As tears go by. Takeda remembers a Rolling Stones song he had to translate when he was a student. He has no idea what makes him think about it now.
But what he does know is that the tears in his life have gone by without him being able to cry them.
120
Takeda has the taste of ash in his mouth. He spent the entire previous day in his hotel room being chased by memories and being forced to confront himself once too often. He had called the Public Security Commission and passed through the usual echelons before being granted an appointment. An appointment on March 19th wasn’t possible, which left him with a day on his hands to mull over his chances again and again.
7.58am. The Hibiya line is packed as usual. Takeda squeezes between the other passengers as they push towards the door of the train. A railway official dressed in the familiar green uniform and regulation white gloves tries to prevent all the pushing and shoving from getting out of hand. Two men wearing surgical masks board the train behind him to his right, not an unusual sight on overfull metro trains where bacteria has free reign. Decent people wear a mask out of respect for their fellow travellers when they feel a cold coming on. One of the men is carrying an attaché case and an umbrella, just like hundreds of thousands of others on their way to work in the metropolis. He squeezes in behind Takeda. The other walks past him.
Takeda tries to organise his thoughts. He can’t appear nervous in front of the Commission. He dives into his memories as he used to dive into the sea in his youth when he wanted to be alone. He remembers his first holiday job selling tyres for a car-part firm and how he stammered and stuttered in front of his first customer. At university he joined a Buddhist organisation called Soka Gakkai, but it didn’t last. The path to inner peace was not for him, although he longed for tranquillity in the depths of his being. Several months police-training in Tokyo followed, the city without beginning or end, where millions of people work, dream, fight and fuck. The metropolis always worked him up, and now the same old fever invades his bones in spite of his best efforts to think serene thoughts. He looks around the compartment. The train slows down. Akihabara Station is the next stop. The man with the surgical mask behind him places a number of parcels wrapped in newspaper on the floor and looks around. At that instant Takeda looks over his shoulder in response to what feels like a tingling in his neck. Their eyes meet and for a moment Takeda is confronted with his own loneliness. He turns back and is unaware that the man behind him is poking the parcels on the floor with the sharpened tip of his umbrella. The train stops. The man wedges up against Takeda to get off. There’s a chemical smell in the air, the smell of concentrated cleaning fluid. The man pushes Takeda aside and jumps onto the platform. Takeda shakes his head at his rudeness, but is quickly confronted by a new sensation: a hurried crowd pushes and shoves its way into the carriage. The inspector tries to stand his ground against the increasing pressure from the bodies around him. The smell in the compartment becomes penetrating, like nail varnish remover. The passengers begin to shout, push to the front, gasping for air. Takeda feels an oncoming wave of nausea. His eyes are irritated and his chest tight. The scene in the compartment begins to undulate as if he’s under water. A mother of a headache sets in.
The second man was chosen because of his skills as a metro pick-pocket. He’s young, smart, cheeky, and equipped with lightning reflexes. Like his accomplice, he was given an injection of atropine that morning, an antidote for sarin. Small, agile and slightly cross-eyed, he knows precisely what to do. When the passengers start to cough and rub their eyes, he has to do the same to avoid drawing attention to himself. The adrenalin begins to pump. He watched his companion leave the train and he knows that it’s now his turn. When panic breaks out he sees Takeda lose balance. Not long now. The train is approaching Kodemmacho station. A couple of passengers have found the source of the deadly fumes: three plastic bags on the carriage floor. When the train stops they kick the bags onto the platform. In their panic they hit people trying to board the train. Chaos breaks out on the platform and people start to scream. Takeda falls to his knees, snot pouring from his nose and a yellowish fluid from his mouth. The second man stoops and grabs the attaché case his victim has been holding with both arms the entire time. Takeda looks at him with bloodshot eyes and makes a feeble gesture, as if insisting the man give him his bag back. He knows, the second man thinks. He knows what I want from him. He spits in Takeda’s face, jumps from the train, skilfully avoids the convulsing bodies on the platform, and rushes towards the exit with the attaché case clasped to his chest. He runs outside as the sirens begin to wail in the distance. He hums, almost imperceptible, his favourite song: Lord Death Counts His Followers.
Inspector Takeda vomits and tries to get to his feet. All the evidence he had is now gone. His last thought before losing consciousness: I should have fired a sea of bullets as I crossed the street, when I saw him there with his follower and their motorbikes and leathers and flashy helmets as if they were from a different planet…
121
The spring sky is bright and capricious as molten iron. The sea by contrast is deep blue with occasional white-crested waves. As sea and sky collide, the buildings on the island seem like relics of a forgotten civilisation of giants. Norikazu is made for this island, Yori thinks, as if its concrete ground gave birth to him. Today he’s without make-up. In the sunlight his pockmarked skin is speckled black. Yori once saw photos in an underground magazine of Vietnamese with skin diseases brought on by the American defoliation compound Agent Orange. Their damaged skin looked like that of Norikazu. It’s amazing how bright daylight makes him appear old when he’s without his make-up. Today Yori can clearly see that he’s well into his sixties. At other moments, at dusk and at night, he seems much younger, in part because of his jet-black hair, which he probably dyes.
“I saw it on TV,” she says. “They’re calling it ‘an aimless gas attack in the metro’. Aimless, father?” She likes to call him father. Norikazu smiles, exposing his pointed teeth. In this light they’re yellow and irregular.
“How did you manage to track down the inspector?”
He turns away from her. Today, as is often the case on Hashima, he’s wearing formal attire. His hakama is charcoal grey. His broad-waisted gi is black. His grey trouser skirt hangs to the floor and accents his height. He looks at once like a badly assembled meccano man and an impressive stage actor, larger than life itself.
“Come, father. You know how curious I can be.” She stands beside him, rests her head against his chest. He smells of metal long exposed to the sun. He almost always does.