Tokyo Year Zero

Half-things in the half-light, the half-things …

I put her clothes in my army knapsack –

Here, here in the half-light …

I put her bones in my bag –

Debts to the dead …

Down the corridor of tiled walls and written warnings, I push the button and I wait for the elevator. I glance into a mirror above a sink. I glance away. Now I glance back into the glass –

‘I almost didn’t recognize you…’

Her bones on my back, I stare into the glass –

No one is who they seem …

I vomit in the sink. Black bile. I vomit again. Brown bile. Four times I vomit. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey …

I stare into the mirror above the sink –

I scream, ‘I know who I am!’

Now I smash the glass, breaking the mirror into one thousand pieces, one thousand pieces falling, falling to the ground –

Broken and splintered …

‘I know who I am!’

*

I shouldn’t still be here. Not tonight. I should have gone home to my wife and children. But in the half-light, I watch Yuki at dinner. There is still no rain tonight, no sound of thunder, only the wind, louder than the radio now. She finishes her second bowl of rice. She rinses her chopsticks and then her bowl. She puts the utensils back into the cupboard. She puts a hand to her mouth, stifles a belch and laughs –

‘I suppose your wife is much more polite than me?’

My heart aches and my body stinks –

I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari …

Behind the six-panel screen, two pillows placed side by side, she is dressed in a yellow kimono with a dark-blue stripe; the collar is off her shoulder, her hand upon my knee –

I think about her all the time …

I run my hand up her back –

She haunts me …

Her hairbrush in one hand, she leans forward to stare at herself in the three panels of her vanity mirror –

She turns to look at me and smiles –

She has dyed her teeth black –

She drops the brush, ton, and asks, ‘Does this become me?’

*

The chief has reserved the same room in the same recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, the one near the kitchens of the Victors. The chief is treating the whole of the First Investigative Division to a celebratory meal. The whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on the new mats –

There is no Ishida. No Fujita. No Adachi or me …

There is beer and there is food; zanpan from the Victors’ dustbins, the men grateful not to eat zōsui again –

Raising their glasses, taking off their ties, tying them around their foreheads and singing their songs; their songs of endeavour, their songs of courage, their songs of battle –

Their songs of victory –

Case closed!

But there are only the names of three detectives on the interrogation report; Adachi, Kanehara and Kai –

Three names and one signature –

Kodaira Yoshio.

The other detectives from Room #1 and Room #2, the uniforms from Atago, Meguro and Mita, the other detectives and uniforms from Saitama and Tochigi Prefectures –

Dogs starved at their masters’ feet…

Their names are all missing –

Beneath their tables …

But no one cares; everyone still talking about Kodaira Yoshio, about his confession to the murder of Kondo Kazuko, twenty-two years old, of Jujo, Kita Ward, Tokyo, whom Kodaira had met queuing for a ticket at Ikebukuro station on the fifteenth of July last year, whom he took into the woods at Kiyose-mura, Kita Tama-gun, out in Saitama Prefecture, and throttled and raped and then robbed of sixty yen and her paulownia geta clogs –

Death is here…

Everyone still talking about Kodaira Yoshio, about his confession to the murder of Matsushita Yoshie, twenty years old, also of Kita Ward, Tokyo, whom he had met in a queue at Tokyo station on the twenty-eighth of September last year, whom he took into the same woods at Kiyose-mura and throttled and raped and then robbed of one hundred and eighty yen, her handbag, her best black suit jacket and her mother’s umbrella –

Death …

Everyone now whispering about the rumours of purges, about Kempei in hiding, Kempei on the run. Everyone whispering about trials and hangings, Kempei taking new names and new lives, the names of the mad and the names of the dead. Everyone whispering about death and the dead, the dead and their ghosts –

Everyone now whispering about me –

Me and Ishida. Me and Fujita…

Me and Adachi …

In this room of this recently reopened restaurant near Daimon, the whole of the First Investigative Division sitting sleeve against sleeve, knee against knee on these new tatami mats –

On the mountains and mountains of lies …

Chief Kita and Chief Inspector Kanehara –

On those lies upon lies upon lies …

Inspector Kai and Inspector Hattori –

Lies upon lies upon lies …

Their glasses raised, their ties around their foreheads, their songs sung, they look up at me now –

All their lies on my back …

They look up at me like they don’t know who I am, like they cannot see me standing here, standing here before them –

Her bones on my back …

I should not be here –

Debts to the dead …

Now I’m gone.

*

The wind is still blowing as the siren starts up, as the voice on her radio announces that enemy planes are at the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula, the sirens louder now, the voice more urgent as Yuki runs to the closet, sliding open the door, diving in among the bedding, heart hammering and eyes wide, listening for the rattle of the incendiary bombs or the swish of the demolition bombs –

First comes the rain, then comes the thunder …

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ I tell her –

I should not be here, not tonight…

I go downstairs, out into the street –

People are running, digging –

I should be home …

Hiding things in the dirt –

In their shelters –

Boom! Boom!

The anti-aircraft batteries have begun, the searchlights crisscrossing the sky, catching the planes as the fires start –

People with suitcases now, people on bicycles –

‘Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!’

I smell smoke. I put on my air-raid hood –

‘Red! Red! Incendiary bomb!’

Thousands of footsteps up on the road –

‘Run! Run! Get a mattress and sand!’

The deafening sound from above –

‘Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!’

I fall to the ground, to the earth –

‘Black! Black! Here come the bombs!’

But there is only silence now –

‘Cover your ears…’

I get back up. I run inside –

‘Close your eyes!’