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Authors: Jesse Ball

Tags: #Mystery

Silence Once Begun (7 page)

BOOK: Silence Once Begun
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INT
.

And then the hospital wouldn’t accept him?

MRS. ODA

The hospital wouldn’t accept him. He was bleeding all over. He wasn’t even awake. He was going in and out. The doctor looked at him, opened the back of the ambulance, looked at him and said that he would not receive him at that hospital, that everyone should know he would not do such a thing for the Oda family. I don’t know. I ask you, how can such a person be a doctor? My husband was taken to another place where there were real doctors, an actual hospital, not like this first one. There he was taken care of. In all the years since, I have never gone to that hospital, not once. I tell my friends, also, do not go there. That is not a good place.

INT
.

But the main thing I wanted to ask you about was Sotatsu telling Jiro that he hadn’t done it.

MRS. ODA

We did not believe Jiro. He was always a difficult child, did poorly in school, was always lying. He was a lying child, every time he would say something it was likely to be something a person couldn’t believe. You had to look at everything from three sides and even then it would turn out to be false. So, he gets it in his head he would convince Sotatsu of something. We did not believe him. Also, he picked the worst time to tell anyone about this. In the hospital room when my husband was nearly dying? He did not die, no. But he was almost dying, very close to it. My daughter came from Tokyo, just to see my husband, just because of his injuries. She did not visit Sotatsu. She was there,
and she didn’t like it either, what Jiro was doing. We were not alone.

INT
.

But he is your son.

MRS. ODA

Yes, he is. He has done better for himself. Now he has a good family. He is no longer the same. But when he remembers that time, I do not think he can be trusted.

Interview 8 (
Mother
)

[
Int. note
. Mrs. Oda returned specifically to explain her last point. I was woken up by knocking at the door of the house where I was staying. I went downstairs and there she was. She apologized for the sudden visit, but felt there was something that must be cleared up.]

MRS. ODA

I will tell you a story about Jiro. I will explain why he cannot be trusted, not really at all. He used to have a game where he would pretend that he was a lord and he would have his toys come before him and present him with cases to decide. He thought this was a very amusing game. I do not remember him ever playing it with anyone else, just alone. He would do different voices for the different toys. They did not need to be figures in order to bring a petition. His favorite spoon, for instance, was often coming. First in line, second in line, third in line—they would all argue and jostle, trying to be the first to speak to Jiro, and he would sit on a little stage he had made and argue with them or tell them what was what. Well, it would be like this: Jiro would say, who is this and what have they to say? And the little wooden box would be there in front of the spoon which was in front of the cloth bird and they would all be shouting and saying things and Jiro would hold up his hand for silence. Then there would be some quiet and he would say they would all be taken and killed if they couldn’t speak in turn. Then the box would say, I don’t know what it would say exactly, this was something that went on all the time,
hundreds of times. Possibly the box had something it was always asking for, and never getting, I don’t know. But it might say, I don’t like the spot where I am put at night. Often other ones get placed on my head and it’s uncomfortable, and Jiro would say, don’t open your mouth again or I will have you killed, and he would send the box away. Then it was the spoon’s turn. He would say that, would say the same thing every time. No matter what was said to him, he would say that, don’t open your mouth again or I will have you killed. I doubt he even remembers it. This was long ago, even before he went to school.

INT
.

But why do you say that he can’t be trusted? I’m sorry, I don’t see …

MRS. ODA

That he thinks everyone should receive the same treatment, regardless of what they did or what they say? Or that it doesn’t matter what anyone does—it all ends up the same? Maybe he has changed some things about himself, but a boy is a boy. He is still the same one he was. Don’t tell him that I told you this. Or do. I guess I don’t know.

(She roots around in her bag and brings out an old soup spoon.)

MRS. ODA

This is it, I thought I would bring it to show you. For some reason, he would always have this spoon go on and on. It was like the spoon was trying the most to convince him. But it never did. I would be sitting in the next room and listening as he would play this game. I would listen to the whole game. Every time I listened, from beginning to end. The things he would have them say, you couldn’t believe. But this spoon
was always the one with the most elaborate excuses, the most long-winded little speeches. Always it was the same, though. Don’t open your mouth again, or I will have you killed. I really pitied the spoon, so, so I still have it.

INT
.

It is a keepsake, from Jiro’s childhood. That’s a good thing to have, and a good reason to have it.

MRS. ODA

Oh no, I don’t think of it that way. I rescued it from him. I don’t think he cared about the spoon at all.

Interview 9 (
Father
)

[
Int. note
. I had attempted to speak with the father on many occasions. He would agree over the telephone to meet, and then the day would come and he would simply not arrive. His wife gave many excuses: his declining health; the difficulty of travel; the day was hot, etc. When we spoke again on the telephone he would act confused. He had not known we were to meet, etc. After perhaps nine or ten such assignations, he finally arrived. He was extremely thin and small, hardly the dominating force that he had seemed to be from his family’s accounts of him. However, when he spoke, there was a certain forcefulness there. Like his son, he appeared to distrust and dislike me. He felt that I was attempting to trick Mrs. Oda into telling me things that I shouldn’t hear. He had come to set things straight. I was not to listen to the things that Mrs. Oda said. He wanted to make that clear. He was going to tell me some things, and that would be that. The things he would tell me would take the place of what Mrs. Oda had said, and certainly should take the place of whatever nonsense his son was feeding me. He was surprised to hear that Minako had spoken to me. He did not know she was in the country, and seemed confused by the news. It took a little while to get him back on track. He preferred to speak in the yard, so occasionally on the tape there is the sound of traffic in the distance. He said that when one was his age, any day with a fine afternoon sun like that had to be used. One had to use things when one had them, so he said.]

INT
.

Where shall we begin?

MR. ODA

I was not surprised when I heard the news, when I
was told by our neighbor that someone had seen my son taken away to the police station. I can tell you that, Mr. Ball. I was not surprised at all. If these things took others by surprise, well, they did not take me by surprise.

INT
.

Why were you not surprised? How could you possibly have guessed that such a thing would happen?

MR. ODA

I have always known that something terrible was going to come. Until then our life had gone well. I was living in the shadow of this thing, this terrible thing that no one else could see. But, I knew that it was coming. Fishermen are not like other people. We can tell things; not like priests. I am not saying we are special or deserve any regard. We deserve no regard. In fact, one might say we are the lowest ones, drudging around in the water for a lifestyle that keeps one’s family poor, that never amounts to anything. But we do see things. Sometimes we see them before they happen. It is not reliable. It isn’t the same as knowing about things. One doesn’t find it useful, you see? Do you, do you see? It isn’t a useful thing. It is just a thing. I knew something grave was coming, and when it came, I recognized it. I had seen it before, you see. It was like an old friend. Or an old enemy. One saw, though, immediately, that there were no preparations that could have been made. That sort of thing is just foolishness.

INT
.

So, you thought Sotatsu was doomed? That he never would have amounted to anything?

MR. ODA

He and my brother got along very well. My brother’s
business was nearly ruined by that, by Sotatsu’s presence. But they got on well.

INT
.

Why did you not visit your son in the jail?

MR. ODA

What do you mean? I went there. I went there first, before anyone.

INT
.

I’m sorry, I know that, I meant to say, why did you not visit him after that first visit? Why did you stop going?

MR. ODA

This is not the reason I came here to talk to you.

INT
.

Do you have something else you want to talk about?

MR. ODA

I do. I do.

INT
.

Well, tell me what you want to tell me. I am ready to hear anything you have to say.

MR. ODA

Mr. Ball, my son was ill. He was ill his whole life. He was sick once as an infant. My wife denies it, but she is a moron. He cried once for two weeks straight and his head turned blue. He recovered, but he was never the same. He was always ill with this, whatever it was. He thought he could hear bells ringing all the time. It was part of his illness. That’s why he was always playing records. He wanted it out of his head.

INT
.

No one else says anything about this.

MR. ODA

You shouldn’t listen to the others. This is what we are saying, that I am telling you the things now that you can use. We are talking about that.

INT
.

I understand that. You said that already.

MR. ODA

Maybe others couldn’t see it, but I always could. I could always tell when he was about to do something stupid. He would get this blue look, this look that I recalled from his childhood. It would be like he was being strangled, but he wasn’t, and you would know, you would just know—he is going to do something now that everyone will regret. And then he would do it. Of course, he would never apologize either, afterward. He would do something like, for instance, he would forget to greet me when I came in. I would just stare at him and stare at him, waiting, and the longer I stared the more I could see it building up. Then, instead of saying anything, anything at all, he’d just up and run off out of the house. And Jiro would run off too. Anything he did, Jiro would do. Only Jiro didn’t have the sense that Oda sometimes had. Although now, it’s not easy to say which one turned out worse.

INT
.

Are you angry at Jiro for something that he has done?

MR. ODA

You come here and it is like you are going to fix something, but either the thing that is broken is part of something that is gone, or you are doing no good with the thing that is still around. I don’t know why I came to talk to you.

INT
.

Please, just let me ask you a few questions. You said at one point, after the accident, when you were in the hospital, you said …

MR. ODA

That is an invention of my wife’s. I was not in the
hospital. I don’t know about that. She talks about it sometimes. I don’t know where she got that.

INT
.

All right. Well. It is said that you forbade the family from visiting with or talking about Sotatsu. That you were very angry with Sotatsu and no longer wanted to have him be a part of your family, that you specifically told your daughter, your wife, and your son not to speak to him or visit him. Is that true?

BOOK: Silence Once Begun
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