Beate is lying on her bed in her neat hotel room, which resembles many other neat hotel rooms she’s stayed in over the years. But this one is smaller. She blames the legendary Japanese lack of space. It’s also a little old-fashioned, decorated in beige, light-brown and pink, with large flowers on the bedspread. She lies on her bed of flowers and leafs through the magazines she bought at the supermarket. The pictures disappoint her, their gaudy lollipop colours like cheap MTV ads. Many of the people in the photographs look like mental patients, recently escaped from some institution or other. A garish colour photograph takes up almost the entire cover of one of the magazines.
Beate Becht looks at it and holds her breath.
16
The sounds of sleeping people around me make my own sleeplessness all the more painful. I’d like to get up and go into the city, which looks like a colourful funfair at night, but it’s as if my limbs are paralysed. Earlier today, Reizo said: “You have the face of a murderer.” He was teasing, of course, but his words stuck in my mind. They remind me of Mayumi’s death. I must have been about ten. It was towards the end of the day. I remember seeing the sun, the colour of red ochre, drifting in the water like a gigantic egg-yolk. The dilapidated central watchtower of Hashima Island cast long shadows, and I’ve never dared ask my father why I, a child, was taken to the tower. I recall asking for “uncle” Mayumi while two of his followers escorted me up the steep path to the island’s highest point. Mayumi, cheerful and chubby, always ready with a joke, looked after me when my father went on his nocturnal trips to the mainland. He bathed me, told me stories, and brushed my hair with a hundred strokes. Mayumi bowed to my father like a jack-knife and would have walked through fire for him. Why then, had my father’s followers tied him naked to one of the watchtower’s supporting masts? I never found out.
I can remember a stiff breeze tugging at my clothes, but I can’t recall my exact feelings. Disbelief and bewilderment, most likely. I do seem to remember being choked by fear, as if I had been the one tied up there naked, and not Mayumi.
I understood nothing of the speech my father gave to the large group of followers who had assembled at the top. I heard his voice, but my mind refused to interpret the sounds as words. I looked at Mayumi, a few metres away from me. He was staring at the ground, but lifted his head a little every now and then to peer at me. His expression was that of a beaten dog, infinitely sad. I felt something change in me, a dreamy state, as if part of me had separated itself. The same feeling, now sharp and sizzling, shot through my body like a bolt of lightning when my father stopped talking, pulled out his katana, turned with the fluidity of water and chopped off Mayumi’s head.
My father took me back down to the building where we lived, his hand on my shoulder, patiently pointing to the places I should tread carefully on the steep, overgrown path. For once, he didn’t seem to be scrutinising me for some shortcoming or weakness.
I was prattling on about nothing, acting all busy and grown-up, like a little lady.
When we were almost at the bottom, he said casually: “Mitsuko, don’t you want to know why you had to see this?”
I sensed that much depended on my answer and my heart raced: “Because I’m your daughter and I deserve respect.”
He gave me a long, inscrutable look and finally nodded. I was deeply relieved, but hadn’t yet realised that I wasn’t the same girl who had gone up to the watchtower.
He then took my hand and asked: “Don’t you want to know what Mayumi did?”
I surprised myself with my answer: “I don’t know enough of the adult world, but I’m certain about one thing: Mayumi loved me.”
We were almost at the bottom. He let go of my hand and walked in front of me, an angular giant in warrior’s clothes from a different era, in a world of his own where darkness was falling rapidly.
I’ve always wondered whether I imagined his answer, but tonight I can feel my feet searching anxiously for the path after he let me go, and hear his voice again in the gathering dusk: “He loved you too much, and that’s why he had to die.”
I saw the gang my father called his followers commit many more atrocities in later years, but I’ll never forget the look on Mayumi’s face just before he died.
It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly and I was rooted to the spot. I remember Mayumi looking up at me just before the sword was pulled, I remember his smile.
How can a child witness such a thing and grow up normally? Everything I did seemed ambiguous after Mayumi’s execution. I was unable to accept the reality of my life, so I made everything unreal.
It only occurred to me much later that Mayumi is a woman’s name. It made me distrust my memory – and as a consequence, my life.
17
The girl has brought Xavier Douterloigne to a restaurant in the centre of the city. She was quiet on the overcrowded Hakushima tram, a little frown between her eyebrows as if she regretted her suggestion. Hiroshima’s nightlife is just as noisy and colourful as Xavier remembers it, yet it amazes him all over again. The restaurant doesn’t have a single photo album to help non-Japanese speaking tourists choose their food – a good sign. The interior may be a bit cluttered – bright red plastic walls and a steaming open kitchen – but it’s not Western. There are trees opposite, on the other side of the street, date palms colourless and bony, like old men against the cloudless night sky. Xavier orders himself a healthy meal. The waitress smiles at him approvingly; a tall blonde man speaking fluent Japanese is something to tell her friends about. She looks as if she wants to touch him. His table companion introduces herself as Yori, but doesn’t say much else. She attacks the food, licks her teeth with every bite, her pink tongue darting in and out. Xavier notices she’s still wearing her gloves. She starts to talk again in the middle of the meal and before long she’s bombarding Xavier with questions about his life, buzzing around his head like a bee. A girl with seven-league boots. He smiles. He knows that women find him attractive, especially Asian women. He’s evasive when she asks about his family: “My parents have been diplomats all their lives, but they wanted to round off their careers close to home and moved to Brussels. They’re the best. I’m their only son… just graduated. This trip to Japan, where I lived for many years, is my graduation gift.” Yori flashes her eyes at him as she asks about girlfriends.
“Enough about me,” says Xavier with a smile. “My life is boring. A diplomat’s son with doting parents, nothing exciting ever happens to me. Your body’s a story in itself.” He touches her right temple carefully. “And I guess there’s plenty more inside.”
Yori quickly rubs the spot where Xavier’s fingers touched her skin.
“Have you got a boyfriend?”