He pointed to the mainland. “One day that will be your home. You’ll be a person with authority. You’ll change the course of your country’s history. Show yourself worthy!”
In spite of my anger I tried a little girl manoeuvre: “I’m so lonely, father.”
Bad choice. It made him angrier. “Korean prisoners of war died like flies to dig the mineshafts and apartment buildings on that godforsaken lump of rock I’ve called home for the last fifteen years. I, a refined spirit of nature, have been doomed to live in a place where the souls of the dead maraud through the streets at night in search of revenge. And you speak of loneliness?”
I’m taken aback by the amount of emotion in his words. Anger, but also frustration and sorrow. I had never associated my father with sorrow. He was right, of course. Nights on Hashima had a melancholy power that often left me longing for death. As a young girl I used to wander through the empty halls and corridors. I sometimes sensed I was being followed by a tiny figure, much smaller than me, with a doll in her right hand, eyes like a hawk, and the reddest mouth you could imagine. A doomed soul perhaps, but I wanted to be her.
He stepped towards me, pointed to the island: “There really are ghosts over there. And sometimes, you, my daughter, are one of them.”
I stuck to my guns and pretended I hadn’t heard him.
“I have a plan; we can move to Nagasaki right away.” There, it was out. There was no way back. “We can say that we’re descended from hibakusha, that we suffered genetic damage because of the bomb,” I rattled.
I still don’t know why, but my remark threw him into a rage. He lifted his huge deformed hand and I was convinced he was about to slap my face. “Silence, I tell you. Enough! You live in your own world. You don’t want to hear what I have to say.”
I realise now that I couldn’t imagine anyone doing me any harm in those days, not even my father. Perhaps my hysteria was a terrified response to the sudden awareness that he was capable of more than I thought. Or was it an explosion of accumulated anger? An entire lifetime concentrated into a single instant? Before I knew it I was screaming: “I’m your prisoner! I’d rather die than live another day like this!”
His black eyes narrowed. I saw the tension in his body, but I couldn’t stop myself. “It’s your fault my mother jumped to her death in the sea!”
To my surprise he started to laugh. “Mitsuko, poor Mitsuko, is that what you really think?” He took me by the shoulders and whispered in my ear: “Don’t you remember what you did to gentle Mayumi? And to your mother?”
Me? My throat closed as if he was squeezing it with his hands. He looked at me, his face like a lump of stone ready to crush me. Before I had the chance to speak he said: “Don’t you remember what you did to the boy you called Crow?”
The Lord of Lies. That was all I could latch onto, the only thought that made sense. I pushed his hands from my shoulders and staggered backwards. His enormous body blocked every escape. He thrust himself against me and whispered: “If I’m Rokurobei, then you’re Harionago. Think about that before you open your mouth again.”
Harionago? The female demon of death with her barbed hair? I had longed for love all my life. How dare he compare me with that bloodthirsty harpy who drove disease and epidemic into the world just to be sure she had enough souls to catch in her net. He was the one who had robbed me of everything I loved. Blood rushed to my head. “If I’m Harionago, then you would be the first to join me in hell and there would be nothing you could do about it!”
An electric shock ran from my belly to my head when he grabbed me by the throat. I’d seen him loose control before. But always with other people. I invariably had the chance to disappear, look away, pretend it wasn’t happening. In spite of the years of denial, I suddenly realised I knew exactly what he did when he lost control. I couldn’t breathe, felt dizzy, my chest heaved.
“Father,” I whispered.
His hands were already gone, but before I had the chance to breathe again he did something incomprehensible. He tore my furisode, the pretty long-sleeved kimono he liked to see me wear. He lunged forward, bit my neck, restrained me with one hand and loosened his belt with the other. As he penetrated me, burning, dry, grinding, his eyes closed, his face distorted, I watched the island behind us ablaze in the morning sun. It didn’t last long, didn’t hurt much… it was a dream and only certain details etched themselves in my mind: his Adam’s apple as he threw back his head, his strangely curved penis as he pulled out of me, spattering seed on my belly, the way he pinched his eyes tight as if he was in pain. I felt as if I had been yanked out of my own body, as if I was hovering above it all. My mind was painfully clear, but it no longer seemed attached to my body, my existence.
All his life my father had been free to indulge his every urge without concern for reasons or consequences. Who, after all, would dare stand in the way of Rokurobei, this natural manifestation, half god half human? He was ignorant of the boundary between good and evil, and had no idea what either meant.
But his reaction, disgraceful as it was, also revealed that he could feel pain, perhaps even doubt himself. He had never touched me in such a manner before, or shown any signs of desire. When I think about it, I’m sure he didn’t do it because he desired me, but because it was the only way to vent his fury. He was faced with a choice: kill your daughter or rape her. He chose the latter.
As I lay on the deck trying to cover my body with my torn clothes, he charged towards the wheelhouse, broke the helmsman’s neck like a match, and threw his body overboard. He took the helm, didn’t deign to look at me or say a word. I needed no explanation: I knew why he wanted no witnesses to what he had done.
We returned in silence to the lump of rock that had been my prison for as long as I can remember.
34
“What’s got into you, inspector Takeda?” Chief commissioner Takamatsu is standing at his desk, hunched dramatically, leaning on the tips of his fingers. “Why waste my time with these absurd theories?”
“Take a look at the facts one more time, commissioner, if you don’t mind. In 1948, the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo was raided in a bizarre attack. A man identifying himself as a Ministry of Health official informed the manager that a deadly epidemic had engulfed the area. Management and staff were asked to drink what they thought was an antidote. They did what they were told and they were all poisoned. An unusual modus operandi, don’t you think? Stranger still was the fact that the robbers only took a small sum of money. What did the federal police discover yesterday at the Dai-Ichi-Kangyo Bank?”
The commissioner stares at inspector Takeda long and hard. Takeda begins to think he’s unwilling to give an answer or that he hasn’t understood this abrupt twist in his argument. His superior sits, leans back and says in a deceptively gentle tone: “The amount of money stolen has yet to be determined. It appears that nothing has been taken from the safes. It probably has to do with bonds and securities.”
“That only supports my conviction, commissioner. In 1948, the police arrested an artist by the name of Hirasawa Sadamichi. After attempting suicide he confessed to the raid on the Teikoku Bank. But his written statement was full of holes when it came to the modus operandi of the robbery. Taro Shiga, the manager of the bank who had also taken poison and died, is referred to in American books as “Prince Chichibu’s WWII banker”. According to the Americans, the prince had an important role to play in the disappearance of Japanese war treasures after the capitulation and…”