Tokyo Year Zero (34 page)

Kodaira called upon the Kashiwagi family last winter –

Baba Hiroko was murdered last winter.

Baba Hiroko was found dead on the third of January this year. Baba Hiroko was last seen alive on the thirtieth of December –

Kodaira was here last winter. Kodaira was here
…

The Kashiwagi family is a nervous, sullen family. The Kashiwagi family just sits and stares and offers us no tea or water –

‘Do you remember exactly when Kodaira came here…?’

But the Kashiwagi family does not remember exactly –

‘You remember if it was before or after New Year…?’

The Kashiwagi family does not want to remember –

‘But you remember what he traded…?’

The Kashiwagi family claims not to remember what Kodaira Yoshio traded for their hand-warmer fuel. But the Kashiwagi family is lying because country-folk never forget anything –

I hate the countryside. These country-folk
…

Because country-folk remember everything; every last piece of fuel and every last grain of rice; every single coin and every single note they have ever received; every single item accepted in a trade –

I hate them. I hate them all
…

That is why their unmarried daughter is fiddling with her wristwatch. That is why she has been fiddling with it since we sat down. That is why I reach across their hearth to grab her wrist –

Why I hold this watch on her wrist up to her face –

‘Is this what friendly Mr. Kodaira gave you?’

Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku
…

This watch I now tear from her wrist. This watch I turn over in my hand to the light. This watch with an inscription on its back –

An inscription that states,
Miyazaki Mitsuko
…

This watch that was not Kodaira’s to trade –

That screams,
Miyazaki Mitsuko…

This watch. This watch…

Not theirs to keep –

This watch
…

That I stuff into my knapsack as I get to my feet to leave –

Tachibana asking, ‘But who is Miyazaki Mitsuko?’

*

The daylight blinding, my eyes squinting, in this Land of the Living, in this Land of Plenty, before their mountains, before their trees, before their fields, their leaves and their flowers, their rivers and their streams, their greens and their blues, in this Land of the Living –

Before
his
mountains,
his
trees,
his
fields –

I say, ‘Miyazaki Mitsuko was a nineteen-year-old girl from Nagasaki whose naked body was found on the fifteenth of August last year in an air-raid shelter of the Women’s Dormitory Building of the Dai-Ichi Naval Clothing Department near Shinagawa in Tokyo.

‘The autopsy revealed that she had been raped and then murdered around the end of May last year. At that time, Kodaira Yoshio was working at this Women’s Dormitory.

‘The autopsy on Miyazaki was performed by a Dr. Nakadate of the Keiō University Hospital. Dr. Nakadate also performed the autopsies on the body of Midorikawa Ryuko and on the unidentified body found near Midorikawa in Shiba Park. Dr. Nakadate believes that all three women were murdered by the same man; Kodaira Yoshio. As you know, Kodaira Yoshio has already confessed to the murder of Midorikawa Ryuko…’

Tachibana nods. ‘But not to the second unidentified body from Shiba Park?’

‘No.’

‘And not to this Miyazaki Mitsuko…?’

‘He’s not been asked.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I have not mentioned Miyazaki to either Chief Kita or Chief Inspector Kanehara, who is leading the interrogation team.’

‘But why not?’ asks Tachibana again.

I look at Ishida as I say, ‘Two reasons; the Miyazaki case is officially closed and, secondly, the case file is missing.’

Tachibana is shaking his head, glancing from me to Ishida and back again. ‘Someone was actually charged?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘They were.’

Tachibana asks, ‘Who?’

‘A Korean labourer…’

A Yobo
…

‘And so what happened to this Korean labourer?’

‘He was shot and killed resisting arrest…’

‘Shot by whom?’ asks Tachibana. ‘An officer from the Kempei.’

‘Case closed, then?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him, still looking at Ishida; Ishida saying nothing, Ishida asking nothing. ‘Until today…’

Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku
…

Her watch in my hand –

Chiku-taku
.

*

Beyond another pine grove, beyond more dwarf bamboo, the next house, the next family, the same as the last house, the same as the last family. The grove after that, the house after that, the family after that, the same as the last grove, the same as the last house, the last family –

I look back down the mountainside, at the mainly thatched roofs and the odd tiled one on the odd two-storey house, at the crops in the fields and the leaves on the trees and I wonder where I am, where this place is, this place of plenty, this land of the living –

No dead without name, dead without number
…

This place of mountains. This place of rivers –

Piled up high along the riverbanks
…

In this place of greens and blues –

No stench of rotten apricots
…

In this place of colour where Kodaira came with his many pickings from the dead, with his trophies and his spoils, the trophies and the spoils he had brought to barter –

From the dead
…

Every house Kodaira ever visited, every family he spoke to, every thing he traded, every single house, every single family, every single thing he showed them –

His trophies
…

But in the next house, the next family, the house after that, the family after that, they sit in shame, sit in silence and they will not remember, will not try –

His spoils
…

‘Because so many people come,’ they tell us. ‘So many people, so many things, every day a different person comes, every day with different things…’

So many people
…

And in the next house, the next family, the house after that, the family after that, they shake their heads when we say his name, they shake their heads when we describe his face, they shake their heads when we ask for dates, they shake their heads and tell us –

‘So many people come, so many things…’

*

We stand beside the truck and wipe our faces and wipe our necks, the cicadas deafening and the mosquitoes ravenous, the sun high in the sky but there is a darkness here now, in the shadows from the mountains, from the trees and in the fields, darkness and shadow –

The slopes are purple, the leaves black now, the grass grey
…

In the rivers that do not flow, the streams that stand still –

There are no currents and there are no fish, only insects
…

Tachibana asks, ‘What do you want to do now?’

Insects feasting in the still and stagnant pools
…

I look up at the sun then back down at the shadows and I say, ‘Take me to the place where you found Baba Hiroko.’

*

Up the side of another small mountain and down its other side, then
up and down another until the truck stops on the narrow road where the woods at the foot of this small mountain look out over a ditch onto a patchwork of fields and ditches, more fields and more ditches, and Tachibana says, ‘These are the woods. This is the place.’

Nishi Katamura, Kami Tsuga-gun, Tochigi
…

Tachibana, Ishida, and I climb out of the truck and wipe our faces and wipe our necks and turn away from the fields and the ditches to stare up into the woods on the slope of the mountainside, up into the shadows of the black trunks of the trees –

Their branches and their leaves
…

Tachibana points up the slope and says, ‘It’s that way…’

‘But I thought Baba was found in a field?’ I ask him –

‘It seems that she was attacked down here,’ he says. ‘But then her body was dragged from the field up this way…’

Now I follow Tachibana as he climbs up off the narrow road and into the woods, waving away the mosquitoes and the bugs with the file in his hands, Detective Ishida following behind –

He walks behind me. He walks behind me
…

Tachibana leads us through the trees to a slight hollow in the side of the mountain; a slight hollow surrounded by fallen logs and filled with broken branches and dead leaves –

He walks behind me, through the trees
…

‘This is the place,’ says Tachibana now, handing me the file –

The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry
…

In this place, in this hollow, I take her case file –

Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees
…

I open the file. I take out the photographs –

Their branches and their leaves
…

Now I see her in this place –

Her white, naked body
…

Her face in this place –

Her beaten face
…

Her face –

Black
…

In this place, in this hollow, beneath these trees, I close my eyes and I see her face; I see her say farewell to her uncle, with her gifts for her mother; I see her take the Ginza Line to Asakusa; I see her climb with the crowds up the stairs to the second floor of the Matsuya Department Store; I see her join the queue for her ticket –

How long did you stand in that queue? How long did you wait?

That cold and desperate queue of cold and desperate strangers, pushing and shoving, those desperate, defeated strangers with their desperate, hungry eyes, pushing and shoving –

Is this where you met him? Is this him behind you now… ?

In his ancient winter suit that is far too loose beneath his frayed army coat with its Shinchū Gun armband, his hair tight against his scalp, skin tight against his skull –

Did he offer you a piece of bread? A rice-ball? Candy?

In that cold and desperate queue of cold and desperate strangers, pushing and shoving, this one smiling, friendly man, this one small, friendly act of kindness –

Did you eat it there and then? That one small gift?

Now he asks you where you are going, this smiling, friendly man and between your hurried, grateful mouthfuls, you tell him you are going to visit your mother in Nikkō. He asks you where your mother lives in Nikkō and you tell this smiling, friendly man about the Furukawa Denki apartments. Now he says he once worked for Furukawa and he tells you Nikkō is where he’s from and he tells you he knows a farmer from whom you can buy some very cheap rice, some rice to surprise your mother with, some rice to take back for your uncle in Kyōbashi. And he smiles and he smiles and he smiles, this friendly man with his small acts of kindness and he even makes you laugh, this smiling, friendly man in that cold and desperate queue, among those cold and desperate strangers, this smiling, friendly man he puts an arm around you now to guide you through the crowds, the pushing and the shoving, to shepherd you onto that train, among those cold and desperate strangers, this smiling, friendly man, he helps you to find a place to stand on the train among those desperate, hungry eyes, among the ringworm and the lice, on that train with its windows of cracked plywood and bits of tin through which blow the wind and the snow as the train crosses over the Sumida River and steams up through Kita-Senju, on and on, up and up the Tōbu Line –

Does he press against you now, on that cold, cold train?

All the way up and up the Tōbu Line he smiles and he smiles and he smiles and you laugh and you laugh and you laugh as he talks and he talks and he talks, and it’s like you’ve known him all your life, this smiling, friendly man, like he’s your uncle, this smiling, friendly man, or even the father you lost so young, for you feel so safe in his
smile, this one smiling, friendly face on this cold, cold train, among these strangers, these desperate, defeated strangers who stare at you with their hungry eyes and their dried lips, their sunken cheeks and their frayed collars on this cold, cold train that takes forever –

Is his smile too close? Are his hands too free… ?

But now the train is pulling into Kanazaki and he’s telling you this is where you should both get off, that this is the quickest way to the farmer he knows, the farmer with the very cheap rice he’ll sell you, the rice for your mother, the rice for your uncle, and now you’re not so sure because you do not know this place, this land, and it’s getting darker and darker and darker but you’ve eaten his bread, taken his rice-balls and sucked on his candy, and now he takes you by your arm and leads you through these cold and desperate strangers, through the pushing and through the shoving, and off that cold, cold train and onto that cold, cold platform and now the train is gone and the platform is gone and you’re walking through the ticket gates and now the station is gone and soon the town is gone because you are walking and walking and walking away, minute after minute, hour after hour, and now the day is gone and the road is narrow, walking and walking and walking, and the mountains are dark and the fields are lonely and still he smiles and he smiles and he smiles, this smiling, friendly man, but his teeth are pointed now, his eyes hungry now –

Is this when his grip tightens? His words harden… ?

His lips wet and his tongue long, this man is not smiling now, this man is not friendly now, this man with his pointed teeth and his hungry eyes, his wet lips and his long tongue whispering what he wants from you now, in those woods or in that ditch, telling you exactly what he wants from you now and you’re turning away from this man, turning away from him now, on this narrow road, beside these lonely fields, beneath that dark mountain, below those black woods, but he’s pulling you back and he’s slapping your face, punching your face and kicking your legs, and you’re asking him to stop and you’re begging him to stop and you’re pleading with him to stop, but he’s pulling you off that narrow road and away from those lonely fields, up this dark mountain, into these black woods, putting a hand around your neck and another between your legs and you know what he wants and you know what he wants and you know what he wants and you’re trying to tell him to take it and you’re begging him to take it and you’re pleading with him to take it, to take it and then
leave you alone, please leave you, please leave you alone but he’s squeezing your throat, he’s squeezing your throat, he’s squeezing your throat, snot in your nose and piss down your legs and shit from your backside, as he squeezes your throat tighter and tighter, the mountain darker and darker, the woods blacker and blacker –