The Investigation Page 14

  ROAD

  I lost it.

  Not knowing what I lost where

  my two hands feel my pockets

  as I go out onto the road.

  The road snakes along the stone wall

  Endlessly linking stone and stone and stone.

  The wall’s steel doors are firmly closed

  Casting a long shadow on the road

  And the road goes from morning to evening

  And from evening to morning.

  When I look up after shedding tears along the stone wall

  The sky is embarrassingly blue.

  I walk down this grassless road

  Because I’m on the other side of the wall,

  I remain alive

  Only because I am searching for what I lost.

  It was a desperate confession. What had he lost? Sugiyama knew Dong-ju had lost everything – his country, his language, his name. Had he known long ago that he would be imprisoned, that he would be incarcerated on the other side of the wall?

  Every night Sugiyama sat at his desk in his office, unable to sleep. He wanted to force the frail young man to write poems again. He wanted Dong-ju’s poems to survive these terrible times. Even if only a single person were to survive this war, he wanted the poems to be able to provide relief. It was all he thought about. He looked down at his desk, at the rough paper in his hands, his palms studded with calluses, his bent fingers, his broken nails. An old pen lay on the desk. An urge to write something came over him. He didn’t want to be a poet; he just wanted to write. He wanted to express on paper what was roiling inside him. He’d understood the world by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. He’d seen bloodied corpses, heard deafening explosions and screams, touched the upturned earth and dust, smelled the smokiness of gunpowder and tasted blood. But his eyes no longer saw, his ears no longer heard. He’d started to decipher the world around him, appreciating the human side of the prisoners through the postcards given to him to censor and obtaining war news from the dailies. The world now existed for him through letters. He’d obtained a sixth sense.

  He recalled what Dong-ju had told him: ‘The most important is the first sentence. If you write the first sentence properly, you can write all the way to the last one.’ Sugiyama cautiously picked up the pen as though he were handling a sea creature with dangerous tentacles. He dipped the nib in black ink, but couldn’t get started. He couldn’t even place it on the paper. The blank page in front of him was as bleak as the prison yard. What was he doing? He couldn’t write. He was a torturer who knew only how to beat people. He was a half-literate censor who burned the writings of others. He shook his head, but he couldn’t put the pen down.

  The wind rattled the thin tin roof. The words in his head glinted like pieces of broken china in the dark. He picked up the dictionary and sped his way through unfamiliar nouns, adjectives, verbs. He took the glistening words and carefully strung them together, then revised them. He couldn’t tell what his endeavour would become.

  Ten days passed. Or was it fifteen? Each night he stared into the darkness. He could hear the waves, the restless sea tossing and turning. He couldn’t fall asleep. Dawn neared. A gloomy foghorn sounded from the navy ship in far-away Hakata Bay. Sugiyama folded the piece of paper and slid it into his breast pocket.

  Dong-ju was sitting dejectedly at the top of the hill, his arms around his knees. His soul seemed to have burrowed deep inside the shell of his body, and his dark eyes brimmed with despair and resentment.

  Sugiyama approached him with the kite and spool he’d made. ‘Yun Dong-ju!’ he called. ‘How long are you going to remain like this? Enough! Get up! Do you want a beating?’

  He tried to push away the guilt he felt from knowing that he was the cause of the young poet’s sorry state. With his club he prodded Dong-ju to check that he was all right; his forehead was gashed, his eyes were swollen and his lips were badly cut.

  Sugiyama’s gaze wavered. He felt short of breath. His fingers trembled. This silent communication was the most truthful conversation he could offer, more sincere than an overwrought apology.

  ‘I knew you would walk out of solitary alive,’ he said, pleadingly. ‘Now that you’re out, you need to write.’ He wanted to read Dong-ju’s words once again. He wasn’t alone; all the prisoners – even the guards – hoped to hear him whistle, fly his kite and write their postcards again.

  ‘How cruel of you,’ Dong-ju finally replied, in a voice as arid as though he’d been buried alive. ‘What right do you have to tell me to write poems? To risk my life?’

  ‘I don’t. That’s true. You can say I have no shame. That’s true, too. But don’t stop writing poems. You have to stop destroying yourself.’ Sugiyama was caught off-guard by the sound of his own desperate voice.

  ‘Why?’ Dong-ju spat back harshly. ‘Why shouldn’t I destroy myself, when the whole world is going insane?’

  Sugiyama was stumped. That angered him. He couldn’t use his club to force Dong-ju to write poetry; nothing could do that. ‘Fuck!’ Sugiyama spat out. ‘Do whatever you want.’ He raged silently at the cruel god who bestowed on Dong-ju the talent for refined language while taking away his mother tongue. Dong-ju’s gift wasn’t a blessing, it was a curse.

  Sugiyama knew he should do something about this state of affairs, instead of just hating it. He should try to repair this vulnerable soul he’d wrecked. He rummaged around in his inner pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. ‘Look! Look at this. It’s a poem.’

  The words pulled Dong-ju’s gaze like bait. Sugiyama wasn’t quite sure if what he’d written was a poem. But if Dong-ju was right, if the truth could be poetry, then perhaps his scribbling could be a poem, too. His were a few unspectacular lines, but they weren’t a lie. He hadn’t been a guard or a censor when he wrote them; he had been true to himself. ‘I can’t believe it either, but I picked up a pen and wrote this. Do you know why?’ He spoke urgently. ‘I wanted to show that someone like me could write poems. What’s your excuse?’

  Dong-ju smiled, fatigued, as though he’d just returned from a long journey. He shook his head sorrowfully, with the grief of a poet who could no longer write, the anguish of a singer who could no longer sing.

  Sugiyama realized he was breathing raggedly and tried to calm himself. ‘Why do you refuse to write?’

  ‘Because we Koreans are only allowed to write in Japanese,’ Dong-ju explained heavily.

  Sugiyama felt his head splicing in two. So language wasn’t simply a tool to convey meaning. It was the charter of a human being that contained a nation’s history; Dong-ju’s had shattered, been dumped on the bloodied floor of the interrogation room. And it was Sugiyama who’d done that to him.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether your poems are in Korean or Japanese,’ Sugiyama insisted. ‘Because, in their essence, they’re your own.’

  ‘Why should I bother writing poems that nobody will read?’

  Sugiyama’s eye twitched imperceptibly. ‘I’m going to read them. So write!’ He grabbed Dong-ju’s collar. ‘You’re a poet. You have to write. Poetry is the only proof that you’re alive. If your poems die, so do you.’

  Dong-ju clenched his teeth. ‘I’m not dying. I’m walking out of this place on 30 November next year, on my own two feet.’

  ‘If you’re lucky, you might survive, but you can’t count on luck,’ Sugiyama urged. ‘Prisoners are continuing to die. If you can’t walk out of here, the poems in your head will be shut in forever.’

  Dong-ju gazed up impassively at the sky. He no longer seemed interested in Sugiyama. The blue sky was reflected in his eyes.

  Sugiyama offered the kite and the spool to Dong-ju. ‘Fine. If you don’t want to write, at least fly this kite. You liked doing that.’

  Dong-ju’s eyes sparkled in momentary joy before he was again overtaken by resignation.

  ‘Everyone’s been waiting for you to come out of solitary and fly your kite.’ Sugiyama lifted his chin towards the yard where the pris
oners were gathered around, talking excitedly.

  He pressed the spool into Dong-ju’s hands. The prisoners looked at him expectantly. With the spool in hand, Dong-ju closed his eyes and gauged the force and direction of the wind. Sugiyama walked a few paces away, holding the kite. The wind picked up and Dong-ju began to run. Sugiyama gently let go of the kite. The spool spun, as though it had been waiting. The kite soared.

  The following week the familiar blue kite flew up over the prison walls as the prisoners watched with bated breath. The blue kite circled, jostling for a fight. Dong-ju quickly reeled his kite in.

  ‘Why are you avoiding it?’ Sugiyama glared at the fragile young man, who resembled the kite made of thin paper and bamboo. ‘Fight till the end!’

  Dong-ju thought for a moment before unspooling the kite line. His kite rocketed up. The blue kite followed, its tail swaying. The blue kite changed direction and approached. Dong-ju gripped the spool. The thin kite lines cut into his palms. The blue kite blocked the wind and came close, and Dong-ju’s kite stumbled. The spectators let out a groan. The wind billowed again. Dong-ju’s kite swooped and circled the blue kite a few times. Now, even if the lines were cut, the two kites would fall, bound together. Suddenly, with a tug, the taut kite line sagged; the blue kite had clipped the white one’s line. Dong-ju’s kite flew on for quite a while before sinking slowly, the blue kite descending along with it. Dong-ju quietly wound in the line. The men murmured in the yard; there was a smattering of cheering and applause.

  ‘These guys never cared about winning,’ Sugiyama said with a faint smile, nodding over at the yard. ‘They just wanted the kite to go beyond the walls.’ Sugiyama kept looking at the descending kites in the distance.

  Dong-ju imagined himself looking down at the ground from the sky, down at the vast ocean, the endless sea-foam coasting in with each wave, the port twinkling in the sunlight, the workers on deck, the children flying their kites, and the wooden guard post, in front of the large dome of the main ward, glistening brassily in the setting sun. Perhaps now he’d be able to write again.

  Every Tuesday Dong-ju flew the kite in the prison yard. Through the slender line, he sensed the girl on the other side of the wall – her pink cheeks, her firmly closed mouth. The goal wasn’t to win, but to see how long he could endure. The blue kite seemed to cross lines, not to fight but to engage in conversation. When Dong-ju unspooled more line, the girl did too, and when he reeled it in, she did as well. When Dong-ju’s kite staggered, the blue kite tugged at its line to give it wind. The two kites crossed lines and detached, reeled down and went back up and teased each other. They approached and stepped back, tangled and fell. If Dong-ju’s kite spiralled down, the blue kite flew up, spinning in the opposite direction. If Dong-ju’s kite flew sluggishly, the blue one dragged along with it. Their beautiful dance embroidered the clear sky. A gust of wind would carry Dong-ju’s kite far away, and the prisoners watching would feel better, imagining their dreams flying far away with it. The two kites’ solemn waltz was the only beautiful scene at Fukuoka Prison.

  NIGHT COUNTING STARS

  Sugiyama stood against the cold brick wall. He took out a worn piece of paper from his inner pocket and opened it. Winter sunlight fell onto his clumsy handwriting:

  In the bronze mirror stained with blue rust

  my face remains so disgraced

  A relic of which dynasty?

  Each word beaded in his heart. Dong-ju’s skeletal form blocked the sun. Sugiyama looked up, carefully folding the piece of paper and sliding it back into his pocket.

  ‘Why do you have that poem?’ Dong-ju demanded.

  Sugiyama didn’t know what to say. As he was the one who’d burned Dong-ju’s poems, he couldn’t tell him that the poem had healed his battered heart. He couldn’t confide in Dong-ju that, when he read the poem, he felt as though he’d found something he’d been desperately searching for. He felt that he was the only person who could save the young man’s poems; he’d begun memorizing them hungrily, reading as though he were praying, reciting them to himself reverently, fingering the copies deep in his pockets.

  ‘Since these poems helped me, they could help many others,’ Sugiyama managed to reply. ‘I know they could make everyone feel better.’

  Dong-ju closed his eyes. He could hear crows flapping their wings on top of the poplar trees. His face seemed to be made of thin ice about to shatter. ‘It’s possible that the book of poems is still around.’

  Sugiyama’s eyes gleamed. If a copy of the manuscript was intact somewhere, the poems would be, too. His guilt could lessen. He grabbed Dong-ju’s shoulders and shook them. ‘Where?’

  Dong-ju gazed up at the empty sky. ‘I don’t know. They left my hands a long time ago.’

  During Dong-ju’s time at Yonhi College, he wrote poems fervently, read books and listened to music. He spent his afternoons going on pilgrimage to used bookshops and music cafes, and on his return to the dormitory he stayed up all night reading. His shabby bookcase was stuffed with literary magazines and books. Between the pages he dried perfect leaves he found on his walks, writing down the place and date he found them. In those days, everything glistened with possibility.

  But he wasn’t spared the cruel clutches of war. The four years he spent in Seoul were harsh and ruthless; young men were dragged off to war and the citizenry was impoverished by the allocated collections for war goods. He had to leave the dormitory and move into a boarding house run by the novelist Kim Song, blacklisted by the Special Higher Police. Kim’s boarders were targets of inspection; detectives watched the students’ every move at all hours of the day. Like clockwork, they burst in every evening to scribble down the students’ book titles and confiscate letters from their desk drawers. Dong-ju packed his bags again, but there was no place for him to go. No matter where he went, he wasn’t safe from brutal restriction and watchful eyes. Several of Dong-ju’s friends were conscripted, a red band tied around their tonsured heads; others were brought into the police station, beaten within an inch of their lives and sent to prison. For Koreans, there was no future. Every night Dong-ju sat before his tiny desk and threw himself into the darkness. Unfinished poems piled up, along with crumpled, discarded pieces of paper smudged with eraser marks and slivers of words.

  With graduation looming, Dong-ju made three copies of a manuscript containing nineteen poems. He asked his friend Jeong Byeong-uk to safeguard one copy, kept one for himself and took the final copy to his professor Lee Yang-ha. He explained his desire to publish a couple of dozen copies and asked Professor Lee to write a foreword. His mentor shook his head; the book of poems would be considered seditious. The Special Higher Police detectives would bare their teeth if they saw poems like ‘Cross’, ‘Sad Tribe’ and ‘Another Home’. Professor Lee suggested that they wait for a better time.

  ‘When would that be?’ Dong-ju asked.

  His mentor couldn’t give him an answer.

  Dong-ju wondered if such a day would ever come, and whether his nineteen poems would survive until the day the world changed.

  ‘Are you saying that there are two more copies of the manuscript in Korea?’ Sugiyama demanded.

  ‘That was three years ago. Who’s to say that someone else could save the poems I myself couldn’t protect?’ Dong-ju was less concerned about his poems than for Byeong-uk, who’d been enlisted as a student-soldier. He also didn’t wish his professor to be put in danger for owning a seditious manuscript.

  But Sugiyama wanted to believe that they had protected those poems from the gale.

  Dong-ju changed the subject. ‘The stars will be in the sky tonight too, right?’ He sounded parched.

  Sugiyama nodded. Every night, from the eastern sky, Venus rose without fail, and the Big Dipper circled the North Star like an enormous waterwheel in the sky. The Milky Way and the sharp twinkling stars giggled and whispered and fought like children. Stars didn’t appear in Dong-ju’s sky. Each night he lay in his cell and drew an imaginary constellation on the ceilin
g. Sugiyama couldn’t blame Dong-ju for wondering whether light had disappeared from the world and whether stars no longer twinkled in the sky.

  That night at 10 p.m. Sugiyama stood in front of the cells. The steel doors opened with a screech. He walked down to Cell 28 at the end of the corridor on the right. ‘645! Interrogation! Regarding seditious writings.’

  The prisoners turned around in their cots and hurried back into slumber. Men called out in the middle of the night rarely came back whole. The guard on duty unlatched the lock and opened the door, then tied Dong-ju’s arms together. Sugiyama signed off on the prisoner log and prodded 645 with his club. He could feel Dong-ju’s protruding ribs through the tip of his club. The long, winding corridor heading towards the interrogation room was dark. The two passed the interrogation room. The shackles clacked and shrieked. Dong-ju was afraid. Where was Sugiyama taking him?

  They stood in the prison yard, spotted with white light as though salt had been scattered over it. They heard the watchtower machine gun readying. The cool searchlight stopped over them.

  ‘Sugiyama Dozan, Guard Department!’ Sugiyama shouted. ‘Interrogation of the scene with Prisoner 645.’

  The guard above them checked his files; he found paperwork signed by Maeda that had been submitted earlier. The searchlight returned to its normal pattern, circling the premises. Sugiyama and Dong-ju could hear the wind against the branches of the poplar trees as they rose like soft, leavening bread. They sat against a tree, side-by-side. The wind blew cold air on Dong-ju’s pale cheeks and temples. He could hear his own heart beating. Sugiyama loosened Dong-ju’s ties and took off the handcuffs. The cold night air smelled sweet. Dong-ju inhaled deeply and murmured words Sugiyama couldn’t understand; he was reciting a poem in his mother tongue, the same language he shouted in as he played in the mountains and fields of his hometown. The language he’d had to repress now burst out through his lips.