David Peace - Occupied City

For now you see, now the old man is fading, going and now gone, now you see and now you know, know what it is,

what it is you want; just the truth –

Not the fiction. Not the lies –

Only the truth –

Tear by drop-drop, foot by step-step, hoping there is still time; still two candles, in this upper chamber, beneath the Black Gate; still two last candles, tear by drop-drop, foot by step–

step, your head now turning, this way,

that way, turning again, and again –

Tear by drop-drop, foot by step-step, for you are not alone, beneath the Black Gate, in this upper chamber,

between these two candles, drop–

drop, step-step, drop–

drop, step–

step–

‘We are all in our cages, our cells and our prisons,’ says a voice in the shadows. ‘Some by the hands of others –

‘And some of our own making –

‘Of our own design …’

This way, that way, left and then right, you turn and you turn again, looking with the candlelight, searching through the shadows,

step-step, right and then left, step-step, that way and this,

step-step, looking, step-step, searching, step–

step, for the author of these words –

‘Are you my judge? The man who will accuse me? Accuse and convict me? Sentence and imprison me? Imprison or execute me? Is that you, my dear writer, is that you?’

Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, in the candlelight, now plague-light; white-light, hospital-white, laboratory-white then grey, an overcast-skin-grey then open-vein-blue, blue and now green, a culture-grown-green then yellow, yellow, thick-caught-spittle-yellow, streaked sticking-string-red, then black;

black-black, drop-drop, black-black,

step-step, in the plague-light,

drop-drop, step-step,

in the plague–

light–

‘Would you sit at my table of rotting food?’ whispers the voice in the shadows. ‘Would you dine with me, drink with me, and then enter a large black cross beside my name? Is that your plan?’

This way and that, you turn and turn and turn, drop-drop, step-step, you huff and breath-puff –

‘Is that what you want, my dear writer? Is that what you seek, here beneath this Black Gate, here among your melting candles?’

You puff and breath-pant, you pant and now-gasp,

for he is coming, step by step-step, whispering and muttering. In your ears, you hear him gaining, step by step-step,

drooling and growling, step by step-step,

A Night Parade of but One Demon …

Half-of-monster, half-of-man, you can smell him, you can sense him, but still you cannot see him,

still you can only hear him, whispering and muttering, drooling and growling –

‘Every society needs people like you, dear writer, people who will weep at their mother’s funeral. But a truly great man will always, already place himself above the events he has caused –

‘A man like me. And so behold –

‘In this city. In this mirror –

‘Here I am …

In the fractured, splintered mirror, the child before the man / Before the doctor. Before the killer. Before the dead / The sunlight and the stream, the flowers and the insects / Wings off flies. Legs off frogs. Heads off cats / The skin and the skull, the appearance and the absence / In the fractured, splintered mirror, murder is born

In the Death Factory, at Pingfan, near Harbin, in Manchuria. This place had once been home to villages and farms, to families and fields. The villages had been requisitioned and their inhabitants expelled. Then the Nihon Tokushu Kōgyō Company arrived. The Tokyo-based company hired local Chinese labourers to work day and night for three years to construct the one hundred and fifty buildings which would form the vast complex, the Death Factory.

I can never forget the first time I saw the place. Across a dry moat, beyond the high earth walls and the barbed-wire fences, the square-tiled facades of the central buildings towered, larger than any I had ever seen in Tokyo, reflecting the sunlight and the sky in a brilliant white radiance.

Over the moat, behind the walls and the wires, through the gates and the guards, a whole city, a future city, was waiting for me. There was a runway and a railway, a huge administrative building and an equally large farm, a power house with cooling towers, dormitories for the civilians and barracks for the soldiers, barns and stables, a hospital and a prison and, of course, the laboratories and the furnaces. This was the home of Unit 731, my new home.

The Unit was divided into eight separate divisions; First Division was concerned with bacteriological research; Second Division with warfare research and field experiments; Third Division with water purification; Fourth Division with the mass production and storage of bacteria; the four remaining divisions handled education, supplies, administration and clinical diagnosis.

The Emperor was our owner, Major Ishii was our boss.

On the Black Ship, the Killer sees it stretched out now before him: the Occupied City; its sewers and its streets, its homes and its shops, its schools and its hospitals, its asylums and its prisons. This city is a monstrous place; a Deathtopia of fleas and flies, of rats and men.

On the Black Ship, here in this Deathtopia, no one knows who he is, no one will ever know who he is. Here he will dwell, among the fleas and the flies, among the rats and the men –

The Killer in the Occupied City.

In the twenty-fifth year of the reign of the Emperor Meiji / In a village, in Chiba Prefecture / The fourth son of a rich landowner / In a lavish villa, in a bamboo forest / A tall child, a bright child / In a shaded grotto, before the family graves

In the Death Factory, Major Ishii welcomed the new recruits, his new workers, standing beside an antique vase of white chrysanthemums: ‘Our vocation as doctors is to challenge all varieties of disease-causing micro-organisms, to block all roads of intrusion into the human body, to annihilate all foreign matter resident in our bodies and to devise the most expedient treatment possible. However, the research in which you will now be involved is the complete opposite of these principles and will, naturally, initially, cause you some anguish as doctors. Nevertheless, I beseech you to pursue this research based on what I know will become your two overriding desires; firstly, as scientists to give free rein to your instinct and urge to probe for the truth in natural science, to discover and research the unknown world; secondly, as soldiers to use your discoveries and your research to build a powerful military weapon to use against the enemies of our divine Emperor and our beloved homeland –

‘This is our mission, this is your work.’

On the Black Ship, among the rubble, in the sunlight, the Killer watches a group of children playing beside a crater. The crater is filled with black water, broken bicycles and the debris of a defeated city. The water smokes, the water bubbles. The children toss pieces of wood into the water and then watch them sink.

The Killer remembers a story a colleague once told him in the Death Factory. A unit was sent to the city of Jilin to conduct tests on plague bacteria there. The method involved placing the pathogens into buns and then wrapping the buns in paper. The unit then went into an area of the city where children were playing. The men in the unit began eating buns similar to those in which they had planted the germs. When the local children saw the men eating the buns, they all came running over, asking for the buns. The men then gave the children the infected buns. Three days later, a second unit was sent to the area to record the levels of infection among the children and their families. The area had to be isolated within sheet-metal walls, then everything within the enclosure burnt to the ground.