Occupied City

The Eighth Candle — The Martyr-log of a Homo Sovieticus

Tokyo, January 9, 1947

This city, this country, is a wilderness to me and so these words, these pages, will document my temptations, my trials. Hence there are words for reports, for the tops of desks, the desks of others, and then there are words for diaries, the drawers of memories.

I finally arrived here in Tokyo from Khabarovsk two days ago. Yesterday I met with Comrade Maj. Gen. A. N. Vasiliev, one of our Associate Prosecutors at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. I had been told in Khabarovsk that it was Comrade Vasiliev who had personally requested my presence in Tokyo. However, it was clear from our first meeting that Comrade Vasiliev had made no such request. Comrade Vasiliev was aware, though, that it had been I who had conducted the interrogations of Major Karasawa Tomio and Maj. Gen. Kawashima Kiyoshi in Khabarovsk last year. Comrade Vasiliev had read the transcripts of my interrogations of the prisoners and my report and its conclusions on the Japanese Bacteriological Warfare programme as it pertained to possible prosecutions for war crimes, both in Tokyo at the IMTFE, and in Khabarovsk at our own proposed trials of former servicemen of the Japanese army.

I had been told in Khabarovsk that an informal approach had been made to the Americans to interview Ishii, Ōta and Kikuchi. Hence, my presence in Tokyo would be required to conduct the interviews. Comrade Vasiliev confirmed that a low-key approach had been made through the backroom staff of the American IPS. However, the G-2 (Intelligence) Section of the American GHQ had informed Comrade Vasiliev that any such request must be submitted in writing, detailing the reasons for the interrogations.

On my arrival, Comrade Vasiliev was therefore in the process of submitting a formal request to Maj. Gen. Willoughby, chief of G-2, to interrogate Ishii, Ōta and Kikuchi and I was able to assist in the preparation of the request:

‘At the disposal of the Soviet Division of the International Prosecution Section,’ we wrote, ‘there are materials showing the preparation of the Kwantung Army for bacteriological warfare. To present these materials as evidence to the Military Tribunal it is necessary to conduct a number of supplementary interrogations of persons who worked previously in the Anti-epidemic group (Manabu) N731 of the Kwantung Army. These persons are:

Lt. Gen. of Medical Corps Ishii, commander of the Anti-epidemic group N731.

Colonel Kikuchi, Chief of the 1st Section of the Anti-epidemic group N731.

Colonel Ōta, Chief of the 4th Section (and prior to that, chief of the 2nd Section) of the Anti-epidemic group N731.

‘These persons’, we continued, ‘are to testify about research work on bacteria carried out by them for the purpose of using bacteria in warfare and also about cases of mass murders of people as the result of those experiments. I believe that it would be expedient to take preliminary measures preventing the spreading of information concerning this investigation before the investigation is completed and the materials are presented to the Tribunal, i.e., to take from these witnesses certificates to the effect that they promise not to tell anybody about the investigation of these matters and to conduct the preliminary interrogations not in the premises of the War Ministry building.

‘In connection with the above-said, I ask you to render us assistance through the IPS in conducting the interrogations of the said persons on January 13, in premises specially assigned for this purpose, and after taking from them certificates containing promises not to speak about the investigation.

‘Besides that,’ we concluded, ‘I request you to provide the Soviet Division of the IPS with certificates of the whereabouts of Lt. Col. Murakami Takashi, former chief of the 2nd Section of the Anti-epidemic group N731, and Nakatome Kinzo, former chief of the General Affairs Section of the same group. These certificates are needed for the purpose of submitting them to the Tribunal.’

Both Comrade Vasiliev and I felt the letter carried just the right amounts of deference and contempt, promise and threat. Still, I could not help but feel — given all we know that they know and all they know that we know — that our knees were bent, our caps in hands. Then again, if the child does not cry, the mother cannot know it is hungry. And as long as I get my hour with Ishii, I do not care if I have to beg.

January 12, 1947

Early this morning, before the light, I walked down to Tokyo Bay and I stood on the docks and waited for the dawn. As I watched the faint winter sun struggle up the heavy winter sky, I thought of the thousands of dawns I had seen, the thousands of miles I had walked, over these past ten years, to stand there on those docks, in this city, in that dawn, on this day.

And maybe it was the water and the light, maybe the hour and the season, but I was suddenly beset with childhood memories of post-revolutionary Petrograd in that eerie winter of 1917-18, when the city and its people seemed to have broken free of their moorings, when the city and its people seemed to be floating off somewhere unknown.

Roads are never straight for long; they twist and they turn, they rise and fall, fork and diverge. With or without maps, there are always choices to be made; always choices and always consequences, whether you stay or whether you go, choices and consequences, consequences and farewells.

All those farewells, some said and some unsaid, but all those people still gone, floating off somewhere, somewhere unknown, somewhere down the river, somewhere behind me.

For behind me this morning, on those grey docks, were the ruins of Tokyo, the ruins of Japan, of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, of our Russian Motherland and our Soviet Republics, of Germany and of Europe, all lain flat out behind me, everywhere and everyone collapsed, the cities and the people, the people still suffering.

But in front of me, across that bay, across the ocean, I knew there was America; an America not in ruins, for America has no ruins. America does not know invasion. America does not know siege. America does not know surrender. America does not know defeat. America does not know suffering as the rest of the world knows suffering.

Between their West and our East, there is not only a curtain, there is a vastness — across plains and over mountains, from the sea to the sky — a vastness and a sorrow. Two worlds now divided, as Comrade Andrei Alexandrovich Zhadanov observed, into the Imperialistic and the Democratic.

And this city and these people would seem to have made their choice, to have chosen their side. And once again, they seem to have chosen the wrong side of the river; once again, the wrong moorings. And though I have been here only three days, this Occupied City is a hard place to like, and its people — both the Occupiers and the Occupied — arouse in me no sense of either fraternity or sympathy.

But as the great Nikolai Vassilyevich Gogol once wrote, ‘It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.’

January 15, 1947

The Americans have been stalling but, finally, early this morning I went to the War Ministry with Comrade Colonel Lev Nicholaevich Smirnov and our interpreter. Comrade Smirnov, along with Comrade Colonel Mark Raginsky, has only recently arrived in Tokyo to assist our prosecution team at the IMTFE, now that the Nuremberg trial has concluded. And though this was the first time I had met Comrade Smirnov, I had of course read in newspapers and other reports of his heroic words as one of our prosecutors at Nuremberg.

The Americans were represented by Lt. Col. McQuail of G-2, Major Keller of the Chemical Warfare Service, a D. L. Waldorf from the International Prosecution Section, and their own interpreter who was very obviously also from G-2.

Of course, the meeting went entirely the way we had predicted it would; Lt. Col. McQuail asked us to explain what information we had which led the USSR to want to interrogate the subjects Ishii, Kikuchi and Ōta. So it was time for us to show our hand, so to speak, as we knew would happen.

Comrade Smirnov began by giving brief details of the capture, ranks and responsibilities of our prisoners Karasawa and Kawashima (during which the Americans feigned disinterest). Comrade Smirnov then began to detail the information obtained from our interrogations of the prisoners, mainly being the extensive experiments in BW at the Pingfan Laboratory and its associated field experiments, using Manchurian and Chinese bandits as materials, of whom approximately 2,000 are believed to have died as results of these experiments at Pingfan.

It was most interesting and very telling to note the reaction of the Americans to the evil catalogue of horrific murders and gruesome torture through perverted experimentation that Comrade Smirnov detailed for them: NOTHING. This proved to us that ‘our friends’ were either already familiar with these details from their own interrogations and sources, or completely devoid of all moral feeling. The only question that Lt. Col. McQuail remembered to ask Comrade Smirnov was in regard to Pingfan; to what extent had it been destroyed and by whom?

To this question, Comrade Smirnov replied that Pingfan had been completely destroyed by the Japanese themselves in their retreat and in an obvious attempt to cover up all evidence. All documents were also destroyed. So thorough was the damage, that our own experts did not even bother to photograph the ruins.

It was hard not to laugh at them, and also ourselves, but then Comrade Smirnov let them know we were not there to joke around, to play the fool for them.

‘The Japanese’, he said, ‘have committed a horrible crime, killing 2,000 Manchurians and Chinese, and Ishii, Kikuchi and Ōta were involved. Furthermore, the mass production of fleas and bacteria is very important. At the Nuremberg trials, an expert German witness testified that the spreading of typhus by fleas was considered the best method of BW and it would now seem that the Japanese have this technique. So it would be of value to the USA as well as the USSR to get the information. So it is our request that the Japanese be interrogated without being told they are liable to be charged and prosecuted as war criminals, and that they be made to swear not to tell anyone about the interrogations.’

With these remarks, the meeting concluded with the usual false promises and outright lies of quick replies and further meetings, of consultation and cooperation.

At the door, while the Colonels were trading boasts, this man Waldorf from the IPS suddenly whispered, ‘Tell me honestly Comrade, how long have you really known?’

‘Since the summer of 1938,’ I told him.

‘So long?’ asked Waldorf. ‘But how?’

‘Chyornye voronki,’ I said, knowing then that tonight I’ll dream again of the chyornye voronki.

But tonight I will not dream of the black ravens of Harbin, driven by the Japanese, to kidnap the Chinese. No, tonight I will dream of other black vans, driven by me. Tonight, I will be driving again down the streets in my second hand leather jacket, streets that lead to forests, forests that lead to graves, and these streets will not be Chinese streets, these forests not Chinese forests, these graves not Chinese graves, the streets will be Russian streets, the forests Russian forests, and my cargo will be Russian cargo, Russian citizens for Russian graves.

January 18, 1947

Was at the cinema in the ballroom below the Foreign Press Club. I went with Comrade B.G. and Comrade B.A. to see Rhapsody in Blue. Afterwards, we were joined by two of the American correspondents and we drank and argued once again about who won the war, and who will win the next one.

At the end of the evening, when we had all drunk too much, one of the Americans said to me, ‘So, Comrade, did you enjoy the movie? Do you like Gershwin?’

‘No,’ I said, but it was a lie for, although I did not like the film, I do like Gershwin.

February 9, 1947

Inquiring daily for decision. Told via IPS channels that our request is still being considered. Of course, from our intercepts of their communications we are fully aware as to the truth of the situation: Uncle Sugar Sugar Roger is being given the good old American-style runaround.

February 27, 1947

Comrade Vasiliev had a ‘full and frank exchange’ of opinions with their Colonel Bethune in regard to our request to interrogate former Lt. Gen. Ishii, et al. First of all, Comrade Vasiliev demanded to know whether or not the interrogations would be permitted. Colonel Bethune stated — through his G-2 interpreter — that no decision had been made as to whether or not the interrogations would take place. Comrade Vasiliev then asked if the location of the subjects — Ishii, et al. — were known. Colonel Bethune stated that if they were in Japan they could be found ‘presumably’. At this point in this ludicrous charade, I very much wanted to take out my pen and a piece of paper and write down Ishii’s address for him. Finally, Comrade Vasiliev insisted that the USSR merely wanted information pertaining to war crimes and agreed to make available to American interrogators the documents and the witnesses which we have, if desired. But Colonel Bethune merely reiterated that when the interrogations had been authorized by ‘a higher authority’, then the IPS would be notified. Comrade Vasiliev was not placated and demanded to see Gen. Willoughby in person to resolve the issue. Of course, this demand was denied.

March 7, 1947

Increasingly unpleasant exchanges between ourselves and ‘Our American Friends’ at GHQ. Comrade Lt. Gen. Kusma Derevyanko, our member of the Allied Council for Japan, submitted a memorandum in regard to the ‘stalemate’; there are five Japanese prisoners of ours who ‘our friends’ would like turned over to them for war crimes. Similarly, we request that ‘our friends’ turn over Ishii, et al., for war crimes. As usual, we have been told to wait ‘while Washington is consulted’.

April 12, 1947

Comrade Lt. Gen. Derevyanko finally received a written reply from Willoughby: Despite no clear-cut war crimes interest by the USSR in acts allegedly committed by the Japanese against the Chinese, permission is granted for SCAP-controlled Soviet interrogations of Gen. Ishii and Cols. Kikuchi and Ōta as an amiable gesture toward a friendly government. It should be noted, however, that the permission granted in this instance does not create a precedent for future requests, which shall continue to be assessed on their individual merits.

No doubt now the real waiting will begin while Our Amiable Friends’ in GHQ debrief Ishii and his gang.

May 9, 1947

Today was a day of the greatest jubilation for today was Victory Day in the Soviet Union, marking the end of the Great Patriotic War. But has the Great Patriotic War ended? I remember when the tide turned at the Front, how our newspapers blared forth fanfares, and how our evening skies were lit up by ever more extravagant displays of fireworks. And I also remember looking up at that sky, at those fireworks one night — where? Was I still in Moscow? — and, feeling only sorrow, only anger, I heard from somewhere someone whispering, ‘Be careful, this victory is not what you think it is at all, you will have to answer for it and pay the due retribution …’ And then, of course, I silenced myself; my duty, of course, is to rejoice. Rejoice! Rejoice!

June 6, 1947

The clock showed midnight, then one o’clock, two o’clock. Still there was no answer. The calendar showed Monday, then Tuesday, Wednesday. April, then May, now June. Still there was no answer. So days and weeks have passed, but thoughts and memories have not. For external time and internal time never correspond and so they remain unchanged, these thoughts and these memories. And then yesterday the answer finally came; we are to be allowed to interview the criminal Ishii, but only in the presence of the Americans, and only at the criminal Ishii’s residence, and only tomorrow, that is, today.

So an American jeep picked up our own interpreter, our own stenographer and me this morning. Of course, I had not slept, but had spent the entire night preparing for this encounter, not knowing if further interviews would be granted.

We were seated in the back of the jeep, the windows obscured, and driven around the city in various directions for well over two hours until, finally, we arrived at our destination; 77 Wakamatsu-chō, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo.

At the Ishii residence, the atmosphere rather resembled a luncheon party than a criminal interrogation. As well as their own interpreter and stenographer, there were two uniformed officers whom I did not recognize and two men who were quite obviously from Camp Detrick, as well as Lt. Col. McQuail and Mr Waldorf. Ishii’s wife and daughter were also present as well as Ishii’s pet monkey (who, from its friendly disposition towards certain nationalities present, had obviously already met these particular Americans, or else it had been specifically trained to display antagonism only towards citizens of the Soviet Union). And then, of course, there was the General himself.

The criminal Ishii was bedridden and feigning ill health. However, he could not disguise his own inherent arrogance and also his contempt and disdain for the Soviet Union. The man, though, had been well coached by his American friends and so, for example, while admitting that he had authorized and overseen experiments on Chinese and Manchurian captives, Ishii repeatedly denied that any such experiments had been conducted upon Allied or Soviet prisoners.

This diary is not the place to record or repeat the full extent of either my questions or his answers. But, suffice to say, Ishii answered my specific questions only with generalities, denying he could remember, or presently had access to, any specific technical data. To quote him, ‘I cannot give detailed technical data. All the records were destroyed. I never did know many details, and I have forgotten what I knew. I can give you only general results.’

And in an obvious attempt to curtail any further investigation on our part, Ishii was also keen to portray himself as the person who should take full responsibility for Pingfan and N731 –

‘I am responsible for all that went on at Pingfan. I am willing to shoulder all responsibility. Neither my superiors nor my subordinates had anything to do with issuing instructions for experiments. I do not want to see any of my superiors or subordinates get in trouble for what occurred as a result of my instructions.’

However, in regard to his research into plague as a BW agent and the mass production of fleas, Ishii was categorical in his denial, stating that no such work had taken place. Of course, we know this to be an outright lie and it only confirms that an arrangement has already been made with the US in regard to this information.

And so it went on for almost two hours; vague generalities and professions of guilt, followed by categorical denials and outright lies.

However, a second and final interview with the criminal Ishii has been granted and is scheduled to take place in the criminal Ishii’s residence, again in the presence of the Americans, in one week’s time. At the conclusion of my interview today, I asked Ishii if he would agree to hold the second interview at a different location. To this Ishii replied, ‘I prefer to be interviewed at my house because of my health and also because I am afraid to leave my house.’

But at least now I have one full week in which to consider what action I should take at our next and final meeting.

June 13, 1947

I doubt I have slept more than one or two hours each night of this past week. My head and my thoughts have been filled with numbers; the numbers of the dead and the numbers of the hurt, the number of my temptations and the number of my sins (all of which I know now to be countless). Repeatedly, I have found myself forsaking the documents, the reports and the transcripts, and returning instead to the Ten Commandments, the thirty steps of the Divine Ladder of Ascent, and the forty days and forty nights Christ spent in the wilderness. How many days and nights have I spent in the wilderness, how far have I fallen from the steps of the Divine Ladder, how many of the Commandments have I broken?

As before, we were picked up and driven around for an hour in an American jeep. Again, as before, at the Ishii residence, the criminal was bedridden. And again, as before, he spoke only in generalities or lies. This was as I had expected.

But the meeting was not entirely pointless for, as I bid him farewell, I handed Ishii a letter. And, for the first time, the man looked frightened and worried. I have no doubt he will show the letter to his American friends. But still, tonight I shall pray he will reply or seek to make contact, if only to be rid of me and the threat of further interrogation.

There is the death and then the mourning, and after the mourning there is the forgetting. That was how it was with our father and our mother; the death, the mourning, and then the forgetting. That is how it should be, how it must be.

But if someone said to me: You should forget your brother now. You must move on. Then I would strike that person down. I would strike that man down!

For his is a death imagined. There was no body. There is no grave. No damp mound of fresh earth on which to fall, to lie, prostrate in the soil with my tears.

Imagine if we could never forget the dead, imagine if we were always mourning, imagine then a world of tears, everything flooded, everyone drowned. That is my world, this city, all flooded, all drowned.

The Year 2000 43rd of April

An extraordinary incident occurred last night. I had fallen asleep rather early, fully clothed upon my hotel bed, when I suddenly awoke again. I looked at my watch and I saw that it was a quarter to three in the morning and, at that precise moment, a man stepped out of my wardrobe.

The man was Japanese, dressed in black and wearing a beret. He had a pistol tucked into the belt of his trousers. I immediately jumped up from my bed and grabbed the pistol from out of his belt, knocking the beret off his head. I switched on the light and I pointed the pistol at the man.

The man fell to his knees, cowering and shaking. He claimed to be a former BW engineer. He told me he had important information to share with me. He told me he had evidence of war crimes by detachments 100 and 731. He told me he had documentary proof of experiments conducted on Chinese, Manchurian, American AND Soviet prisoners of war. He told me that all of this was in addition to the information and evidence that he knew we already possessed.

Of course, I wanted to believe him and was more than curious to hear his information and to see his evidence. However, equally, I could not help but have my doubts and suspicions about his words and about the man himself. For though he claimed to be a former BW engineer, he seemed to me to have the air more of a medical man than of a technician.

And though he had fallen to his knees, cowering and shaking before me, though he had offered no resistance when I had disarmed him, I did not believe the man was afraid of me. His actions, it seemed to me, were rather those of a highly trained actor, well versed in the dissemination of lies. And above all else, beneath this façade, it was difficult for me to determine the motivations of the man, what had led him to my room, to my wardrobe, the reasons he had for telling me the things he was telling me, and what reward he sought.

All was a mystery to me.

But still I listened to him. And still I agreed to investigate his claims. But in return, I had something to ask of him. And so I wrote a name on a piece of paper torn from this very martyr-log. And I gave him the name on the paper, telling him it was a test.

And I kept his pistol.

Martober the 86th, between day and night

Terrible dreams, every night, these dreams of Moscow, of the War College. First, of the fleas. Next, of the rats. Then, of the cells. The floorboards ripped up. Replaced with wire nets. And finally, the men.-Barefoot men, naked men. The men thrown into the cells. The men thrown onto the wire. The rats beneath the wire floor. The rats hungry, the rats biting. Up through the wire. Deep into the skin. Infected, plagued. Every night, these dreams. But in the dream last night, on the far wall was written, with blood for ink, in my brother’s hand, the words, ‘Avenge me.’

No date at all. The day was dateless.

The man from the wardrobe visited me again last night. And, as he had promised he would, he returned the page from this martyr-log on which I had written a name. And, as I had feared he would, beneath the name he had written an address — the address I have been searching for this last year. I know now I have no more excuses, only decisions to make.

Don’t remember the date. There was no month, either. Devil only

knows what there was.

Recently, I often think of those rotting, stinking old saints, their fossilized remains dug up from their graves and displayed in the Museum of Godlessness in the former Saint Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square opposite the un-rotting, un-stinking body of the Great Vladimir Il’ich Ulyanov.

Recently, I often think of the decay of the saints and, particularly, the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. I often think those forty days and forty nights were not so long, those temptations not so great, not compared to these years in this city, this wilderness and its temptations.

Every night before I sleep I say my brother’s name three times.-Then I say the Jesus Prayer three times. Finally, I spin the gun’s barrel three times and I pull the trigger, once.

The Great Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy once wrote that God sees the truth, but waits. But this poor citizen now knows, Man also sees the truth, but then he runs.

The 1st date.

The man from the wardrobe was here again. This time he was not shaking with fear, but shaking with anger.

‘You are the same as the Americans, Comrade,’ he spat. ‘I give you information, I give you evidence, but you do not use it for justice, you use it only for your own ends. You are just the same. All the same!’

The man then took out a piece of paper, a document and he read, ‘In 1941, in Ulan Bator and other areas of Mongolia, a Professor Klimeshinski carried out BW experiments on human beings using plague, anthrax and glanders. The subjects of these experiments were political prisoners and Japanese prisoners of war. The prisoners in chains were brought into an 8 man tent, on the floor of which were kept, under wire nets, a number of rats infected with pest fleas; the latter transmitted the infection to the subject of the experiment. The experiments were positive in most cases and infection ended in bubonic plague. Beside the rats, ground squirrels and other rodents also proved efficient intermediary hosts. It is known that the escape of one prisoner infected with bubonic plague started a great plague epidemic among the Mongols in the summer of 1941. To check the further spread of the epidemic, a chase was unleashed with the participation of many air units, during which some 3 to 5,000 Mongols met their death.

‘Glanders,’ he continued to read, ‘may be spread by guerillas, secret agents, or airplanes in regions in the possession or under the occupation of the enemy.

‘It is also known that in Moscow, from 1939 to 1940, a group of investigators, with the code name WAR COLLEGE, used infected food to try anthrax on political prisoners and prisoners of war who had been isolated in experimental cells.

‘It is believed that the Russians favour the infection of herds or pastures, or letting loose infected animals in enemy territory as dissemination by aircraft has proven unsatisfactory.

‘However, in conclusion, it is our belief that Stalin will not initiate BW until it is an absolute necessity and only as a last resort should German troops penetrate deep into Russian territory and an anti Soviet revolution breaks out in the country. In that instance, Stalin will order the use of BW agents, alleging that it was first started by the Germans.’

The man from the wardrobe stopped reading and he put away the piece of paper. And then he smiled and he said again, ‘Just the same. All the same. But not me! I will show you, show you all — Japanese, American, Chinese and Soviet — I will show you all. I will teach you all. I will infect you all!

‘First, I will infect Tokyo. Then, the whole of Japan. Finally, the world itself.

‘How you ask — never why, only how; always the first question and always the last — too late, always much too late — is the question why. Perhaps it is because, hidden in your hearts, you already know why. So you only, always ask how –

‘Well simply, I will poison the water supply. I will release fleas. I will release rats. And they will drop like flies — occupiers and collaborators alike — writhing in intestinal pain. There will not be enough ambulances, enough stretchers or beds. They will lie where they fall, one on top of the other, or side by side, their faces up and faces down, their hands raised, frozen and petrified, at their throats, dying in agony, fear and silence. And on your head will be these dead …’

The man is obviously mad and so I have nailed the wardrobe door shut.

Tokyo & Moscow. Februarius the thirtieth.

Each night I sleep, I dream of Russia, I dream of Moscow. In last night’s dream, in my second-hand leather jacket, I was pursuing a man when I saw that this man, this Japanese man who was running away from me, in his turn, was pursuing a third man who, not sensing our chase behind him, was simply walking at a brisk pace along the pavement. Then this third man heard the sound of our running boots and he turned to look behind him and I saw that the third man was my brother. Of course, when I awoke, I was still in Tokyo but my toes felt cold, my socks were damp and the bed muddy.

Maybe he is alive and it is I who am dead. My hands injected, frozen and black, and then hacked off like the handles on a clay pot before my own eyes. Maybe it is I who am screaming, ‘Avenge me! Avenge me! Avenge me!’

And so maybe it is I who am stood on the banks of the river among the silent legions of the murdered dead, the countless legions of the war dead, my threadbare overcoat rotting into the stagnant water and its tangled weeds, maybe it is I who am waiting for him to avenge me –

Stop! Stop! Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Spin! Spin!

Click! Click!

January of the same year, coming after February

I could no longer put off this day. I woke early again from a fitful sleep and I took the train out to Chiba. I got off the train at Funabashi Station. With the piece of paper in my hand — the piece of paper originally torn from this martyr-log, on which the man from the wardrobe had written an address below the name I had given him — I walked through the snow and the mud. Finally, I came to the house, his house, his big house by a shrine where he lives with his wife and his children. And I stood across the road from his house, in the sleet and the declining light, and I waited, with the pistol in my belt and the rain in my face, the encroaching night at my back. I watched the lights go on in his house. I heard children’s voices. I thought I could smell food cooking. And then the lights in the house went out and I thought I could see a figure at a window watching me, watching him. But frozen and soaked, incapable of either action or thought, I simply stood there.

The Date 25th

I dreamt of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s ‘Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap’ and, in the same dream, I heard the music of Bach. And when I awoke, clouds of snow hung low over the city, but it was ash that fell from the sky. And in that sky were written three words, three Russian words in our Cyrillic alphabet:

Avenge me…

And again I hated this city, this trap, and again I hated its people, these insects.

But I dressed quickly and I took the train back out to Chiba. I tried to keep my eyes on my boots, on the floor. But at every station, each time I glanced up, I saw that same sky out of the stained windows and I saw those same words, those three stained words, following me, watching me, suspended on strings, carried by swallows, flocks of swallows, in their beaks, three stained words:

I got off the train and I walked through the sleet and the mud up the long road to his house by the shrine, my eyes on my boots, my eyes on the ground. But all the time, with every heavy step, I felt the sky above me, those words above me, swallows flying blind, leading me, pointing:

There he is, before you now —

And then, sure enough, when I looked up, there he was before me, walking towards me and I knew: This man is murder, this man is death; this man is my brother’s murderer, his killer; and there he was before me–

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

And then the man, this murderer, he said in broken, halting English, ‘I know who you are and I know why you are here. I knew you would come and so I have been expecting you, waiting for this day. Now the day is here and the wait is over.’

I unbuttoned my coat and I took out the pistol.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

The man glanced at the gun and said, ‘I am ready, for I think you know, Comrade, as well as I do, that war is within all men, regardless of their politics, regardless of their religion, regardless of their nationality, regardless of their race. It is the abyss beneath all our skins, the abyss within all our skulls. And once we have looked as we have looked, into that abyss, once we have stared as we have stared, into that void, then we cannot look away, for the abyss stares back at us, turning our hearts black and our hair grey. And with our black hearts and our grey hair we are no longer human, we are only war, are only murder, only death.

‘And so shoot me, and then shoot yourself. Or arrest me, then hang me, and then yourself.’

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

I stepped towards him, tears on my cheeks. I grasped his head with my left hand, the pistol in my right hand. I brought his face towards mine, tears on his cheeks. I dropped the pistol. I kissed him on his lips. And then, then I walked away.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,

have mercy on me,

a sinner.

Da 26 te Mth yrae January 48

‘Only then do we set ourselves free from external oppression, when we have set ourselves free from internal slavery,’ wrote Nikolai Berdyaev. How right he was then, how right he is now.

This evening outside the hotel, they were waiting for me. I have no more strength to endure. I hear a chair fall in the room next door. I put on a clean, white shirt. That’s it now-

1 + 1 = 1;

2 + 2 = 5;

3 + 3 = 7;

4 + 4 = 9

Signed, Comrade / Saint Kaka / Akakos,

Comrade Yurodivy or St Shit,

Ward No. 6

Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, the medium closes this journal, this martyr-log, and now she holds this journal, this martyr-log over one of the five candles until the pale flame catches its pages and now this journal, this martyr-log begins to burn –

‘See,’ the medium laughs, ‘manuscripts do burn …’

Burning the journal, the martyr-log in the flame of the candle, the journal, the martyr-log now only ash, the candle,

the eighth candle now out –

‘I was and remain the best and brightest of all that is Soviet. Indifference to my memory and rumours about my death will be a crime. My body will be transported back to Moscow and my ashes placed alongside Gogol and Mayakovsky in the Novo-Devenchy Cemetery, under a red and black monument and an iron wreath of flywheels, hammers and screws. An iron wreath for an iron man –

‘So now, farewell Tokyo, murderous city …’

Beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, eight candles gone, another ghost gone, there are no red and black monuments here, no iron wreaths, for you are a tarnished, rusted and corroded man –

Tarnished, rusted and corroded by the tears-that-will-not-come, the book-that-will-not-come, in this place-of-no-tears, this place-of-no-book, only these words, on your head are these dead,

these words you have heard before, on your head are these dead, words you have heard twice now, on your head

are these dead, on your head

are these dead …

But beneath the Black Gate, in its upper chamber, in this now-occult square, the light of its now-four candles, there are sirens again,

two sirens, an ambulance siren and a police siren –

And now the medium lies before you, crumpled and flattened inside the circle, hands raised and stiff in the candlelight, a detective’s identification wallet in her black and broken fingers,

the medium a detective; a dead detective –

And now you crawl towards her, on your hands and on your knees, towards her prone body, and you put your fingers on her face to close her eyes, her two pitch-black eyes staring up at the ceiling of the upper chamber, the roof of the Black Gate, and in these two pitch-black eyes, in the eyes of this dead detective, you spy a crow, and in her eyes, you follow the flight of this crow,

in these two pitch-black eyes,

through the city, across its rooftops, down its streets, into its alleyways, in her eyes, her pitch-black eyes, and now these eyes, these two pitch-black eyes, these eyes they blink, alive again –

The medium, her left hand behind your head, pulls your face towards her own, and now her lips open your lips, her tongue touches your tongue, moving up and down, her tongue inside your mouth, up and down, in and out, up and down, in and now out –

For now, in the light of the candles, these four candles in their occult square, now the medium pushes you away and she whispers, she whispers the words of the dead detective –

‘You are not him. You are not the man I seek, the man I failed the man I failed THE MAN I FAILED