Tokyo Stall Vendors Processing Union.
Now they let me go. Now they let me wipe my face and wipe my neck, straighten up my shirt and put on my jacket –
The calls of odd, even and play …
There is a foreigner coming down the stairs, an American in sunglasses. At the foot of the stairs, the American turns his face to look at me and then looks away again. He nods to Senju’s men as he disappears into the alleys and the shadows –
No one is who they say they are …
There is no ‘Apple Song’ playing here as I walk up the stairs towards the open door, just the dice and his voice –
‘You got good news for me, have you, detective?’ calls out Senju before I even reach the top of the stairs –
I stop on the stairs. I look down at his two goons. They are laughing now. I turn back to the door –
The sound of dice being thrown. The calls of odd, even and play, odd, even and play …
‘Don’t be a coward now,’ he shouts. ‘Answer me, detective.’
I start walking again. I reach the top. I am a policeman. I turn into the doorway. Into the light –
‘Well?’ asks Senju –
I kneel down on the tatami mat. I bow. I say, ‘I’m sorry.’
Senju spits his toothpick onto the long low polished table. He turns his new electric fan my way and shakes his head –
‘Just look at you, officer,’ he laughs. ‘Dressed like a tramp and stinking of corpses. Investigating murders when you could be getting rich, arresting Koreans and Formosans and bringing home two salaries for the pleasure. Taking care of your family and your mistress, fucking the living and not the dead…’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘How old are you now, detective?’
‘I am forty-one years old.’
‘So tell me,’ he asks. ‘What do they pay a forty-one-year-old detective these days, officer?’
‘One hundred yen a month.’
‘I pity you,’ he laughs. ‘And your wife, and your children, and your mistress, I really do.’
I lean forward so my face touches the tatami mat and I say, ‘Then please help me…’
And I curse him; I curse him because he has what I need. And I curse Fujita; I curse him because he introduced us. But most of all I curse myself; I curse myself because of my dependence; my dependence on him …
‘You chase corpses and ghosts,’ he says. ‘What help are you to me? And if you can’t help me, I can’t help you.’
‘Please,’ I say again. ‘Please help me.’
Senju Akira throws down five hundred yen onto the mat in front of my face. Senju says, ‘Then get a transfer to a different room; a room where you can find things out, things that help me…
‘Like who paid Nodera Tomiji to kill my boss Matsuda; like who then killed Nodera; like why this case is now closed …’
‘I will,’ I say, then over and over. ‘Thank you.’
‘And don’t come back here until you have.’
‘Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.’
‘Now get out!’ he shouts –
I shuffle backwards across the mats then down the stairs, past the goons and through the alleys, back into the market –
‘Shall we all sing the Apple Song?’
The Shimbashi New Life Market –
This is the New Japan … This is how we live –
‘Let’s all sing the Apple Song and pass the feeling along.’
*
I haggle. To eat. I barter. To work. I threaten. To eat. I bully. To work. I buy three eggs and some vegetables. There was no fish and there was no meat. Now there is another problem on the Yamate Line and the trains have stopped running in the direction of Shinagawa, so I take the streetcar. It is crowded and I am crushed and the eggs were a mistake. I get off at Tamachi and then I walk or run the rest of the way. The vegetables in my pockets. The eggs in my hands –
To eat. To work. To eat. To work …
There is only this now.
*
I have waited hours to lie again here upon the old tatami mats of her dim and lamp-lit room. I think about her all the time. I have waited hours to stare again at her peeling screens with their ivy-leaf designs. I think about her all the time. I have waited hours to watch her draw her figures with their fox-faces upon these screens –
I think about her all the time …
Yuki is the one splash of colour among the dust, her hair held up by a comb. Now Yuki puts down her pencils and stares into the three-panelled vanity mirror and says, ‘Oh, I wish it would rain…
‘Rain but not thunder,’ she says. ‘I hate the thunder…
‘The thunder and the bombs…’
She haunts me …
‘Rain like it used to rain,’ she whispers. ‘Rain like before. Rain hard like the rain when it fell on the oiled hood of the rickshaw, drumming louder and faster on the hood, the total darkness within the hood heavy with the smell of the oil and of my mother’s hair, of my mother’s make-up and of her clothes, the faces and the voices of the actors we had seen on the stage that day, in those forbidden plays of loyalty and of duty, those plays of chastity and of fidelity, of murder and of suicide, those faces and those voices that would swim up through the darkness of the hood towards me…’
She has haunted me from the day I first met her, in the thunder and the rain, from that day to this day, through the bombs and the fires, from that day to this …
Yuki is lying naked on the futon. Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid! Her head slightly to the right. Red! Red! Incendiary bomb! Her right arm outstretched. Run! Run! Get a mattress and sand! Her left arm at her side. Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid! Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. Black! Black! Here come the bombs! My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs. Cover your ears! Close your eyes!
‘Make it rain again,’ she says –
And then she brings her left hand up to her stomach. I think about her all the time. She dips her fingers in my come. I think about her all the time. She puts her fingers to her lips. I think about her all the time. She licks my come from her fingers and says again, ‘Please make it rain, rain like it rained on the night we first met…’
She haunts me here. She haunts me now …
I place an egg and two hundred yen on her vanity box and I say, ‘I might not be able to visit you tomorrow.’
Here and now, she haunts me …
‘I am a woman,’ she whispers. ‘I am made of tears.’
*
The Shinagawa station is in chaos. Every station. There are queues but no tickets. Every train. I push my way to the front and I show my police notebook at the gate. Every station. I shove my way onto a train. Every train. I stand, crushed among people and their goods –
Every station. Every train. Every station. Every train …
This train doesn’t move. It stands and it sweats –
Finally, after thirty minutes, the train starts to move slowly down the track towards Shinjuku station –