Silence Once Begun (12 page)

[I went on a walk with Jiro on one of the days I visited there. He said there was a way to go that would be quite pleasant, especially on a day like that. I didn’t know what he meant. It seemed like any other day, but when we went outside, there was a sun-shower going on. He said he loved sunshowers more than any other weather. They were good luck, but some people said you shouldn’t go out in them. Do you go out in them? I asked. I always do, he said. Always. We went down off of his property and along a thin road. No cars came or went. He told me that you get the whole place to yourself, since everyone stays in. Which place? I asked him. Any place, he said, laughing. After a while, we passed a small wooded area with some broken-down buildings. They were a deep rust red, and there was old broken farm equipment here and there. Something that had been a barn was now leaning on itself, huddling in. The site was quite arresting. I said there was no good catalog of the human qualities of buildings or alleys. Jiro asked me what I meant. I said something like, there is a quality of firmness or importance, secret importance that one puts on small geographies and features of landscape, houses, yards, hidden spots beneath trees. To have a list of such places. That was my explanation, and it prompted him to tell me the following.]

JIRO

Is it on? All right. This is the memory. When we were boys there was an old gate at the end of a little road. We would go to it. Do you know what I mean? Do you remember boys go to things, to places where limits exist—to the end of things wherever they can be found, to the bottom of holes, to the sea, to walls, fences, gates, locked doors. Do you remember of all
places, these are where boys feel their real work must be done? My parents had never taken us there. Matter of fact, we had never even seen anyone else on that road at all. When we stepped onto it, we felt we were gone away. Well, we would go there and look at this gate, just stare at it. We felt it was unclimbable, it was so rusty and sharp.

INT
.

You went there often, you say?

JIRO

At this time, at this one particular age, we were always there. We’d sit some distance from it, and have muttered conferences, make plans. Or if I just ran off from the house, or Sotatsu did, the other one would know that that’s where to go. He’d go there and find the one who’d run off. I was always finding Sotatsu there, and he was always finding me there. We thought that gate wasn’t in use, that someone had closed it a hundred years before, and that no one even remembered it was there. But, one day we went there and it was open. It was half swung open and the way was clear. I was terrified. It is hard to explain how frightening it was to me. I didn’t even want to go near it, but Sotatsu pulled me along. I balked at the very edge and he continued on. When I saw that he was going to go through, I started crying and ran home. I didn’t look back, not once. He went in by himself.

INT
.

Do you regret it?

JIRO

Somehow it happened that I never asked him what was in there. It seems like I would have, like such an important question couldn’t possibly have escaped me, but that is exactly how it happens. Children are
constantly forsaking whole methods of thinking in favor of new ways, and with that they give up all the old questions. Of course, later they remember. What did Sotatsu see in there? I am so fond of him when I think of it, when I imagine him at that gate, disappearing from sight. It is something I never saw, but I wish I had.

I went to visit the prison that Oda Sotatsu was kept in. I was not allowed to go inside, but I took photographs from the car that I had rented, and I drove to various points in the countryside where there were vantages onto it. I would like to say it was a remarkable building, but it wasn’t much of anything. An ugly complex, not even particularly threatening. There was a small store about a half mile from the entrance where they sold soda, candy, newspapers, maps, etc. I asked the man what he thought about the prison. He said it kept him in business. Apparently people would buy things there to take to inmates when they visited.
What’s the most popular thing?
I inquired. He held up some peculiar candy that I had never tried. I bought some of it.

I knew, of course, that it wouldn’t be the same thing people had been bringing in when Oda Sotatsu was there. I knew that. But when you are dealing with something as odd as this, you sometimes get a sense for how to behave. I felt like buying that candy changed my relationship to the prison. The remaining photographs I took were a little different. Later I asked someone, a photographer friend I knew, I asked her to look at the photographs I had taken. Of the lot of them, she separated out the six I had taken after going to the convenience store.

These ones
, she said,
these are much better than the others
.

[
Int. note
. On this day I had decided to be bold and ask Jiro about why he hadn’t tried harder to convince Sotatsu to recant. However, my opportunity for such a question did not arise.]

INT
.

Your brother had been in the prison then for a few weeks when you finally saw him?

JIRO

That’s true. The guards were confused. At first they took me to the wrong prisoner. It was an old man. He came to the edge of his cell and peered at me. I think he was trying to remember who I was. Probably no one had visited him in years.

INT
.

How long did you stand there?

JIRO

Not long. I said,
Good luck, old-timer
. He called me some name that I don’t remember. His voice was very shrill. The guard was looking at the paper he had been given. Suddenly he figured it out. He apologized and took me to the right place. It sounds very comedic, I know, but in a place like that, I don’t think the guards would do such a thing on purpose. I believe it was a mistake.

INT
.

But then he did take you to Sotatsu?

JIRO

Yes, and my brother was actually in another ward entirely. Not even the same building. In his special building all prisoners were in single cells. They couldn’t see one another. They ate alone. Even the exercise,
which was walking around in a concrete atrium—even that was alone.

INT
.

How large would you say the cells were?

JIRO

Perhaps seventeen square meters.

INT
.

And you were the first visitor he had had in weeks?

JIRO

I believe he had another visitor. I was told that. I think the girl was still seeing him. She was going during the trial, and the guard mentioned her to me. He said, your sister has been coming. Of course, I knew that wasn’t true. She did every single thing my father told her, everything he ever said, no matter how small, she did that thing exactly. There was no chance that she was visiting Sotatsu against my father’s wishes. That’s when I remembered that I had seen Jito Joo at the police station, and I connected her with a girl mentioned in a news report during the trial, a girl visiting Sotatsu.

INT
.

Have you ever spoken to her about it, since that time?

JIRO

Never.

INT
.

To get back to this first moment, the guard took you to Sotatsu’s cell. Did Sotatsu get up when he saw you?

JIRO

He was asleep. The guard had handed me off to a different guard. In fact, that process had happened three times. This deepest guard, he woke Sotatsu up by banging on the door. He opened the door and stood in it, banging it. Sotatsu opened his eyes. I could
see from where I stood, he opened his eyes but didn’t move aside from that. Here was a guard banging a stick and shouting his name and he just calmly lies there.

INT
.

Did you say anything?

JIRO

He sat up after a minute. When he saw me, his expression didn’t change, but he came over. The guard had shut the door by then, but there was a window that slid open and we could see through it, we could still see each other. I was always trying not to blink. I would stare and stare at him and then eventually I would blink, but he never would. I stood there with him until it got dark, maybe two hours. The guard told me five times, six times, I had to go, but I had a feeling I was getting all I would get of him, that I wouldn’t see him again, so I didn’t want to go. I put all of myself into just watching and stood there looking at him as powerfully as I could. Eventually, I had to go. And as it turned out, I was wrong. I did get to see him again. But, I was glad I stayed as long as I could that day.

INT
.

So, you left the prison when it was getting dark?

JIRO

Yes.

INT
.

And you said the bus didn’t stop there? You had to walk to the bus station?

JIRO

It was a two-hour walk to the bus station from the prison. Then, the bus didn’t run at night, so I slept in the bus shelter, leaning on the bench and an aluminum
fence, and caught the bus the next morning back in time for the second shift.

INT
.

That mustn’t have been so easy for you.

JIRO

It was hard, having what happened happen to him at all, but then, having him in a place that was so difficult to reach? That’s why I only went to see him maybe eight times. Maybe if I had had a car it would have been easier. I could do it, though, sleeping at the bus stop, walking for hours, I could do it because I could hardly feel anything. If it was like that for me, I was always thinking, what was it like for my brother?

[One day, I managed to convince Jiro to come with me to speak to his mother one final time. I had tried repeatedly to get access to her again, but she would not meet me. Jiro said that he thought he could convince her, but that if his father found out, it would never come to pass. He was as good as his word, and we met her in a park. There was a little wood and two benches sitting across from each other. I put the microphone by her and Jiro. I sat on the other bench. Some of my questions turned out to be inaudible, so I have reconstructed or omitted them. The words spoken by Jiro and Mrs. Oda were entirely clear.]

INT
.

I wanted to speak to you a little more, because I know that there are so many things you know that no one else does. Your knowledge of Sotatsu is something very valuable, I think, and I would appreciate it very much if you would share some more of it with me.

MRS. ODA

(nods to herself)

JIRO

We were speaking of the time that Sotatsu got a medal at school. Do you remember that?

MRS. ODA

(makes a shushing sound)

JIRO

Of course you remember that. I was trying to recall what the medal was for, but I couldn’t. Do you remember?

MRS. ODA

Geometry. A geometry medal.

INT
.

Was there some kind of competition that he won?

JIRO

Yes, I think there was. I think he won a geometry competition and they gave him a medal. He was very proud of it. As a matter of fact, I believe he kept it his whole life.

MRS. ODA

That’s nonsense. It wasn’t a competition. It was a thing he had to do, to get up in front of the school and present at a visit by the mayor. The teacher had him do it because she thought he would do the best job of it, but he didn’t. He actually misdrew the shape and labeled the lines wrong. The teacher gave him the medal anyway, since it had already been made.

JIRO

He always told me …

MRS. ODA

The teacher was very embarrassed. I believe he left the school partway through the year and they had to find a new teacher.