The Investigation Read online

  One day he was pacing the garden of a high-level official’s house that he’d been assigned to guard. He heard something – a piano. Sugiyama looked up at the second-storey window, searching for the source, and saw the undulating, round shoulders of a young woman. That brief moment altered him forever. He was twenty years old. The notes of the piano coasting on the fine flow of air tugged at a heart that knew nothing of music. He knew he would worship that sound for the rest of his life. Something began to form inside him, feelings that had atrophied in the years ruled by punches. Little did he know that an eye for beauty was tucked away in his nature. The notes created a web and hung in the air. He felt at peace; the music flowed through his veins and rattled his dead heart.

  A few days later he decided to learn how to tune a piano. He began working as an errand boy at a piano shop in Kobe. His touch with the piano was inborn; in a mere instant he learned skills that took most people three years. He didn’t know whether it was because of a natural artistic sense and excellent hearing or because of the young woman. Within a year he’d become a tuner, handling delicate strings with the same hands he’d used to beat people with. He caressed the piano, imagining he was touching her, and she played for him. But their happiness was as fleeting as a drop of water on the surface of glass. The year he turned twenty-four a red notice struck him across the face and he was conscripted. As a soldier, he suffered through snowstorms, sandstorms and mud, dust, exhaustion and death. Somehow, he survived. He thought of her all along. Surviving was the only way to preserve the sound of her piano; surviving was the sole blessing in his life.

  Or maybe it was a curse.

  HOW DO SENTENCES SAVE THE SOUL?

  The warm April breeze wafted over the towering walls and scattered a subtle scent around the desolate prison; flowers opened and dusted pollen into the air, luring honeybees. Blood circulated anew in the prisoners’ faces, festering toes healed and new flesh grew on cracked hands. All Hiranuma wanted was to survive this place. If he lived, he could write poetry again. Every morning, before he got up, he erased the numbers he’d etched on the wall next to his head, bitterly resolute, counting down the days to 30 November 1945.

  The prison was a melting pot of the human condition. Housed here were ideological prisoners and assassins, con men and fugitives. They shared only one trait: they all insisted on their innocence. But they were all lying. Their wrongdoings weren’t serious, sometimes not even crimes: they didn’t deserve to be thrown behind bars. A docker had chased after a woman he loved and was accused of raping her; a guard overseeing a conscript’s forced-labour unit got him in prison out of hatred; a man knocked on his boss’s door to ask for back-pay and was charged with attempted murder. Everyone talked about their heroic exploits, and each time someone spat out indifferently, ‘Hell, there’s nobody here who isn’t falsely charged!’ The prisoners launched violent attacks on one another. Hiranuma felt only pity. He thought violence was the only way for prisoners to stand up against their fate.

  One day, during their daily outdoor break, an old man with short greying hair and a wily look came up to Hiranuma. ‘You’re so gentle,’ he remarked, air whistling out of the gaps in his teeth. ‘You don’t belong in here. What crime did you commit that brought you to this place?’

  ‘Violation of the Maintenance of Public Order Act,’ Hiranuma answered curtly, digging the dead grass. He could see green sprouts under the dried roots.

  ‘Maintenance of public order, my arse,’ the old man grumbled. ‘They’re trying to do away with Koreans. I had a high-interest loan, but the Jap financier brought a charge against me, saying I wasn’t paying back the interest. I’ve been here two years. Is that what happened to you?’

  ‘No. I wrote some poems in Korean.’

  The old man clucked his tongue. This boy wasn’t just naive, he was foolish. Their world was one in which Japanese was taught in primary school and no one was allowed to utter a word in Korean. He squinted at Hiranuma. In his mind, educated people like this boy who did useless things were what caused Korea’s demise.

  A small man with beady eyes came up to them. He brushed his hand over his shaved head and blinked, looking all around him. ‘Old man, are you crazy? What are you doing? What if the Choi gang sees you?’

  Everyone knew that Choi monitored the prisoners and hand-picked those he wanted for his gang. Since Hiranuma’s arrival, this university student had been Choi’s main focus.

  The old man grinned. ‘Don’t get so worked up, Man-gyo! Do you even know why Choi is anxious to get this boy in his gang?’

  ‘I don’t. Do you? Is he made of gold or something?’ Man-gyo snapped impatiently.

  The old man turned serious. ‘I don’t know whether he’s a mound of gold or a mound of shit. But since Choi is interested, it’s clear he’s not just anyone. If we get him first, Choi won’t be able to boss us around.’ The old man rubbed his dry palm against his beard, speaking about Hiranuma as though he weren’t standing beside him.

  ‘Shit! And if he’s not worth it?’

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about selling something, do you?’ the old man said dismissively. ‘You need a good eye to notice whether something will make you money. And you need gumption. The more money you can possibly make, the more danger you have to risk. But you don’t know any of that. Your fate is to sell cigarettes and crackers and stick your nose up the guards’ behinds.’

  Man-gyo settled down. The old man gave him a look, prompting him to take out a dirty cigarette from a seam in his uniform and offer it to Hiranuma, who waved his hands, refusing this small luxury.

  Man-gyo shoved the cigarette back into his uniform. ‘I’m investing, so if it’s a good deal you have to split it with me!’ He moved away, looking around furtively.

  The old man stroked his jagged beard. ‘You might be wondering how cigarettes are circulated in the prison. Well, you see, wherever people live there is trade. A proper merchant can buy and sell even death. That Man-gyo, he may never be a big fish, but he’s an innate peddler. He began to bring things in from the outside six months after he got here. The guards are hungry, too. Bribes got them to look the other way.’

  Hiranuma didn’t know whether to feel hopeful that his fellow man had a persistent will to live or to despair at the tenacity of human greed.

  The old man read his hesitation. ‘If you have to bet on something, I suggest you choose hope. If you go with despair, what’s left over is even greater despair. In my experience, believing that the sale will be a success leaves more profit.’ He blinked his crusty eyes and asked, ‘What will you sell?’

  Hiranuma shook his head. He had nothing. If he had books he could sell a few to a used bookshop, but they were useless now. Sentences, Criticism of the Humanities, Poetry and Opinion – they’d been confiscated and were either mouldering in the inspection office or had been burned.

  ‘Everyone has something to sell. If you don’t, you can sell your body. If your body’s damaged, you can sell your life. Son, you studied at a university! You were fortunate enough to study abroad in Japan! If you can read and write in Japanese, you have something to sell.’

  ‘How could I possibly sell that?’

  ‘We’re allowed to send out a postcard written in Japanese once a month. But most prisoners are illiterate. Forget Japanese – they haven’t even learned Korean properly. You can write postcards for the prisoners who can’t write. Since Korean is banned, you can translate what they tell you and write it in Japanese.’

  ‘There must be other Koreans who know Japanese.’

  ‘The censor here is incredibly strict. He’ll destroy your postcard if there’s a sentence that is even a little bit problematic. You’ll also get a beating. A couple of prisoners wrote postcards for others, but when they almost died from the beatings, nobody wanted to do it any more. Lots of people are itching to send out postcards. Can’t you see the money piling up?’

  ‘But you just said you can die from a single wrong word.’

 
‘That’s why you’re the right man to do it. You’re a literary man who knows about writing, so you can avoid expressions that will get censored. And you can make money.’

  Hiranuma frowned. ‘How could I make money off penniless Koreans?’

  ‘The Japs in Wards One and Four are always looking for people to do their work for them. So the Koreans sell their labour. In exchange for writing a postcard in Japanese, you can get them to work for a Jap for a day and take their wages. Then everyone wins.’

  ‘You’re saying I’m to sell Korean manpower to the Japs?’

  ‘That’s the deal. If they register as patients with the guards that were bought off, they can avoid physical labour here, and that’s how they can fill in for the Japanese.’

  Hiranuma was disgusted. ‘I can’t make my countrymen suffer.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘And here I was, thinking you were smart. With your talents you can help the illiterate send news home. But you’re going to decline. Are you stupid? Or cruel? Most prisoners can’t send word to their families. If you aren’t going to help them, what’s the point of your education?’

  Hiranuma pondered the questions for a long while. ‘How much do you get for a day’s work from the Japs?’

  ‘Four sen. That’s the official price.’

  ‘So how much do I get?’

  The old man’s eyes glinted. ‘We’ll split fifty-fifty. Two sen each. But considering that I’ll take out Man-gyo’s cut and the bribe for the guards from my share, it’s actually a better deal for you. Take it or leave it.’ The old man waited expectantly.

  Hiranuma gave him a short nod. The old man grinned, and scurried around to publicize his new service. The news about the ghostwriter quickly and quietly spread throughout the cells. But people didn’t approach Hiranuma as he stood under the prison walls. Everyone knew that evading censorship was as precarious as balancing on a straw cutter. Emotional expression, descriptions of the reality of prison life, questions about the war were all immediately blacked out, and both the sender and the writer of the problematic postcard would be called into the interrogation room for a beating. The old man decided that the only way to convince the fearful prisoners was to be the first. He stood in front of Hiranuma and called out his letter in a loud voice so that all the Koreans could hear.

  ‘Dear Suna, the spring I’ve been waiting for isn’t coming to this prison, which I so want to leave. They say spring has come, but damn it, the cell floor is like ice and the guards run wild. People are dying all around me and it doesn’t even make me flinch.’ The old man shouted out expressions that went well beyond the danger zone, as though determined to be caught.

  Hiranuma’s pencil raced across the postcard transcribing the old man’s sardonic voice. The prisoners crowded around, curious as to whether the pale writer could repackage the old man’s complaints. When he finished writing, Hiranuma read out in Korean what he’d written. The old man’s intent and feelings were intact, but his overt complaints had been restrained. The courier collected the postcard. The prisoners were tense. Each cell whispered and bet about the fate of the missive. Two days later the postcard was sent off, but the old man wasn’t called to the interrogation room. Silent cheers spread through the cells. The prisoners finally understood who 645 was: someone who would help spirit their souls to the outside.

  One by one, prisoners came looking for him. Before Hiranuma wrote their postcard, he asked them who they were sending it to, what their relationship was, what memories they shared. He carefully observed the way they talked and the words they liked to use. He wasn’t simply writing down what was dictated. He constructed a cover that would camouflage the true meaning of what they wanted to convey. When he read back what he had written, the men shed tears, as they heard their true feelings put into words. Hiranuma shaped the desperate sentiments of the prisoners while avoiding the blade of censorship, a perilous high-wire act. A fortnight after the postcards were sent out, answers began arriving, slashed intermittently with black ink, only traces left of undesirable words that didn’t pass Sugiyama’s censorship. The letters sparkled with hope and love. Hiranuma read them out; even if Sugiyama blacked out all of the lines he could resurrect the words, read what was hidden and what couldn’t be said, revealing unshed tears and undreamt dreams. Hiranuma felt alive again. More and more prisoners rushed to secure his services; the old man fashioned ledgers out of scraps of wood and kept records written with a lump of coal. Hiranuma grew busier, the old man’s books grew fatter and Man-gyo busily scurried off to the Japanese wards to supply labour.

  ‘It’s a hit, Dong-ju,’ the old man said, grinning. ‘People are lining up. If they’ve done it once, they’ll naturally come again. If you reduce the silly interview time, then the poor saps won’t have to wait so long.’

  Hiranuma was editing a postcard he’d just written. ‘But if we get caught it’ll all be over,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t you want to keep doing business?’

  ‘You’re right! Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’re doing pretty good.’ The old man shook his head and looked at his log. ‘Forty-five prisoners wrote postcards in a fortnight. So that’s 180 sen, and your share is ninety sen.’

  Man-gyo came up to them. ‘You need anything? Cigarettes? Rice? Sugar cubes or red-bean jelly? I can get you anything.’

  ‘I could use some labour. How much for a day?’

  ‘We get four sen from the Japs, but I can’t charge the full price for a business partner, can I? How about half? Two sen a day!’

  Hiranuma smiled. ‘Okay. I’ll use the people I write postcards for.’

  The old man’s face fell. ‘Look at this boy! A real wolf. You’re trying to take the meat meant for someone else’s belly.’

  Man-gyo looked from one man to the other in confusion.

  Pitying him, the old man explained what Hiranuma was proposing to do. ‘If Dong-ju writes a postcard, we get four sen. That’s the cost of the labour of the man who sends the postcard. We get four sen from the Japs and send the postcard-writers to them. We take half and this boy gets the other half. But now he’s going to repurchase the manpower of the man who asked for the postcard. And for two sen a day!’

  Man-gyo grew concerned. ‘Then we don’t have a worker to send to the Japs, and our business . . .’

  ‘Is over.’

  Man-gyo looked alarmed.

  Hiranuma jumped in to reassure him. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have the man work for the Jap, and then you can give him the two sen you would have given me. Then everyone wins. You and the old man can keep earning your cut, the Koreans will make money for their labour, and the Japs can find a Korean to do their work for them. Of course, the guards will keep getting a nice bribe, too.’

  ‘Then you don’t get anything,’ Man-gyo said. ‘Shouldn’t you get something out of it? You’re doing the writing, after all.’

  ‘I do get something out of it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can use a pencil and paper every day. As long as I can write something, I don’t care what it is.’

  It was an ideal arrangement, but the old man and Man-gyo didn’t realize how good they had it.

  Sugiyama opened the outgoing post box after his afternoon rounds and found four postcards inside. He settled into his chair. One was by a Korean prisoner sending a postcard to his wife. The neat handwriting succinctly relayed what he wanted to say. He spoke of the prison, but he didn’t complain, and while he wrote about pain, he seemed relieved. Sugiyama was a little suspicious, but he couldn’t pick out exactly what was unsanctioned. The second postcard was to a prisoner’s mother. It was in the same hand as the first one, but its writing style and expression were different, as though a completely different person had written it. He couldn’t find anything problematic about this one, either. This phenomenon repeated itself again and again. The writer knew which words to avoid. Sugiyama suppressed his scepticism and stamped the blue Censorship Completed mark in the middle of the postcards. He leaned back and rubbed his d
ry eyes. He suddenly sat up as he picked up the last postcard:

  More than anything, you should know about the censor officer’s generosity. If I had known that he was this gracious, I would have sent a postcard earlier on. I didn’t send word because I was afraid it would be censored. But thanks to his magnanimity I could read your postcard without a single word being deleted.

  A thought struck him: the author of the postcards was writing all of this with Sugiyama in mind. He could tell there was something fishy going on. He would show this brash prisoner what would happen to someone who played pranks on him.

  Prisoner 645 sat ramrod-straight on the hard chair, much like his neat handwriting. Sugiyama lowered his voice. ‘The postcards you wrote were for me. You knew I would read them.’

  Hiranuma’s brain whirred. One wrong step would cripple him and the prisoners who had asked him to write the postcards.