A collective sigh runs through the room. The eyes of the other novices are glazed. Reizo Shiga bows his head to camouflage the glint in his. As he watches the video recording of the Blessed One instructing the novices on how to generate the power to levitate, his thoughts scurry back and forth like a pack of hunting dogs. He tries to concentrate on the screen, listen to the Blessed One as he explains how much energy levitation requires, watch as the Blessed One undresses and sits in the lotus position wearing nothing but a loincloth. The eyes of the Blessed One, half blind in the polluted earthly dimension, but pools of light and energy in the higher dimensions where he spends most of his time, close as he bows is head and his long black hair falls over his face. His body quakes, his breathing becomes a rhythmic grunting. The Blessed One’s body judders up and down, faster and faster, the waves of energy surging through it more impressive by the minute. At a given moment, when he’s a metre above the ground, it happens: the Blessed One raises his head, appears to freeze in midair, stares at the novices, and slowly falls, as if weightless, to the floor. Although he knows that this is only the first step towards levitation, Reizo Shiga is disappointed. Did he witness a transgression of the established laws of nature, or a cheap trick used by yogi to give the impression they are levitating when in fact they are simply jumping up and down on the spot?
He looks around the room surreptitiously. The faces of the others, waxen in the light of the video screen, appear narrower, excessively smoothed by absolute admiration and docility. A couple of the faces belong to ex-members of the Suicide Club who only two months earlier had followed Reizo Shiga with the same blind faith as now the Blessed One. Shiga senses a desire for revenge bubble to the surface. He glances furtively at the undersecretary, who is also staring at the screen, expressionless, like a sheep. How can a senior member of the Brotherhood with reputedly superior alpha powers not sense Reizo Shiga’s blasphemous thoughts?
Reizo Shiga feels his body tingle. The answer is simple: his alpha-potential is unfathomable; it’s been there all his life; nothing else can explain it. If he develops that potential, no matter how, he’ll be able…
The thought suddenly comes to him that Mitsuko must be very precious to the Blessed One, if even novices are being sent out to look for her. As sacred tea is distributed, made from the hair of the Blessed One to help speed the novices to a higher astral plane, Reizo Shiga is unable to suppress a new thought: why, why can’t the Blessed One find Mitsuko himself if his astral powers are so advanced?
36
After the swirling colours that made him feel sick and the piercing noises sharp as razors, came blackness. Xavier Douterloigne has lost control of time and space in his head. He’s eight years old and imagines he’s back in Ypres, at the industrial poultry farm run by his grandfather on his mother’s side. Thousands of chickens are scurrying around on the floor of the dull grey poultry house. Their cheeping grates in Xavier’s ears. He chases after them, excited, determined to catch one, caress it, cuddle it. The rubber boot on his left foot lands on a yellow stain. It wriggles, crumples, oozes blood, slime. Xavier begins to sweat. He feels the pain of the crushed chick under his boot. He’s carried the pain of that childhood incident all this time and now it’s got him by the throat. It catapults him through time, arms and legs outstretched as if he’s on a cross, until all movement ceases.
That’s how Anna must have felt.
When fate struck its final blow, Anna was wearing a dress as yellow as a cornfield.
And it was his fault.
37
Did it really happen? My father raping me? Did it really happen? Doesn’t a woman with a phantom pregnancy live in a world of her own making, a world she thinks is real?
But the fabrications of the mind are contradicted by the body. I can still feel the pain in my belly, the fever that kept me in bed for days with my father at my side, a silent ghost staring out of the window at the sea and not at me. We didn’t exchange a single word: our bodies seemed frozen in time.
Still, this morning my doubts are like pebbles tumbling down a steep incline. Can I describe my father to my own satisfaction? What happened to all that time I spent alone, more or less, with Mayumi? My mother? Can I picture her face? I must have been about ten when she committed suicide. My father told me she committed suicide, that I wasn’t witness to it. Yet I can still see her looking back, high on the ramparts surrounding the island, her hair tossed by a stiff sea breeze. I hear something screaming at me, a confession or an oracle. Scenes in my head, like those in the manga comics that are lying scattered on the floor in this old building. Reizo says they’re the “literature of tomorrow”. Or scenes in my head from a film I saw when the cinema on Hashima was still intact? Captive on my futon, surrounded by the breathing and groaning of people awaking from sleep, I panic when I feel me slipping away from myself. I try to remain calm and the fear slowly subsides, but a residue of doubt about my own mental stability lingers. I should seek help. Is it possible that my unusual metabolism is also affecting my mind? Didn’t the same thing happen to my father? Since the day I found his birth records on Hashima, one hypothesis after another has plagued me. If you saw my father you wouldn’t believe your eyes. Almost seven foot tall, head like a block of stone, hands and feet abnormally large, long neck out of proportion with the rest. The medical term for the condition is acromegaly. But does that explain his extraordinary powers of attraction? The light in his eyes, the expression on his lips, the way he uses his classical, poetic Japanese to seduce people, his berry-red lips? The way he moves his imposing body, which sometimes, in certain positions and at unguarded moments, can appear fragile?
Does acromegaly explain how my father thinks? I haven’t a clue what drives him. He always played his cards close to his chest and wallowed in the aura of mystery that surrounded him.
Yesterday I had an unexpected conversation about my father with Reizo Shiga. He had just returned from a meeting of what he called “the Brotherhood”. His pupils were dilated, his movements fast, pointed, exaggerated. His saliva spattered all over the place. One minute his body was limp, the next it jolted and jiggled as if electrified. He asked if I still saw my parents. In an impulse I told him about my father, fortunately without mentioning Hashima. My description excited him. He wanted to know more: “What a character!” That’s Reizo’s mantra: everyone has to be a character in his novel. I realised I’d told him too much and tried to distract him. Easy enough since he was high. I asked him what kind of literature he wanted to write.