David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

She does not ask why we are here.

Nishi and I sit at her stained, low table in her hot, overcast room. We refuse her offer of tea. We apologize again for disturbing her, for calling on her unannounced –

But she is insisting on giving us tea, apologizing for having no snacks, leaving us alone in her room while she ducks behind a curtain to bring us some tea –

I turn away to look out of her window but the view is partially obstructed by a thick growth of trees near the edge of the cliff, though I can still see the Togoshi-Ebara heights rising beyond the Meguro River, still see the barrack houses going up, the light industry returning, but all else is burnt and ruined; the old feudal villas, their gardens now overgrown parks, their ponds diseased pools –

‘It was originally a place for mistresses, up here,’ says Okayama Hisayo, placing two glasses of cold tea on the low table. ‘The founder of the Shibaura Company was actually the man who first bought this land to build an apartment for his mistress. It used to be quite a fashionable address but the building has changed hands so many times now it has become quite run down…’

‘It must still have some luck left though,’ I say. ‘To have escaped all the bombs and the fires.’

‘Because it’s up on a hill,’ she says. ‘And because of the railway and the river…’

‘Do you see much of the other tenants?’ I ask. ‘Do you know your neighbours?’

‘Not really,’ she says. ‘They used to be quite fussy in their choice of tenants. But the war changed all that. It turned back the clock. It’s all hostesses and mistresses again now, balladeers and gangsters who sublet the rooms for hourly uses…’

‘This building is also used as a hotel, then?’ Nishi asks her. ‘For prostitutes and their clients?’

‘Every evening,’ she says. ‘Different women, different men.’

‘And so do you know where they solicit their clients?’

‘They work the cheap cafés near Gotanda station.’

‘Each night?’ Nishi asks. ‘Different men?’

‘The sound of laughter,’ she says. ‘And then of tears.’

I ask her, ‘And so what do you do, Mrs. Okayama?’

‘I work the cheap cafés near Gotanda station.’

Another plain woman, another shabby room, another shabby apartment, another shabby building, another shabby neighbourhood .

‘Is that how you first met Kodaira Yoshio?’

Mrs. Okayama shakes her head and says, ‘I am a widow now, but my husband was a bus driver. I met him when I worked as a bus girl. Mr. Kodaira’s wife worked as a bus girl too. That’s how I became friendly with his wife and it was her I knew first. Then, when the apartment downstairs fell vacant, I suggested Mrs. Kodaira and her husband move in. She then became pregnant and went back to her family home in Toyama to have the child. Because of the wartime situation, Mrs. Kodaira and the new baby stayed on in Toyama…’

‘And so, when his wife was evacuated to Toyama, that was when you first became intimate with Kodaira?’ asks Nishi.

‘Mr. Kodaira had to stay on in Tokyo,’ says the widow. ‘And so his wife asked my daughter and me to take good care of him. But actually it was Mr. Kodaira who took care of us as he always had some extra food, he always had sweets and tobacco…’

‘And what did he ask in exchange?’ asks Nishi. ‘For his extra food, his sweets and his tobacco…?’

‘His wife had been pregnant,’ she says. ‘And then she was evacuated. He was alone and I…’

‘Did Kodaira ever mention anyone called Tominaga Noriko?’ I ask the Widow Okayama. ‘Did he ever mention an Abe Yoshiko?’

‘I know I wasn’t the only one,’ she says. ‘I know there were even others in this very building. Others who were not widows, like me. Others whose husbands were soldiers…’

‘But did you ever hear Kodaira talk about or ever see him with a girl aged approximately seventeen to eighteen years old; a girl you might have seen wearing a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress over a white half-sleeved chemise?’

I think about her all the time …

‘My daughter Kazuko had a dress just like that,’ she says. ‘Where is your daughter?’ I ask. ‘Does she live here?’ Mrs. Okayama shakes her head. ‘I sent her away.’

‘Where did you send her? When was this?’

‘May last year,’ she says. ‘To Tochigi.’

The place where Kodaira is from …

‘Did your daughter know Kodaira?’ asks Detective Nishi. ‘Did your daughter ever meet Kodaira?’

Mrs. Okayama nods. ‘Why do you think I sent her away?’

‘You sent her away because of Kodaira?’ asks Nishi. ‘Why?’

‘Because I knew he liked my daughter, not me. But she wouldn’t sleep with him and I would. He would screw me while she slept beside us; screw me while he stared at her…’

‘How often did he come here?’ asks Detective Nishi. ‘How often did you let Kodaira sleep with you?’

‘Mr. Kodaira had an appetite,’ says the Widow Okayama. ‘Mr. Kodaira was always hungry…’

‘And was Kodaira violent with it?’ I ask the widow. ‘With his appetite, with his hunger?’

She haunts me …

Mrs. Okayama shakes her head. ‘As long as you lay still.’

‘He never forced you to have sex with him?’ I ask her.

‘We had to be quiet so we did not wake my daughter.’

‘Did Kodaira ever put his hands around your neck?’

‘I said it was like pretending to be dead…’

‘Did he ever try to strangle you?’

‘He said, we already are.’

We’re already dead …

And then she says, suddenly from out of the silence, she says, ‘I think death follows him, it must follow him wherever he goes…’

Death follows us, as we follow death …

‘What do you mean?’ I ask her –

‘After I had sent my daughter away to Tochigi Prefecture, to live with my own mother, her grandmother, Mr. Kodaira kept asking and asking about her, saying we should go and visit her, saying we should see how she was, how we could go there to get kaidashi , to stock up on supplies. You don’t know him, but Mr. Kodaira is a relentless man and he is a persuasive man and so last June, this would have been about a month after my daughter left, Mr. Kodaira and I went to Tochigi to visit my mother and my daughter…’

Death is everywhere. Death is everywhere …

But Nishi can’t wait. Nishi can’t let her finish. Nishi asks, ‘You said death follows Kodaira; what do you mean?’

‘Well, I only accompanied Mr. Kodaira to Tochigi that once,’ she says. ‘But I heard from my mother and my daughter that he has been back there on a number of other occasions…’

Nishi still can’t wait, can’t let her finish. Nishi asks her again, ‘But your mother and daughter are still alive?’

‘Of course they are,’ says Mrs. Okayama. ‘But my daughter told me someone had been murdered…’

Nishi asks, ‘Murdered where?’

‘In Kanuma,’ she says. ‘Near to the house where my mother and daughter are living…’

*

Detective Nishi and I take Mrs. Okayama to the Meguro police station. We take her upstairs. We sit her in a chair at a table in an interview room. We give her a glass of cold tea. We offer her a cigarette. Then we ask her to tell us again all the things she has told us before. We ask her about her late husband. We ask her about her mother. We ask her about her daughter. We ask her about the house in Kanuma. We ask her for the dates. We ask her for the places –

Personal things. Private things …

We ask about her lover. We ask about their sex –

Dirty things …

We bow. We thank her. We send her back home. We do not tell her that her former lover is sitting in the very next interview room, smoking our cigarettes and telling us jokes –