The Investigation Read online

  With the tips of his fingers, Dong-ju read the capricious wind as it changed direction and speed with every second; with his eyes, he followed its movement. Once, a gust of wind snatched the kite and made it tilt, triggering a burst of moans from the prisoners. With skilled hands, Dong-ju unwound the line and rewound it and the kite regained its balance. His deft touch made it seem as though he’d made the kite circle the air twice on purpose. Finally Dong-ju let go of the spool; it spun like a top and the line unwound quickly. The kite sank, its tail wafting behind it languorously. The prisoners groaned.

  Sugiyama grabbed some line and wrapped it around his bare hand. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ The line dug into his palm, making him bleed.

  ‘You have to give it more slack to get it up higher. Then the kite can ride the wind and lift up.’ Just then, the trembling kite caught the wind and shot up higher than before.

  The men shouted, pointing the other way. A large blue kite with a sky-blue tail had risen from the other side of the walls, and it attacked Dong-ju’s kite like a shark preying on smaller fish.

  Sugiyama murmured, ‘A fight. The prisoners are getting too excited.’

  Instead of answering, Dong-ju quickly dodged the new kite. The blue kite attacked Dong-ju’s, which lost its balance and wavered. The blue kite changed height and direction and persistently tried to tangle its kite line with Dong-ju’s. The men, holding their breaths, watched as their sad kite avoided the attack. Finally Dong-ju’s kite emerged unscathed, and the prisoners let out cheers. Dong-ju quickly wound in the line; the kite dropped down and came back within the walls. The men let out a loud, wounded sigh.

  The siren blared, marking the end of break. The men disappeared one by one into the work area or the cells. The yard returned to its quiet.

  ‘Why did you avoid the fight?’ Sugiyama asked.

  Instead of answering, Dong-ju finished winding the kite line.

  Sugiyama wondered if Dong-ju had decided that it would be better to avoid the battle instead of disappointing the prisoners by losing. Perhaps he figured it would be better to shield the hopes and dreams of the Koreans than risk them being felled by an aggressive kite. It had to be better than losing hope.

  GO GO GO LIKE A FUGITIVE

  Maeda crumpled the piece of paper in his hand and threw it on the floor. ‘What have you been doing as the censor? Explain how these seditious writings were circulated!’

  Sugiyama picked up the ball of paper.

  ‘Look at what’s written on it!’

  Sugiyama unfolded it. His eyes bulged. The tiny letters were in Korean. His face went rigid, as though it would crack at a soft tap. ‘I’m unable to decipher it, but—’

  Maeda cut him off. ‘The fact that it’s written in Korean means it’s seditious!’

  The coals in the furnace crackled loudly.

  ‘I discovered the Korean prisoners passing it round. You must know who wrote this damn document?’ Maeda barked.

  Sugiyama felt perspiration running down his back. There was only one person in the prison who wrote with such a neat hand. He swallowed the name on the tip of his tongue. ‘Sir, I’ll find out who it is immediately!’

  ‘No need!’ Maeda opened the confiscated documents log and stepped closer to Sugiyama. ‘I already know who did it.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Who else would do this? It’s Hiranuma Tochu. Why weren’t his confiscated documents incinerated?’

  ‘Sir, I wasn’t able to get to it because there has been too much to do.’

  Maeda glared at him. ‘You mean you were lazy. Get me all of his documents right away! I’m going to handle this myself. You just give him a good beating!’

  Sugiyama gave his superior a stiff salute and turned around.

  Sugiyama whacked his club across the prisoner’s bare torso tied to the torture rack. It sounded as though something was breaking within Dong-ju. His thin shoulders were bare, his joints bulged. Under the light his pale skin was almost translucent. Sugiyama had been foolish, lazy. Despite knowing what would ultimately happen, he’d been lulled by the arsehole’s mellifluous words. He hadn’t dealt with the danger lurking within. He’d been practically criminal. He should have burned the confiscated documents at the very beginning. He should have turned Dong-ju into a cripple then.

  ‘You fucked me over,’ he panted, his voice cracking. ‘Talk! What does this goddamn poem mean?’ He tossed a pen and piece of paper on the desk. ‘Translate it into Japanese!’

  Dong-ju picked up the pen with his swollen fingers. The pen trembled as it pushed across the crumpled paper. Words poured out like river water, words that signified innocent confession, pure anguish and embarrassed guilt. Finally the pen fell on the paper, heavy as a rock. Reading it, Sugiyama felt rejuvenated, as though he’d become a boy again. He threw a glance at the waiting guards. They melted into the darkness, knowing from experience that this was when Sugiyama began the most brutal phase of his interrogation.

  Sugiyama picked up the paper with the original Korean poem written on it. It had been constructed from several different pages, cut into long strips and pasted roughly together with glue. ‘Where did you get this goddamn paper?’

  With great effort Dong-ju moved his bloodied lips. ‘I cut tiny slivers off the bottom of the postcards and pasted them together with rice.’

  ‘The rice is for you to fucking eat, not for you to make paper for your scribbles!’

  Dong-ju flashed him a faint smile.

  Sugiyama’s club trembled in the air. ‘What were you planning to do with this dangerous poem?’

  ‘That’s not a dangerous poem.’

  ‘Is that so? When Koreans read this poem, it’s obvious they’ll think about home and get disgruntled. Were you planning to start a riot?’

  ‘There’s no proof that this poem makes anyone feel that way.’

  ‘No proof? It’s obvious this poem will make anyone’s emotions run wild!’ Sugiyama hesitated. He couldn’t reveal that it had made his own cold, violent heart falter. He threw down his club and lowered his voice. ‘When I read your stupid poem just now, I felt dizzy.’ Sugiyama paused for a breath. ‘This will be the death of you. I’m not going to kill you. But I’m going to wash the inside of your head. You’re going to solitary. Fifteen days!’

  Two days later, Maeda called for Sugiyama to meet him at the incinerator. The head guard was looking more relaxed. ‘We got him quickly, so we were able to stop this document from spreading. You made the right decision, Sugiyama. Two weeks in solitary will either make him a corpse or wipe his mind clean.’

  Sugiyama stood to attention. ‘He’s a writer. Words are branded on his mind. He’ll survive just so he can write again.’

  ‘No matter,’ Maeda said, smiling, a gold-capped tooth glinting in his mouth. ‘A danger that’s discovered is no longer a problem.’

  He tossed Sugiyama a bundle of papers. Red letters were stamped on the top. To Be Incinerated. Sugiyama flipped through them. ‘Boy’, ‘Snowing Map’, ‘Night Seen from Here’, ‘Morning of the Beginning’, ‘Another Home’, ‘Night Counting Stars’. The words trembled.

  ‘Strictly speaking, this incident wasn’t your fault,’ Maeda reassured him. ‘Really, it’s his fault. He’s being punished accordingly. You just need to clean up. Go ahead and burn these.’

  Sugiyama felt his heart drop. ‘I’ll finish reviewing them as soon as possible and incinerate them after sorting.’

  ‘Do it now!’ Maeda snapped. ‘Just throw the whole bundle in. He violated the Maintenance of Public Order Act. Resistance runs in his veins. Just look at this poem here!’ Maeda impatiently snatched the manuscript out of Sugiyama’s hands and flipped through it until he found the page he was looking for. He shoved it in Sugiyama’s face:

  ANOTHER HOME

  The night I return home

  My skeleton follows and lies down next to me.

  My dark room leads to the universe

  And the wind blows on me from somewhere, from the sky.

  Looking a
t the skeleton that gently weathers in the dark

  Is it I who is crying

  Or the skeleton

  Or a beautiful soul?

  The dignified dog

  Barks at the darkness all night.

  The dog barking at the darkness

  Must be chasing me.

  Go, go

  Go like a fugitive.

  Go to another beautiful home

  Behind the skeleton’s back.

  – September 1941

  ‘See?’ Maeda spat triumphantly. ‘Everything from the first line to the last is seditious. This poem contains explicit anti-Japanese themes. What else would it mean for a dignified dog to be barking at the darkness? The dog is the stubborn Korean prisoner, the darkness means the occupation. Another home is a liberated Korea. It’s urging the Koreans to fight for the liberation of Korea!’

  Sugiyama stared at the poem. ‘You’re being too generous, sir. He wrote this in September 1941. He visited his home in Manchuria during his studies in Seoul. He was just anxious about the future. These are just a kid’s worries. The skeleton and beautiful-soul image are just a fancy way to admonish himself. It’s not deep enough to be grandiose nationalism. Sir, it’s just emotional drivel.’

  Sugiyama’s heart quaked. The young man from the poor Japanese colony desperately longed for home, but he wasn’t able to hide even there. He was describing an era when he had nowhere to turn to, an era when longing was banned.

  Maeda turned the pages to another poem. ‘Well, this one’s very obviously anti-Japanese!’

  SAD TRIBE

  White towel wrapped around black hair

  White rubber shoes on rough feet.

  White blouse and skirt shield sad body

  White belt ties around thin waist.

  ‘White towel, white rubber shoes, white everything!’ Maeda trumpeted. ‘You know that the colour white is beloved by Koreans! Black hair, rough feet, sad body, thin waist – these are complaints! The white garments are a coded suggestion for the Koreans to fight us off.’

  Sugiyama swallowed. ‘As you said, that poem definitely contains an inflammatory nationalism. He’s Korean, so this is of course inflammatory. But not all the poems are like that.’ He flipped quickly through the manuscript and began to read another poem out loud:

  BOY

  Sad autumn drops like fall foliage all around me. Spring is being readied at each spot left vacant by a leaf and the sky is spread above the branches. The boy looks into the sky and blue paint dyes his eyebrows. He wipes his warm cheeks with two hands and blue paint dyes his palms. He looks at his palms again. A clean river flows along the lines, a clean river; in the river is a face, sad like love – beautiful Suni’s face. The boy closes his eyes in bliss. Still the clean river flows and the face, sad like love – is beautiful Suni’s face.

  His own low voice lingered in his ears. Sugiyama looked down at his palms, at his hands as cold as the river. With those hands he’d beaten people without discrimination. He was suddenly ashamed.

  ‘Nowhere in this poem can you find nationalism or a hint of rebellion. It’s just the pure heart of a boy who is in love for the first time.’

  Maeda glared at him, suspicious. ‘Hiranuma is a careful man. He would have stuck a lyric poem in with the rest just to confuse the censor. He probably knew he would get arrested.’

  ‘That’s not true. This poem conveys Hiranuma’s true feelings.’

  ‘No, he’s hiding his true colours. Suni probably doesn’t even exist!’

  ‘Suni is not an imaginary woman!’ Sugiyama unwittingly raised his voice.

  Hasegawa glared at him.

  Sugiyama tore through the manuscript again to the page he was looking for:

  SNOWING MAP

  On the morning of Suni’s departure large snowflakes fall with unmentionable feeling onto the map laid sadly far away outside the windows.

  I look around the room, but nobody is there. The walls and ceiling are white. Is it snowing even inside? Are you really leaving, like lost history? Though I write in a letter what I wanted to say before you left, I don’t know where you’re going, which street, which village, under which roof; are you left only in my heart? The snow keeps covering your small footprints so I cannot follow them. When the snow melts, flowers will bloom in your footprints; looking for your footprints among the flowers, it will keep snowing in my heart for twelve months a year.

  ‘“Boy” and “Snowing Map” are serial poems written two years apart,’ Sugiyama explained, pointing at the dates. ‘“Boy” depicts the heart of a young boy in love, “Snowing Map” is about a young man’s despair at lost love. If the first poem was only here to fool us, he wouldn’t be able, two years later, to miss the same character this desperately in the same tone.’

  Maeda looked uncertain. ‘You’re not bad at deciphering poems.’

  ‘I just need one day. I’ll select the poems to be incinerated and report back.’

  Maeda waved his hands. ‘No, there’s no point. Just burn them all now!’

  ‘But don’t you agree that these two are just lyric poems?’

  ‘Well, that’s the problem. They’re more dangerous because they’re not seditious. Whining about love when the entire citizenry has tightened its belt and is fighting against American and British aggressors? Decadent poems like these weaken the do-or-die pledge.’

  ‘But after the war, they’ll be able to heal people’s hearts,’ Sugiyama insisted, not noticing that his voice was rising.

  Maeda snapped, ‘You don’t need to concern yourself about that. We will be victorious at the war’s end. The Great Japanese Imperial Military will chase the aggressors to the end of the world and exterminate them.’

  ‘After the war our people might need these poems. It wouldn’t aid the Empire to burn all of this.’

  ‘I appreciate these aren’t ordinary poems, especially seeing how confused they made you. That’s why we need to get rid of them. They’re dangerous.’

  Thoughts he couldn’t utter echoed in Sugiyama’s mind. He slowly yanked the rusted steel door to the incinerator. It screeched open. The air choked with the smell of smoke as dust and ash billowed up. Maeda gave Sugiyama an impatient nod. The manuscript trembled in front of the flames lungeing to swallow it – it contained one young man’s lost dreams and agonized repentance. Sugiyama’s hands were shaking.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ Maeda urged. ‘The arsehole got you to let down your guard. And all the while he wrote all these banned poems. He fooled you. I won’t question your judgement. I know these types always target good guards like you.’

  Sugiyama ripped out the first page of the manuscript. The flame from his lighter licked the edge of the crumpled paper, swallowed Dong-ju’s neat handwriting and ignited the banned sentences. One word at a time, one line at a time, one page at a time, Sugiyama ripped apart the manuscript and tossed it into the fire.

  ‘Self-Portrait’, ‘Night Looking Back’, ‘A Dear Memory’.

  He glanced at the piece of paper in his hands, the shadow of the fire looming over the words:

  A DEAR MEMORY

  One spring morning, in a small station in Seoul

  Waiting for the train as I would wait for hope and love,

  I cast the shadow of exhaustion on the platform

  And smoked a cigarette.

  My shadow let out a shadow of smoke,

  As a herd of doves flew up without shame

  their wings reflected by sunlight.

  The train took me far away

  Without any news

  After spring left – in a quiet boarding house room

  in the outskirts of Tokyo

  I long for myself on the old streets as I would long

  for hope and love.

  Today too the train goes by several times,

  Today too I will wait for someone

  Pacing the hill close to the station.

  – Ah, youth! Stay there a while.

  Dong-ju had written this
a year ago, as a lonely student in Tokyo. The world had been cold and grey, filled with the smell of gunpowder. Sugiyama threw the poem into the fire. What Dong-ju had looked for in a small station vanished in the flames. Nobody would ever know that this poem had existed. Sugiyama closed his eyes. He didn’t want to witness his actions as he murdered the young man’s soul. He found himself wishing that time would pass quickly, that all the poems would disappear without a trace. He wanted to sweep the remnants, bury them and scrub his dirty hands until everything disappeared – the trace of ash on his fingertips, the smell of flame threaded into his clothes, the memory of the dead poems. But his guilt would remain, caked on like soot. Sugiyama opened his eyes and glared into the incinerator. It was your fault, Dong-ju. You did something you shouldn’t have. I won’t forgive you for making me do something so terrible.

  ‘Good! That’s taken care of then.’ The flames danced on Maeda’s face. ‘After all that time in solitary, the arsehole won’t think about writing a poem again.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sugiyama realized then that his throat had closed up and his eyes were wet.

  Two weeks later, the poet limped out of solitary. Sugiyama was relieved to see Dong-ju walk out on his own, although he did so on shaking legs. His soul had been forever altered. Though weak, he became aggressive, skulking around gloomily. He picked fights with everyone and threw sloppy punches, even though he couldn’t actually beat anyone up. He limped towards solitary again, covered in blood.

  A week later, he crawled out and became ghost-like. His blank gaze was fixed on the horizon, and he looked lost in time. The blue kite that had floated hopefully outside the prison walls every afternoon stopped appearing. Dong-ju’s depression tugged the entire ward into a deep slump. Sugiyama missed the young man with a ready smile. He remembered one of Dong-ju’s poems that he’d read in front of the incinerator before turning it into smoke that snaked up to the sky: