David Peace - Tokyo Year Zero

The weaker ones slowing down …

‘Now only jewellery will do…’

Falling behind the others …

‘Kimonos or shoes…’

Resting already …

‘It’ll be much better in autumn,’ they convince themselves –

But it’s not autumn yet, the tips of the branches still green –

The persimmons on the trees still to fatten and brighten –

To ripen, to fall and to splatter …

There is an old man still dressed in his civil-defence uniform sat down at a curve in the road. His trousers tied with a rope and his jacket already soaked through with sweat, he has propped his backpack up under a nettle tree and sits rolling a cigarette from old dog-ends, staring vacantly ahead at a clump of flaming daisies –

He looks up as my shadow falls on his face –

I ask him if we might share a match –

He nods and we share the light as he tells me, ‘The shoddier these matches get, the more expensive their price becomes…’

I nod and I agree. Then I start to walk away –

But the old man asks, ‘What time is it?’ I stop now and I turn back to him –

I ask, ‘Is your watch broken, sir?’

Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …

The man has taken out his pocket watch and is winding it up. The man shakes his head. The man shows me his watch –

The old man says, ‘It keeps stopping dead…’

This watch. This watch. This watch …

His watch says twelve o’clock –

Now I show him my watch –

I say, ‘It’s eight o’clock.’

‘I’m already late, then,’ he sighs. ‘Missed all the good stuff.’

I nod and I agree. I start to walk away again but again he calls after me and again I stop and I turn back to him as he asks me –

‘Do you know the roads around here, do you?’

I shake my head and I apologize. ‘I’ve not been here before.’

‘I think I came here once before,’ he says. ‘But that was with someone from the neighbourhood and so it must have been quite a time ago now. I think it was here. The war had started, I know that. But not the air raids. I’m sure it was before the air raids…’

I nod again but I don’t know what to say –

‘I lose track of the time,’ he sighs. ‘Because there’s no end, is there? They tell us that it’s over, that we’re at peace, but it doesn’t feel like peace, doesn’t feel like it’s ended to me. What about you?’

I shake my head. I say something like, ‘You’re right.’

‘I’m sixty-nine years old,’ he tells me. ‘What good am I to anyone any more? I might as well be dead and be done with it. But I remember when I could carry sixty or seventy pounds, no trouble…’

‘But you look like you’re doing all right to me,’ I say –

He thanks me and asks me where I am from –

‘Mitaka,’ I tell him. ‘What about you?’

‘Kinshi-chō originally,’ he says. ‘But not any more, of course. I tell you, I was lucky to get away with the clothes on my back. I’m staying with my daughter-in-law in Hakozaki now. But you can’t depend on anyone these days, can you? And now they say my son is dead, she’ll be looking to remarry and then what will I do …?’

I nod and I watch him untie the towel from around his face and wipe the sweat from his forehead and then from his neck –

Now the old man gets to his feet and he looks at me –

‘Forgive me,’ the old man says. ‘But are you ill?’

I shake my head. I say, ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘You’re just very pale.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I tell him. ‘I’m fine…’

I pick up his bundle for him –

I hoist it onto his back –

It is a heavy load …

‘Thank you,’ he says as he walks off. ‘And good luck…’

I raise my cigarette to wave and I watch him go –

‘Don’t give up,’ he shouts back. ‘Never!’

*

I walk up the clean little steps into Kanuma police station where the two officers behind the front desk bow, salute and welcome me back.

‘I have a message from Tokyo for a Detective Ishida,’ announces one of the two men behind the desk –

‘Thank you,’ I say as he hands me the piece of paper and I put it in my pocket and thank him again –

‘Is Chief Tachibana here yet?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Maybe he’s gone to the inn…’

‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll go for a walk…’

‘Where will you go?’ he asks me.

‘To the river,’ I say. ‘The…’

‘The Black River?’ he asks.

‘The Black River,’ I nod.

I walk out of the police station. I do not run. My pocket on fire . I walk down the clean little steps. I do not run. My pocket on fire . I walk across the road. I do not run. My pocket on fire . I turn down another road. I do not run. My pocket on fire . I see the Black River –

And now I run. My pocket on fire . Now I run. My pocket on fire . Now I run. My pocket on fire . Down the banking –

My pocket on fire . And then I stop –

I take out the piece of paper:

‘Leave Minami in Tochigi. Return to HQ. Inspector Adachi.’

Then, suddenly, a shout, ‘There you are, Inspector Minami!’

‘I look up. Tachibana and Ishida coming down the banking –

Ishida; I no longer know who this Detective Ishida is …

‘Thought you’d run back to Tokyo,’ shouts Tachibana –

‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘I just needed to go for a walk…’

‘Don’t apologize,’ says Tachibana. ‘I bet you’re not used to so much sake and good food these days, are you now, inspector?’

‘You were very generous,’ I tell him. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘We’re all policemen…’

I look at Ishida as I nod, ‘All policemen…’

‘Where to first, then?’ asks Tachibana, clapping his hands.

*

The same ancient small truck. The same old policeman in the driving seat. Tachibana gestures for me to sit up in the front while he and Ishida climb into the back again. The corrugated iron and the carpenter’s tools gone today. The driver puts out his cigarette, straightens his cap and he starts up the truck as I hold on tight again –

I hate the countryside and I hate the people who live here –

This Land of the Grasping. This Land of the Greedy …

My eyes squinting in pain as the sunlight blinds me –

Everything black today. Everything black here …

The mountains black. The trees black –

No grey, no green and no purple …

No leaves and no flowers here –

There are no colours here …

Here, here, here, here –

In Kodaira country …

Here in Ōaza-Hosō, in Nikkō-chō, where our small truck now pulls up outside the family home of Kodaira Yoshio, the ramshackle, broken-down family home where the uncle, the aunt and the cousin of Kodaira Yoshio still live, still working for Furukawa –

The uncle, the aunt and the cousin of Kodaira Yoshio who know why we are here, who know why we will keep knocking –

Until the cousin finally opens the door to invite us in, in through their rotting door and filthy genkan , through their stinking, fetid kitchen and into their dark and humid hearth and home –

Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home. Home …

The aunt scuttling off on her hands and her knees down another dark corridor. The uncle cross-legged in the hearth with a pipe. The uncle is an old man. The uncle does not speak –

‘He hates the police,’ says his son, the cousin. ‘He thinks the police have got it in for him, got it in for our family…’