Keitai Friends Page 2
Restrained by two large and non-communicative enforcers, a short, stocky policeman walked up and stared at him. The policeman’s mouth was moving to form words yet he was not uttering a sound - he was practicing. It was surreal as Josh began to interpret the words. “What is you name?” the policeman mimed. Silently, Josh corrected the policeman’s English. “What is YOUR name? YOUR name,” his inner voice repeated angrily. “JOSH,” he answered out loud leaving the moment hanging.
The policeman, not sure of what was happening linguistically, took time to organise the next utterance. “Magazine, do you have magazine?” the policeman blurted in a heavily accented, abrupt voice. Josh was dazed now. Publicly humiliated, roughed up and unrepresented he just couldn’t process his situation coherently. “Magazine, what bloody magazine?” he replied, shaking his head in defiance.
The policeman did not respond immediately but made eye contact in succession with the policeman on the left and the policeman on the right. Still restrained, Josh leaned as far forward as he was able. Craning his neck, he moved his head as close to the policeman’s face as possible and one syllable at a time shouted. “NO - MA - GA – ZINE !”
The policeman, expressionless and without moving his head made eye contact with the other officers one more time, only this time with a more assertive and authoritative glare. The policeman on Josh’s right strengthened his grip, the one on the left taking a step forward, ripping Josh’s jacket open shoving his hand in the inside pocket. He withdrew the magazine from Josh’s jacket as if withdrawing a katana (sword) from its saya (casing).
Dangling the magazine in front of Josh’s face, he swung it from side to side to taunt him.“Resheeto wa ?” (Where is the receipt?) asked the policeman in Japanese with a rising and playful inflection in his voice.
Josh said nothing. Full of contempt he adopted a neutral facial expression and avoided eye contact.
The police, sensing his declaration of non-cooperation pushed him forward in the direction of a waiting police van, parked on the verge just outside the Hankyu station.
In what seemed like a blur of images and sensations taking place in the space of several seconds, he was in the main holding cell at Sonezaki police station at Umeda. The cell door slammed shut, the sound of the electronic lock snapping in to place echoing through his head. The cell was painted white, was well lit and fitted with stainless steel benches on either side. He shuffled over to the right hand side bench and collapsed into a sitting position. Leaning down, face in his hands, he groaned in a low voice then fell silent.
He remained like this for some time, listening to the muffled sounds of the traffic outside, the trains exiting and entering the subway system, people talking in Japanese, all unintelligible to him.
Finally Josh sat up, more relaxed but feeling the weight of his backpack. In a flash he remembered ‘THE DRUGS’. Panicking, he looked from side to side quickly realising that there was no one in sight nor within earshot. He wriggled as he took off the uncomfortable encumbrance, placing it on the floor in front of him.
“Fuck,” he cursed out loud. “What to do?” he thought.
His mind quickly ran through a thousand scenarios in a split second, whirring through the possibilities and the penalties. He began to realise that in a closed holding cell, there were very few options available to him. He had to get rid of the drugs. He looked around the cell, there was no toilet, no holes in the concrete floor and only a tiny little port hole window. Swallowing the drugs would kill him. Stamping them into powder would just make a trail of pink powder on the floor. He sat, slowly deflating; his only solace the thought that at least they weren’t on to him. He slowly realised how likely it was that he would soon be found out. His only option was to shove the stuff down his pants or into an orifice on his body but the bag; the pills; sharp corners. It all began to seem a bit impractical. He noticed a concealed security camera in the opposite corner of the cell and was thankful that he had not acted on any of his hasty and ill-conceived ideas realizing that the police had been watching him the whole time.
Josh sat for a moment and tried to work out what to say so the police wouldn’t go near the bag. Before a plan had emerged, the lock on the door recoiled with a loud echoing flick of metal on metal. A short, slight and nervous policeman opened the door and walked in.
There was a meaningless exchange of glances between them before the policeman stood in front of Josh who was sitting, his bag at his feet. He looked over the shoulder of the policeman at the camera, concerned that the police would pick up on his nervous body language if he made any further eye contact with the policeman in the cell.
There was an awkward silence until the policeman asked in controlled and heavily accented English, “Why did you steal a magazine?” Without thinking and grasping at straws, Josh surprised himself by responding in an emotion laden, helpless voice of a victim. “I thought it was free,” he pleaded. “No, no free,” replied the policeman patronisingly adopting the persona of an anime superhero, reaffirming the position any truly law abiding citizen should take. “I made a mistake,” Josh declared, “I can pay.” “You have money?” asked the policeman. “Yes, yes, I can pay,” Josh reiterated. The gravity of his situation lifted as a way out of his situation came within reach.
His eyebrows shifted horizontally as his expression changed to one of composure. “Why did you steal magazine, you have money?” continued the policeman. Shattered by the policeman’s logic Josh sat silent and expressionless. The gig was up. He had the money, had just stated that he knew he had the money and he hadn’t used it to pay for the magazine. “Burden of proof discharged,” he thought to himself.
He didn’t answer the policeman choosing to look randomly around the room while nervously rubbing his chin. His gaze rested on his bag in front of him until, in a flash of awareness, he realised he was drawing attention to it. He quickly jerked his gaze up to the ceiling, then fleetingly at the policeman. Josh realised the policeman had detected a change in body language and was now looking at the bag on the ground. Josh stopped gazing randomly, focusing on the far corner of the cell, not realising that he had further confirmed the policeman’s suspicions that there was something in the bag.
Without a word, the policeman walked out of the cell. Josh could hear him barking out what seemed to be orders to others, judging by the volume and curt nature of the words. He could understand that several other officers were responding. "Hai, wakarimashita," (yes, I understand) reverberated in his ears like alarm bells, signalling imminent action that he quickly reasoned would involve the bag and then the drugs.
Terror raced through his body; his life; his dreams; his job; his FRIENDS. He remembered that all his friend’s numbers were stored on his keitai. Instinctively he pulled his phone out and opened the address book. In a frantic yet concentrated effort he selected delete and confirmed the action as fast as he could, one by one down the list. He became unaware of the call to arms developing in a conference room outside his cell as tears began to well in his eyes. He began to feel a sense of loss for each number deleted as if he was deleting a part of his life. He then felt despair as the phone was yanked out of his hands by a young police man and his back pack was picked up by another.
Josh had no idea how many of his friend’s numbers he had deleted and how many he hadn’t as the cell walls seemed to move closer and the ceiling became lower. Tears began to flow freely and anxiety pooled in his lower stomach as he realised that this day had been and was now ended - spent - never to be revisited or changed. Unable to look and too petrified to express emotion, his mind screamed ins
anely as he heard the excruciating sound of the zipper of his back pack being ripped open.
###
Illustrations by:
Kumi Shimizu and Maho Kanagawa
About the author:
[James lived and worked in Japan for just over 6 years returning to Australia to raise a young family. He teaches high school Japanese and is presently working towards a law degree]
'Memoirs of a Vending Machine',
Kujira
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