Hanami

Originally published in Causeway/Cabhsair 2(1), May 2010

It’s not summer but the park is dust. All those feet kick up a cloud of the stuff and the spring wind whips it round. It stings the face, clogs the throat, dries the eyes. The smell of sweat and smoke wafts through. Everywhere people pushing, pressing, the heat and the passion. Ueno is hot.

When we’re finished, the park’s going to be ruined. You simply can’t have this many people in one place and expect nothing to change.

I straighten my glasses. Clear my throat. Sweep my hair off my face. It’s grown again – not back to its original length, but almost. The jagged scar of interrogation is hidden under fringe. The shaved head will soon slip my mind. I sweep it back, enjoying the moment.

The press of humanity; the heat and the passion. I search the crowd for her face, though I know she won’t be there. She hates these things. “Give me the essence,” she says. “Show me the important bits, without all the hanging around and the forced contact.” I’ll go home and I’ll tell her. Then she’ll write a poem and I’ll write an article. That way, we’ll experience it together.

The plosives spit through the PA. The wooden stage echoes when I stamp, rumbling like an earthquake. They cheer – oh, how they cheer – when I promise the future. They shout with me when I call on the nation, on our ancestors. They laugh when I use the Militarists language, take the rhetoric and make it mine. Can’t smash the Kokutai, so might as well use it. The national body is sick, I tell them. I tell them of the cure. They lean forward, concentrating when I quote Lenin and Marx, first in the original, then in Worker’s Japanese. Workers of the world, unite. Bankoku no roudousha, danketsu se yo!

I knew it would push their button. They’ve been watching me for a while: they know I’m important. They stand at the side of the stage with their checklists and pencils, waiting.

Revolution is the obvious word, as are its derivatives and neighbours: rebellion, rebel, and revolutionary. Anything Communist, Red or Soviet is out of bounds. Comrade gets you a pointed finger from the side of the stage. But whisper the other R word  – Republic – and you’re in the back of a van and in front of a beating before you can spit “but I’m a Patriot” through the blood and teeth holes.

*

I knew this would be the end of the speech. That’s the art. Get your message out in a publicly acceptable form and then finish on an arrestable statement, but – and this is the trick – make it look like there was much more to come. Raise your hand, finger pointed. Open your mouth as if to shout, begin stepping and when you get bowled off-stage by an angry mass of uniform, you’ll leave the crowd desperate to know what was next.

As the police lead me away, I look for her again but she isn’t there. She’s already dead.

A gloved hand digs into my neck and forces my head down. I try to keep searching but it’s well-trained and strong. Everywhere tastes of dust, but the smell has changed.

The pavilion rips apart in flame and noise. We’re close enough that we dive on impulse rather than reaction, and seconds later particles fall on us like tiny shooting stars. I think of the war.

Screams and sirens.

People in pain.

The heat and the passion.

Did we do this? Or did they?

They know me and I know them. We've been here before. Same old forms, same old questions. Same beating. Same cell.

My throat is rough; my hands red. I swallow blood. It’ll be hours before they think to offer me water. She'd told me never to stand too close to the flame and, as usual, she was right.

Something is different. The explosion has changed everything. No way do they believe I had nothing to do with it. My group, my demonstration: my people. I call for a revolution. I threaten the life of the Emperor. I declare a republic. And then, by sheer coincidence, the pavilion spreads itself in flaming shards across the park.

No, this is something different, and I’m scared. Sooner or later I’ll have to start talking and I need something to tell them, but I know nothing. For once I’m totally in the dark. I can’t invent anything, because I don’t know what they know. Maybe it was all them and they’re setting me up. If I start spinning a tale and they catch me. If I keep saying nothing, they’ll only try harder, and they are good at trying hard. I just don’t know anything.

*

I am always first with news. I have friends all over town. Everyone owes me a favour and I keep it that way. If you know something useful, you can always find out something valuable. Without the valuable, I can’t be useful. But I let certain things slip me by. That Taka was hosting a poetry reading was one of those things.

He rented the basement of a print factory from a struggling publisher. It was dark, damp and squat, but it was a good deal on both sides – the company got money and a night watchman. Taka got illicit access to everything needed to produce a paper.

New Dawn had been a good idea for longer than I could remember but we’d never been able to put it out. When we held the first issue in our hands, ink on our fingers, new print in our noses, it felt like victory, smelt like victory. We’d finally produced something from all the talk.

That night I'd dropped in to see how the latest issue was coming. The translations of the Russian stuff had been completed over the weekend and I'd given Taka my editorial the day before. This was going to be a big issue. Everyone knew about the essays but no one had read them. Rumour was: someone had managed to get them into the country and they were being translated. Rumour was: they would soon be out and then things would be different. Rumour was right. We had them. We’d translated them. We were bringing the issue out that week. To say I was excited would be an understatement. My editorial was a work of genius. I’d used up all my coffee and all my foreign cigarettes on it. This was the call to arms. This was the spark. This was it.

Taka unlocked the door and I slid inside, checking I hadn't been followed. The street was empty. I pulled the wooden door shut, locked it and replaced the chains. I stepped over a box and put my foot through a fish tank.

“Ah! A gatecrasher.”

A deep female voice, strong and amused reached me from the back. The faces staring at me laughed. Heads shook then turned away.

“Where was I?”

She spoke. I didn’t listen. I shook the glass off my foot, not caring how much noise it made.

“What’s all this?” I hissed at Taka.

“A reading. What do you think? Haven’t you read the flyers I’ve been giving you?”

“I’m sorry, but do you mind?” The voice came again. From where I was standing I couldn’t see her, but the faces were looking again. Taka jabbed his finger towards the back room. I scowled at the faces and followed him through.

The test prints were laid out on the desk. I told Taka to get me a coffee, lit a cigarette and settled down to a night of proofreading.

*

Me, white noise. I wonder why the sergeant is falling. It’s me falling. Life tastes of metal and is dark. My jacket pulls me up, backwards and I’m on my knees. Through the bars in the corner I see the moon, full. The moon goes out, new.

Same cell, different beating.

This time they mean it.

As I lie in the cop’s piss, a thought comes to me: they didn’t do it. I mean; the local cops: they think I did it. But we didn’t do it. So who did? Whose beating am I taking?

*

“Tautology”

I jumped so high I nearly broke her nose as it hung over my shoulder.

“Where did you come from? You shouldn’t be back here. Where’s Taka? Who are you anyway?”

She nodded at my editorial. “You can’t say “for all eternity”. You can’t have “a bit of eternity”. It's all or nothing I’m afraid.”

“You're the … poet, aren’t you?”

“Noe.” She held out her hand in the western style. “You must be Trotsky.”

“Murata Shigenori.”

 “Sorry I missed your show. I assume from all the noise that you were … popular.”

“I know. Isn’t it just hideous? Imagine being liked by other people.”

“Well, people like distraction; they like the people who distract them.”

“Well I’m glad my fantasy world took them away from reality for an hour or so. Anyway tell me, how’s your comic? Still translating foreigners instead of thinking for yourself?”

“I can think for myself. Our paper is written for its readers, not its writers.”

“Oh good. I do so look forward to reading what Russia thinks I should think.”

“You seem to know a lot.”

“People like talking to me. It’s one of the drawbacks of being popular.”

“I can imagine.”

“I guess you’d have to.”

“The issue will be ready just as soon as I can get back to proofing it. If you wouldn’t mind …” I nodded at the door.

“Oh, of course. You don’t want to keep the public waiting.”

I swear I heard her mutter “both of them” as she strutted out. She denies it, of course.

Thoughts like shooting stars. They arc across my brain then are gone. I can’t hold onto anything.

*

In the cell I’m not alone. Two thugs have the beds so I sit against the door, the only flat wall-space clean of urine. I try to think but they’ve done a good job on me: in nothing but shit-stained shorts I sit on the stone floor, my back against the door, shivering. It’s all I can do to stay awake. I can’t focus. Who could organise this without me or the police knowing?

*

I saw her a few nights after the reading, at the issue launch party in Kosuke’s restaurant.  She arrived late with Yoshiko, a novelist who was beginning to get noticed. He was a weedy little man who always reminded me of those early photos of the Meiji Emperor in western dress: uncomfortable seeping from every pore, an attempt at a beard that made him look like he’d sneezed over an ashtray, suit hanging like a typhoon had dropped it on him. Noe was clearly drunk, and using him for support. His body was rigid with the tension of such proximity to Female Flesh and sweat beaded his temple. He wasn’t enjoying himself, but he’d get a short story and a wet dream out of it, so he’d be all right. 

I’d been in full flow when they appeared, holding a table of students enraptured, but the door belling and the cheers which greeted another arrival alerted me. There was always the chance that the cops had got hold of a copy and were coming to collect, which was why I made sure I never strayed too far from the kitchen. Kosuke had the back door wedged open with beer crates just in case. I looked up but Taka’s substantial frame stood between me and the newcomers. It was the laugh I recognised. Surprising myself, I grabbed the bottle and a free glass and pushed my way to the door.

It was an accident. To the end of my days, I’ll swear it was an accident. Taka’s fat frame shifted as I pushed past, and he slingshot me forwards. Yoshiko got the sake full in the face and, spluttering, swearing, fell backwards and sat on someone’s chicken skewer. Speared, he screamed, twisted and tumbled onto another table, slamming his fist through the fish tank and spilling goldfish over his suit and onto the floor.

Kosuke dived over, desperate to save his fish, but many were beyond saving. I picked myself up and looked at Noe. I expected her to be shocked, or seething, or something. Instead she was laughing. On one of the tables Yoshiko had managed to miss, lay a plate of rice balls. One of the flying fish had landed, perfectly, on top of a rice ball. Noe picked it up, pining the still flapping fish with one finger. “I shall call you Sushi,” she said to it, staring deep into its eyes, before taking a big bite.

“Want some?” she said, offering me the other half. I ate all of it, taking two of her fingers into my mouth as I did so.

I swallowed. Looked down at Yoshiko, back at her. “Is he with you?”

“Who?”

*

I’m in the courtyard, blindfolded and standing against the wall. Last night they gave me a newspaper cutting. In the top left corner was a picture of a well. I didn’t read it. There was no point. She was at the bottom of it. This morning I was found guilty.

*

The first time I went to Noe’s room, the first thing I noticed was the poem written in beautiful calligraphy on one wall. I didn’t know then, but it was by Ariwara No Narihira.

In the big, flowing letters of her personality it read:

                                   I have always known
                                   That at last I would
                                   Take this road, but yesterday
                                   I did not know that it would be today.

It’s hot in the courtyard, and the air smells red.