Sacred Cesium Ground and Isa's Deluge Read online

  As far as he could see, nothing but empty landscape.

  Forward and back, left then right, in whichever direction he turned his eyes, empty to the horizon, nothing but a completely level expanse of land. Not even a single tree. Not a hill, not a depression. No grand boulders had ever rolled through here. No hint of man or beast to be seen. Above the horizon? No way to know what time it was. The hazy, blue-tinged space that stretched out there was not so much sky as something perhaps better referred to as an emptiness.

  The scene would appear in his mind’s eye and Shōji would be unable to stand still. Sometimes when he was walking through town by himself, and even during some of those rare times when he was sharing a drink with someone else, like a flash he would see it, like now, the illusion of a vacant space.

  “Kawamura-san, this is you, you know.”

  It would rain down from somewhere in the space above his head, suddenly, this voice.

  “The blandness of this scene. The lack of anything. This is you, pure and simple.”

  There was no one to be seen. He did not recognize the derisive voice.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Shōji murmured, accepting this without resistance. Besides, he didn’t want to be derided any further.

  “And you? Nothing. That’s what you are: nothing. People skills? None. Curiosity about new things? None. Self-confidence? None. And you suck at making friends and have no chance at love. Am I wrong?”

  Shōji felt himself shudder. His mind went blank; all words seemed to have been blown away; he could remember none. He covered his face with his hands; before he knew it he was on his knees. And immediately the voice again, guffaws reverberating in the space above his head.

  “See?! See what I mean?! Isn’t that just one of your poses? A pose you adopt according to the scene? Right? You are just a fake, a poser.”

  Such was the flow of the dream that Shōji had been having for about half a year now. He was tormented by this nightmare, over and over again. He would wake up sometimes, tears in his eyes. Sometimes, after he had quit his job, shut in his curtained room, this voice would ring in his ears even when he was fully awake.

  This thing called Reality should not be looked at too closely. It’s usually a dead end, a road to nowhere. No revitalization to be found there. That’s why we have the overflow of stuff, of information: it’s to forget obstinate reality. Everyone makes use of this stuff, as a matter of course, but none of it held any appeal to him. He didn’t play mobile games, wasn’t on Twitter, didn’t feel the need for a smartphone. He couldn’t figure out why people were so excited about the completion of the Skytree, a building that had nothing but height going for it. People, at least in Tokyo, would point to something and say, “That’s so exciting; this is so much fun” (which meant it was going to cost money). He had no interest in any of it.

  Back when he still had the emotional space to think about it, he was sure that it was society that was odd. But after all the effort of finding a new job, and then having to quit that company, he began to think that the problem lay with him and his inability to adjust. Turning forty may have had something to do with it. There was no way to escape “forty.” He had graduated from college and joined the workforce, working for small publishing houses and in printing, changing jobs often. When he couldn’t find other work, he had even spent a period installing grocery-store shelves. He wasn’t changing jobs like this because he wanted to, but because the work proved more than he could take and the office politics jammed up the works; this was also a time that glorified successive part-time jobs and changes of office; it was cool to be a part-timer. But one result was that he had no more than fragmentary knowledge about whatever work he took on. He knew all too well that to learn specialized skills a person needed to start in their twenties, but he thought he might still be able to do something in his thirties. But in the process of this and that he had turned forty. He now had to admit to himself that he had fallen into the very trap that he had been worried about. “I guess the file is closed on my life,” he thought. He became fixated on his situation, masochistically picking at it like a scab: “You got no money, you got no woman, you got no friends, you got no looks, you got no fashion sense, you got no dreams, you got lousy people skills, you suck at work, you’re dim-witted, you got no social graces, you’re uninteresting, nobody likes you, you get no pleasure in life, as a person nothing about you is interesting. You got nothing; everything is lacking, insufficient; nothing, nothing, nothing …”

  That’s how Shōji felt during those days. He had lost track of day and night. He had wondered, given that’s who I am, wouldn’t it be better to just be dead? Garbage moving through garbage. The dried-up husk of his life moved, but meaninglessly. But then he would wonder, “So, death, then what?” He was stuck, unable to make a move. “I could be dead, this good-for-nothing me, but then what would be changed?” He figured that no one would think a thing about it. It would just end up making more mess for someone else to clean up. Death itself brought no scrap of meaning to this life. Even thoughts of his own death led to thoughts of others, so he ended up feeling as though his own life were not even his own.

  The dreams changed when he found himself boxed in like this, exhausted, in a fog, unable to move. The laughter had reverberated above his head; he had fallen to his knees and braced himself, but now a low rumble reverberated from the ground, and the empty expanse of land began to undulate. Unable to keep his balance for the fierce shaking, he would put out his hands and begin to crawl, just in time to see the ground, for as far as he could make out, rise in a wave, hollow into a trough, and then, out of the resulting dust, sometimes a hand would emerge, sometimes a head, backs would rise, crowds of people would appear, all the way to the distant horizon.

  When they rose, brushed off the dust, stood with confidence, they appeared to be warriors like you would see in ancient, Heian-period scrolls. But, with pelts around their shoulders, there was also something barbarian about them. Everyone had a bow in hand, a bundle of arrows on their back. Some were blowing their noses in their fingers, others were pissing where they stood, others calling loudly to someone at a distance, others in a scuffle, others sitting cross-legged and starting in with their sake. Each followed their own whims.

  Who were all these people spread across the landscape? Shōji had no idea. All the faces were covered in shadow and hard to see. A simple glance made it clear that these were not guys to be messed with; even so he felt a degree of affection for them. At that point a short-statured, bowlegged, large-boned man in front approached him and said with a laugh, “So, you’re here?!” Nothing except the yellowed teeth in his laughing mouth were visible. Even so, Shōji was pretty sure that the man was Uncle Isa. “So, that’s what that was? That’s what all the noise was about?” Isa was looking up at the sky as he asked Shōji. Shōji just nodded silently.

  Isa let out a snort, placed an arrow in his bow, aimed at the sky, put all his strength into pulling back the string. That’s the moment someone raised a loud shout: “Oh-hohh, look who’s here, it’s that Isa, cocked and ready to go!!” And in no time at all one voice rolled after another: “Formations!!” “Formations!!” “Oh-hohh!” “Oh-hohh!” Waves of men in archery formation, all pointing their bows to the sky.

  It was now deathly still, as though all the breath had been sucked out of the air; a moment of bowstring-taut silence. Isa let fly the arrow that he had been holding in reserve all this time; it served as the signal, and the other men all released their arrows in unison. Arrows covered the sky; it was as though great thorns were being sucked out of the wide expanse of earth, as though the sky overhead were being painted. All those arrows flying with no decrease in speed penetrated straight into the sky.

  Isa and all the men raised their fists at the sky with a great hue and cry. The sky swallowed the multitude of arrows but did not disappear, and in the commotion that threatened its cleaving, Shōji could no longer, he found, hear the voice overhead.

  It was nearly
noon before Shōji awoke on the day after drinking with Hitoshi. He had apparently crawled into his futon without changing clothes. It had been that same dream again. In the past the faces had always been clouded in shadow, but this time it was clearly the face he had seen in the picture album yesterday, and that seemed strange. There had also been a makiri knife thrust into his belt.

  A hint of incense remained in the air. He picked up the glasses next to his pillow and put them on. Looking around he found he was in the altar room that Hitoshi had been going in and out of the night before. To the left of his face were the offerings of grapefruits and sweets placed before the butsudan altar. On the wall next to the butsudan hung the framed funeral pictures of Hitoshi’s mother and father. The mother, whom he had no memory of ever meeting, was full in the face with drooping eyes. He realized now just how much Hitoshi looked like his mother.

  He stood and walked to the living room. The full sun of May came streaming through the front window that faced the parking area in front of the house. Hitoshi was not there; he had followed through on his statement from yesterday that he would be gone to work at the production plant.

  Shōji sat on the sofa and lit a cigarette. Alcohol still weighed down on the core of his brain like sediment. The low table had been cleaned off and everything put in order. The ashtray that he remembered as a mountain of butts was washed and put back in its place. While it seemed a very laid-back life, everything was organized. It was Hitoshi’s way of being a good host. Even toward me, with no redeeming features to speak of, Hitoshi had entertained me until late with stories of Uncle Isa; it was just like old times, the way he took care of me, treating me like a younger brother. Brought Shōji almost to tears. There are real people here, he thought in his loneliness. He felt the increasingly pale shadow of his former self gaining substance. “Must be time to give up Tokyo, maybe time to come back here …,” he thought to himself. He found it unexpected, this thought that came to him.

  He had first gone to Tokyo for university; he had been there ever since. Seemed a short span, but then he had lived there longer than he had in his hometown; even so he still did not feel comfortable in Tokyo. So yes, there was more work there than here, but even so, if asked why he continued in that place where everything was cramped—well, he no longer remembered.

  He slowly exhaled. He turned his attention to the beating of his heart and the rhythms of his breathing. The familiar tick-tick, tick-tick of increased palpitations, the usual dizzying rush of blood to his head, the rapid breathing, the hyperventilation he could not control—he did not now feel those familiar symptoms.

  Get Your Prayers Answered with Ten Seconds of Nenbutsu Power! Bring Good Fortune through Bathroom Feng Shui: this was the kind of books produced by the publishing company where he had worked as an editor. But he had not been hounded to exhaustion by the work. In fact, for nearly half a year prior to quitting he had overseen no books of his own but had merely helped his stressed-out colleagues on their projects. And even though he was not temporary staff, come six in the evening his colleagues would urge him to go home with “That’s enough for today.” He had no memory of any office screwups. He had no idea how he had become marginalized like this. Outside work he also tried to stay within the boundaries, never got emotional, was humble and self-reflective, keeping a low profile in order to not make waves.

  Once, however, something had occurred. He became aware that the young woman, a newly hired recent graduate, sitting at the desk next to his was struggling with her first editorial plan for the book that she was putting into production. It had occurred when he thought he might give her some suggestions. She was from Akita Prefecture, which is to say from Tohoku, like him. She asked for advice and he responded warmly. They had even gone out for drinks once. Usually he conducted himself as though he feared that it would be to his disadvantage to let others know that he was from Aomori Prefecture, and he would excise all Tohoku regionalisms from his speech, but while drinking with her he naturally took on the muddy speech patterns. He was unable to forget how much fun he had had at that time, and he eventually found himself falling in love. He had even been thinking she might have similar feelings. Then, once, when he had begun to ask her a question she intercepted with a flustered “Um, um, everything’s good.” “But I haven’t even said anything yet,” he thought to himself. Then he realized that she was fastidiously hiding from sight the manuscripts on her desk. When he rather testily asked her, “What’s good?” she turned red and evasive, “Oh, it’s nothing,” and then mumbled something about “a curse.…” With that she quickly covered her mouth with her hand. A murmur of laughter could be heard from the others in the office. Someone unnecessarily tacked on, just loud enough to be overheard, “The curse of no sales?”

  He shook his head. Not good. His heart skipped a beat. In an attempt to think about something else he checked the messages on his phone. Just one. A message from Sayoko, a classmate from his middle-school days.

  “Hey Shōji! You just got here today?! Wondering what kind of adult you have turned into! It’s been suuuch a long time that I’m feeling a little nervous!! It’ll be fun to see everyone again!! There’s sooo much to talk about …!”

  A sigh of relief. Nothing more than this, but for whatever reason it was enough to allow him to relax. One of the reasons for this trip back home was for the middle-school reunion, where he would see Sayoko for the first time in twentysomething years.

  Last month a message from Sayoko had come unexpectedly. There had been a newspaper story about one of their classmates named Sawada. He and Shōji had often played together as kids. At the time of the disasters Sawada had rescued close to thirty people in danger of being carried away by the tsunami. This was to be their first middle-school reunion, and the purpose was to sing the praises of Sawada. Back in the day, Sawada was part of a group known by the overblown name of “the gangsters.” According to Sayoko, after high school he had been involved in the nightlife and entertainment business but had recently given that up and was now a professional housepainter.

  “That Sawada, was it?” Shōji said to himself. But he also remembered the Sawada who was a real crybaby when they played together as kids, who also had a soft side; he could totally see him doing such a thing. The true value of a person is no doubt revealed when confronted by such situations. At the time of the earthquake Shōji had been in his apartment in Tokyo, futon pulled up over his head, being jostled and turned. When it was over he turned on the television; there was a string of images from Hachinohe—a place that rarely was reported on. It hit him hard, all the images of so many boats being carried away by the tsunami. When they then showed images of all the people in the Tokyo area unable to go back to their homes that night, of all the salarymen and the female office staff waiting inside the train stations for the new day to dawn, he turned to the television and muttered darkly, “Serves you bastards right.”

  He truly wanted to congratulate Sawada on his actions. Nonetheless, had the message not come from Sayoko he probably would not have even considered attending. The message, since it had come from her, the girl he used to have a crush on, felt like a lifeline. It was true that she was now, in the eyes of the world, just a middle-aged woman. He knew she was married with a kid in middle school, yet there still remained a sense of the affection that he had felt toward her so long ago.

  Shōji went into the kitchen for a drink of water and found he was slightly hungry. In the sink he found a half-empty bag of spicy rice crackers he had bought yesterday. He boiled some water, made some instant coffee, and went back to the living room. Stuffing crackers into his mouth he sipped the coffee. In the notebook opened on the table he began to write the story of his uncle that he had heard from Hitoshi.

  (A rough outline of Uncle Isa’s movements)

  Squid fishing → finance → squid fishing (two cases of assault) → admitted to the psych ward of the hospital → ? (unlikely to have been gainfully employed) → to Kawasaki (assume he was employed as a d
ay laborer or other temporary work. Never again returned to Hachinohe) → suffers a stroke and is disabled. Admitted to a facility for people without family support?

  • At one point he was also a moneylender. The relatives in the main house had sold off a large tract of land, and Isa had received a share (which was evidently quite sizable). He went to Hakodate to live with an aunt and began moneylending there. It seems likely that he lent money to a small-time gambler and was unable to recover his money; eventually the operation went bust.

  • After his assault cases he spent time in jail in Hakodate and Shizuoka. Every time he returned to the main house he would break things and threaten them all with a knife. No one could contain his excessive violence; some relatives admitted him to the psychiatric unit. One assumes this was to cure his violent disposition and alcoholism, but following his release he held on to his grudge until the end.

  • Overseas labor: it appears that he spent some time in Saudi Arabia working construction on oil refineries. (This is about the time of the changes to access of international waters—200 nautical mile limit issue—and since the number of boats was reduced, so too were the possibilities for work in squid fishing back home.) According to how Hitoshi told it, Isa talked about being in a place where temperatures could reach 50 degrees Celsius, a place of such fierce heat that “I could watch the sweat on my arms turn to steam.” Isa said he could make 10 million yen in a year’s time; and it was a fact that Isa had paid back all his loans, and then some. During those years that Isa was not in Japan, over at the main house, which Isa had so frequently terrorized, things were calm and quiet for a time.