I can’t recall the reason he gave for leaving, but I do remember the way we said goodbye. He bent down and kissed my hand like an eighteenth-century composer would have done. Before I knew it, we’d agreed to meet again two days later, when the boat he was working on would be back.
I’d only walked a dozen steps or so when a shadow fell over me. I knew who it was.
I stopped, head bowed.
The noise the shadow uttered was like the mocking screech of a crow.
26
Beate Becht always carries a camera, even when she’s out for a stroll at night. She’s marching along the canal behind the Genbaku Dome at a speed even she thinks is slightly Teutonic. Going for a walk in the middle of the night seemed like a good idea at first. A powerful wind is lashing the river. Beate is on her guard. Is that down to her upbringing, her personality, her genes? She’s read that Japan is one of the safest countries on earth for foreigners. From the canal she can see the boulevards, the rivers and the city’s industrial zone. It’s very different from the densely populated city centre she walked through yesterday, full of neon, noise and smells. Near the ruins of the Genbaku Dome, a grim reminder of Hiroshima’s war history, all is quiet. Pools of shadow drift underneath the willows lining the river bank. The benches along the canal, occupied late into the evening by courting young couples not bothered by the dome’s grim perimeter fence, are deserted at this hour. Beate looks to the right. The water of the Aioi River is black. She remembers reading descriptions of the river from shortly after the atom bomb, when it was littered with corpses as brittle as burnt wood. A large firefly, pale as moonlight, skims over the water’s surface. Beate aims her lens and shoots, even though the half-light and the ghostly insect’s abrupt changes of direction have almost certainly rendered the result useless. The firefly makes her think of the genbaku obake, the spirits of the nuclear victims: unmistakably present, difficult to capture.
Further down the riverbank she notices a van, a VW, more hidden than parked between the willows. The colourful painting on its side attracts her attention. She approaches it slowly, her curiosity more powerful than her sense of caution. The manga painting depicts a white-haired girl with the face of a child and large, innocent eyes, dressed in a pleated school skirt and thigh length boots. Her underpants are down around her knees. Her breasts dotted with droplets of sweat dangle from her schoolgirl blouse. She’s being taken from behind by a red-skinned demon with a white, spongy head, lumpy and misshapen like an enormous turnip, and eyes that look both wild and sad. The demon’s massive penis has been painted over with metallic squares, but the girl’s vagina is depicted in great detail, with an exaggerated bulge and fluid dripping in abundance. The van seems abandoned. Reassured, Beate searches for the best angle to take pictures of the scene. The camera flashes twice.
She’s startled by a thud. She turns and walks away. Two thuds. A third. A drumming sound against metal.
Then she hears shouting, in Japanese. The voice sounds desperate.
She quickens her pace.
The voice switches to Dutch. Beate worked with a female midget from Amsterdam once, a highly intelligent and charming model who’d overcome the fact that she – as she put it – was imprisoned in a body not much taller than a metre. One evening, after an exhausting photo session in which Beate had locked her in a cage among the stray cats and dogs at a local kennel, the woman hit the bottle and had one drink too many. At three o’clock in the morning, she peered down at Beate from an attic bar, fixed her with bleary eyes and whispered: “Help. Help me.” Beate hears the same words now.
Xavier has managed to crawl to the side of the van and is kicking against it with both feet. Again, and again. He’s shouting, without even knowing what. The urge for life that he seemed to have lost for a while after Anna has come back with a vengeance. His mind is deflating like a balloon, focusing down on that one desire. It feels like drowning. Is he imagining things, or did he hear something? He takes a deep breath, his throat raw from yelling.
“Wie sind Sie, bitte?” A woman’s voice.
It sounds distant, as if a stretch of water is in the way. No time to think.
“Hilfe!”
Looking back later, Beate will marvel at her own decisiveness. Now, she’s acting on instinct. She can hear a man’s voice with a Dutch accent screaming for help in her native German. She tugs at the back door. It’s locked. She looks in through the window on the driver’s side. Something’s moving behind the seat. The riverbank is covered with smooth stones. She grabs one, and then on second thoughts grabs another. She hurls a stone at the driver’s window. Nothing. She lifts the heavier one, takes a few steps backwards this time, and throws it with all her strength. A crack. She runs back to the shore, pumped with adrenalin. She’s not thinking of the consequences of her actions, convinced that the man in the van needs help. She grabs the heaviest stone she can find, and this one smashes the glass. Reaching inside carefully she pushes the handle of the door. It swings open. She gets in, wriggles to the back of the van between the two front seats. It’s empty, except for a strapped figure on the floor.
27
My father used to say: we are the future, they are the past.
My father used to say: of course you’re not human, you’re more than human. Cloaked in his protective armour of fevered activity and revenge, he made me feel invisible. I thought no one could see me – me, Mitsuko, the woman inside this shell.
Crow, a sixteen-year-old boy, did see that woman. He drew her out of herself with his lopsided smile, his gangling, funny gait, the way he always seemed to be conducting an unseen orchestra with his constantly moving hands.
I soon started to treasure the stolen hours we spent together, twice or three times a week. Without him, I felt like I was walking in a void. He was very frank. He told me he was a runner for my father’s gambling joints in Nagasaki, and mentioned names of American Mafiosi that I later looked up. The kings of the American underworld were a recent fascination of his. He talked about Capone, but also told me stories about less famous men like Joseph Pistone, Lucky Luciano and Vincent Gigante. Crow talked about their sense of honour, and about the corrupt politicians and police, who he believed were much worse than the criminals. The men in his stories had only one goal, one resolution: to work their way up, and overcome their fears whenever they had to. Crow was determined to do the same. He didn’t say so, but I could telclass="underline" I want to reach an important position in your father’s organisation, then you and I can… I trembled at the thought, a shudder ran through my body from tip to toe, or was it a tingle?