Number9Dream (39 page)

Abe, Goto and Kusakabe are writing letters to their families, so I will do the same, and clip off some hair and nails for cremation. I shall write my final orders to you in this letter, but I shall reiterate them here: Takara, you are the acting head of the Tsukiyama family until Father returns. Whatever trials lie ahead, preserve the sword. Impress upon your sons, and their sons, the integrity and purity of the Tsukiyama blood-line. After deification my soul will reside at Yasukuni shrine, with my myriad brothers who also gave their lives to the emperor. Come to pray, bring our sword, and let the light dance on the blade. I shall be waiting.

Weather: fair, hazy. The maple leaves are flaming scarlet.
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departed from Otsushima. The departure ceremony was held on the dock at 0900. A camera crew was present to make a newsreel of our departure. I waved at the camera as I passed, Takara, in case you and your friends see me at the cinema in Nagasaki. Lt Kamibeppu gave a speech on behalf of the Kikusui unit, thanking our trainers, apologizing for our blunders, and promising that every kaiten pilot will do his utmost to make our country proud of us. After this, we thanked Mrs Oshige individually. She was choked with emotion and unable to speak, but words may sully the message of the heart. The officers toasted us with omiki libation, and boarded the submarines to cries of ‘Banzai’. We stood atop our kaitens, and waved back at our classmates on shore, until we rounded the western head of Otsushima. A small flotilla of fishing boats and training canoes saw us into the open sea. Goto looked at the fishermen’s daughters through Kusakabe’s binoculars. Abe has just announced that our maintenance check has been brought forward an hour, so I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you about
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.

Weather: rain in the morning; a clear afternoon with swelling waves. Goto, who has a way with words, describes life in a submarine as being ‘corked into a tin flask and thrown into a flood’. Into this tin flask is fitted the forward torpedo room, officers’ qtrs, forward battery, pump room, conning tower, control room, mess, crew qtrs for 60 men, fore/aft engine rooms, after-torpedoes. Slick likens
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to an iron whale. I marvel at the crew: they have been on active duty since the war began with only 10 days’ shore leave! After one day, I am already aching to run, or throw a baseball. I miss our futons on Otsushima – on
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we sleep on narrow shelves, with sides to stop us falling out. The air is stale and the light is sepia. I must emulate the endurance of the crew. Even walking requires contortion, especially at the beginning of a voyage when the gangways are used for food storage. There are only two places one can be alone. One is the kaitens, which can be accessed from the inside of the submarine via specially adapted tubes between the submarine deck and the kaiten lower hatch. The other is the toilet. (However, submarine toilets are not conducive to lingering.) Additionally, we have Cpt Yokota’s permission to use the bridge when conditions permit. Of course, I must inform the duty officer when I go above-decks, so I can be accounted for if we have to make an emergency dive. After our evening calisthenics session I joined the ensign on lookout duty, starboard of the conning tower. At night the control room is ‘rigged for dark’ – only red lights are permitted, so Cpt or observers may switch above-and below-decks without loss of night vision. I watched the white spray on the bow and the foam wake to the rear. On moonlit nights these are telltale signs for bombers. The ensign told me the coastline to the west was Cape Sata-misaki, in Kagoshima prefecture. The end of Japan was lost in scarlet clouds.

‘EjjjMyake!’ Masanobu Suga bumper-cars into Shooting Star from the neon night, trips over and wallops the floor. He noses the ground, and grins at me – he is so drunk that his brain cannot understand how much his body hurts. Suga wobbles up to a one-legged kneel, as if he is about to ask for my hand in marriage. I dive around the counter to pick up his glasses before he grinds them to splinters. Suga thinks I am trying to help him up, and elbows me away with a ‘grfffme!’ He stands up, as stable as a newborn giraffe, and falls backwards into a rack of war movies. The rack topples and a hundred video boxes cascade. A customer – only one, luckily – stares death rays at us through her half-moon glasses. Suga glares at the fallen video rack. ‘Poltygeists liv’nn heeer, Miyake. Needter leanov’r theeer a mo, mo-mo, justamo . . .’ He tightrope-walks to the counter, lifting his head towards the monitor. ‘
Cassyblanca
.’ The movie is actually
Bladerunner
. I right the rack and collect the videos boxes. Suga dangles his head, broken-puppet-style. ‘Myaki.’

‘Suga. Nice to, uh . . .’

Suga loses spittle control. I intercept the saliva stalactite with the
Tokyo Post
. ‘Notdrunk, nvergetdrunk, notme. Happy, happy, he-he-hep-py, yes, mebbe, butnotnever out-of-cont. Roll.’ He sinks to his knees, his knuckles gripping the edge of the cliff. Even Uncle Pachinko on a whisky bender is not this hopeless. ‘Wentaseeya, Mishish Shashashaki sedyja quit. ByebyeUenobyebye, badvibes, bad, badbadbadvibes in Ueno, where allverlostnf’gottn orphans ended after the war, did did y’knowthat? Died like flies, poorlittlpootlittl . . .’ Tears blossom in Suga’s eyes and one runs down his pocked cheeks. Death-Ray Specs has a rape-alarm-in-a-library shrill: ‘Too much! The way you youngsters behave today makes me vomit out my own lungs!’ She leaves before I can begin an apology. For a moment I wish Suga would pass out – I could pretend not to know him and maybe an ambulance would take him away. ‘Suga! You need to get home! You drank too much!’

Suga sniffs and focuses on me with puffy dogfish eyes. ‘I’m curshed.’

‘Have you got enough money for a taxi?’

‘Curshed.’

‘Can you tell me your address, Suga?’

He clenches his eyes and deliberately whacks his head back on the front of the counter as hard as he can, which luckily is not too hard as his neck control functions are off-line, but even so his face is bright with pain. I hold his head and he pushes me away. ‘I’m curshed, Miyake! Dontchoogettitt? Curshed! One donut! For one fcknmeashly
donut
! Littlkid, kindygartn littlkid, waiting jushinside th’bakery doordoor, hewuzcryin’seyes out . . .’ The tears begin again and Suga trembles. A scared dog sort of shiver.

‘Suga, my room is upstairs, I’m going to—’

‘
One
’ – whack! – ‘
meashly
’ – whack! – ‘
donut
. I opnd the door, littlkid runs out, fastazafastaza.’ Sugas eyes screw up in pain. ‘Batman’n’Robn on his T-shirt, littlkid, straight intr the middlvthe . . . road . . .’ Suga blubs and his breathing is chopped and sliced. ‘Wtchythink Idid, Miyake? Swoooooopd t’th’rescue, d’ythink? Nope, Miyake, nope nope nope rootd, rootd, I’s rootd. T’th’spot, Miyake. Saw. Heard. Audiovshl. Car. Brakes. Littlkid. Wham, wham, wham. Flew, littlkid, flew like a baggashopping,
ber-lattt
, bowlingball, bloodontheroad, markerpen . . .’ Suga’s fingers claw for a ripcord on his face to pull – I grip his hands in my fists. Suga is losing his will to resist. ‘Mum, she . . . pushpass-pusspashme, wailing right . . .
AaarrrAaarrrAaaaaarrrrrr
 . . . I ran. Ran ran ran . . . Ran, Miyake, nverstppd never, run, Suga run, you
MURDER-RER
 . . . Suga the mudderer.’ Suga swallows a stone of grief. ‘Betchawishdyr poisoned th’pineapple now, doncha? Howdjathink I got this pizza cheezgraterskin? Curshed. Icrossaroad, Isee Littlkid. Iseeanuvva Littlkid, Isee Littlkid. Curshed. Curshed.’ His eyes ease themselves shut.

I see.

I take the key from the till, and manhandle the sack of Suga upstairs. ‘Toilet. If you piss my futon I’ll blowtorch your computers, okay? Suga? You hear me?’ Suga nods, bleared and mumbly beyond grammar. ‘I’ll be downstairs.’ Down at the till a girl in a cow-print T-shirt stands holding every Brad Pitt video in the shop. She studies her watch and emits a sigh of pain. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ I say. She ignores me. I hear Suga barf. Barf one, Cowgirl looks puzzled. Barf two, Cowgirl breaks her vow of non-interaction and stares at me questioningly. Barf three, Cowgirl says, ‘Can you hear anything?’ I look at her as if she is an utter lunatic. ‘Nothing. Why?’ She leaves and I rearrange the fallen video cases on the rack. My toilet flushes, which is sort of encouraging. A flurry of custom follows. I have lost track of who is human and who is a replicant on
Bladerunner
. I wonder how many years Suga has been carrying his cursh around with him. I forget that other people in the world have broken parts too. Eleven o’clock swings around, and the night shows no sign of cooling. I hear a thump or two upstairs: at least I don’t have a dead body on the premises to explain to Buntaro. I hear the drumming of water, and for a moment think the heat has turned to rain – then I realize that no, to answer the last question he asked me three weeks ago, Suga cannot piss straight when he wazzes. Another treat in store tomorrow morning. I crank up the air-con a notch, and retrieve my grandfather’s journal and kanji dictionary from under the counter. The warmth between Subaru and Takara his younger brother is in stark contrast to the cold between my father and Takara my grandfather. Admiral Raizo’s mention of a ‘feud’ makes me uneasy. The Yakushima aunts happily used me as ammo in their endless polite battles, and I cannot shake the feeling that I am on the edge of another war zone.

Conditions too poor to permit access to bridge. Abe reminds us we are irreplaceable components of our kaitens. Moreover,
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rolls about too much to allow maintenance checks on our kaitens. We have sensed a certain reserve between ourselves and
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’s crew. A certain distance is perhaps natural, but at times their conduct borders on coldness. For example, I discovered that Radioman First Class Hosokawa in communications grew up in Nagasaki, and when we passed in the corridor after dinner I addressed him in our local dialect. He looked startled, and replied using rigid formal speech. When Abe suggested that the kaiten pilots contribute to the cleaning docket, Cpt Yokota replied with terseness that our offer was generous but unthinkable. Abe believes the men regard us as incumbent gods, and are merely suffering from excess veneration. Goto pointed out that 3½ years of dodging depth-charges would put a strain on anyone’s mental state. Kusakabe speculated that the men may consider us insane. This angered Abe. Kusakabe calmly observed that submariners spend their lives slipping away from the jaws of death, while we seek to meet it head-on. Abe pulled rank and ordered Kusakabe – and Goto – never to voice such thoughts again, because he was demeaning the dedication and patriotism of our hosts. I said nothing for the sake of harmony but inwardly I sympathized with Goto. Even the youngest crew members have the eyes of old men.

Fine conditions prevail. The mercury in the thermometer climbs as the sea warms. It is impossible to remount the kaitens on the submarine deck once released, so we are unable to make test runs in our vessels. We must, however, spend time in our kaitens checking that the engines and other systems are in perfect working order. Watching the sea rush by through the kaiten periscopes is most enjoyable, especially when
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is submerged. As we proceed south, I notice changes in the animal kingdom. For example, today I saw a manatee. It swam how a cow might swim. We passed through a school of tropical fish coloured marigold, snow and lilac. Two dolphins appeared this afternoon, swimming alongside us. The creatures appeared to be laughing at such a peculiar fish. May fortune similarly smile on our mission. Goto made a joke. ‘If a Chinese bandit, an American imperialist and a British general jumped off a building at the same time, who would hit the ground first?’ Nobody knew, so Goto gave us the punch line. ‘Who cares?’

Weather thundery, but no rain, yet. Cpt Yokota is outspoken in his criticism of the Tokyo government, to say the least. If a civilian spoke in such a disrespectful manner he would be surely be arrested by the secret service. At dinner tonight, the captain opened a bottle of rum. I never experienced the drink outside pirate tales of my boyhood. It certainly loosens the tongue. Abe drank least, being a weak drinker, but Cpt Yokota can knock it back like cool tea on a hot day. Cpt Yokota first savaged the Admiralty for failing to learn from the Midway fiasco instead of suppressing news of the defeat and turning the very word into a taboo. ‘The sole strategy of our navy,’ according to Cpt Yokota, ‘is to lure the enemy into a “Decisive Naval Engagement” like the Battle of Tsushima against the Russians. But it isn’t going to happen in this war. The Americans are not so stupid.’ Prime Minister Tojo is ‘an army idiot of the highest magnitude’ for ordering the invasion of uninhabited Alaskan islands: ‘For what? To liberate seabirds from Anglo-Saxon tyranny?’ Prince Higashikuni is ‘so stupid he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel’. Goto laughed, Kusakabe smiled, and Abe turned a polite pink. I was unsure of the appropriate response. Cpt Yokota maintains the East Indies oilfields would still be Japanese territory if the wings of the military had fought together and not against each other, and if radar technology had been seriously developed. Now we must resort to begging the Germans for radar sets. He accuses the Imperial Army of operating subs undeclared to High Command as ‘wheelbarrows’, to support troops stranded on Rabaul and islands the enemy have bypassed. Most worrying of all is the Cpt’s firm conviction that our secret codes have been cracked. Abe, perhaps rashly, observed that the codes were invented by a Tokyo Imperial University cryptologist to be undecipherable to the occidental brain. Cpt Yokota retorted that no Tokyo Imperial University cryptologist was ever ambushed on the high seas by a pack of destroyers that knew his vessel’s exact whereabouts.

‘But what if’ – I unpick loops in my phone cord – ‘you are right, and meaning is just something the mind “does”, how come different people have different meanings of life? How come some people have no meaning? Or forget the meaning they started with?’