“You know the Japanese, darling, everything according to the book,” Günder growls. “Not an ounce of creativity! But I don’t think you’ll be able to refuse that escort forever. I’ll talk with our lawyers about it asap.”
“OK,” says Beate. She feels excited, bubbling with ideas. She knows that she might be suffering from shock, but she wants to stay with the feeling, intensify it. Ideas flow thick and fast. Her new book is going to be her best yet, it’s inevitable.
“One more thing, Bruno. I’m not allowed to talk to the press about this.”
A short silence follows. “But you didn’t talk to the press, sweetheart,” says Günder, his accent even thicker. “You spoke to your publisher about it.”
Beate gently replaces the receiver. She looks in the mirror. She’s beaming. At this moment, she realises, Günder is having his staff prepare a press release and is about to milk the hype. With a bit of luck it’ll go global. She can see the headlines: “Attempted murder of renowned German photographer in the City of Peace!”
In her mind Beate Becht pictures Günder lighting one of his expensive cigars. She smiles and looks at her reflection in the mirror. A sacred light glistens in her eye.
Someone knocks at the door.
47
After my confrontation with Reizo in the storeroom I make my way back to Yori, but she’s not on the futon where I left her. I don’t understand these people. They sneak in and out like rats in their ideological struggle to break the daily bread. I explore the rest of the dingy and miserable squat. There’s no one here. It’s time for me to get out too, but I first want to be sure Yori is safe. I peer through the green and grimy windows, framed in rusting rectangles. Extinguished neon signs still decorate the facades outside, remnants of what the place used to be: a sewing workshop, a restaurant, a firm that produced boxes and packaging. I make my way back, call Yori’s name. I realise what made me feel at home here so quickly, in spite of the state of the place. It reminds me of Hashima Island, the same weathered atmosphere, the same suppressed hostility. I wander through the dark mouldy spaces, not quite sure of what I’m doing. Judging by the black stains on the walls and the floor there must have been machines here, probably not so long ago. I retrace my steps and peer through the doorway of the main room, the machine room as Reizo calls it. There are futons and tatami mats all over the floor, shelves with provisions, laundry, yellow plastic containers we use to store drinking water. A mixture of smells, predominantly rusty. The parking lot in front of the building is overgrown with weeds, and there’s a swing barrier twisted up into the air, crooked, broken. Yori told me the city authorities were planning to ask a court to decide who was responsible for cleaning up the site for redevelopment. The Suicide Club didn’t have much time left. I walk down the ramshackle stairs. On the ground floor there’s a pale grey iron door, bolted shut. I try the bolt and it opens without a problem. It’s been recently oiled. I can see a ladder disappearing into a hole in the ground, a dark, damp cellar. I can just see the reflection of the tiles on the floor. There’s a light switch. A single light bulb illuminates the cellar with a bluish glow. I’ve no reason to go down, except for the fact that the ladder is new and someone went to the trouble of tapping electricity from the web of cables that criss-crosses Hiroshima.
48
The moment she opens the door without checking first who has knocked, Beate Becht realises she is acting foolishly. She stands there, frozen to the spot. But it’s just a Japanese girl, not an attacker with a knife. The girl is dressed in an unimaginative grey suit, the type worn by the majority of Japanese women when they’re at work. Her hair is tied up in a bun and she’s wearing a hat that’s both pert and artless. She’s also wearing spotless white gloves. She says she has a message from the hotel desk. Her English is lumpy. Beate automatically steps back and invites her in. The first thing the girl does is lock the hotel door behind her.
Beate grimaces in a state of panic. The girl takes off her hat, shakes her hair loose, and makes a reassuring gesture.
“Not recognise?”
For an instant Beate looks as if she’s about to throw herself at the girl and force her way to the door. Then her penny drops. It’s the Japanese girl who drove the van to the hospital. She was dressed differently back then. The stiff two-piece made her unrecognisable. Beate remembers that she was wearing gloves that night too, shiny, with a tiger motif. It takes a while for the girl’s words to penetrate. She apologises in her broken English for abandoning Beate at the hospital. She was scared. Now she wants to ask her something, or better, how you say? Beg? She hopes Beate will listen, she won’t regret it. “Please listen. My name is Yori.”
She then does two things. She unzips her belt bag and produces a well-thumbed copy of the American edition of Beate’s first photo collection, the one with all the punk, horror and sadomasochistic grand guignol motifs.
She then removes her left glove. Her left hand looks as if it’s covered in snake skin. The fingers are slightly clawed and she has no nails. She bursts into tears. She points at herself, searches for her words, repeats again and again:“Hibakusha!”
49
The cellar has vaulted corners. The bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling casts shadows everywhere. In the far left corner a couple of old-fashioned metal filing cabinets create a separate space with an opening to the left. I slip through it and stop abruptly as if I’m facing a wall. A hideous creature is staring at me, only feet away. It’s grey, with horns, a flat pig-like nose, yellow eyes with black pupils, a frozen grin and sabre tooth tiger tusks. A crop of stiff hair has been planted between the horns like a horse’s mane. Déjà vu, I think to myself, and a familiar sense of panic creeps up on me. The feeling remains, gnawing at the edge of my consciousness, even after I realise it’s a Noh mask. There’s a desktop computer on top of a table. I open a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. It’s full of manga comics exploding with sexual sadism, sweat drenched female bodies being taken in every imaginable position by demonic creatures with grotesquely engorged genitals. One manga is situated in feudal times and depicts an adulterous woman undergoing bukkake: all the men in the village older than fifteen gather around her trussed, gagged and naked body. The men masturbate in her face and fill her nostrils with their seed until she chokes. I see her eyes bulging in a circle of exaggeratedly swollen penises. I know bukkake was invented by the Japanese porn industry in the 1980s and isn’t a classical sexual practice, but the manga artist has a skilled imagination. On Hashima I was fascinated for a while by the works of Freud and his rigid sexual theories. They transported me into a dream-like state in which I designed my own world. I was only sixteen at the time, but in hindsight my daydreams were perverse, and I still don’t know why I didn’t realize it at that time. Bodies were objects to be used and abused and they had a use-by date. Emotions were enlarged and inflated, a caricature of reality. Rage and cruelty monopolized the conversation. Sex went hand in hand with humiliation and often with death. Bodies beaten and bent double were tossed from the cliff into the sea. I saw details, colours, heard sounds, was overwhelmed by the maelstrom of this alternative world. Later the visions stopped. I don’t remember when or why, but I can sense them creeping up on me again in this dark cellar, whispering in my ear that I’m a deviant, a freak of nature. I close the drawer with the same feeling that I’ve seen all this before. The other cabinet contains folders with photos of a man I recognise to my surprise as a member of my father’s Yuzonsha. He has strong Mongolian features, his eyes almost invisible. He’s wearing what looks like a curtain of long black hair and appears to be the spiritual leader of some sect or other. Apparently, he’s called the Blessed One and he presents himself as humanity’s new redeemer and the saviour of Japan. Baroque statements vie with each other in their use of elevated words like “light”, “unity”, “the Almighty Creator”. His complicated and highly symbolic creation narrative seems more intended for children than adults. I’m about to return the folders when I’m distracted by one of the titles: Mu: the beginning of humanity.