watching terrible events unfold — an epee-graph told from the future — appendix 5

She was making tea when he arrived back from Edinburgh. After a while she began to tell him about her day and how it was a little like a job she had done years ago in Osaka. They were by this time always talking about their personal histories, speaking of the things that they could not, dared not share with anyone. As she told him about this moment of her life, her language was as fuzzy as it could be and remain understandable. (Earlier today, lying on the hillside, thinking about the sense of deja vu, the already-seen, thinking that it has happened before. Even though Osaka was very different. The explanations of what they’d be doing, whilst you were in Edinburgh and I was working and watching, didn’t feel reassuring as I looked down from where the field turns into woodland watching through the scopes.)

My trip was planned in fine detail. I arrived in Kobe and rented a car for five days, the clerk was bored. You can leave it at any Hertz office she told me. The light was beautiful, the pylons on the highway were clearly visible even in the early evening. The landscape c. was featureless, it was November and the vegetation was very sparse and grey. In Osaka she/I left the car in the overflow carpark and went into the hotel. She tells him that I found him in the bar, he seemed like precisely the kind of disposable commodity I needed to distract herself […] I don’t remember anything about him, he asked her what she thought about it. It wasn’t easy finding any words. it was late, tiredness weighed upon me. I wanted to go to sleep but he wanted to stay awake and have sex again. I would have preferred to sleep as I had to leave early in the morning to drive into Osaka. I remember looking out at the lights of the bay, a dry breeze was blowing out past the hotel towards the bay. It was November and cold. There were three or four people on the terrace of the hotel two floors below the bedroom windows. He was stroking my back, tracing the lines of the tattoo. He was talking about going to the modern art museum tomorrow. It was late and he was tired as well, he must have thought I was going to go with him, occasionally he’d pause searching for the right word, and in those lapses she thought about driving at dawn towards Osaka. I listened to the owls calling outside as he became more insistent in his stroking and speaking, holding my right breast. He spoke of the klees and the massons in the museum. I told him that I was looking forward to it. The lapses in words and sentences as her attention wandered more, in her life life avoiding surveillance. (I lay back and almost enjoyed myself. When he was asleep I injected him with the anesthesia. I had a shower, laid out clothes for the morning. And then slept on the sofa. (he smiled at her, you and sofas)) He hadn’t moved all night, I got dressed, checked his pulse which was slow but even. Handcuffed him to the bed. Took his car keys, wallet and left him. Putting a do not disturb notice on the door.

I understood, understood perfectly, thinking that he would eventually forget.

[Actually I remember that the man had spent a long time in a country that was a police state. I drove towards Osaka, occasionally thinking of the man chained to the bed in the hotel. it was five in the morning. The man who is left behind in the hotel, confusedly told a version of this story to the police later that day. In amongst his long ex-cursive rambling, painstakingly recorded by the two detectives who mistakenly decided he had been robbed by a prostitute, he did not tell them about the tattoos, in fact it was this simple absence from his description which made the detectives file the recording as minor theft. The man told his stories to himself word by word, sentence by sentence, editing and contracting, and he wrote a novella which he published in japanese and english, in a way one might say it was written in his memory and then committed to paper.

[>> Did you read the story ? << >> No, just the first couple of pages, he seem to think that his female protagonist was ill. << ]] I was long gone by then, vanished back into Tokyo.

She/I parked the car in the drive of the big empty house in Osaka.________.______ and went and watched the house of the target. On the other side of the low wall at the back of the house. There were birds feeding outside the kitchen windows. Thesus and his wife Penelope occasionally came into the kitchen to make tea and take small hammers and knives deeper into the house. I watched the birds and them until after lunch. Took the gun and went over the low wall into the garden and the house. Looking round the house she/I found the teenager in chains on the floor. I left Thesus and Penelope dead in the bathroom. Packed the girls fingers in ice, bandaged the girls hands and drove her to the accident and emergency in the NdA hospital in Osaka before driving out of Osaka on the E2A. My father was furious at me for not killing the girl, everyone, you were told everyone, he screamed. She was supposed to die not be rescued. Nobody told me about the girl, only about them. She explained unheard in the torrent of abuse. He swings his hand to slap her face, she moves backwards,swaying to the side refusing the slap. She didn’t say anything, suffering the abuse as she had for twenty years. In this there are two actual truth events: I thought about harming my father for the first time as he shouted, and the money that was not paid because the girl lived may have caused the war that followed later and brought me here. Later that month I killed Achilles in Seoul […]

[ >> He said.My biggest regret from before is a case where I arrested a woman who killed her husband. She is still in jail and shouldn’t be. The person I am now, living with you would ensure she was not arrested. << >> Why, the change? << she asked. >> We are a war machine, somehow that means we need to be ethical, whereas before i was merely police, a representative of law… << She smiles at him →> You are my bag carrier.<< She said…. >> Always, you know that don’t you. << He said. She smiles >> Only as a war machine can we counter the world machine we live within << >> or live at all… << He responded.]

(I was lying on the hillside, thinking about the sense of deja vu, the already-seen, thinking that it has happened before. The explanations of what they’d be doing, whilst you were in Edinburgh and I was watching and didn’t feel reassured as I looked down from where the field turns into woodland watching events unfold through the scopes.) The already seen and lived endured, perhaps it was stronger than I was seeing. A filter sprayed over the surrounding reality, the woods, field, gardens and the detached houses. I felt a touch of vertigo and was tempted to let go and fall into it not knowing what her automatic responses would act like, but only for a moment. Remembering Osaka and all that had been set in motion, the strange metamorphosis that ended with my lying here. A corrupted assassin. The deja vu marked the differences between her then and now, the euphoria of that realization. The thought of the lack of melancholy, and I wondered if my psychopathology meant that she/I could never be melancholic. This sense of finite liberation however… I was lying down in a hollow on a ground sheet and covered by another one that is pegged down, her feet are slightly lower down than her head and shoulders. About 75 feet higher than her primary target. The police she is watching are in a house, and they are in turn watching the house opposite. It amuses me that they were watching the suspected murderer whilst I watched them. I imagine that they are getting a warrant to enter the house later today or tomorrow. I watched, interested in the processes of police surveillance. It is remarkably labour intensive, I thought. Eight hour shifts, Three shifts a day, two people plus visitors per shift. [>>That is not how they are surveilling us, with us they are using long term passive surveillance, probably imperceptible. << >>People and things close to us? she asks << >> yes.<< ] At that moment there are five police in the house. One is watching the house, and presumably the street, one is talking to the DCI, and the DCS, there is also a DS. The DCI and probably the DCS will leave to collect the warrant. So later tonight they will enter the house she imagines. She doesn’t understand why there is not a human manned observation post along the treeline watching the rear of the house. Through the other scope she can see the head of the young woman perhaps its a teenager that they are torturing. The woman is in the room at the moment. ( I wondered if you would mind me breaking into the house and harming the man and woman. The whole point of the exercise was watching. But it would be quite nice to hurt them, possibly permanently.) She only has a few hours before she must leave and go home. Perhaps she should break in and force the police to act act act. I have become such an angel she thinks, what i really need is a decent rifle to put a bullet through that woman’s head or better still that man’s body as he is standing outside the patio door smoking a cigarette. An Angel. perhaps i should simply rescue the girl it would be quicker and more certain than waiting for the police. The sense of finite liberation as she thinks about the options she has, which is like understanding something she’d known all along, since Osaka at least, but didn’t really want to know. The already-seen was telling her her that even as she was psychopathically inclined to not care about others, this life she was leading meant she was perhaps beginning to care, capturing it in a future about to be lived. She watches a red kite wheeling through the air above her. She has been here since 4AM, about twelve hours. He will be leaving Edinburgh soon, perhaps he already has, on a train and she needs to be back home in time to make the house look lived in. She smiles at such an absurd thought. She watches the police and thinks she should hurry this along so she can have a shower before he gets back, she doesn’t want to leave the two people torturing and possibly killing the girl because she left it to the police. Eventually and reluctantly: she packs her bag, remembering packing a different bag in Osaka and puts on the shoulder holster beneath her leather jacket, reties her boots, checks the gun. Packs up the ground sheet. Puts the scopes in their case and sits cross legged with her bag beside her. Sighs, relieved in knowing that he’d forgive her whatever she did. She picks up her phone and sits cross legged. “Hello Frank it’s Park…Don’t hang up. Put me on speaker, Hello Jean. She can hear people moving. “I am watching the man and woman in no 38 torture a young woman. Can you go in and rescue her or do you need me to enable that. Frank is asking about where the young woman is. She tells him. He speaks with Jean, they agree. She thinks they’ll shout at him tomorrow. He says could you make sure they can’t escape from the back whilst we go in the front. OK, I’m sorry Frank, you can shout at me on saturday. He hangs up. She watched them go in. Nobody came out the back. Sounds of violence, more police arriving, ambulances… [He said “That’s good, for if we’d had to leave it would have been like Thomas in the Peter Stamm novel and I don’t think we could do that now…”] As she drove along the road amongst the beech trees that was taking her back towards the house, she knew that at a certain point she’d see a rusty old iron sign on which the direction and distance to her destination was written. And that she’d follow the direction, nothing was clear but she hadn’t hurt anyone.

Now they were sitting on the sofa, the TV playing some inane French movie about a histrionic murderess. The sound was off. He asked her “What happened to the girl in Osaka?” “I was wearing a singlet, I had a single dragon tattoo at the time, with dark glasses and a baseball cap on, I half carried her to accident and emergency, gave them her fingers on ice. Told them I was her guardian. Said her name was Osaka and that I’d fetch her documents. She became protected, our responsibility. My family never forgave me for that either. After that i don’t really know. she left i think”