39. Search and Seizure

The cop who was pawing my underwear earlier now walks over to me with two cell phones in his hands: “These yours?”

“Yes, but, um, I no longer use thatone,” I say pointing to the older of the two. “It hasn’t worked for months.”

“We’re confiscating both of those, too,” Nakata calls from the dining room. 

Pyon-kichi hops back towards me, scratches playfully at my legs, then takes off for the balcony, a trail of droppings left in his wake.

One of the cops asks me where my wife is. When I reply that I’m not married, his eyes widen. Perhaps he believes he’s just caught me in a lie. “But, you said your wife named the rabbit.”

“One, we are divorced and, two, Pyon is an old rabbit.”

“Aah so,” he replies, somewhat crestfallen, and drifts away, scribbling in his notebook.

Meanwhile, the other cops continue to go through my belongings. There is no rhyme or reason to their search: they give the contents of one box a thorough going over only to overlook the next box altogether. They run their gloved hands through the contents of one drawer, but leave the drawer next to it alone. It only serves to reinforce my initial impression that they don’t know what they are looking for. When they first started poking around my apartment, I expected them pack everything up in uniform white boxes and march away in a neat line—as I’ve often seen on the news—leaving me in nothing but my skivvies in the center of a cleaned-out apartment. After nearly an hour, though, all they have confiscated are my passport and cell phones.

A middle-aged cop, poorly dressed and sweating profusely, shows me a stash of unexposed film in one of my smaller Balinese containers, about ten rolls from some of my more recent trips.

“What’s this,” he asks.

“Film.”

“I know it’s film, but what is it of?”

“This and that.” 

It’s not that I’m trying to be difficult, but, really, what’s the point in being too cooperative?

He turns to Nakata and asks if he should pack the film up and take it to the lab as evidence.

“By all means, please take them,” I interject. “And while you’re at it, I’d really appreciate it if you could you make extra copies for me, too. I haven’t had the money to get them developed.”

Nakata tells him to forget about the film. 

Damn.

38. Passport Confiscated

Windbreaker, who is still crouched down before me, comments on my Japanese: “It’s pretty good. You been here long?”

“Too long,” I answer. “Fourteen years this spring.”

“Where are you from?”

“The States.”

“The U.S., huh? Where?”

“Oregon.”

“Olé . . .”

“Oregon. It’s on west coast of America, just north of California.”

Normally, I don’t miss “home”, but on a day like today . . .

“Ah, California. I know California.”

I have had to endure the very same conversation ten thousand times since coming to Japan. I know what the next question will be before Windbreaker does.

“You don’t, em, . . . look American,” he says, craning his neck to get a better view of the gaijin before him.

“You tell me: what is an American supposed to look like?”

“Well . . .”

“I’m half Lebanese,” I tell him. “Half Lebanese, half French.”

“But you are American?” he says, making a notation on his pad. Many of the cops are carrying small notepads and scribbling away. None of them are the same, though. Not like the standard notepads the FBI in American movies have. Makes you wonder if they have to cough up the yen to buy their own.

“Yes, I was born in America,” I said. “You know, the Great Melting Pot and all that.”

To the average Japanese, it probably sounds like I am trying to pull a fast one by “claiming” to be American. As if the cachet of being a Yank is so great that I would lie about my nationality. If anything, it is an embarrassment, especially with a reckless cowboy like Bush in the White House.

“Can we see your passport?”

“Yeah, hold on.” When I stand up to get it, the older cop in double-breasted suit stops me with a hard tap on my arm. He gives some orders and that annoying little man with the salt-and-pepper hair and dreadful pencil mustache comes over. His name, I’ll learn soon enough, is Nakata.

“Where is it?” Nakata asks brusquely.

“It’s over in the living room.”

“Where in the living room?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Don’t move!”

Nakata gives the other cops instructions to clear out of the way. The longhaired cop with the video camera follows along behind me. Another cop with a camera takes stills: one shot of me pointing towards the living room. Another photo of me pointing towards the bookshelves and cabinet, then one of me opening the cabinet and pulling out the folder I keep important documents in.

When I hand Nakata my passport, he asks, “Have you got any other passports?”

On the urging of a mother too proud of her country and family to ever renounce her own nationality, I have kept a Lebanese passport wrapped in a handkerchief in the side pocket of a pair of shorts along with about three-hundred-thousand yen in euros and U.S. dollars in a suitcase that is tucked away and gathering dust in the back of my closet. If my mother has taught me anything, is that it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

“No, of course not,” I answer.

“We’re going to confiscate this, okay?” Nakata says, agitation rising in his voice.

“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.” I reply and return to the sofa in the back room. Never has it occurred to me to actually use my Lebanese passport. Not until today, that is.

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.

37. Pressure Building

In the bedroom, a cop searching through my chest of drawers finds something that makes me swallow hard: a simple black wallet dé Dale gave me. The cop runs his gloved fingers through each pocket, but, not finding anything, returns it to the drawer. He moves onto the next drawer and fishes around my socks and boxer shorts, tedium starting to show in his face.

“C’mon, you know why we’re here, don’t you?” Ozawa prods again.

The guy is starting to sound like a broken record. Every time he asks, I reply with the exact same answer: “No. I don’t know.” I look straight into the narc’s eyes and say, “I honestly haven’t got the slightest of clues.”

I wonder how others are able to perform in similar circumstances. Do they collapse like aluminum cans under the slightest pressure? Do they blather away, confessing every class of sin, venial and mortal? Do their telltale hearts drive them mad with guilt until they own up to everything?

It’s not in my nature to lie, but I can’t afford to be forthcoming with these men, not until I know what they know—namely why they have raided my apartment in the first place. The last thing I want to do is to confess to the wrong crime.

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.

36. Ayin Hasad

The cop in the blue windbreaker crouches down before me and says, “You’re awfully calm.”

I shrug. Calm waters may run deep, but there is a torrent raging just below the surface. It’s all I can do to hold myself together and keep from breaking out into a sweat and freaking out completely.

The guy with the video camera moves slightly to the right so that he can get a better shot of my face.

“You’ve got a nice place here,” Windbreaker says.

“Thanks.”

“You decorate it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you buy stuff like this?” He holds up a coffee grinder I bought a few years ago at an antique fair in Beirut.

“Here and there,” I answer. “I like to travel. I pick up things wherever I go. I got that in Lebanon. Those baskets are from Thailand and Malaysia. That lamp is from Bali.”

Windbreaker asks what all the blue and white glass circles hanging in the entry are.

“They are talismans from the Middle East called nazar,” I explain. “They’re supposed to protect you from the Ayin Hasad.”

“The what?”

“Ayin Hasad, the maliciously envious stare of strangers. It’s a Middle Eastern thing. In English, it’s called the ‘Evil Eye’. My mother brought them when she last visited and insisted I put them up. I’m not a superstitious person, but my mother can be persistent. I did it to humor her.”

“Do they work?”

“Not today.”

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.

35. Rabbits and Tanabata Wishes

“There’s a rabbit, too!” another cop hollers from the balcony. Dressed in jeans and a blue windbreaker, he seems to be enjoying the raid far too much.

“Is it yours?” he asks coming back into the room.

“The rabbit? Actually, he belonged to my next-door neighbor, but I, um, ‘adopted’ him when they moved away.”

“What’s the rabbit’s name?”

“Pyon-kichi,” I answer.

Everyone laughs.

The black rabbit hops into the room and, pausing at my feet, glances up at me with his dark eyes as if to say, “Dude, what’s with all the pigs?” Then, dropping a few balls of poop, hops off towards the dining room where another old cop is rummaging through my cupboards.

Atta boy, Pyon! Sic ‘em!

“Pyon-kichi? Who gave him a name like that?” the cop in the windbreaker asks.

“My wife did,” I say, reaching down to pick up Pyon’s droppings with a tissue.

“Well, that makes sense,” he says with a chuckle. “Pyon-kichi isn’t the kind of name I imagine a gaijin would give a rabbit. What about the bamboo in the other room?”

In the main room of my apartment, a large open space comprising the living and dining rooms which I sometimes use for the English lessons I have at home, is a bamboo branch about two and a half yards long that arches out from one corner of the room. A few days ago, my girlfriend Azami and I spent the evening decorating it with colorful origami for the Tanabata Star Festival that falls on the seventh of July.[1]

As she often does, my girlfriend impressed me with not only her retention of, but also her ability to still apply all the creative and artsy-craftsy skills she picked up ages ago in elementary school. Where the typical Japanese might be able to fold a square piece of paper into an origami crane, Azami can take the same piece of paper and make four connected cranes out of it as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do. Most of my students were thrilled when they saw the bamboo, and, filled with nostalgia, gladly wrote down their Tanabata wishes on paper, which they then attached to the bamboo branch.

“My students and I made it,” I tell the cops. “There may be some extra tanzaku paper left. Feel free to write your wishes down, too.”

None of them take me up on the offer.

[1] Tanabata (七夕, literally, “evening of the seventh”) is a Japanese star festival, celebrating the rendezvous of the deities Orihime and Hikoboshi (represented by the stars Vega and Altair), who are separated by the Amanogawa (Milky Way). The lovers are allowed to meet once a year on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, according to the old lunisolar calendar.

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.

34. Guilty of Good Taste

The fusuma partitions, which separate the room Ozawa, the suit, and I are sitting in from the other rooms of my apartment, have all been thrown wide open such that I can see most of my apartment from where I am. Plainclothes officers mill about, going through my things with gloved hands. Two cops poke their fingers into the pockets of the clothes hanging in the closet, while others open the baskets and containers I have on the bookshelf in the living room.

Another cop—it’s hard to keep them straight—comes up to me and asks, “Who do you live with?”

“I live alone.”

“Oh? Why have you got two bicycles, then?”

“I know people who’ve got three or more cars . . .”

He makes a notation in his book and walks away.

 

I’ve never been the kind of person to harbor a blanket contempt for law enforcement the way, for instance, my friend dé Dale does, but as I watch these matori agents search my apartment I can’t help being reminded of the Keystone Kops. I get the impression that they are just as bewildered as I am. For one thing, they don’t seem to know what they are searching for.

A cop venturing out onto the balcony exclaims, “Hey guys, check this out!” Curious policemen gravitate towards the balcony. “He’s got bamboo and hydrangea out here.”

“And a Japanese maple tree!” says another. “Well, I’ll be!”

They have me there.

Where most Japanese have laundry racks and bags of recyclables, I do indeed have two thickets of black bamboo growing on my balcony and a number of hydrangea of varying colors, which are now in full bloom. The leaves of the Japanese maple still has that fresh green hue that I love. When the afternoon sun shines on them, the bedroom fills with a comfortable viridescent glow. The morning glories I planted only a few weeks ago are just starting to wind their way up a railing and bamboo trellis that I built in a rare fit of frenetic activity only a week ago.

On the northern half of the balcony—the part you can see from my Japanese-styled bedroom with its antique tansu chest of drawers—I have arranged plants typically found in Japanese gardens. The other half of the balcony, visible from where Ozawa, the older cop in the suit, and I are sitting, is more Mediterranean in theme with a palm tree, bougainvillea and herbs such as lavender and rosemary. I also have deck chairs and a large parasol.

If they were to charge me with having good taste and a green thumb, then I am, beyond the shadow of doubt, guilty.

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.

33. Matori

Cool as a cucumber, the cop in the wrap-around sunglasses explains that he is Ozawa from Matori, the Mayaku Torishimari Kyoku (麻薬取締局), the Japanese equivalent of the DEA. He also has a piece of paper: a warrant to search my apartment.

“I understand,” I say. “I’ll get out of your way, then.”

What else am I supposed to tell the man? This sure ain’t the United States where you demand to see your lawyer; no, the only thing you can do is let them go about their business and hope against hope they don’t find what it is they are looking for.

As they begin searching my apartment, I go to a back room and sit down heavily on the sofa.

Ozawa follows behind me, taking a seat near mine, while an older cop in a baggy double-breasted suit sits down next to me.

“Do you know why we’re here?” Ozawa asks.

“No.”

“You have no idea?” He says, giving the older cop a look that speaks volumes about the contempt he must feel for the gaijin[1] in his presence.

“No. None at all,” I reply.

Ozawa doesn’t seem to buy it. He pushes his sunglasses up on to the top of his shaved head and rubs his eyes. Looking long and hard at me, he says, “You can’t think of any reason that would have all of us storming in here?”

The guy has the build of a wrestler, the hands of a strangler. He’s also got a good 20 to 30 pounds more meat on his bones than I do. If he wanted to knock me about, there wouldn’t be anything I could do but try my best to enjoy it.

“A mistake?” I offer.

“A mistake?”

The cop in the double-breasted suit chuckles; Ozawa looks away in disgust.

Another cop with longish hair and acid-washed jeans is standing a few feet away, filming me on a small video camera.

“Yes, a mistake,” I say. “My neighbor down the hall in four-oh-five is yakuza. People are always confusing our apartments.”

“Are you trying to make a fool of us?” Ozawa yells.

“No, no, no, not at all. It’s just that you asked . . . Never mind. I’m sorry.”

[1] Gaijin (外人, lit. “Outside Person”) is a contraction of gaikokujin (外国人, lit. “Outside Country Person) which is Japanese for “foreigner”. Many Japanese, aware that some non-Japanese residents take offence at being called gaijin will bend over backwards to not use the word “foreigner” when speaking English. Instead, they’ll say something silly like “other country people”. To which I’ll say, “Oh, you mean ‘foreigner’, right?”

Some foreign residents of Japan take umbrage at being called gaijin, likening it to an African American being called a “nigger”, but the word isn’t nearly as emotionally charged as that.

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.

 

32. This is No Joke

When I open the door, I find an intimidating gang of middle-aged men standing in the corridor. The beefy one in front, who’s in wrap-around sunglasses and blue work clothes, flashes a badge.

“Police!”

“Yeah, right,” I say, barely able to suppress the nervous laugh that bubbles out of me.

Badge or no badge, the guy looks like a thug. Shaved head, a scraggly, but trimmed beard, and those ridiculous sunglasses. If this goon’s a cop, then I am a man of the cloth.

“Someone put you up to this, right?” I say. “Was it dé D . . .”

Before I can complete the sentence, they storm my apartment—one after the other like an implausible number of circus clowns jumping out of a VW bug—so many, I lose count.

As I’m watching them rush in through the front door, I notice something curious: before stepping into my apartment each one of them nimbly removes his shoes. By the time they are all inside, a heap of leather and rubber and canvas, a pyramid of sneakers, loafers, and rubber boots has formed at the entry.

The last one to enter my apartment is a pudgy little man with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a pencil mustache. Right away, he corners me in my dining room and starts waving a badge and a piece of paper in front of my face. He says something to me that I can’t quite catch, and then turns to the others and starts rattling off quick, excited orders.

Only now does it hit me: this is no practical joke.

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.

31. Knock, Knock

But then comes that knock at the door that will change everything.

I look to the clock on the wall. “Eight-o-two? Who on earth could be coming by at this hour? Must be dé Dale.”

Ever since the Frenchman confided in me that he was going to leave Japan, never to return—NEVER!—we have been spending a lot of time together—for better, for worse.

More knocking.

Then again, maybe it’s FedEx with the package . . . but at eight in the morning?

The knocking grows louder.

“Jesus, I’m coming already!”

I peer through the peephole, but can’t see anything. Someone or something on the other side of the door is covering it.

Gotta be dé Dale.

Oh, if only it were.

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.

30. Wedding Bells and Death Knells

Only last night, I phoned my girlfriend with the good news: “Azami, things are looking up!”

And they were. Cash was flowing in steadily and I calculated that I would be able to clear 700,000 yen before the end of the month.[1] Not a fortune, I admit, but more money than I managed to earn in one hell of a long time.

And, the best part about it? Now that Yūko, my ex-wife, was another man’s headache and living in Tōkyō with the chump—er, pardon me—her new husband, she no longer needed my support. With her gone, I have been able to whittle down my monthly bills to about a third of my income.

“Meaning,” I said to myself as I did the books last night, “I should be able to plunk a good three-hundred—no, make that three-hundred and fifty thousand yen ($3,500)—into savings this month and still have more than enough to play with.”

I knew my girlfriend would be relieved to hear it. After dating me on and off for over four years—enduring the sickest, the thinnest, the very, very worst of times—Azami was finally able to hear the not so distant peal of wedding bells.

Go ahead, call me an arse, but however much I loved Azami—and I did, I do, I do, I do, I do—to me those bells still sound like a death knell.

Marriage, though, is a foregone conclusion. I know Azami and I will tie the knot sooner or later—preferably later, though, much, much later. No, all I want now is a bit of self-indulgent lotus-eating, some quality Me-time to heal the burns I got in that frying pan of a first marriage to Yūko before I jump into the fire with Azami.

“Things are going so well,” I told my girlfriend over the phone, “I’ll proabably have enough saved up by the end of the year to take you to see my family in Beirut for Christmas. Knock on woo . . .”

[1] Dollar amounts throughout this novel have been calculated according the actual exchange rate at the time an event in the story is taking place. The rate in the year 2000, for example, was about 105 yen to the dollar. In 2006, however, one dollar was worth around 115 yen. 700,000 yen was worth about $6,100.

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.

29. Full Steam Ahead

A knock on the door at 8:02 this morning is going to derail me.

I just don’t know it yet.

No, at a quarter of the hour, I am still chugging ahead, convinced that all the sacrifices I have made over the last three years—the patience, the frustration, the fucking scrimping—are at long last starting to pay off. At a quarter to eight, I still believe that I have put miles between my present self and my past mistakes, that I have redeemed myself and there is no looking back. The tracks have been laid and they are straight and it is full steam ahead from here on.

Or so I think.

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.

28. Benkai

Thursday morning, July 13th

 

“Rokuban.”

I look up from my book to find Bear peering in through the window.

It may be a new morning, but I’m already feeling as if it is Groundhog Day again.

“Yes?”

He mumbles something I don’t catch.

“Pardon me?”

“Benkai,” he says. “Your lawyer’s here. Get ready.”

“My lawyer?” I say, brightening.

I’m so delighted I could do a little jig right here in the cell.

Maybe now we can get this matter all settled and Rémy can finally be on his merry little way.

If I had my druthers, I would have them release me before Gilligan wheeled around with lunch. Three nights in jail is more than enough.

I put the gray shirt on, making sure to tuck it in properly, and then kneel before the door, legs tucked under my fanny.

Several minutes later, just as the radio exercises are starting to kick in, a dull metallic clank at the front of the cell tells me the door has been unlocked.

“Rokuban, benkai,” a guard says, opening the door and taking a step back. Benkai, yet one more truncated word in the lexicon of Japanese Ministry of Justice. I give the word some thought, turning it around in my head like a Rubik’s cube until it occurs to me that it must be shorthand for bengoshi kaidan, or a consultation with one’s lawyer.[1]

After confirming my name and number, the guard then leads me to the right, and up the corridor.

As we are walking past the windows of my neighbor’s cells, I can’t help but look in on them. The boy next door in Cell 25 is at his desk writing what looks like a long letter. In the next cell, the long-haired, bearded Castaway sits against the wall, knees pulled up against his bare chest and bony arms at his sides. He stares vacantly at the opposite wall, rocking slowly.

At the end of the corridor we come to a wall of bars. The guard orders me to turn to the left as he fiddles with the lock. We do-sa-do upon passing through the opening, and, once again, I’m told to turn away while he locks the door behind us.

The guard then takes me up a flight of stairs and down a broad hallway. Similar to the hall on the western side of the jail, here, too, the outer wall has posters featuring Kyūshū’s scenic spots.

Wouldn’t it be more humane if there were windows offering a glimpse of the world outside the jail, something real and familiar to hold on to so the prisoners didn’t go completely bonkers?

At the end of the hall, we arrive at another wall of bars. A guard on the other side, sitting at a wooden desk cluttered with forms and rubber stamps, asks for my number.

“Rokuban.”

He makes a notation in a register and gives me an inkpad to dab my finger on. I put my fingerprint on the form.

We do-sa-do again, and yet another guard comes ‘round the outside to escort me. The hallway narrows and then slopes downward, the floor changing from bare concrete to white tile. Through a door on the right, and down a flight of steps we are back on the ground floor. Passing through one more locked door, we enter an “L” shaped hallway, windowless and antiseptic with evenly spaced doors running along the inner wall. The guard opens one of the doors and tells me to get in and take a seat. He turns the air-conditioner on and locks the door behind me.

The room is small, and lit up like a showcase. I sit down on a metal chair that is bolted to the floor and rest my hands on the cold stainless steel counter before me. A thick pane of glass separates my side from an identical, but unlit room on the other side.

This is how germs must feel when examined under a microscope.

On the wall is a list of rules:

 

No yelling.

No banging on the glass.

No standing.

 

A fluorescent light on the other side flickers on, the door opens.

My lawyer, Adachi, hurries in, looking just as disheveled and confused as when I first met him a week ago.

“I tried to get here as soon as I could,” he says, placing his briefcase on the metal counter and sitting down. He takes a long hard look at me, and then exhales slowly. “Things have gotten rather serious, haven’t they?”

“You can say that again.”

[1] Benkai (弁会) is indeed the abbreviation of bengoshi kaidan (弁護士会談), meaning a consultation or meeting with one’s lawyer.

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.

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.

26. What is it, Grandpa?

“Ikāru.”

My name, mispronounced, pulls me from depths of a fathomless sleep.

“Ikāru.” Through the murk, I see the blurred outline of a huge man looking in at me.

“Shou, Jiddo?” I mumble. What is it, grandpa?

“Ikāru!”

The fog lifts. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, the man whose voice has woken me comes into focus: it’s that guard, Bear.

What’s he of all people calling me Icare for? Only my grandfather ever called me by my middle name.

“Rokuban . . .” he says now that I’m awake.

“What?”

“You’re not supposed to be sleeping now.”

“Huh? Is it three already?”

I push myself up off the floor and make a listless chopping motion with my right hand before my nose, gesturing that I am sorry.

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.

23. Cruel and Unusual

The cell is baking hot now. Although I haven’t moved around much since returning from the infirmary—where could I go—sweat runs in rivulets down my bare chest and back, soaking the top of my shorts.

A guard in the corridor pokes his nose in through the small window and tells me to get my shirt back on.

“I’m sorry, but I was hot,” I say, taking out a fresh t-shirt from the yellow basket.

“Haven’t you got an uchiwa?” he asks.[1]

“An uchiwa? No. No I haven’t.”

The guard disappears for a moment, and returns with a round paper fan, which he feeds through the bars. It’s got a long plastic handle and an advertisement for Asahi Super Dry featuring a sylphlike Japanese woman in a blue bikini, holding frothy glass of pale yellow Asahi beer in her right hand.

“If this doesn’t constitute cruel and unusual punishment . . .,” I say, and start fanning myself with the uchiwa.

 

[1] An uchiwa (団扇) is a round paper fan.

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.

23. Melancholy Baby

When the show is over, I return to the zabuton and read the final chapters of a book that has had the ride of an Oldsmobile. I can’t say my socks were knocked off by the novel’s plot, but Melancholy Baby has helped me get through this my first full day in the can.

“And for that, I am grateful, Mr. Robert B. Parker,” I say to the black and white photo of the author on the back. “Thank you.”

22. Green Thumbs They're Not

A rusting old metal shutter, large enough to accommodate a mid-sized truck, is rolled up exposing an opening in the eastern wall of the courtyard. Several guards pass through the opening and take up positions around the periphery of the courtyard. A moment later, an order is hollered out and inmates in orange coveralls and white cotton work gloves start filing out. Some of them have rakes; others, shovels. A few have sheers. One of them has been entrusted with a weed-whacker.

The guy with the weed-whacker gets his machine up and running and, starting at the eastern edge of the courtyard, moves towards the middle, making broad sweeping motions and kicking up rocks and dust and pollen. My window is pelted with small pebbles as he passes by.

A platoon of inmates armed with rakes make piles of the cut weeds which are then bundled up in canvas sacks by another group of inmates.

In less than thirty minutes, the inmates turn the wildly overgrown courtyard into an austerely manicured garden, in the center of which is a rounded hedge and a few modest trees.

Mission accomplished, they march out of the courtyard like soldiers, garden tools resting on their right shoulders. The shutter is pulled down and locked behind them.

21. Gamelan

Discordant, yet somewhat melodious sounds come from outside my cell’s rear window. Were I at a resort hotel in Bali and not in this stinking jail, I might suspect that a gamelan ensemble was rehearsing in the courtyard. I get up off the zabuton and move toward the back of the cell to get a better look.

Although the “music” continues to grow nearer, I can’t see anything unusual going on outside the window. There is an occasional sparrow flying in and out of the weeds, the tenuous chirps of the summer’s first cicada. The shadow of Cell Block B, which enveloped the courtyard in the morning, has now retreated to the lowest edge of its wall. If the sun burned any brighter the weeds would surely catch fire. Meanwhile, the soft hammering of gongs grows louder.

Just then the powerful urge to take a leak strikes me, the first time since I’ve been locked up. The toilet in back of the cell, which lacks even a hint of privacy, has left me stage fright.

On one side, you’ve got the window open to the courtyard, inviting one and all to have a peek. On the other, there’s a short wall, half a foot high that is next to useless. Any guard passing by in the corridor can get a free show if that is what floats his boat.

And just as I release a steady stream, redolent of the morning’s barley tea, the mystery of the gamelan is solved. Looking to my right, I find a guard standing outside my window, tapping the bars with a rubber mallet.

The guard looks at me and, making an swift and astute observations that the only bar the inmate before him has tampered with is the one in his hand, moves on to the next cell, dissonant chords of the tap, tap, tapping fading.