For a time there was a woman in my life – not my mother – who looked after me and asked me all sorts of questions. Her name was Mayumi. Something happened to her. Then my father cut off her father’s head. Why? And that’s not the only strange thing. When I think back to that horrible episode, something doesn’t square. There was a switch somewhere.
Switch: it has become a keyword in my life. As if someone switched places with me, early on, unexpectedly.
(You didn’t even leave me a glass of water.
Does that mean you won’t be away for long? How long have I been here? I don’t feel thirsty, no, not yet.
If I die here, my father will dip the tips of his fingers in your blood and paint my name on your belly.
Come back! Get me out of here. The pressure of the earth above me is suffocating. The thunder of the trains is like the breath of some resentful ghost in my neck.
Don’t chance your luck, fool. You’re dealing with the daughter of Rokurobei.)
(Get me out of here. You can have me. I’ll have sex with you. I’ll climb on top and do the things I saw in my father’s films. You’ll die dribbling with pleasure.)
Father, why don’t you come?
75
Adachi isn’t sure how to deal with the situation. He feels as if he’s landed in a nightmare. He’s suddenly reminded of a statement made by the Noh director Tadashi Suzuki, someone he’s admired all his life: “People say Noh theatre is absurd and grotesque, pregnant with tragedy, a chaos of gods and demons, but I say: Noh theatre dines at the table of reality. So many people close themselves off to the tears in the theatre curtain in which we have wrapped reality and dam up their lives with work and karaoke, with laws and prohibitions. Look around you, listen to the stories your friends have to tell you, open the papers, turn on the TV: the cycle of meaning is everywhere. You read about the threads of people’s lives becoming entangled with others, acquire insight into coincidences that create extraordinary new circumstances, you imagine yourself as an urban cannibal chopping up his victims and eating them, you are the father who lusts after his daughter, you live in a world of rats and syringes, you are the mother who strangles her child at birth, you are the hero who rushes into a burning house to save the lives of complete strangers.” Adachi has never forgotten Suzuki’s statement about the absurdity of life, but he’s never fully understood it. Now he’s convinced he’s got himself into the kind of situation the Noh master had in mind: his entire life is suddenly out of kilter, and what amazes him most is the self-evidence of it all.
The police doctor tries to explain the situation to Beate Becht while simultaneously doing his utmost to untangle the confusion left behind by Yori’s declarations. “I need time to study these documents,” he concludes. He can see that the photographer is growing impatient. How long before she takes things into her own hands? Adachi asks himself if Takeda knows what he’s got himself into. The inspector is in the middle of an intricate hornets’ nest and needs to be kept abreast of unexpected developments.
Adachi’s thoughts are interrupted by the bleating of the police radio in his living-room.
76
The economist is standing next to Takeda’s car watching the lights in his house go out one by one. “My brother Tomio was the oldest.” He sounds calm, but there’s still a tremor of subdued tension in his voice. “He inherited our father’s professional secret and was ordered that he should commit seppuku rather than reveal it to anyone.” He turns to the inspector: “In those days, in the early 1950s, it didn’t sound so crazy. People still believed back then,” he says defensively.
“Professional secret?” Takeda asks, ignoring Nagai Shiga’s remark. “You mean ‘the secret of the Golden Lily’? Wasn’t that all a bit dramatic?”
“Exactly, but I say it again: the generation before ours was a different race altogether, obsessed by different ideals. Japan was a different country in those days.” Nagai Shiga smiles, but with a hint of malice in his eyes. “We even had a god as our leader.”
“They say it was the emperor himself who gave orders for Japan’s war treasures to be hidden in out of the way places.”
“The idea came from Hirohito, but it was Prince Chichibu who did the work, with the help of zaibatsu, the army and the secret service. The prince apparently didn’t think twice about hiring criminals for the job. Gold, platinum, silver, diamonds, antiques and objet d’art were stored away in underground warehouses. Prisoners of war did the actual work. Afterwards they were shot or buried alive.”
“Your father Taro Shiga helped choose a number of those locations as Hirohito’s banker.” Takeda doesn’t mention the fact that his hypothesis comes from a recently published American book. He hopes to take the economist by surprise and tempt him to reveal more. Nagai Shiga takes a step backwards. For a moment Takeda fears he has gone too far. “A credible hypothesis,” says the economist. His voice deepens. “Nobody can keep a secret where so many people are involved. A year ago I was approached by Kenji Eda, a professor of history in Tokyo. He had evidence of my father’s complicity. But I had already figured it out because of the family secret that had been passed on to my brother Tomio and some of the vague remarks he made when he had been drinking. I thought it was all about his involvement in the emperor’s unsavoury secret, not about complicity in the murder of so many prisoners of war.” A sad smile. “Do you have a family, inspector? You know how it works. We all vow secrecy and fidelity come what may, but sooner or later we end up looking for a shoulder to support our ailing consciences. When my brother talked – albeit indirectly – about the Golden Lily, I wrote it off as wartime idealism. I knew that my father had close links with the imperial family and that he revered the wartime ethics of the day. As a banker, he was one of the driving forces behind Japan’s war effort. But please understand me: he was my father. I wanted to believe that all those stories were totally unfounded, or at least exaggerated.”
Takeda thinks about his own father, the unknown Japanese soldier, rapist, child killer, and nods. “My brother laughed in my face because I pretended not to believe him. He too was a banker, just like my father. Do you understand? He was conditioned to think in terms of money flow and power. In his eyes, I was a boring and slightly naive academic who spent his days poring over tables and economic fluctuation charts, a slave to the system, while he was at its helm. He dismissed my predictions of the present crisis. His confidence in Japan’s monetary and economic resilience was limitless. When the bubble burst he didn’t see it coming, or didn’t want to. And even when it was impossible to deny, he still maintained his confidence in the ability of the banks to rectify the situation and restart the economy. I wasn’t the guardian of the family secret. That was his burden. But when I look back I have the feeling he wanted to share it and that he was frustrated by my inability or refusal to believe him.” The economist shakes his head. “Why did I behave as I did? Jealousy? Contempt? Shame about my family? I don’t know. In any event, a couple of months ago Tomio handed me a photograph and observed cryptically ‘take good care of this should anything happen to me’. Here, I had a copy made.” Nagai Shiga fishes a black and white photo from his jacket pocket. Its background grey with age, it pictured two men in uniform from the Second World War posing in front of a life-size statue of Kannon, the hermaphrodite god of mercy and compassion. In line with tradition, this emanation of the Buddha glistened in polished gold. The crisp shadows suggest the photo was taken with powerful lighting. Takeda has the impression that it was shot in a cave. While both men pose straight-backed and rigid, he can see no evidence of pride in their eyes. On the contrary, they’re wide open, as if whatever they’re looking at is a shock to the soul.