David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse! I curse!

Ishida takes the telegram from the officer behind the desk. Ishida steps to one side to open and read the telegram –

My heart is pounding. My heart is pounding …

But Tachibana is taking me down the side of the front desk, leaving Ishida to his telegram, and leading me along a corridor to his office, telling me the local history of Kanuma –

I curse him! I curse him! I curse him!

Police Chief Tachibana sitting me down and promising me tea, searching for the other files, the other dead women he feels might have been murdered by Kodaira Yoshio –

Other women, other deaths …

There is a soft knock on the door now as Detective Ishida steps into the room, excusing himself –

Eyes blank, eyes dead …

‘Here we are,’ says Chief Tachibana, handing me two thin files across his desk. ‘In the face of any initial evidence to the contrary both these deaths were originally recorded as ikidaore , accidental deaths due to injury or disease, mainly because of the deterioration of the corpses. But, to be honest, I’ve always felt that there might have been more to their deaths than simple accident or disease and now, with this Kodaira suspect you have in Tokyo…’

I open the top file as he speaks, Ishikawa Yori …

‘Thirty years old and the wife of a tailor, Ishikawa was an evacuee living at Imaichimachi, Kami Tsuga-gun. She was last seen on the twenty-second of June last year, waiting for a train at Shin-Tochigi station and then travelling on a bus from Tochigi station to Manako station, which is near to where her body was found. We believe that Ishikawa died some time towards the end of June last year but her body was not discovered until…’

‘The tenth of September,’ I read –

‘Yes, the tenth of September,’ continues Chief Tachibana. ‘Thank you. An old farmer had gone up into the woods at Manako-mura to pick leaves to smoke as a tobacco substitute and that’s when he found the body, or the skeleton as it was by that time…’

‘But it was never treated as murder?’ asks Ishida.

‘Difficult,’ says Tachibana. ‘Because of the state of the body and also, of course, there are many animals in these woods.’

I pick up the second file. There is no name on this second file. I hold up the second file. I ask Tachibana, ‘And this one?’

‘Even more difficult,’ says Tachibana. ‘The owner of a small mountain at Kiyosu-mura, again this is Kami Tsuga-gun, he’d gone up onto the slopes to prune away some of the branches around his cypress trees and he came upon a perfect skeleton. This was only last month and we think the body may have been there for over a year.’

I ask, ‘Did you find out anything else about the body?’

‘Yes,’ says Tachibana. ‘The autopsy was conducted in Utsunomiya and although we were unable to determine the exact cause of death we do believe it to have been the body a young woman aged approximately twenty to twenty-five years…’

‘But again you had it listed as ikidaore?’

‘Yes,’ he says again. ‘Ikidaore.’

‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘You find many such bodies, do you?’

Tachibana nods. Tachibana says, ‘In the last three or four years, yes. Older people particularly, they come out here from Tokyo to scavenge and they get lost in the woods. They have never been out here before. In the summer, some simply collapse of exhaustion. Others, in the winter, lose their way and freeze in the night…’

‘But these two weren’t old,’ says Ishida. ‘You often get young women walking in your woods, dropping down dead, do you?’

‘They were younger, yes,’ says Tachibana. ‘But we do get younger ones, but for different reasons. Only two days ago, for example, in some other woods, we found the body of a twenty-three or twenty-five-year-old woman. Dead about one month and animals had been there but we know it wasn’t murder. It was suicide.’

‘How do you know?’ asks Ishida. ‘If animals…’

‘Well, this one had at least left us a suicide note.’

‘What did it say?’ I ask. ‘This suicide note?’

‘That she had lost all her relatives during the war. That she was completely alone. That she saw no point in living any more –

‘She was from Tokyo too,’ he says. ‘Mitaka.’

Please let my daughter’s eyes be open now .

*

Below another dark mountain, with its overhanging eaves and the shade of its hearth, this inn seems much grander than the one we stayed in last night. This place in the shadows . At the foot of the mountain, with its pond and its bridge in the garden round the back, this inn seems much older but is better maintained. This place from the past . This inn still accepts Ishida’s rice but they are able to offer us a hot bath in their bathhouse and the room we are shown seems much bigger and cleaner too, with its fresh mats and its rosewood table, the tasteful alcove and the red camellia in a celadon vase. This place from another century, this place from another country …

Because of the chief of the Kanuma police, because of Tachibana. He tells us he will join us for the evening meal. He promises there will be fresh food, and even some sake –

In this other country, in this other century …

Tachibana tells us to enjoy our baths, that the water will be hot now. Then he leaves us alone, Ishida and me –

In this place, so very far from home …

Ishida and me in this beautiful room, alone and silent –

No talk of messages from Tokyo. No talk at all …

Until Detective Ishida says, ‘Please take your bath first.’

*

The inn has been built around the garden and the room we have been given is at a right angle to the long plank walkway which separates the bathhouse from the main building. Sara-sara . It would also be possible to reach the bathhouse by crossing the small garden and the bridge over the pond, but I choose to walk across the planks, oak and zelkova trees to my right, the magnolia and camellia bushes in the garden on my left, listening to the sound of running water. Sara-sara . There is a room of toilets and basins before the door to the bathhouse. Sara-sara . The taps in the basins are all running and I can smell the scent of heated bathwater. Sara-sara . I open the door to the bathhouse and I step into the changing room. Sara-sara . It is dark and windowless in here, the only light coming from a small lamp in one of the corners. Sara-sara . The bathtub must be on the other side of the second door. Sara-sara . I unbutton my shirt. Sara-sara . I take it off. Sara-sara . I unbutton my trousers. Sara-sara . I take them off. Sara-sara . I am ashamed of this shirt and these trousers. Sara-sara . This shirt and these trousers that my wife has tended and mended, stitched and re-stitched. Sara-sara . I take off my undershirt. Sara-sara . I take off my undershorts. Sara-sara . I fold and pile up these clothes. Sara-sara . I place them in one of the changing-room baskets. Sara-sara . I never want to wear these clothes again. Sara-sara . I pick up one of the clean white bathing cloths. Sara-sara . I go through the second door and I close it behind me. Sara-sara . The room is filled with steam. Sara-sara . The only windows are narrow and high in one of the walls and admit little light. Sara-sara . The bathtub though is big and raised. Sara-sara . I pick up a small wooden bucket. Sara-sara . I climb up the three small steps to the bath. Sara-sara . I fill the bucket with water from the tub. Sara-sara . Now I crouch down and tip the bucket of hot water over my body. Sara-sara . I find the soap and the brush and I begin to scrub myself clean. Sara-sara . Then I take another bucket of water and I rinse myself. Sara-sara . Now I climb the small steps for a third time. Sara-sara . Now I get into the bath. Sara-sara . I put my cloth upon the edge of the wooden tub and stretch myself out. Sara-sara . The water is hot. Sara-sara . The water is pure. Sara-sara . I do not itch. Sara-sara . I do not scratch. Sara-sara . I fold the bathing cloth into a small pillow. Sara-sara . I rest the back of my neck on the edge of the tub. Sara-sara . I close my eyes. Sara-sara . I listen to the sound of the running water. Sara-sara …