Ten or Twelve years more or less and a woman in a hat flies from Tokyo to London… (1)
They know little or perhaps even nothing about what they are doing. The research they did not do would horrify them for days and months afterwards. This is Seo, leaving meetings, and heading towards the airport, to travel from one continent to another… This is the long month long moment when they completed the becoming major from gangsters to capitalists. She already understands herself, themselves as normal and define every difference from this as divergent from the norm. By the end of these hat stories she will be a normal woman of the state. She already is of course, but at this moment when she is leaving meetings and heading to the airport, to travel across continents, she doesn’t know this. The transition did not mean that they were any less criminal at the end of the transition than at the beginning. Everything that happened before this is excluded. At this starting moment she and the world thought of her only as an upper class woman. An owner. There is no need for a preamble, after months of negotiation, analysis and the establishment of the prototypes. The draft documents are signed. The criminals watched the Chinese get into their car and stood in the doorway as they drove off, out of the drive and along the bay road. The cars headlights fading across the bay, the arc of the road, the shoreline and the cliffs of the nature reserves… She will be spend a still unknown number of days in London. She is sitting in the plane, she has taken off her hat, charcoal grey with colourful icons and chevrons. my first mother said if I wore this hat, I should be certain to get off with the right sort of man, Well, look where I am now, on a desert island, here I am now leaving Tokyo, my second mother may be causing me to die, wearing this hat… The first class cabin is mostly shades of grey and blue, the surrounds of the seats are beige, Neutral colours that hide the complex machinery from casual view. They fly out of Tokyo and are already cruising northwards. northwards. Her two companions are already asleep. They are all exhausted after the last few days. She should be, but is living on her nerves. The woman knows that neither her sister nor the man she lives with have left the locality in which they live for years. Though she knows more about their everyday activities now than when she had first flown to London to see her, still they remain almost invisible. The reason why they are visible at all does not occur to her. This may seem unimportant in this story of a woman travelling from Tokyo to London, accompanied by the only two people she really trusts and loves in the world, but still, since, the purpose of the passage from Tokyo to London is to beg forgiveness and ask for favors it seems important to acknowledge how little she understood of what motivates her sister to stay constrained, imprisoned in one place rather than to vanish. So here we are its a nice day in September, autumn will be approaching by the time she arrives in London and she is desperately hoping that the winter that follows doesn’t end up with a long line of dead people stretching between London and Tokyo. Whilst at this moment the true scale of the disaster she is trying to avert is unknown to her, she will grow to understand this over the next few months. She will wonder at the hubris of the person she was on the plane, imagining that she and her sister are still related in some way. She is laying in the half light, wishing she could sleep but instead is looking at the pale grey ceiling of the plane, the soft led daylights casting gentle shadows beneath the overhead lockers. The essential hum of machinery at 10,000 metres. In/on/at the stopover in Frankfurt they will carry out a final check on the European finances, and to brief them on the project they are about to be involved in. On the plane they offered her a drink, over the sea flying northwards, she took a glass of white wine, some water and some fruit juice. They left the menus with her. She fell asleep somewhere over the coast of Russia and had stress dreams of chairs, flying, falling, horrible felt dresses which recognized as being her sisters, and worst of all being chased though a city, or is that a woods, the office unfolding before her as she runs. She used to dream of having a child and a partner who stayed at home looking after the child. But these dreams had ended long ago. Though she had begun to have occasional thoughts of having a child with the man asleep in the adjacent seat. She cannot imagine how anyone could think of them as capable of such things. She is dressed in jeans and a linen jacket over a soft grey tee shirt with multiple folds in the arms and across her chest. When she takes off the jacket to eat later the attendants will not be able to see the single headed dragon tattoo on her body. The attendants rightly guessed that she and her two travelling companions are “senior business people” but they mis-assume that the men are more important than the woman. Patriarchal fantasies are omnipresent in this world. As she began to wake up she was aware that Sik was looking at her, holding her arm. Are you OK he asked. I dreamt of having a child again she said. Looking at her tired and stressed face. he said before he could stop himself. <We should, I would like that.> She realized he meant it. They ordered food from the menu, more liquids to drink. a peculiarly flavoured Ice cream for dessert. That’s disgusting he told the attendant, can I have some more ? She looked at the agendas for the next days meetings, at the newspapers that were full of discussions of irrelevant political evasions, and some useful discussion of how to change Bourgeois property law in Japan… She suddenly remembered that she hadn’t brought any presents with her for the children and others. I left them at home she said to them. I brought some for the children — and I’ve brought a couple of birthday presents for Osaka, Sik added. What did you get her ? A mint 1923 Shklovsky A Sentimental Journey — first edition., and a 1929 edition… She sighed, Yukio said that they were her third memory, but she thought they were her first memory… Well at least something worked out she thought. Sorry I didn’t mean to forget she said to them. Hours pass. Yukio and Sik are playing go, she cannot tell who is winning. She reviews the business section and is surprised to see a note about Kwarbarti’s property buying. She wondered what it was that was making her feel more relaxed. She puts her hand on his shoulder, Are you serious she asks. Yes I am. OK. It makes no difference, night or day, the shadows won’t fade away. Hours pass, His hand has been resting on her on her body for an hour. She left it there whilst watching an anodyne HK action film, her unconscious thinks she would have killed them without speaking. People speak too much in movies whilst they hold guns. She thought of the videos of Park running across Tokyo. We should have financed a movie she thought. The co-pilot announced they would be landing in two hours. and that something or other would be served. She took her travel bag and went for a shower and a change of underwear. The plane eventually began to descend, they drank tea. Talked about the hotel they staying in. Tomorrow. Frankfurt, the city and its suburbs rose up to greet them as they descended to the airport. They were very easy and quite charming the attendants said of them. A message arrived during the descent, There is a chauffeur waiting for you, Ms Seo at the exit. (I put on my Hat, I button my coat, Life’s little duties, precisely, at the very least, were finite to me) The familiar airport didn’t look as grey and mechanical as it usually did. Once she had looked at pictures of the anonymous rich at global meetings in magazines, curiously over the decade she no longer cared. The landscape greeted the wheels of the plane.
None of the names, places and languages in this vignette are accurate. The events, sex and gender however are.
This is Seo leaving the plane, wearing her hat, carrying hand luggage, going through the emigration desks speaking to them about why they had come. Afterwards collecting collecting the luggage from the conveyor belt and wheeling it through customs. Outside they found the chauffeur waiting with a sign that said (Ms Seo and party.) The driver took them from the airport to the hotel. The three of them sat in the rear of the limousine and discussed what to do in the evening. They were staying in the Sofitel. It had the usual things that global hotels have, restaurants, cafes, bars, a pool and gymnasium, room services, suites, laundry services and shopping services. They had two suites next to one another. Seo and Sik’s suite was neutral, soft browns and beige, engineered wooden floor over soundproofing and concrete, with multi-coloured rugs. Yukio’s was about the same size but slightly more colourful, a themed suite based around a mixture of Korean and Chinese colours and patterns. The hotel during the week was full of business travelers who always seemed to wanted to go somewhere. In the evening the three of them would sit down at the table in the restaurant and drinking, they would discuss how they should brief the hedge fund people and venture capitalist investors about the project. A day may not be enough in which case you should stay with them whilst they are doing the evaluation. She said looking at Yukio. That’s… Sik added, if we need to stay in London you should fly back to Tokyo to keep things running. Yukio looked between them. Are you thinking of running ? Sik nodded and Seo smiled at him. Only if we must, the two of us might be able to follow a line of flight and escape the bullets. I know you can’t do that Yukio, also at least one of us must survive this, and it should be you. Sik waved the waitress over and ordered three vodka martinis. Could you not die please, I would miss you. Yukio said finally, accepting the inevitable. Eventually, a little drunk, she goes upstairs and puts on the TV, finding an IP channel with South East Asian dramas on with a choice of English or German subtitles. She finds a drama about prosecutors and their corruption and lets it run in the background, the actors are a mixture of pretty young things and serious older ones. She looks at the contraceptives in the bathroom and wonders what to do. Whilst the drama plays in the background, she checks the weather for tomorrow which seems to suggest it will be good weather for meetings. When she leaves the hotel she leaves the contraception in the wastebin in the bathroom… [Here the meetings that take place from eight in the morning until six in the evening are deleted]
They know little or perhaps even nothing about what they are doing…
Originally published at https://www.driftwork.work on September 2, 2021.
