I’m at my cleaning job, sweeping away, sweating like a pedo in a playground, when this old man comes out of his apartment, trainer pants, t-shirt, a goatee, white sparse hair, a bit unkempt, looks like Ho Chi Minh, says good morning, I answer good morning in Vietnamese (Chào buổi sáng)…
I’m done sweeping, move on to the next entrance, I’m almost done there, too, when uncle Ho wanders in, oh hi there again, he’s looking at the apartment numbers on the ground floor…
What are you looking for?
Apartment 17
17?? There’s no 17 nowhere here or anywhere
He pulls a piece of paper out of his pocket, looks at it and says oh oops, 117
Oh, that’s in the entrance where you came from, come, follow me, and once there I realize it’s the apartment he came out of 10 minutes earlier
Oh, you gotta be shitting me
You’re one of those (early dementia)
He got lost in a 5 square meter zone
So, we are standing in front of the door
Is this your apartment?
Yes
You sure?
Yes
Are there human body parts in your freezer?
What?
Is there a scantily clad child chained to a water pipe in the bathroom?
What?
Ok, let me knock anyway
Knock, knock…
Nothing, nobody
Aright, I’ll open the door and you go in first, I don’t have my teeth today
We are in
It’s dark
Turn on the light
There’s no light
What do you mean?
There’s no electricity
Why?
I didn’t pay the bill
I step in, and with light coming in from the window in the room on the right, I see this hallway…w t f?!
Meanwhile he’s just standing there while I’m exploring, it got worse and worse, you see the toilet? Well, at first I thought maybe it’s art, a message against pollution
You have an electric fan? Turn it on please, will you? It’s hot
There’s no electricity
Screw you
Ok, you can’t stay here, so, what do you wanna do? I take you to the concierge or I put a pillow over your face?
The concierge please
We walk, at snail pace, I’m starting to regret some of the stuff I’ve done in my life, I also ask him if it would be okay If I came back later to clean up his place a bit, I’m a bit of a cleaning freak, a male Monica Geller, if you like
Sure, he says, yes, please, thank you
No, no, thank YOU
I wouldn’t have been able to sleep tonight if I didn’t
At the concierge’s, who’s aware of Ho’s situation, I explain a little, mainly re the no electricity bit
C: Didn’t you pay the bill the other day?
Yes, I did
C: did you turn on the breaker?
?
C: you need to turn the breaker back on, oh forget it, I’ll come with you
The concierge thanks me and says he’ll take it from there
I go inside for a break in the nicely air-conditioned room for cleaners
I can’t relax
So, after the break I go back to his place to clean up a bit
Hello, I’m back, can I clean up a little?
Oh, hello, nice to meet you
Sure, nice to meet you, too
I didn’t clean much, just the hallway, a bit of sweeping, couldn’t remove the sticky stuff
I’m done
Thanks a lot, really
You live alone? You have family
Yes, a younger sister
She lives far ?
Yes
(I’m thinking Hokkaido)
Where ?
In central Tokyo, but she’s busy working
What’s that phone number on the piece of paper in your pocket ?
Social services
Are you thirsty?
Yes, the concierge gave me this small bottle of tea but it’s almost gone
Ok, I’ll bring your more later, ok?
Yes, please, thank you
So I go back to the concierge
What’s going on here? This is embarrassing, why is this man living like this?
What happened?
Well, he was in hospital for about a week due to dehydration, they had cut off his electricity
Aaaaand? Go on, don’t make me waterboard you
What?
What’s his story?
He was married, the wife died about 3 years ago, after that it was just him and his son who had a brian hemorrhage and is now in hospital, not coming back, it just all went downhill after his wife died
He also has a daughter somewhere in Tokyo, she’s his legal guardian, in charge of his little retirement pension money, never seen her
So, what are we gonna do about it?
What do you mean?
Well, we can’t leave him like this, anyway I just cleaned his place a bit
You can’t do that (the concierge is actually a very nice 83 year old man), under law you could get in trouble for barging in unauthorized, his daughter could actually sue you
We’ll see about that
I don’t care about that law, the law of human decency is what matters here
And anyway if I go down, you go down, too
What?
I gotta get back to work, you do the right thing
I went to the convenience store, bought lots of cold tea and bananas, went back to Ho’s place
Hi
Nice to meet you
Yeah, yeah, shut up
He was sitting in the “living room”, surrounded by trash, staring at the TV, which was off
Watcha watching ?
Nothing
The light was on, and the AC
He had opened a cup ramen
I gave him the stuff
Thank you
You’re welcome
I’ll be back
I went back to the concierge who had a Jesus you again look on his face
So?
I called everyone, the social services, his daughter…they are all coming today
When I met Ho half an hour earlier, in his sweat pants, I thought to myself: hm, interesting color, various shades of…fucking filth
You should all know, you who read this, although I don’t have the exact figures, lots of people, mostly elderly, starve to death every year, alone, abandoned
Ho doesn’t live in a shit hole, he lives in a nice apartment building (what they call a mansion here) in a nice neighborhood in a callous society
“I believe we can measure how humane a society is by the way it treats its most vulnerable members.”
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