Jesse Ball - Silence Once Begun

(Something indecipherable.)

INT.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t make that out. What did you say?

GARO

I said he was so good they let a girl in his cell, right before the end. Not that he knew it was the end, mind you. Execution’s always unannounced. Never know. They drag ‘em off through a series of rooms, one after another. We called it visiting the Buddhas because there are different statues, one in each room.

INT.

I have questions about that, but first …

[ Int. note . Here we lost the connection. It was a couple of weeks before I managed to speak to him again. That continuation will come shortly.]

[ Int. note . Watanabe Garo gave me a photograph that he claims had been in Oda Sotatsu’s death row cell. When I later met with Jito Joo, she admitted having given it to him. This strengthens Watanabe’s claims of having known Oda; it is also possible he recovered it from another guard, or from the cell, without having known Oda. Further conjecture on the exact degree of his reliability is likely useless.]

[ Int. note . This was somewhat later in the same conversation at the pavilion. Jiro and I had been drinking, and he had begun to tell me some stories from his and Sotatsu’s childhood.]

INT.

So your father refused to take you along on the fishing boat?

JIRO

He said it would be bad luck for me to come.

INT.

And why was that?

JIRO

He said it had to do with my birth date, that it was not an, what did he call it, not an auspicious day for a fisherman to be born. He wouldn’t even let me on the boat when it was out of the water.

INT.

But he would let Sotatsu?

JIRO

Yes, Sotatsu went with him on many occasions.

INT.

Did that divide the two of you? Did you feel that you were in some kind of competition for your father’s esteem?

JIRO

No, not at all. I have heard of families like that, certainly, but …

(Laughs.)

JIRO

… not in the least. If anything it was always Sotatsu and me together against the rest of them.

INT.

You two had a special trick you would do, right? At school?

JIRO

Yes, sometimes Sotatsu would throw a stone through the window of my classroom. Then the teacher would go off trying to find who had done it and the class would end early. I also did this for his class.

INT.

But how did you manage to not be in school at that time?

JIRO

I would be using the toilet. Or, I would say so.

INT.

And was he ever caught doing this?

JIRO

He wasn’t. I did get caught, though, several times. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I ever got away with it. The schoolteachers were always suspicious of me, I don’t know why.

INT.

Do your own children take after you in that respect?

JIRO

How do you mean?

INT.

Well, that one seems to be trying to run away with my hat.

JIRO

Yes, nothing is safe around here.

[ Int. note . Shortly after that, I asked him about his father’s reaction when he discovered that Jiro was still visiting Sotatsu. He had told me earlier that his father had been angry, but he hadn’t gone into detail. Later, when I asked again, he was more forthcoming.]

INT.

How did it come about that your father learned you were visiting Sotatsu?

JIRO

There was a photograph, an unfortunate photograph that was published in the newspaper, a photograph of the prison. Some photographer had visited there to take photographs of various inmates, my brother included. He passed me at the prison entrance and noticed my resemblance to Sotatsu. I tried to avoid it, but he took my photograph and sold it to the newspaper. He sold a photograph of me visiting my brother for money, and that photograph was seen by my father. He demanded that I come to see him. I did so. He was furious. He said that a decision had been made and we would all stand by it. He said that some of us were trying to continue to live, to continue with our lives, and that I wasn’t making anything easier for anyone. I replied that, in fact, I was. I was making things easier for myself and for my brother, Sotatsu. I told him that I didn’t believe Sotatsu had done anything wrong. I said I didn’t like any of it from the beginning to the end. He said that I was still stupid, and had always been so. That whether Sotatsu had done something or not was not the point and never had been. He said that you had a chance with each life, each person’s life, that there was a chance to get along without drawing the wrong kind of attention to yourself. That if you did, it was never good, it always ended badly, and the facts of the matter were nothing, were no good. He said I had a liar’s respect for the truth, which is too much respect.

INT.

And that’s when he …

JIRO

He told me he didn’t want to see me again.

INT.

But he went back on that.

JIRO

He did. Later that same year he went back on it. But he was so changed then that it didn’t matter. He was a different person. As he is now. You can see, can’t you? There’s no satisfaction to be had from the person you met.

INT.

…

JIRO

Whether you will say so or not, you can see what a shell he is.

(Tape clicks off.)

The First Time He Spoke with Oda Sotatsu

[ Int. note . This was the interview at the ramen house, and it was the interview to which Garo brought the photograph I showed some pages back. He had the photograph in a manila envelope along with other things that he did not show me. I was very curious about what else was in the manila envelope, but if it was perhaps necessary for me to have won his trust further in order to have seen it, then in that case I failed to do what was necessary. I did not learn of the other contents. The photograph that he did give me, that of Jito Joo in a kimono, had writing on the back. The writing read, On a lake, they float, but they do not see the lake. They only see what’s above, and only in the day, and only when the sun is not too bright . I tried to discover the provenance of those lines but was unable to, until speaking to Jito Joo herself. For now, however, I was sitting opposite Watanabe Garo in the ramen house, my tape-device dwarfed by two enormous bowls of ramen.]

INT.

I am very curious, of course, to hear anything you might have to say about Oda Sotatsu, but most of all I’m curious to hear about the times when he spoke to you. Do you remember which was the first time?

GARO

Do you think I could forget a man like that?

INT.

So, he made a powerful impression, visually?

GARO

No, no, not at all. In fact, that was the thing that was most fascinating. When you were in a room with him it was like you were alone. He had the least presence of anyone I have ever met. It wasn’t just that he was quiet. Of course he was, that was his thing, no? But also, he simply appeared to be elsewhere.

INT.

And where do you think that was?

GARO

Some of the guys used to say they would wring it out of him. There were those who didn’t like him, I guess. We were divided along those lines. The newer guys didn’t like him. The older ones just valued behavior above everything.