David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

The three women smile again. The three women bow again.

‘Do you know the Salon Matsu?’ I ask them. ‘In Kanda?’

The three women shake their heads.

‘Do you know anyone who has ever worked there?’

The three women shake their heads again.

‘Anyone who might have left here to work there?’

‘I am sorry,’ says Kato, the president in her bright kimono. ‘But nobody really talks about what they did before they came here or what they will do after they leave here. It is much better for us not to think or talk about the world outside of here…’

‘But you were a geisha. She was a typist. She was a dancer.’

‘Maybe we were,’ she smiles. ‘No one remembers.’

I don’t want to remember. In the half-light …

‘But what about new recruits?’ I ask. ‘Don’t you interview them? Don’t you ask them about their previous work?’

‘There are no interviews here,’ she laughs. ‘Only medicals.’

The chairs and the tiny curtains. Their concealed faces and their open legs. The two shallow pools. Every other day …

I ask all three, ‘How long have you been here, then?’

‘We all came in December last year,’ says Kato.

‘And how much do you owe the company?’

‘About five thousand yen each,’ she says.

‘And do you have any savings at all?’

‘Of course not,’ she laughs. ‘We have to buy our food and pay for our own medical expenses and then there are the new clothes and the cosmetics we need for our work.’

‘But how much do you earn?’

‘Before we were placed off-limits, we each had fifteen customers a day,’ she says. ‘Each customer paid fifty yen and half of that went to the manager and half to us.’

‘That’s almost four hundred yen a day,’ says Nishi, suddenly.

‘Almost four hundred,’ says Kato. ‘But that was before.’

‘And how many customers were coming a day?’

‘Almost four thousand a day back then.’

‘How many girls were there?’

‘Three hundred.’

‘That’s one hundred thousand yen a day for the company,’ exclaims Nishi. ‘One hundred thousand yen a day!’

‘But that was before,’ repeats Kato. ‘That was before we were placed off-limits to the soldiers.’

‘And now?’ I ask her. ‘How many come now?’

‘Maybe ten,’ she says. ‘Twenty at the most.’

I ask her, ‘Why do you have a union?’

‘To petition General MacArthur,’ smiles Kato. ‘The manager thought that if we wrote to General MacArthur as a union, asking him to let his lonely and homesick GIs come here, then the general would allow the International Palace to open again.’

I shake my head. We thank them –

They bow. We leave –

Leave. Leave …

I want to leave this place. This country . I want to flee from this place. This heart . I want to find the driver. Now …

I walk back inside one of the barracks –

Nishi follows me. Up the stairs –

There is a girl in the corridor. There is a naked girl in the corridor. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours, no older than fourteen. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours, no older than fourteen, being penetrated up her backside by a Victor as she stares down the long, long corridor at Nishi and I with tears running down her cheeks, down her cheeks and into her mouth, saying, ‘Oh, very good Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, very good Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, oh, Joe…’

She is better off dead. I am better off dead …

This is America. This is Japan. This is democracy. This is defeat. I don’t have a country any more . On her knees or on her back, blood and come down her thighs. I don’t have a heart any more …

Her legs apart, her cunt swollen with pricks and pus –

I don’t want a heart. I don’t want a heart …

Thank you, Emperor MacArthur –

I don’t want a country …

Dōmo , Hirohito.

*

Nishi plays the good monkey all the way back to Tokyo as field becomes ruin and ruin becomes shack and shack becomes building and I sit and I watch him and wish I’d had the foresight and the guts to walk back, to walk back barefoot into Tokyo through field and through ruin and not to be sat back here in the Victors’ jeep listening to Nishi mix up his r’s and his l’s while the Victors laugh and throw him cigarettes and chewing gum as childish smiles light up his grateful face and so when we get out at Headquarters and we both bow down as low as we can and thank them a thousand times and they have driven off laughing and joking, throwing their cigarettes and chewing gum, and though I know tonight they’ll burn and they’ll itch and they’ll weep and they’ll scratch it’s no consolation, and so I turn and I slap Nishi hard across his face, so hard across his face that he falls over in the road and does not get back up again –

Because Nishi has no guts. No guts –

Because Nishi is gutless –

Gutless. Gutless …

Just like me.

*

Back inside Headquarters, I go to where we keep the undead. ‘And we’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember?’ I go to where we keep the files of the cases we have not solved. I don’t want to remember . To the archives and the records of our defeats and our failures. But in the half-light, I can’t forget . I ask the man on duty for one of our records of failure. ‘Did you find that file, inspector…?’

‘It would be the fifteenth of August,’ I tell him. ‘Last year.’

The officer disappears and then reappears, empty-handed –

‘Not there,’ he says. ‘Must have already been signed out.’

‘Really?’ I ask him. ‘Do you know who signed it out?’

The officer pulls out the tatty, old battered register –

‘Your Nishi of Room #2,’ laughs the officer.

‘You’re joking?’ I ask him. ‘When?’

‘Only yesterday,’ he says, still laughing at me.

*

Through the dirt and the dust. Through the shadows and the sweat. Chiku-taku . Down Sakurada-dōri to Atago I run. Through the doors and up the stairs. Chiku-taku . Detectives Kimura and Ishida sat in their shirtsleeves on their borrowed chairs at their borrowed desks; Kimura proud to have found Ishida; Ishida nervous and waiting –

I walk straight over. I ask them, ‘Where are the others?’

‘They’re not back from their rounds,’ says Kimura –

I am staring at Ishida. I am asking, ‘And Nishi?’

‘I thought he’d gone with you,’ says Kimura –

I’m still staring at Ishida, asking, ‘Fujita?’

They both shake their heads. Kimura says, ‘Not today.’

I reach down to Ishida. I grab Ishida. I pick him up. I kick away his borrowed chair. I say, ‘Where is Detective Fujita?’

‘I don’t know,’ flaps Ishida. ‘I really don’t know.’

I pull his face closer to mine by his shirt. There is sweat down his face. There is sweat down mine. There are tears in his eyes and there are tears in mine. ‘You’ve lied to me before. You’ve lied…’

‘No,’ squeals Ishida. ‘I haven’t lied to you. I haven’t…’

‘You’ve lied and you’ve lied and you’ve lied…’

‘No, no, no,’ cries Ishida. ‘I haven’t…’

‘You’ve lied to protect him…’

‘No, no, no. I haven’t…’

‘Lied to save him…’

‘No, no, no…’

‘Yes, you have,’ I hiss and I push him away from me. Back over his borrowed chair and back onto his borrowed desk. The sweat down his face and the tears in his eyes –