David Peace - Occupied City

Tokyo & Moscow. Februarius the thirtieth.

Each night I sleep, I dream of Russia, I dream of Moscow. In last night’s dream, in my second-hand leather jacket, I was pursuing a man when I saw that this man, this Japanese man who was running away from me, in his turn, was pursuing a third man who, not sensing our chase behind him, was simply walking at a brisk pace along the pavement. Then this third man heard the sound of our running boots and he turned to look behind him and I saw that the third man was my brother. Of course, when I awoke, I was still in Tokyo but my toes felt cold, my socks were damp and the bed muddy.

Maybe he is alive and it is I who am dead. My hands injected, frozen and black, and then hacked off like the handles on a clay pot before my own eyes. Maybe it is I who am screaming, ‘Avenge me! Avenge me! Avenge me!’

And so maybe it is I who am stood on the banks of the river among the silent legions of the murdered dead, the countless legions of the war dead, my threadbare overcoat rotting into the stagnant water and its tangled weeds, maybe it is I who am waiting for him to avenge me –

Stop! Stop! Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Spin! Spin!

Click! Click!

January of the same year, coming after February

I could no longer put off this day. I woke early again from a fitful sleep and I took the train out to Chiba. I got off the train at Funabashi Station. With the piece of paper in my hand — the piece of paper originally torn from this martyr-log, on which the man from the wardrobe had written an address below the name I had given him — I walked through the snow and the mud. Finally, I came to the house, his house, his big house by a shrine where he lives with his wife and his children. And I stood across the road from his house, in the sleet and the declining light, and I waited, with the pistol in my belt and the rain in my face, the encroaching night at my back. I watched the lights go on in his house. I heard children’s voices. I thought I could smell food cooking. And then the lights in the house went out and I thought I could see a figure at a window watching me, watching him. But frozen and soaked, incapable of either action or thought, I simply stood there.

The Date 25th

I dreamt of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s ‘Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap’ and, in the same dream, I heard the music of Bach. And when I awoke, clouds of snow hung low over the city, but it was ash that fell from the sky. And in that sky were written three words, three Russian words in our Cyrillic alphabet:

Avenge me…

And again I hated this city, this trap, and again I hated its people, these insects.

But I dressed quickly and I took the train back out to Chiba. I tried to keep my eyes on my boots, on the floor. But at every station, each time I glanced up, I saw that same sky out of the stained windows and I saw those same words, those three stained words, following me, watching me, suspended on strings, carried by swallows, flocks of swallows, in their beaks, three stained words:

I got off the train and I walked through the sleet and the mud up the long road to his house by the shrine, my eyes on my boots, my eyes on the ground. But all the time, with every heavy step, I felt the sky above me, those words above me, swallows flying blind, leading me, pointing:

There he is, before you now —

And then, sure enough, when I looked up, there he was before me, walking towards me and I knew: This man is murder, this man is death; this man is my brother’s murderer, his killer; and there he was before me–

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And then the man, this murderer, he said in broken, halting English, ‘I know who you are and I know why you are here. I knew you would come and so I have been expecting you, waiting for this day. Now the day is here and the wait is over.’

I unbuttoned my coat and I took out the pistol.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The man glanced at the gun and said, ‘I am ready, for I think you know, Comrade, as well as I do, that war is within all men, regardless of their politics, regardless of their religion, regardless of their nationality, regardless of their race. It is the abyss beneath all our skins, the abyss within all our skulls. And once we have looked as we have looked, into that abyss, once we have stared as we have stared, into that void, then we cannot look away, for the abyss stares back at us, turning our hearts black and our hair grey. And with our black hearts and our grey hair we are no longer human, we are only war, are only murder, only death.

‘And so shoot me, and then shoot yourself. Or arrest me, then hang me, and then yourself.’

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I stepped towards him, tears on my cheeks. I grasped his head with my left hand, the pistol in my right hand. I brought his face towards mine, tears on his cheeks. I dropped the pistol. I kissed him on his lips. And then, then I walked away.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,

have mercy on me,

a sinner.

Da 26 te Mth yrae January 48

‘Only then do we set ourselves free from external oppression, when we have set ourselves free from internal slavery,’ wrote Nikolai Berdyaev. How right he was then, how right he is now.

This evening outside the hotel, they were waiting for me. I have no more strength to endure. I hear a chair fall in the room next door. I put on a clean, white shirt. That’s it now-

1 + 1 = 1;

2 + 2 = 5;

3 + 3 = 7;

4 + 4 = 9

Signed, Comrade / Saint Kaka / Akakos ,

Comrade Yurodivy or St Shit ,

Ward No. 6

Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, the medium closes this journal, this martyr-log, and now she holds this journal, this martyr-log over one of the five candles until the pale flame catches its pages and now this journal, this martyr-log begins to burn –

‘See,’ the medium laughs, ‘manuscripts do burn …’

Burning the journal, the martyr-log in the flame of the candle, the journal, the martyr-log now only ash, the candle,

the eighth candle now out –

‘I was and remain the best and brightest of all that is Soviet. Indifference to my memory and rumours about my death will be a crime. My body will be transported back to Moscow and my ashes placed alongside Gogol and Mayakovsky in the Novo-Devenchy Cemetery, under a red and black monument and an iron wreath of flywheels, hammers and screws. An iron wreath for an iron man –

‘So now, farewell Tokyo, murderous city …’

Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, eight candles gone, another ghost gone, there are no red and black monuments here, no iron wreaths, for you are a tarnished, rusted and corroded man –

Tarnished, rusted and corroded by the tears-that-will-not-come, the book-that-will-not-come, in this place-of-no-tears, this place-of-no-book, only these words, on your head are these dead ,

these words you have heard before, on your head are these dead , words you have heard twice now, on your head

are these dead, on your head

are these dead …

But beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, in this now-occult square, the light of its now-four candles, there are sirens again,

two sirens, an ambulance siren and a police siren –

And now the medium lies before you, crumpled and flattened inside the circle, hands raised and stiff in the candlelight, a detective’s identification wallet in her black and broken fingers,