27. Mail Order

Bear asks if I want to order something.

“Pardon?”

“From the catalog, you can order something from it, if you like,” he says, “There ought to be a catalog under the desk.”

“A catalog? I don’t recall seeing . . .”

There are a number of documents, all encased in rubberized files, on the shelf below the desk. Turning one over, I find a catalog with columns of items listed under a variety of categories: snacks, drinks, sundries, stationery, and so on.

“Anything, you say?” I ask, looking at the snacks.

I’m not really hungry, but, ooh, some potato chips, something salty, would be nice . . . something to munch on, too . . . yeah . . . and maybe a nice bottle of tea . . . if I have to drink another cup of barley tea . . .

“Anything, but food and drinks,” he says.

Goddammit!

“You can order food and drinks on Tuesday.”

Tuesday feels like a lifetime away from today and I hope to God that I’m not still locked up by then.

The catalog is so finely printed, I can barely read it. That son-of-a-bitch, Bubbles, wouldn’t let me take my glasses in with me so I’m forced to hold the damn catalog at arm’s length.

Running my finger down the columns, I find a subsection dedicated to women’s hygiene products—tampons and sanitary napkins, and so on—meaning that somewhere in this shithole women are also moldering away. Under the heading of Men’s Hygiene is, among other items, a battery-operated electric razor, but, unfortunately, no deodorant.

After a few minutes’ careful perusal and the beginning of a headache, I fill out an OMR form with a gnawed pencil that Bear has lent me and order several pens, notebooks, and letter sets. If anything, I might be able to get some writing done while I’m locked up.

“Will I get these today?” I ask Bear as I hand the order form and pencil back to him.

“Nah. Not until next week,” the guard replies, adding another puncture to a tire that has been losing air fast.

“Here,” he says, passing two books through the bars. “Something for you to read.”

Bear has given me a nice thick novel called Glory Boys by Harry Bingham—another author I’ve never heard of—and Brigit Jones’s Diary.

“Thanks! Thanks a lot,” I say. He nods his head, then walks away, the sound of his rubber soles against the concrete floor growing faint as he clomps down the corridor.

Slouched on the zabuton and fanning myself with the uchiwa, I crack open Brigit Jones’s Diary. I’ve seen the movie twice and know what to expect, still, there’s something about reading a book after seeing it on the big screen that makes the words on the page so much more vivid than my meager imagination could ever muster.

The pages fly by and before I know it I’m already fifty pages into the novel.

You’ve got to pace yourself, Rémy; otherwise you’ll be through this fat girl’s diary in no time—off the rain swept streets of London and back in this stifling hot Japanese jail, lickety-split.

I put Bridget Jones down, and pick up Glory Boys, instead. It has the thickness of a phonebook and promises two days at least of healthy distraction.

With these two books—and let’s hope there are even more where these came from—it occurs to me that I might, just might, be able to make it.

Now, if only I can get those pens and paper, why, then the next few days should be a . . . well, not quite a cakewalk, but do-able. Yes, I think I can do this!

The radio calisthenics crackles through the squawk box: a repeat in its entirety of the very same triple-header of exercises that were piped through in the morning.

I can feel the screws loosening every time I hear the insipid tinkling of the piano accompaniment.

Next door, Digger is grunting away like a team of oxen hauling the roots of trees out of the ground.

If Digger can do it, then so can I can!

The instructions are next to impossible to follow, so I create a routine of exercises and stretches of my own.

I can do this, I tell myself as I do a set of pushups. I can . . . get through . . . this . . . I’m not . . . going to let . . . anything . . . get Rémy . . . Icare. . . Boncoeur . . . down . . . Nothing! Rémy . . . Icare. . . Boncoeur . . . will get . . . through this . . . Rémy . . . Icare. . . Boncoeur . . . will get . . . through this! Rémy . . . Icare. . . Boncoeur . . . will get . . . through this! Rémy . . . Icare. . . Boncoeur . . .

---

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

25. Entertainment for Jailbirds

From noon on, my fellow jail birds and I are entertained with live radio broadcasts. There’s a news bulletin at twelve, followed by a short fifteen-minute program called Hiru no Inaka no Koe, (昼の田舎の声, Midday Words from the Countryside), featuring the letters of elderly listeners who apparently have little better to do than write to NHK and describe the changing seasons.

At half past, a sprightly jazz guitar melody introduces the next program, Hiru no Sampo Michi (昼の散歩道, A Midday’s Walk). The sublime enka singer, Sayuri Ishikawa, belts out a number of songs, her warbling voice soaring to an unbelievable height, raising the rafters and letting the sun shine in on us.

At five minutes to one there’s a weather update: partly cloudy tonight with the possibility of thunder. Tomorrow will be even hotter than today, with a high of thirty-two degrees.

When the tone announces the hour, I push myself off the zabuton and go have a look outside the rear window to see where the shadows lie. A few feet beyond the window, the railing casts a shadow on the concrete ledge. Just as a sundial might, the shadow of the railing falls against a crack in the ledge, pointing to one in the afternoon. Not having a clock or a watch on me, this will have to do.

The manual says from twelve thirty to three we can nap, if we like. I lie down, my head resting on the rolled-up futon and my feet touching the wall below the small window and try to sleep. Before long, Digger next door is sawing logs.

It’s really no use trying to sleep. Still, I don’t have the energy to get up. My body feels heavy, lead sinkers attached to my shoulders, waist, and arms. I can’t sit up, can’t even lift my arms . . . can’t move my . . . can’t . . .

---

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

24. Lunchtime

An order to get ready for lunch crackles through the squawk box. Not quite loud and clear, mind you, but this is the first time I catch what’s being barked through the ancient intercom system.

Cops and military officials the world over have a penchant for brevity and truncated commands. The American revolutionary Israel Putman’s “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes” has evolved over the years to “Hold fire!” It’s no different in a Japanese jail, where simple requests are honed down to the imperative.

Haishoku yōi! (配食用意! Prepare for meal distribution!)

Gilligan pushes his trolley up to my window, does a one-eighty, and backs it the remainder of the way up the corridor. He returns a minute later with that mother of a tin pot and wheezes, “Cold tea.” I dump the barley tea from this morning into the sink, rinse the pot, and place it on the ledge.

“Thanks,” I say as Gilligan fills it.

One whiff of the tea and I can tell that it’s the same damn barley tea we were served earlier, only cold.

“Dammit.”

What are the odds that they’ve got a tin of Le Mêlange Fauchon tea hidden on the top shelf in the kitchen pantry?

“Well, at least it’s cold,” I tell myself as I pour a cup.

When Gilligan returns, I’ve got my plate waiting for him this time.

“You don’t need that,” he says.

“Huh?”

“The plate. You don’t need it.”

“Oh,” I say, putting the plastic plate back on the shelf.

Gilligan passes a bowl of soup under the bars, then a bowl of rice and a plate of food.

“Thanks,” I say again as he disappears out of sight.

I arrange today’s lunch on my desk: salad with cucumber and onion and a packet of mayonnaise, a potato croquette with a packet of . . .

Ketchup or is it catsup. I never know which. Ah, if only I had a dictionary. If only I weren’t in this fucking jail.

I take a bite of the rice, a sip of the soup, and nibble at the rest, then return the plates to the windowsill.

Next door, Digger is kicking up a disgusting racket, slurping and smacking his fat lips and sucking bits of food out between his teeth and . . .

“Do you hate it?” Gilligan asks when he comes by to pick up the plates.

“Excuse me?”

“The food. Do you hate it?”

“No appetite,” I reply.

“Che’,” he clucks.

As he is removing the dishes, I ask if I might not be able to get another book.

“Book day’s tomorrow,” he says, sullen and tetchy.

“But I’m finished with this,” I say, placing Melancholy Baby on the ledge.

“Already? Che’.”

“Yeah. I haven’t got much of an appetite, but up here I’m starving,” I say tapping my forehead.

“Che’,” he clucks again and takes the book away.

---

The first posting/chapter in this series can be found here.

Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

16. The Orderly

Back in the cell, my skin has become so goddamn itchy from the soap I washed with, I feel as if I’m going to lose my mind. I scratch my right shoulder, then my right cheek. I give my forehead a good rub with both palms, then the back of my ears, and the back of my right thigh. I dig my fingernails into my shins—good God, my shin—and scratch, scratch, scratch . . .

Outside in the corridor, I hear the jangling of keys, and as I’m giving my abdomen a vigorous going over, the door slides open. Bear tells me to put my uniform shirt on, to get ready to go.

“Where to?”

“The infirmary,” he answers.

I pull the gray short-sleeved, button-down shirt over my head, slip on the sandals and step out of the cell.

“Tuck your shirt in.”

The shorts issued to me yesterday are three inches too big around the waist. I have rolled them up to keep them from dropping down to my ankles. Tucking the shirt in just makes the whole get-up look all the more ridiculous.

From the far end of the cell block, a ragged-looking man in an orderly’s uniform slinks towards me like an ambivalent angel of death. Sickly pale and scrawny, the orderly is a paragon of ill health. Worse yet, his skin is so severely afflicted with dermatitis it makes me itch even more just looking at him. Brushed back, his scraggly gray hair barely hides a scalp covered with thick eczema.

The orderly asks if I speak Japanese. Not so much a question as a forlorn whimper. I tell him I do and his dry, scabby face cracks with constrained relief.

“Follow me, then.”

15. Fifteen Minutes

To my great relief, I learn that the cell block has two private bathrooms, meaning Digger and I won’t be scrubbing each other’s ballsacks after all.

Digger drops his boxer shorts to his ankles then kicks them up and snatches them in midair before popping into the bathroom on the right.

A young guard shuts the door behind him. Checking his watch, he makes a notation with chalk on a small slate hanging on the wall and sets a kitchen timer on the door of the bathroom.

Turning to me, the guard asks for my number.

“Rokuban,” I answer resolutely.

Bewilderment flashes across his face. “Rokuban?”

“Yes, I’m Rokuban.”

“No, no, no. Not your number, your cell number? What’s your cell number?”

“Sorry. Cell Number Twenty-four.”

The guard ducks into a supply room of sorts adjacent to the bathrooms. A moment later, he emerges holding a razor with a label that says: “C-24”.

Considering all the indignities you are forced to endure when tossed in jail, it is remarkable that they go to the trouble of providing a clean razor blade. I tell the guard thanks and take the razor.

A shave is just what I need to start feeling human again. I’ve got the beard of my Lebanese grandfather: three days without a shave and I start looking like the Missing Link. Wrap my head in a red and white-checked keffiyeh scarf and I could pass for a hashish farmer in the Beqaa Valley.

A timer rings and a middle-aged man covered in tattoos emerges from the bathroom on the left and starts toweling himself off.

You’d think there would be far more men in their early twenties populating the cells of Japanese jails, but the vast majority of jailbirds I’ve seen so far has been in their forties and fifties.

“Rokuban, it’s your turn. You’ve got fifteen minutes. The timer will ring when there’s five minutes left. When you have finished taking your bath, refill the tub with hot water by turning the red handle there on the left. Got that, Rokuban?”

“Yes.”

“Right. On you go, then.”

“Thank you.”

I drop my boxers, and, after folding them neatly and placing them in a plastic basket on the floor with my other things, I step into the bathroom.

“Top off the bath when you’re done,” the guard says again, closing the door behind me.

The bathroom is an unremarkable room—a rectangular box, encased in black concrete. A single low-watt light bulb, covered with a blackish-green sheen of mildew, hangs from a ceiling. There’s a showerhead at chest level and a faucet closer to the floor. The bath itself is a perfect cube, filled to the brim with piping hot water.

I give my body a scrub down using one of the half bars of soap and hand towels I brought with me from the cell. Without the anti-dandruff and conditioning shampoos or moisturizing shaving gels I’ve been pampering myself with all these years, I have to make do with the soap.

After rinsing myself off, I climb into the tub. The water is scalding hot, more appropriate for soft-boiling an egg than resting your weary, defeated bones in. Worse yet, the detritus of the dozen or so inmates who have also lowered their hairy arses into the very same bathwater floats on the surface: hairs, scabby bits of skin, dandruff, and, most unsettling of all, something that looks like congealed sperm.

Just above the bath is a large window that looks out onto a clump of trees in the courtyard. It’s not much to gaze upon as you bathe, but better than nothing.

Across the courtyard, beyond the trees, is Cell Block B, the first floor of which houses what appears to be the kitchen, a barber shop, and other facilities.

Inmates in the same white t-shirts and gray caps as Gilligan form two lines, at the head and tail of which are guards. One of guards barks out an order causing the prisoners to start counting off, voices full of vigor. God only knows where they get their enthusiasm. Another order is shouted and the prisoners begin marching in line, arms flapping in unison like army recruits in boot camp. Then, with a “Forward-ho!” they march out of sight.

The buzzer rings. I’ve got five minutes to wrap things up.

I climb out of the bath, rinse off with cold water, and dutifully refill the bath for the next person.

When I step out of the bathroom, the kid with the shaved head from Cell 25 is standing butt-naked in the corridor, clutching his toiletries with his left hand, his fishing tackle with the right. He bows humbly to me, then to the guard, then bows again as he steps into the bathroom after me.

I towel off and put on the fresh pair of regulation underwear and tank top. I feel like about thirty-two bucks fifty, which is an improvement because I was feeling like shit when I woke up.

There’s a scale nearby. Stepping on it, I weigh myself. 82kg.

In the Free World, which includes only two countries beyond the shores of the United States—Myanmar and Liberia—where the phenomena of the natural world continue to be based upon the mass of a grain of barley, I weigh 181 pounds.

14. Gauntlet

About fifty yards long and three yards wide, the corridor is lined with small, barred windows and piss-yellow steel doors on the left side, a bank of windows on the right. As I make my way towards the bathroom, I see that most of the cells are cramped single-occupancy hutches like my own.

Halfway down the cell block, however, there are two cells side-by-side which are three times larger. Each accommodates four prisoners who are locked up behind a chain-linked fence. Judging by the elaborate tattoos that cover their torsos and thighs like an exoskeleton, many of the men moldering in the larger cells are yakuza.

In the first of these two cells, a middle-aged man sits on a cushion, fanning himself, while another leans up against a wall, his nose in a comic book. Two other inmates sit cross-legged before a small fold-up table, engaged in a quiet, but intense game of Old Maid.

I’ve read that yakuza consider time spent in jail a “holiday”, and, upon release from prison, can expect to receive a bonus equivalent to what they would have earned had they been out on the streets menacing society. These guys, however, don’t seem to be enjoying their “vacation” all that much. If anything, they look bored to tears. I suppose that a gaijin like myself walking past their cell must bring, as they say in the joint, a little ray of sunshine into an otherwise cloudy day, because they all perk up as I shuffle by.

“Gaijin,” they murmur to each other. “Check out the gaijin.”

Approaching the end of the corridor, I find a weather-beaten old man, eyes clouded with cataracts, staring vacantly out of his window. Like Castaway at the other end of the cell block, the old man’s thin, wizened body looks as if all but the very last drops of life have been wrung out of it. Even so, just as I am passing, this fossil of a man lets out a harrowing scream that gives me such a fright that I’ll be damned if I don’t nearly soil myself.

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Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.

13. Bathtime

Shortly after breakfast, Bear pokes his snout through the bars and says, “Rokuban, bath in five minutes. Get ready.”

Bath? What a relief!

My hair is a greasy, disheveled mop. My scalp itches like a son of a bitch. And, after sweating in this muggy kennel all night, I smell like I’ve been carrying on sexual relations with farm animals.

I’m not sure what Bear means by “get ready”, though. I can only hope it doesn’t entail stripping down to my birthday suit and sashaying butt-naked along the corridor, dingdong flapping with each step and the cell block echoing with lusty catcalls.

Below the sink is a plastic washbasin, the kind you see Japanese totting under their arms when they pop into their neighborhood public bathhouse. I toss everything imaginable into it—half bars of soap, two hand towels, a fresh pair of regulation skivvies and a clean t-shirt. Then, I kneel down before the cell door, and wait my turn.

“Rokuban,” Bear says, sliding the door open. “Your turn.”

Pointing to the far end of the cell block where another guard is standing, Bear tells me that the bath is the second to last door on the left.

“Digger”, my well-upholstered neighbor, has also been let out of his cell and is halfway down the corridor, strutting with the air of a sumō wrestler about to step into the dohyō ring.

I hope they don’t expect the two of us to bathe together . . .

Clichéd images of prison showers cloud my thoughts: a fumbled bar of soap and an unwelcomed visitor barging through the backdoor without so much as a how-d’ye-do as the guard looks the other way.

11. Gilligan

While the guy is away serving the others, I give the schedule in the Regulations & Morals another look:

7:50

Breakfast

12:00

Lunch

16:20

Dinner

Dinner at four-twenty? Who the hell eats dinner at four-twenty?

Several minutes later, the inmate reappears before my window, the trolley now carrying with a large tin pot, stacks of plastic soup bowls, and covered rice bowls.

The first time his figure darkened my window I got the impression that he was in his forties, but now that I take a good look at the guy—the knobby knees poking out of the bottom of his gray shorts like dried persimmons, the stooped, bony shoulders, and arms like twigs—I’d say he must be pushing sixty.

And the longer I look at him, at his gaunt features, the outdated spectacles, the cap covering his shaved head, the more I am reminded of Gilligan stranded on this uncharted desert isle of ours, aging, yes, but not quite getting older season after season after season, year after year.

7. Neighbors

No sooner is the morning roll call over than a commotion, like racehorses bursting through gates, comes from the end of the corridor. Outside the front window, guards, far too many to count, gallop by, with billy clubs in their fists.

The door to my cell is thrown open. A guard calls out at the top of his voice, “Inspection. Out of the cell now!”

As I’m rising to my feet, the guard shouts, “Get the lead out, Rokuban!”

I’m coming. I’m coming.

Stepping out into the corridor, I find it is none other than Mr. Congeniality himself, Bubbles, who is barking at me. And now he’s yelling at me to put my slippers on.

Slippers? What slippers?

“Oh, right,” I mumble, noticing a shabby pair of rubber flip-flops set to the side of cell door. “C-1-24” scrawled on the insteps.

Sliding my feet into them, I feel a bit like Goldilocks: the left one is far too small, my heel hangs over the back; and the right one, with its strap torn, is far too loose. Taking a step forward, the right slipper flops off.

“Oh, for crying out loud.”

“Slipper!” Bubbles hollers at me.

“I got it. I got it.” Sheesh.

“No talking, Rokuban!”

After giving me a good pat down, Bubbles gestures towards the opposite wall and orders me to stand with my face against it.

“But there’s a trolley . . .”

“I said, no talking!”

“How do you expect me to . . .”

“Rokuban! Silence!”

“But this trolley’s in the way.”

“Rokuban! Oh, you’re right. I didn’t . . .” he says. Then, in faltering English, he tells me, “Shitto down.”

When I “shitto down” on the trolley, he shouts at me in Japanese, “Get your arse off that trolley!” Adding, that he didn’t mean shitto, he meant squatto.

Whatever, Bubbles.

So, as I squat down in front of the trolley, the others guards titter and snigger among themselves like junior high school boys.

“Hey, Katō. Great English there,” one of the guards says. “I’m really impressed!”

“Oy, Katō,” another says, holding up his nightstick, “I have a pen.”

As a guard goes through the meager belongings in my cell, I take a gander down the length of the corridor where two-dozen inmates have been forced out of their cells like worms from the soil. Four-dozen eyeballs stare back at me, the only gaijin in the joint.

To my right, a broken twig of an old man dodders out of Cell Number 26. His scraggly beard and shoulder-length gray, disheveled hair make him look like a castaway, long forgotten and given up for dead. All bent out of shape, the old man’s movements are so pained and deliberate, you can’t help but wonder what on Earth a bag of bones like him could have ever done to wind up here.

Between Castaway and me is a skinny young kid, not much older than eighteen or nineteen, whose hair has been given a hack job with a mad pair of clippers. The kid fidgets restlessly with his mouth—fingering his lower lip and giving it a good tug now and again. He steals nervous glances at me, at Castaway, at the guards, and now back at me again. It wouldn’t surprise me if the kid in Cell Number 25 was mentally retarded.

Aye, the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men do, indeed, gang aft a-gley.

To my left, and much too close for comfort, stands my neighbor from Cell Number 23, a lout of a man a few years younger than myself with nearly double the waistline. Dressed in his boxer shorts and a sweat-stained t-shirt, he is digging into the crack of his arse as if he’s mining for gold. He stops scratching, then gives his finger a good, long whiff.

I think he found a nugget.

As bad as things are, it occurs to me that they could be so much worse were I forced to share a cell with any one of these gentlemen.

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Rokuban: Too Close to the Sun and other works are available in e-book form and paperback at Amazon.