“Can I make a suggestion,” says the photographer hesitatingly.
“I’m all ears,” says Takeda.
Beate points at the documents: “If I understand it right, the chief commissioner belongs to a band of criminals that wants to cover up the attack on the bank because it has to do with Japan’s wartime past. If you ask me they’re not going to stop there if they want to keep their boss’s identity a secret. I’ve heard enough to figure that Japan would be turned upside down if the true identity of Rokurobei were to be exposed.”
“Are you suggesting I contact Takamatsu and offer him the documents in exchange for my safety?” says Takeda.
“You make the suggestion but you don’t go through with it,” the photographer answers. “And that’s why we need to go to my hotel room first.”
81
Go away, my son. You’re not real. I left you behind as a sign for your father, my father. I didn’t want you to live when you slithered out of me, far too slimy, without even a cry of anger. Even then your indifference was complete, so don’t pretend now that you’re grieving the loss of your life. I can see the umbilical cord around your swollen neck, I can see your parched tongue. That is no big deal. My tongue is parched too. Be happy you’re already dead. I still have to face my end, and the thought of it pains me in the very place you spent so many months in hiding, kicking me now and then.
I begin to fear that Reizo Shiga isn’t coming back. His tragedy threatens to become perfect and he’s not even here to write it all down. Your presence is all that I have, my son, but I still want you to go. You’ve suffered enough. You weren’t destined to live, just as it would have been better if my father and me had never lived. Your life would have been a misery, populated by therapists, social workers and, who knows, perhaps even machines to help you move and talk. Don’t pretend you’re not a monster. You were deformed, helpless. Death was the best for you. I dressed you like the baby I found deep in the cellar on Hashima, years ago, embalmed, a chrysanthemum on its right heel and birth and death certificates with the seal of the imperial physician who had filled the small corps’ veins with formalin and the eye sockets with caustic soda. According to the documents, they also used zinc acetate, salicylic acid and glycerine.
That baby looked just like you, my poor son, just like you.
I was thirteen and had developed an interest in the history of the island. When I looked up at the sombre ruins against the dark grey sky, I imagined I could hear voices and sensed a hand with wispy fingers reaching towards me from behind, trying to grab my hair. Such thoughts left me with a strange feeling in my belly, a terrified ecstasy. I enjoyed fantasising that there was a curse on the place and that my father and me lived here because humanity had rejected us. I wandered for hours in and out of the apartments the mineworkers had once lived in, trying to picture what they would have been like when they were occupied. My father told me that the Chinese and Koreans who had worked in the mines deep below sea level had been treated like animals. The first time I made my way down to the cellars that gave access to the mineshafts I trembled from head to toe, but I enjoyed every second. Just before descending the broad staircase, I looked up at the sky: greenish-grey with clouds hanging like smoke over the rust-coloured ruins. The crumbling dilapidated walls stood out against the dirty white colossal chimney that rose from the ground behind the buildings. I descended the grimy stairs that gave access to the cellars where the mineworkers changed before they clambered down into the narrow shafts that brought them deep underground, far below sea level. I imagined I could smell them in their underground vault. There were still a few dusty overalls in the changing room, overalls the men had worn and left behind. They had become thin as paper and had the colour of stale rice. Because life on the island was a treeless existence, the only colours I trusted were dull shades of brown, grey, slate, the sombre indifference of the empty windows in the apartment buildings. I kept a close eye on the uniforms, afraid they might come to life at any moment. Bits and pieces of miner’s tackle were scattered here and there, including half a motorcycle. God only knows how it got there.
The iron-coloured chest in the corner beside the metal lockers caught my eye. I rambled through the room, pretending to myself I wasn’t going to open the chest. What might be inside? I knew I couldn’t stop myself, but I resisted as long as I could. I turned on my heels and in a couple of nervous steps I was standing in front of the metal box. I was young, but even then I had an eye for detail. The chest wasn’t covered with dust like the other things in the cellar. The locking mechanism glistened as if it had just been oiled. I held my breath and clicked open the lid. I remember an explosion of heat in my body when I saw the dead, deformed baby. The dry air in the place made it look as if the baby was asleep and might wake up at any moment, in spite of its terrible deformities. Its head was swollen and disfigured. Hardened fibrous tissue bulged from its eyes. A lump of flesh bulged from its lipless mouth. The naked little body had the colour and texture of black porcelain. Its crotch was distended, a snow-white protuberance, the genitals melted like congealed egg-white.
The sight of the baby didn’t terrify me long; rather I felt sorry for it. It looked as if it could come to life at any moment, rub the fibrous tissue from its eyes, and beg for love, protection, warmth with its as good as lipless mouth.
Someone must have loved the poor creature a lot to have taken so much trouble to embalm it.
And as I thumbed through the documents I found in the chest – certificates signed by the imperial physician with reference to the nationality of the mother – I learned who that person was. I saw the chrysanthemum on the baby’s right heel and I read the date of birth.
I read the name of the father.
His full name.
82
“Do you believe in fate?” Takeda asks the German photographer in the taxi. He’d left his police car behind on his way to the gay bar. It would be too easy to trace. Beate Becht turns to look at him. The inspector avoids her gaze and stares out of the window. In spite of his excellent English, he had used the Japanese word unmei. But he was sure she understood.
She sees his taut jaw muscles and tries to make her answer sound noncommittaclass="underline" “People always say that reality is a hundred times more surprising than the imagination. It’s a cliché, of course.”
The inspector nods almost imperceptibly. “Strange that this sad merry-go-round started in my imagination,” he says with an oblique smile. “With my infamous intuition. If I hadn’t told Takamatsu that the deaths of both Shiga senior and Shiga junior in bank raids decades apart couldn’t be a coincidence none of this would have happened.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself,” says Beate. She can’t think of anything else to say and it leaves her feeling stupid and awkward.
The inspector leans forward, lets his shoulders hang. The man isn’t finished yet, Beate thinks, but his resilience is being pushed to the limit.
“I’ve always known that a moment like this would come,” says Takeda. He continues before Beate has the chance to respond: “When they would lock me out, when everyone would see that my skin isn’t the same as everyone else’s.” His eyes veer to the right, surprisingly bright and vulnerable in the light of the neon advertisements outside. “Do you understand?”