Occupied City (28 page)

The man is obviously mad and so I have nailed the wardrobe door shut.

Tokyo & Moscow. Februarius the thirtieth.

Each night I sleep, I dream of Russia, I dream of Moscow. In last night’s dream, in my second-hand leather jacket, I was pursuing a man when I saw that this man, this Japanese man who was running away from me, in his turn, was pursuing a third man who, not sensing our chase behind him, was simply walking at a brisk pace along the pavement. Then this third man heard the sound of our running boots and he turned to look behind him and I saw that the third man was my brother. Of course, when I awoke, I was still in Tokyo but my toes felt cold, my socks were damp and the bed muddy.

Maybe he is alive and it is I who am dead. My hands injected, frozen and black, and then hacked off like the handles on a clay pot before my own eyes. Maybe it is I who am screaming, ‘Avenge me! Avenge me! Avenge me!’

And so maybe it is I who am stood on the banks of the river among the silent legions of the murdered dead, the countless legions of the war dead, my threadbare overcoat rotting into the stagnant water and its tangled weeds, maybe it is I who am waiting for him to avenge me –

Stop! Stop! Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Spin! Spin!

Click! Click!

January of the same year, coming after February

I could no longer put off this day. I woke early again from a fitful sleep and I took the train out to Chiba. I got off the train at Funabashi Station. With the piece of paper in my hand – the piece of paper originally torn from this martyr-log, on which the man from the wardrobe had written an address below the name I had given him – I walked through the snow and the mud. Finally, I came to the house,
his
house, his big house by a shrine where he lives with his wife and his children. And I stood across the road from his house, in the sleet and the declining light, and I waited, with the pistol in my belt and the rain in my face, the encroaching night at my back. I watched the lights go on in his house. I heard children’s voices. I thought I could smell food cooking. And then the lights in the house went out and I thought I could see a figure at a window watching me, watching him.
But frozen and soaked, incapable of either action or thought, I simply stood there.

The Date 25th

I dreamt of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s ‘Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap’ and, in the same dream, I heard the music of Bach. And when I awoke, clouds of snow hung low over the city, but it was ash that fell from the sky. And in that sky were written three words, three Russian words in our Cyrillic alphabet:

Avenge me…

And again I hated this city, this trap, and again I hated its people, these insects.

But I dressed quickly and I took the train back out to Chiba. I tried to keep my eyes on my boots, on the floor. But at every station, each time I glanced up, I saw that same sky out of the stained windows and I saw those same words, those three stained words, following me, watching me, suspended on strings, carried by swallows, flocks of swallows, in their beaks, three stained words:

I got off the train and I walked through the sleet and the mud up the long road to his house by the shrine, my eyes on my boots, my eyes on the ground. But all the time, with every heavy step, I felt the sky above me, those words above me, swallows flying blind, leading me, pointing:

There he is, before you now –

And then, sure enough, when I looked up, there he was before me, walking towards me and I knew: This man is murder, this man is death; this man is my brother’s murderer, his killer; and there he was before me–

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And then the man, this murderer, he said in broken, halting English, ‘I know who you are and I know why you are here. I knew you would come and so I have been expecting you, waiting for this day. Now the day is here and the wait is over.’

I unbuttoned my coat and I took out the pistol.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The man glanced at the gun and said, ‘I am ready, for I think
you know, Comrade, as well as I do, that war is within all men, regardless of their politics, regardless of their religion, regardless of their nationality, regardless of their race. It is the abyss beneath all our skins, the abyss within all our skulls. And once we have looked as we have looked, into that abyss, once we have stared as we have stared, into that void, then we cannot look away, for the abyss stares back at us, turning our hearts black and our hair grey. And with our black hearts and our grey hair we are no longer human, we are only war, are only murder, only death.

‘And so shoot me, and then shoot yourself. Or arrest me, then hang me, and then yourself.’

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I stepped towards him, tears on my cheeks. I grasped his head with my left hand, the pistol in my right hand. I brought his face towards mine, tears on his cheeks. I dropped the pistol. I kissed him on his lips. And then, then I walked away.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,

have mercy on me,

a sinner.

Da 26 te Mth yrae January 48

‘Only then do we set ourselves free from external oppression, when we have set ourselves free from internal slavery,’ wrote Nikolai Berdyaev. How right he was then, how right he is now.

This evening outside the hotel, they were waiting for me. I have no more strength to endure. I hear a chair fall in the room next door. I put on a clean, white shirt. That’s it now-

1 + 1 = 1;

               
2 + 2 = 5;

                             3 + 3 = 7;

                                           4 + 4 = 9

Signed, Comrade
/
Saint Kaka / Akakos
,
Comrade Yurodivy or St Shit
,
Ward No. 6

Beneath the Black Gate
, in its upper chamber, the medium closes this journal, this martyr-log, and now she holds this journal, this martyr-log over one of the five candles until the pale flame catches its pages and now this journal, this martyr-log begins to burn –

‘See,’ the medium laughs, ‘manuscripts do burn …’

Burning the journal, the martyr-log in the flame of the candle, the journal, the martyr-log now only ash, the candle,

the eighth candle now out –

‘I was and remain the best and brightest of all that is Soviet. Indifference to my memory and rumours about my death will be a crime. My body will be transported back to Moscow and my ashes placed alongside Gogol and Mayakovsky in the Novo-Devenchy Cemetery, under a red and black monument and an iron wreath of flywheels, hammers and screws. An iron wreath for an iron man –

‘So now, farewell Tokyo, murderous city …’

Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, eight candles gone, another ghost gone, there are no red and black monuments here, no iron wreaths, for you are a tarnished, rusted and corroded man –

Tarnished, rusted and corroded by the tears-that-will-not-come, the book-that-will-not-come, in this place-of-no-tears, this place-of-no-book, only these words,
on your head are these dead
,

these words you have heard before,
on your head are these dead
, words you have heard twice now,
on your head

are these dead, on your head

are these dead …

But beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, in this now-occult square, the light of its now-four candles, there are sirens again,

two sirens, an ambulance siren and a police siren –

And now the medium lies before you, crumpled and flattened inside the circle, hands raised and stiff in the candlelight, a detective’s identification wallet in her black and broken fingers,

the medium a detective; a dead detective –

And now you crawl towards her, on your hands and on your knees, towards her prone body, and you put your fingers on her face to close her eyes, her two pitch-black eyes staring up at the ceiling of the upper chamber, the roof of the Black Gate, and in these two pitch-black eyes, in the eyes of this dead detective, you spy a crow, and in her eyes, you follow the flight of this crow,

in these two pitch-black eyes,

through the city, across its rooftops, down its streets, into its alleyways, in her eyes, her pitch-black eyes, and now these eyes, these two pitch-black eyes, these eyes they blink, alive again –

The medium, her left hand behind your head, pulls your face towards her own, and now her lips open your lips, her tongue touches your tongue, moving up and down, her tongue inside your mouth, up and down, in and out, up and down, in and now out –

For now, in the light of the candles, these four candles in their occult square, now the medium pushes you away and she whispers, she whispers the words of the dead detective –

‘You are not him. You are not the man I seek, the man I failed
the man I failed
THE MAN I FAILED

1. The city is a wound
the city is a wound
THIS CITY IS A WOUND In the half-burnt pages of my half-destroyed notebooks
in the half-said whispers of the half-heard voices
IN THESE HALF-REMEMBERED MEMORIES OF THIS HALF-FORGOTTEN DETECTIVE In the Occupied City
in the Occupied City
IN THE OCCUPIED CITY We uncover the murders of 169 new-born babies in a maternity home in Shinjuku
they parade the guilt of 28 soon-dead men in a court house in Ichigaya
THEY WILL FIND YOU GUILTY AND THEY WILL HANG YOU, UNTIL YOUR BLADDER EMPTIES AND YOUR NECK BREAKS My father is dead and my mother has remarried
your wife was once a whore, and she is a whore again
IN THE FAMILY ALBUMS, IN THE HISTORY BOOKS Even the Emperor has married again, in his top hat and tails, an American General, with a pipe in his mouth
your child is not your child
WE ARE ALL WHORES I hate all Americans
your family is cursed, your house is cursed
IN THE RUINS OF THE CITY, IN THE EYES OF THE DEAD I took their job, I take their money
the ground beneath is hollow ground
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS I sharpen pencils, I write reports
under your chair, under your desk
WHAT WILL YOU FIND In my unstable chair, at my untidy desk
something is moving, moving behind you, moving beneath you
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS The telephone rings
from a music box, what is that tune
WHO WILL YOU FIND The clock strikes
that familiar, scratched tune
GOOD DETECTIVE, BAD DETECTIVE And the case begins, this last case begins
a light glowing above the city, a fire
raging across the town
DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU On January 26, 1948
it’s coming your way, don’t look behind you
IN THE SILENCE, NOTHING BUT SILENCE The telephone, the clock, and this last case
it makes you hold your breath
AS THOUGH THE WORLD WAS DEAD

2. Across the Occupied City, in our borrowed cars
you follow a tune, the sound of scratching
IN HEAVY BANDAGES Roads turn to mud, mud turns to rivers
across the city, through the night
FROM OPEN WOUNDS Snow turns to sleet, sleet turns to rain, turns to sleet again
sudden, oncoming headlights, American, blinding headlights
THE SCENE OF THE CRIME There are ambulances, there are crowds
crawling down the street, on her hands and on her knees
THEY STAND, THEY STARE Former soldiers standing in their white robes and khaki-caps, feral children hanging from the branches of the shrine-trees
raving about poison, asking for help
THEY ARE THE SPECTATORS, WE ARE THE SPECTACLE The Nagasaki Shrine to my right, the Teikoku Bank to my left
the sound of scratching, from under the ground
THE SPECTACLE, THE CRIME I put out my cigarette, I follow the other detectives, up the steps, into the bank
for hell has found us, as hell always finds us
THE SCENE OF THE CRIME Down the narrow passages, through the heavy furniture
dragging it with us, every place we go
IN THE LIDLESS GAZES Between the empty chairs, the rows of desks
on our hands and on our knees
OF THE RECENTLY DEAD The cash on the desks, in piles, the vomit on the floor, in pools
we should tidy, we should clean, straighten the room, wash the cups
I STAND, I STARE In the corridor, on the mats, in the bathroom, on the tiles
you follow a tune, the sound of scratching
I AM THE SPECTATOR, THEY ARE THE SPECTACLE Ten bodies, ten corpses
the sound of whispering, the sound of weeping
THE CRIME, THE SPECTACLE The clock on the wall, its black hands still moving
every place we go, dragging it with us
IN HEAVY WINTER CLOTHES Their hands raised, frozen and petrified, at their throats
on our hands, on our knees
FROM OPEN HUNGRY MOUTHS These men, these women, this child, they died in agony, they died in fear, they died in silence, fallen on
each other, lying side by side, faces up and faces down
not speaking, but moaning
THE SPECTACLE OF THE CRIME