The second younger brother is the uncle you met, the neighbours tell us. He was once the most dangerous man in the village; drank heavily and carried a knife. He has been in prison. He is still a short-tempered and aggressive man, but now he rarely speaks.
The eldest brother of Kodaira Yoshio is not long dead, the neighbours tell us. He worked at Furukawa with the rest of them but he was fired because he stole from the other workers and he slept on the job. He went to Tokyo but soon came back, wandering from job to job, living off odd jobs and handouts. He was another one who rarely spoke. Even made his own wife and children eat their meals outside so he could eat in peace. In April last year he was arrested for stealing potatoes but he died before the case ever came to court –
His elder sister was much the same, the neighbours tell us. She worked at Furukawa Denki too, just like the rest of them. She married a man who was working there, but it didn’t last more than a year. Then she married a Korean, again for less than a year. She was often hysterical and always a liar and died in January this year –
He was a bad lad himself, the neighbours are quick to tell us. But he wasn’t the worst of the family. He was poor at his schoolwork, lazy and careless, but he never drank and he never gambled. He had the Kodaira family temper but he never fought with strangers –
It was a shock, then, when he killed his father-in-law –
He has a bastard son, the neighbours whisper to us. He must be about sixteen years old. Not a nice boy, a creep to the older kids and a bully to the younger ones. This was the son he had by the woman he had his affair with. This was the affair that made his first wife’s family ask him to divorce her. That was the request that caused him to attack her family and murder her father –
That got him sent to prison –
That broke his mother’s heart, the neighbours tell us now. For his mother was kind and honest, a loving and long-suffering woman –
‘But she lived her life in tears,’ they tell us. ‘In tears…’
*
These mountains and valleys, these forests and fields, all look the same to me. Up the side of one small mountain and down the other side, a short tunnel here, a longer tunnel there, then up and down another slope and along another narrow road until the truck stops outside another small farm set back from the road by another small ditch at the foot of another small mountain. Now, again, Tachibana climbs out of the back of the truck and goes inside the house while Ishida, the driver and I sit and sweat inside the truck until Tachibana returns with another old farmer and introduces us to Mr. Samura –
‘The man who found the body,’ he says. ‘Ishikawa’s body.’
Then the driver starts the ancient truck again and slowly, very slowly we climb up the narrow road that leads up the small mountain slope behind the farm until Mr. Samura nods and grunts and Tachibana calls out to the driver who pulls up on the mountainside –
‘This is where he found her,’ says Tachibana. ‘This place.’
Ōaza Mizuki-chi, Manako-mura, Kami Tsuga-gun …
Everyone climbs out the truck. Everyone wipes their faces, wipes their necks and looks back down the mountain at the patchworks of fields and ditches, of farms and houses, and then everyone turns back round to stare up into another wood on another slope of another mountain, up into more shadows and more trees –
More black trunks, their branches and their leaves …
Samura points into the woods, ‘It’s that way…’
He walks behind me. He walks behind me …
Now Tachibana and I follow the old farmer as he clambers up off the narrow road and into the woods, pointing this way and that as he goes, mumbling things we can’t catch as the trees and their trunks stand closer and thicker together, Ishida following behind –
He walks behind me, through the trees …
Samura comes to a stop up ahead and looks round for us, shouting, ‘This is the place. This is the place. This is the place…’
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry again …
‘Last September,’ he says. ‘I was looking for leaves…’
Between the trees, the black trunks of the trees …
‘Leaves to dry out and to mix with tobacco…’
Their branches and their leaves …
‘I trod right on her bones,’ he says –
Her white, naked body …
‘I’d smelt her too,’ he says. ‘As I was gathering up my leaves. But I’d thought it was an animal, same as when I first trod upon her bones, then I slipped, I fell and I saw it wasn’t no animal bones…’
‘I look like bones … I look like bones…’
‘I knew they were human bones…’
I turn round and around, among these trees and these branches, and I ask Samura, ‘Are you sure this is the exact place?’
Samura nods. ‘Can’t you feel her still …?’
Round and around, among these black trees and their trunks, asking Tachibana, ‘Was this place ever examined as a crime scene?’
Tachibana lowers his eyes. Tachibana bows his head –
‘Shit,’ I curse, again and again, as I turn round and around, the black trunks and their branches turning round and around –
The cicadas are deafening, the mosquitoes hungry …
As I drop to my knees to begin to search –
Digging and digging and digging…
To search, again.
*
‘Over here,’ shouts Ishida. ‘I’ve found something here. Look…’
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida …
Police Chief Tachibana and I clamber over fallen tree trunks and duck under broken branches to get to where Detective Ishida is on his knees, bent over the decaying log of another fallen tree –
Namu-amida-butsu. Namu-amida-butsu …
‘Look at all these,’ he says, standing and holding up bones, white and obviously human bones wrapped in rotting cloth –
Namu-amida-butsu …
‘This must have been where he hid her body,’ says Ishida, kneeling back down to peer under the log. ‘The bones the old man found last year had probably been pulled out of here by animals…’
I look back through the trunks and the branches, back over towards the road where the old farmer Samura has gone to wait and smoke with the driver. I turn back to Chief Tachibana and I ask him, ‘Which of Ishikawa Yori’s bones have you got listed in the file?’
Tachibana opens the Ishikawa Yori file. He flicks through the papers until he reaches the autopsy report. Now he begins to list aloud the bones they found here last year as Ishida and I lift up the decaying log, lift it up to stare down into the damp black soil at more cold white bones, cold white bones that were lost and now found –
Ishida and I on our knees, with our hands, to dig –
To dig and to clean. To clean and collect –
Her bones once lost and now found …
To put them in my army knapsack –
In my bag and upon my back …
‘We’ll take these back with us to Tokyo,’ I tell Tachibana. ‘Where I’ll give them to Dr. Nakadate at the Keiō University Hospital. But please, still try to track down the other bones that were found here and listed as belonging to Ishikawa Yori…’
‘They’ll be in Utsunomiya,’ says Tachibana –
‘Maybe,’ I tell him. ‘But it’s been almost a year since they were found and, because she was listed as ikidaore, Utsunomiya will probably have returned her remains to her family for cremation…’