David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …

‘Then tidy up all your affairs tonight,’ Chief Kita tells us. ‘Leave nothing unfinished. No loose ends, please.’

The chief looks away now –

I glance at my watch –

Chiku-taku …

It is 8:30 p.m.

*

I run down the corridor of Police Arcade to the back stairs. I leave through a back door. I cut through Hibiya Park. The temperature not falling with the night, the flies and mosquitoes hungrier than ever –

Pan-pan girls calling through the shadows and the trees –

‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’

I run across Hibiya-dōri. I reach the elevated tracks –

Pan-pan girls in the shadows and the arches –

‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’

I follow the Yamate train tracks –

To the Shimbashi Market –

‘Asobu …? Asobu…?’

To Senju Akira.

*

Kettles and pans. Crockery and utensils. Clothes and shoes. Cooking oil and soy sauce. Rice and tea. Fruit and vegetables. The kakigōri stalls and over and over, again and again, the ‘Apple Song’ –

‘Red apple to my lips, blue sky silently watching …’

All laid out on the ground, on stall after stall –

Half of it Japanese. Half of it foreign. All of it illegal. But there are no police here. No Victors. No Occupiers –

‘Apple doesn’t say a thing, but Apple’s feeling is clear…’

Here there is only one law; buy or be bought. Sell or be sold. Eat or be eaten; this is where the cannibals come –

‘Apple’s loveable, loveable is apple…’

To the Shimbashi New Life Market –

‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’

The old Outside Free Market is gone. The old Black Market is finished. This is the new market for the new Japanese yen –

‘If two people sing along, it’s a merry song …’

This is the two-storey Shimbashi New Life Market with its modern arcades for over five hundred stalls –

‘If everyone sings the Apple Song …’

The dream of Matsuda Giichi –

‘It’s an even merrier song…’

But Matsuda Giichi never lived to see his New Life Market open because two months ago, on the night of the tenth of June, Matsuda Giichi was attacked and shot in his office by Nodera Tomiji, one of his own former gang members, one who had been expelled during Matsuda’s reorganization of his own gang, the Kantō Matsuda-gumi, in their amalgamation with the Matsuzakaya gang –

But nobody really knows if Nodera killed Matsuda –

Nobody saw Nodera pull the trigger and fire –

Nobody really knows because Nodera Tomiji was drunk when persons unknown found him in a bar on the Ginza –

And he was dead when they left him –

‘So let’s all sing the Apple Song and…’

Now Senju Akira is the new boss –

‘And pass the feeling along…’

This is the man I’ve come to see. This is the man whose men are waiting for me. The man whose men are watching for me –

They know I’m here. They know I’m back …

In their pale suits and patterned shirts, with their American sunglasses and Lucky Strikes, they are whispering about me –

They know why I’m here, why I’m back …

Among the kettles and the pans, they come up behind me now, one on either side, and they take an arm each –

‘You’re more brave than you look,’ whispers one of them –

‘And more stupid,’ says the other as they whisk me past the mats and the stalls, the crockery and the utensils, out into the alleys and the lanes, through the shadows and the arches, until we come to the wooden stairs and the open door at the top with its sign –

Tokyo Stall Vendors Processing Union .

Now they let me go. Now they let me wipe my face and wipe my neck, straighten up my shirt and put on my jacket –

The calls of odd, even and play …

There is a foreigner coming down the stairs, an American in sunglasses. At the foot of the stairs, the American turns his face to look at me and then looks away again. He nods to Senju’s men as he disappears into the alleys and the shadows –

No one is who they say they are …

There is no ‘Apple Song’ playing here as I walk up the stairs towards the open door, just the dice and his voice –

‘You got good news for me, have you, detective?’ calls out Senju before I even reach the top of the stairs –

I stop on the stairs. I look down at his two goons. They are laughing now. I turn back to the door –

The sound of dice being thrown. The calls of odd, even and play, odd, even and play …

‘Don’t be a coward now,’ he shouts. ‘Answer me, detective.’

I start walking again. I reach the top. I am a policeman . I turn into the doorway. Into the light –

‘Well?’ asks Senju –

I kneel down on the tatami mat. I bow. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’

Senju spits his toothpick onto the long low polished table. He turns his new electric fan my way and shakes his head –

‘Just look at you, officer,’ he laughs. ‘Dressed like a tramp and stinking of corpses. Investigating murders when you could be getting rich, arresting Koreans and Formosans and bringing home two salaries for the pleasure. Taking care of your family and your mistress, fucking the living and not the dead…’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘How old are you now, detective?’

‘I am forty-one years old.’

‘So tell me,’ he asks. ‘What do they pay a forty-one-year-old detective these days, officer?’

‘One hundred yen a month.’

‘I pity you,’ he laughs. ‘And your wife, and your children, and your mistress, I really do.’

I lean forward so my face touches the tatami mat and I say, ‘Then please help me…’

And I curse him; I curse him because he has what I need. And I curse Fujita; I curse him because he introduced us. But most of all I curse myself; I curse myself because of my dependence; my dependence on him …

‘You chase corpses and ghosts,’ he says. ‘What help are you to me? And if you can’t help me, I can’t help you.’

‘Please,’ I say again. ‘Please help me.’

Senju Akira throws down five hundred yen onto the mat in front of my face. Senju says, ‘Then get a transfer to a different room; a room where you can find things out, things that help me…

‘Like who paid Nodera Tomiji to kill my boss Matsuda; like who then killed Nodera; like why this case is now closed …’

‘I will,’ I say, then over and over. ‘Thank you.’

‘And don’t come back here until you have.’

‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’

‘Now get out!’ he shouts –

I shuffle backwards across the mats then down the stairs, past the goons and through the alleys, back into the market –

‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’

The Shimbashi New Life Market –

This is the New Japan … This is how we live –

‘Let’s all sing the Apple Song and pass the feeling along.’

*

I haggle. To eat . I barter. To work . I threaten. To eat . I bully. To work . I buy three eggs and some vegetables. There was no fish and there was no meat. Now there is another problem on the Yamate Line and the trains have stopped running in the direction of Shinagawa, so I take the streetcar. It is crowded and I am crushed and the eggs were a mistake. I get off at Tamachi and then I walk or run the rest of the way. The vegetables in my pockets. The eggs in my hands –