret affair. If he finds me, he’ll kill me, and that’s why I’m trying to avoid going outside for the time being. I’ve lost my faith and refuse to wear my veil any more. My unusual appearance is the result of a glandular condition I suffered as a child.

The whipped cream girl who brought me here is called Yori. She says she’s a street artist. She lives with dozens of others in this abandoned warehouse in the old part of town. After nabbing my ¥200 for the whipped cream, she took off her mask. Her mouth was made for talking, and she kept making quotation marks in the air as if she was teaching me a code I had to learn urgently. The economic crisis had forced her and her friends “to do business”, she told me. None of them worked for an employer. “Our parents refuse to understand that we don’t want to be wage slaves for ten hours a day, unbelievable, no?” Yori sounded light-hearted, but a grating undertone had crept into her voice. A giggly bitterness made her next comments sound a bit forced: about a mother who “still lived in the 19th century and had developed a hernia from constantly bowing to her husband”, and a father who “excelled in standing stiff as a rod, military fashion”. Yori was coarse and funny, but also a little tragic. She seemed ashamed of her family, but I sensed that her exaggerated cheerfulness and the street entertainment that gave her an income were holding back a tidal wave of frustration, an energy that was consuming her from within. I went along willingly all the same. She invited me to join her gang, to be part of the Suicide Club. The name contained more than a hint of juvenile provocation, but as irony would have it I had considered suicide myself in only the past few hours. I didn’t mention it. Exhausted after an all but sleepless night at the hotel, I accepted the offer of a bed in their “fortress”. We crossed a busy, winding road that looked like a crazed funfair of neon lights. One of the billboards reads Mitsukoshi in huge letters, a flash of phosphor. Then there was a giant clock, blue, yellow and green, an explosion of colours lighting up the date, March 12 th1995, with a shower of sparkling fireworks before it displayed the time: 02.15 a.m. I also remember seeing a tram twisting over the street like an enormous serpent of light. It seemed to come out of nowhere – I put that down to exhaustion. Then we reached the inner-city, the narrow streets, the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere, Yori walking ahead of me, grey lines on the asphalt road, a grubby blue house, a flight of stairs going up, a room, its windows stark and square, the smell of paint, oil and old wool, mattresses on a concrete floor. Then a shiver running through my bones, sleep taking hold of me, and nothing more.

Nothing, except a day and a night full of memories and doubts. One of the youngsters, Yori’s boyfriend, claims to be a writer. He woke me up after that first night. Or should I say, he shook me vigorously till I woke. Roughly my own age, with boyish good looks, slight but sinewy, a thick head of hair dyed bright blonde and gelled up in stiff spikes. He didn’t waste words: “You’re exactly what I was looking for!” He turned to a young woman at the window, grabbed her by the nose as if she was a dog, and shook gently: “Yori, you’re my inspiring muse! This must be fate!” It took a while before I remembered that the girl who’d brought me here was called Yori. She was playing a game on a hand-held electronic gadget, deeply engrossed, and didn’t seem interested in us at all. She didn’t flinch when her boyfriend took her by the nose. She was wearing a light grey ensemble this time: short skirt, pleated blouse with puff sleeves, yellow gloves halfway up her arms. It made her look innocent and childlike at first sight. The young man introduced himself as Reizo Shiga and asked me to get up. I did as he asked and looked down at him. He circled me, inspecting me like an animal ready for market. His name suited him: it meant cool , more or less.