Page 23 of Daikon

TWELVE

THE BLAST OF A WHISTLE . Six o’clock in the morning.

Noriko Kan wearily rose from another restless night.

She rolled up her futon and pushed it against the wall and went through the motions of straightening the clothes that she lived in.

Fourteen interminable hours lay ahead of alternately sitting and standing on the hard concrete floor, alone with her anxiety, confined with her thoughts.

She started with sitting. She spent hours each day staring at the concrete when she wasn’t dozing, staring until the cracks and stains took on the form of identifiable objects: the outline of a mountain with the moon rising behind it; the head of a horse-insect; a child’s footprint; the dead eye of a fish.

And then there was the splotch that she always returned to, the face of a man, slightly turned away, a friendly presence locked up with her inside her cell.

She smiled, remembering the time during their awkward courtship when she taught Keizo to drive.

His lack of coordination working the clutch and the gearshift had made her laugh so hard that she hurt his feelings.

It was her first glimpse of his sensitive nature.

When she realized what she had done, she won him back with a playful kiss on the cheek.

She had been only twenty-one years old, nine years younger than Keizo, a mere sophomore while he was a doctoral student.

But she was the confident one, the leader, as she helped him in his struggles with English and every other aspect of American life.

It was from that moment in the car that she knew that Keizo was the man she would marry.

And then the shoe was on the other foot.

After their marriage, she returned with Keizo to Japan and experienced devastating culture shock of her own, starting with those first months living with his parents: his difficult and domineering mother, who she realized was the source of his shyness; his indulgent father, who was proud of the academic success of his son.

Then it was Keizo who helped ease her struggles.

He protected her against his mother’s abuse, then scraped money together and moved them into a home of their own.

He helped her improve her Japanese accent and adjust the things that marked her as foreign.

He comforted her when life in Tokyo overwhelmed her and reduced her to tears.

Footsteps jerked Noriko back to the present. She got to her feet and stood with head bowed. The guards insisted on prisoners standing when they made their first rounds in the morning. She heard the footsteps pause somewhere down the hall and the warning tap of a baton on a cell door.

The footsteps continued. Another pause. Another tap.

The footsteps stopped outside her door. A shadow appeared at the grating. Was it the Toad? She didn’t dare look. She kept her head down, communicating submission.

The footsteps passed on. She continued to stand for a time, her eyes closed. Then she started scratching. Being denied the ability to wash had been its own kind of torture for the first two weeks. Now, after two months, she didn’t give it much thought. She just scratched.

The squeaking wheels of the cart. Breakfast was coming.

She seized her bowl and moved to the door.

Hesitate when food was served, and the man would pass on and you would receive nothing.

Attempt to call him back, and the only thing you would be eating would be a guard’s fist or his club or his boot.

The hatch in her door was opened from the outside.

She thrust her bowl through and something was ladled into it.

Then, strangely, something more was added.

Noriko pulled her bowl back and looked down at the most generous meal she had ever received in this place, the usual thin gruel that was served in the morning with a supplemental scoop of something dense sitting in the middle, a concoction of soy and peanut residue and bits of unidentifiable green.

She stared at it for a moment, confused, then retreated to the corner and started greedily eating.

When she was done, she felt almost full.

She licked out the bowl and washed it with a small amount of water, which she drank. Then she sat with her back to the wall, puzzling over why she had received extra food. Was the man with the cart new? Had he made a mistake? Was it a trick?

A trick seemed most likely. Her eyes kept darting to the door, half expecting that it would burst open and she would be taken upstairs to face more accusations. So you’re not just a defeatist and a traitor. You’re a pig! A greedy pig!

Yes, it was a trick. They were trying to raise her spirits so they could smash them back down.

Her anxiety rose. Then the panic seized her. It was the start of madness. She knew that. Confined in this small space, caught between the torment of her thoughts and her fear of what lay beyond the door—it was becoming more than she could bear.

It was starting to unravel her mind.

The scrape of the key in the lock came at midmorning.

She scrambled to her feet as her cell door opened. A man in civilian clothing stood there, not one of the guards. He looked like a clerk.

“Noriko Kan?”

Noriko didn’t answer. She stood with eyes downcast, frightened and confused.

“Is your name Noriko Kan?”

She nodded. The clerk said nothing further. He waved her out of the cell and directed her toward the stairs.

There was daylight one floor up, the first daylight she had seen in weeks.

It was painfully bright and made her squint.

A hallway extended in both directions. The room where she had been interrogated was to the left.

She did not want to go to the left. She prayed she would not have to go that way as she mounted the last step.

The clerk led her to the right, down the hall and around a corner. She found herself at the head of another corridor lined with cell doors. She kept her eyes down as they walked along it, not daring to glance through the row of gratings but sensing human presences locked up inside.

They reached the end, another corner, and the clerk opened a door.

“Five minutes,” he said, motioning for her to enter.

Noriko held back. She could see white tiles through the door.

“Quickly. Five minutes.”

She cautiously entered. The door closed behind her. Tiled floor and walls, mildewed corners, taps with basins underneath, two drains.

It was a bathing room. She was being allowed a bath.

She quickly undressed and began filling one of the basins, then a second to soak her soiled clothes. The water pressure was low, but it was enough. There was even the luxury of a sliver of coarse laundry soap.

She worked quickly, scrubbing herself all over and pummeling her clothes, the filth coming off everything turning the cold water gray as it flowed down the drain. She was gasping when the clerk knocked on the door and called in all too soon: “Finish now.”

She grabbed her clothes from the basin, squeezed out the water and struggled to get dressed without tearing the wet fabric.

The door opened.

“That’s long enough. Come out.”

She had not been able to button up her blouse. She pulled it closed and headed for the door.

“Thank you,” she said as she exited. “Thank you.”

She stood in her cell, feeling anxious and confused as the clerk’s steps faded away.

The extra food, and now a bath—what did it mean?

Was it all just a trick? Or had her situation improved?

She had never been formally charged with a crime, after all.

Perhaps there was a limit on how long someone could be held without charge.

She had assumed the Tokkō could do whatever they wanted, but perhaps not.

Perhaps they had reached the limit on the torment they could inflict.

Tendrils of hope were growing in her mind as she carefully pulled off her wet clothes and wrung them out and hung them from the door. She would sit naked in the corner until they were dry, then put them back on.

She closed her eyes and allowed herself to be carried away, away to the back garden, surrounded by flowers.

They were helping Aiko take her first steps.

Keizo propped her up and gently released her.

Come on, you can do it! One, two, three tottering steps, then a gurgling laugh as Aiko fell into her arms and Keizo was clapping and—

The footsteps returned. They did not belong to the clerk. They were heavier and sharper, the clop of iron-heeled boots. Noriko lurched up and seized her damp clothes and frantically started dressing. But it was too late.

The door opened. It was the Toad, pistol on his belt, club in his hand. His glare turned into a smile when he saw her state of undress.

He leaned back out the door and looked up and down the hall, making sure no one was there.

He entered the cell and closed the door. Noriko huddled before him, clutching her clothes to her body, her soul dropping down through the floor.

There was no hope. It had all been a trick.

The Toad approached. He stuck his club under her chin and forced her to look into his face. “So, you think you have friends,” he sneered, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t carry.

He pulled back and started looking her up and down. He ran his club down her bare arm and along the diminished curve of her hip.

He started pushing the club between her legs. She resisted. He gave her a warning rap on the hand. It hurt, but still she resisted.

He stepped back and struck her on the shin. It was a practiced blow, sharp enough to cause agony without breaking the skin. Noriko cried out and dropped to the floor, clutching her leg.

The Toad looked down at her and smiled. “Do you see your friends here?” He looked around the room, feigning confusion. “Where are they? I don’t see them.”

He cracked the club across her other shin. Noriko let out a strangled cry and rolled into a ball, clutching her legs with one hand, covering her breasts with the other. The Toad watched her with satisfaction, seemingly pleased to have caused so much pain with so little effort.

He squatted down beside her, thrusting his face into hers, breathing stink.

“You have no friends here,” he whispered. “There’s only me. Understand?”