Reiko Read online

  As well as Josh, I got to hang out with Shinichi and Etsuko, who seemed to have come to terms with the subject of my thesis. They accompanied me on a visit to Osaka castle, an impregnable fortress, which could well have stood for a thousand years. I felt a certain disillusionment when they told me it was a concrete replica built in the twenties, after centuries of feudal warfare had laid waste to the original. There are very few old buildings in Japan, they said. Even the most beautiful temples had often been torn down and rebuilt over the years. They told me there was a deep sense of impermanence in the Japanese psyche. Throughout its history, Japan had been persistently ravaged by war and natural disaster. Why build something to last a thousand years, when an earthquake could level it tomorrow?

  They said it was this sensibility which explained the symbolic importance of the cherry blossom to Japanese poets and artists through the ages. The cherry blossom, with its brief and spectacular flowering, most accurately summed up the beauty and brevity of life.

  As for my study, I succeeded in putting it on the backburner for a while. For several nights, Charlie’s black file remained in the drawer and I’d felt no inclination to take it out. Laid low by jet-lag and exhaustion, I’d let the whole issue of Charlie get me down for the first couple of days. Now that I was rested and beginning to enjoy life in Osaka, I was also coming to terms with what had happened to him. Although he’d done the same kind of research, I’d seen the state of his file and knew that he’d had some deep-seated personal problems. I convinced myself there was no possible comparison.

  It was the night before I was due to go to Izumi that I met a young man named Yoshi.

  I had returned to my room after an evening at ‘Sakura’, a low-key local bar. After several late nights on the trot, neither Josh nor I had been in the mood for a big evening, so we sat in the deserted bar and talked about our futures, what we’d do when our time came to join the workforce. We both had little enough to say on the subject, so decided to call it a night after a couple of beers and go our separate ways. Besides, I had some packing to do.

  For a while I pondered writing a letter to my parents, giving them a taste of the sort of life I was now leading. I would paint a vivid picture of the beautiful weather, the lush greenery and the heady nightlife. I even got as far as writing ‘Dear Mum and Dad’ at the top of the page, then decided it was too much effort. An e-mail would do the trick.

  I considered taking Charlie’s file out and swotting up on Izumi, but I was feeling too mellow to be drawn back into Charlie’s world. So I decided upon a walk down to the vending machines.

  I opened my door and stepped out into the corridor, pausing to listen for any signs of life. I still hadn’t discovered the identity of my elusive neighbour and every time I stepped out I hoped to meet him or her, if only to prove Josh wrong. I’d tried knocking on all the doors, to no avail. I’d even resolved to question the concierge, but every time I saw him I was with Josh and didn’t want to make it into an issue.

  I put it out of my mind and made my way to the lift, which was still waiting at the fifth floor where I’d left it.

  Predictably the foyer was deserted and the only sound was the monotonous buzz of the vending machines and the flapping of moths around the overhead lights. There were five machines in all, arranged in an orderly row, three of them selling soft drinks, one hot drinks and one chocolate and snacks. I studied the selection of soft drinks, which ranged from the familiar Coca Cola and Fanta to weird Japanese isotonic drinks with even weirder names: Calpis and Pocari Sweat.

  I settled on a chilled Jasmine tea and dug around in my pocket for change. A handful of ten yen coins didn’t add up to the required amount, so I fished a one thousand yen note from my wallet. I inserted this into the slot, but it came straight back out again. I flattened it out and tried again, with the same result. I turned it over, turned it back again, flattened it once more, but each time the result was the same.

  I was about to give up and return to my room empty-handed when a young man appeared at the main doors. He was a Japanese student, dressed in beige chinos and a white T-shirt. He acknowledged my presence with a brief nod of the head and I decided he might have some insight into the correct handling of Japanese banknotes.

  ‘Excuse me. Would you be able to help?’

  He looked surprised at the question, but he had a friendly face.

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you speak English?’

  ‘A little.’ He held up thumb and forefinger to indicate the amount.

  I showed him my note. ‘Sorry, I can’t get this thing in. I wondered if there was a trick.’

  He took it from me and started rubbing it vigorously between the palms of his hands in an effort to straighten it. Satisfied, he carefully slid it into the slot. This time the machine accepted it.

  ‘Wow. How did you do that?’

  He smiled modestly, with a slight bow of the head.

  I selected my Jasmine tea and the can dropped into the tray with a thud. I stuck out my hand. ‘I’m James, by the way.’

  He took it after a hesitation. ‘I’m Yoshi.’

  ‘Yoshi. Nice to meet you. Are you a student here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘What are you majoring in?’

  ‘French language and literature.’

  We moved over to the lift and stepped in. I pushed the button for the fifth floor. ‘Do you know a guy called Shinichi? He’s doing French too.’

  Yoshi shook his head shyly.

  The lift doors closed and we travelled up in silence. Yoshi kept his eyes on the floor and only raised them when the lift doors opened on the fifth.

  I suddenly realized he must be friends with Francoise, the French research student a few doors down from Josh. ‘You know Francoise?’

  Yoshi was in a world of his own, but he nodded his head with a faint smile as I exited the lift.

  ‘Maybe see you around,’ I said. I was eager to meet as many Japanese students as possible and Yoshi seemed like a nice enough guy.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, as the lift doors closed.

  Francoise was the sort of person who had time for everyone and I considered following Yoshi up there for a moment. From what Josh had said, she was something of a night owl, so no doubt she wouldn’t mind the extra company. But it was late and I had an early morning start, so I thought better of it. I needed to make sure I was packed and well rested for my journey.

  Back in my room, I pulled out my rucksack from under the bed and propped it up against the wall. Time to start the packing. I was planning to stay a week in Izumi, so with this in mind I began to make little piles of clothes on the bed. First I needed T-shirts, which were all I’d been wearing for the past few days. But Etsuko had told me that the climate was different in Fukushima Prefecture so I’d have to take something warmer. I took out a couple of sweatshirts from the cupboard and laid them alongside the T-shirts. Trousers were easy – I only had two pairs of jeans which were endlessly recycled. Socks and underwear – one pair per day…

  Then something happened.

  It happened so suddenly and so violently that for a while it didn’t register. But life is like that. There I was, standing in the middle of the room holding an odd sock, wondering what I’d done with its pair. I glanced casually in the direction of the window, and that was it.

  Just a flash of white crossing my field of vision, there and gone in the blink of an eye. And then a sickening thud.

  I was momentarily confused. I’d seen so much over the past week that possibly my senses were dulled. After the event I tried to remember what I’d thought, but the truth is, I’d thought nothing. I’d just stood there holding the sock, staring out of the window, feeling numb. I knew what I’d seen and I knew who it was – after all, I’d just spoken to the lad – but I couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t accept that the person I’d just been speaking to, who had helped me buy the drink that now stood half-drunk on my desk, whose name I knew, was lying dead on the ground outside. So I just st
ood rooted to the spot for a long time, until I heard the sound of someone screaming.

  Strangely, my first real emotion was not concern for Yoshi, or even horror at what I’d seen, but homesickness. I thought of home, of my parents sitting at the kitchen table thinking of me in this far away place. I thought of the room I’d grown up in, the shelves of familiar things, the childish posters on the wall. I wanted to be surrounded by comfort and love and an assurance that all would be well in the end.

  We stood by the entrance to the Tower and watched the paramedics and police go about their work. I wondered how often they had to deal with things like this and how they learned to cope. Did they ever think about the person lying motionless beneath the white sheet, consider the circumstances that had led them there, feel any pain or sorrow or pity?

  Josh stood next to me huddled in a dressing gown several sizes too small for him. Francoise, whose friend I’d assumed Yoshi to be, leaned against the wall sobbing quietly. The two Indonesian men spoke in hushed tones to one another. In some ways it was a mercy it had happened out of term. It was not something anyone should have to witness.

  Josh seemed to have taken it particularly hard, it being his second experience. He kept shaking his head and cursing under his breath. I didn’t want to tell him that I’d spoken to the man just minutes before his fall. I wondered if I would ever come to terms with it, or whether that brief exchange by the drink machines would haunt me for the rest of my days.

  Josh sighed loudly. ‘How could this happen? How could this happen twice. It’s not normal.’

  ‘Like you told me, this is where they come.’

  Josh shook his head. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  I stared at the flashing beacons on the police cars and reflected that just an hour before, the building’s forecourt had been quiet and deserted. ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Poor fucker. I wonder who he was.’

  ‘Yoshi,’ I said.

  Josh looked up in surprise.

  ‘Yoshi. His name was Yoshi.’

  I turned from the scene of his death and went back through the door, past the drink machines where Yoshi had performed his last act of kindness and straight into the lift which I’d shared with him on his final journey. I didn’t know what to do or what to think, except that somehow I had to put it behind me and move on.

  8. THE JOURNEY

  Osaka was still shrouded in early morning mist as the bullet-train pulled soundlessly out of the station. I sat back in my window seat, determined to enjoy the journey. It was a new carriage, spotlessly clean, and the seats had the kind of legroom unthinkable on an English train.

  It was a relief to be on the move and as the train picked up pace I felt I was putting behind me the traumatic events of the previous evening. At one point in the night I’d even decided I was too upset to travel and it would be better to postpone the trip. But in the end there didn’t seem much point. Yoshi was dead and there was nothing I could do to change that. I hadn’t known him and it had been pure chance that I’d interrupted him on his way to the roof. I’d lain awake wondering if there was anything I could possibly have said to change his mind. What if I’d offered him a drink for his trouble? Or made a bit more effort at conversation? Would that have restored his balance and thwarted his plan? Surely there must have been some sign I could have picked up on. But, apart from seeming a bit distracted, he hadn’t had the air of someone at the end of their tether. He’d been calm and composed, just an ordinary guy on his way to visit a friend.

  It was the coincidence factor that bothered me the most. First, he had chosen to walk into the building at the exact moment I was grappling with the drinks machine. Then he had chosen to jump at the exact moment I turned to look out of the window, on a flight path that took him right past me. A suicide while I was in the building would have been bad enough, but having to meet him and then see him fall was downright unfair. I felt like the victim of some cosmic practical joke. After all, I was still struggling to come to terms with my connection to Charlie Whitehurst.

  The only consoling thought, as the train glided through the dizzying urban sprawl, was that whatever awaited me in Izumi could not be any worse. I even smiled at the irony of travelling to Japan’s most haunted village as a way of recovering my emotional balance. Maybe I should have been getting off at the next stop, Kyoto, as Professor Atami had suggested, and spending a pleasant week visiting Zen temples and gardens.

  For my choice of depressing literature to occupy me on my journey, I had packed Charlie’s file. Despite my unease, his notes on Izumi’s history were extensive and as long as I stuck to the more lucid passages, I thought he might provide some decent background.

  Outside, the city gradually thinned out, but I had been forewarned that the line between Osaka and Tokyo was probably the most built-up stretch of railway track in the world; that in four hours on a high-speed train, you never truly saw the countryside. So I took the opportunity to take Charlie’s file out and read.

  He began with a whole ream of facts and figures, most of them ridiculously obscure, such as the names of post-war mayors or a breakdown of rice production by village sector. Charlie was nothing if not thorough. I learned that Izumi was originally a small farming community of a few hundred people which grew rapidly, with the post-war economic prosperity and the relocation of industries from the Tokyo area, to its present population of just over ten thousand. It had two elementary schools, two junior highs and a high school.

  There were several pages dedicated to the village’s ancient history. Apparently its reputation as a haunting hotspot could be traced to the concentration of kofun within its boundaries. Kofun were huge earthen mounds erected as burial tombs from about the third century. There was no obvious explanation why Izumi was so rich in kofun, but some of them measured several hundred feet in diameter. With the arrival of Buddhism in the seventh century, the tombs were no longer built and, over the centuries, were gradually levelled to make way for agriculture and buildings. Charlie’s thesis seemed to be that Izumi’s long history of violence and hauntings could be traced to angry spirits from these disturbed tombs.

  I had to smile at this theory. It was a hell of a long time to remain pissed off about some disturbed earth. You’d be hard-pushed to find a well-tended third century grave anywhere in the world.

  By the eleventh century the region was still a farming backwater, but the village did get a mention in the diary of a courtier dispatched to the provinces from the capital Kyoto to patch up some local dispute. He referred to it as a devilish place, home to an angry spirit who liked nothing more than to impale a passing traveller or behead an unfortunate peasant as he tilled the land.

  Charlie rattled through a number of gruesome stories about murderous local lords and masterless samurai with itchy blades. Most of the stories ended with mutilated peasants and rivers of blood, with some of the peasants coming back to wreak more havoc and avenge themselves on the innocent.

  It was enough. I snapped the file shut and turned my attention to the passing scenery. There was something oppressive about being in Charlie’s world, beyond the gloomy subject matter. It was his obsessive attention to detail, his ability to string out a simple point into a paragraph-long treatise, his long lists of pointless statistics. Then there was the last section, presumably just before his suicide, when his discipline had abandoned him. I was determined not to look at those pages out of respect – in fact, I had fastened them with a paperclip – the same way I had decided not to look at the photographs of the high school victims, even though the fascination remained. Even now, watching towns and houses flit past the window, I could feel Reiko Shimura’s eyes watching me from some dark place in my soul.

  Mount Fuji was beautiful. It was everything I had imagined and more. I knew it had come into view from the collective excitement of my fellow passengers. At first I couldn’t see anything, until I realized that I needed to look further upwards. And there it was, high up in the clouds, its perfect cone cappe
d in snow. Of course I’d seen it a thousand times, reproduced in photos and woodblock prints, but nothing had prepared me for its size and splendour. The only blot on the perfect view was a bank of cloud making its way from the east and starting to obscure the peak.

  I sat back in my seat and sighed. This was a scene I’d imagined for a long time – casually looking out at Mount Fuji from the window of a passing bullet train as I journeyed across Japan.

  By the time the train pulled into Tokyo Station, the weather had changed: the sky was dark and brooding, a downpour imminent. I stepped onto the platform, dazed after what I’d seen over the last half hour: the mother of all metropolises. I realized Osaka was a minnow by comparison and, making my way through the labyrinthine station, I felt as though I’d stepped into another dimension. I caught the subway to Ueno Station, then made my way through more space-age tunnels to the Tohoku bullet-train terminal.