The Investigation Page 15

  A shooting star raced over their heads. Dong-ju had too many wishes to pick only one. Not Sugiyama; he asked that this poet pass safely through this cruel era. He gazed up at the stars as they traced concentric circles along the sky and wondered if they made a noise as they orbited, or whether they gave off a gentle rustle. He wanted to hear it. The wind blew; his cheek was wet and cold.

  Back in the interrogation room, Sugiyama opened the report form. Dong-ju began to speak, translating ‘Night Counting Stars’ into Japanese. The poem emerged as fragile as candlelight in a gale. Sugiyama wondered: how could he not blame himself if he couldn’t usher these poems past the end of the war? He was the only person who could protect this young man’s legacy; there was no one else. Sugiyama dipped his pen in ink and began transcribing the words, which floated like stars on the dark paper:

  NIGHT COUNTING STARS

  The sky of passing seasons

  Is filled with autumn.

  Without a single worry

  I think I can count all the autumn stars.

  The reason I can’t count all the stars carved

  one by one in my heart is

  because morning is coming,

  because night will fall again tomorrow,

  because my youth is not yet gone.

  For one star, memory;

  For one star, love;

  For one star, loneliness;

  For one star, longing;

  For one star, poetry;

  For one star, mother, mother.

  Mother, I call out one beautiful word for every star. The names of the children I shared a desk with in primary school, the foreign names of girls, Pei, Jing, Yu, other girls who have already become mothers, the names of impoverished neighbours, dove, puppy, rabbit, donkey, deer, the names of poets like Francis Jammes and Rainer Maria Rilke.

  They are so far away.

  Like stars in the beyond,

  And you, Mother –

  you are in Manchuria far away.

  Longing for something,

  On top of the hill under falling starlight

  I etched my name,

  And covered it with dirt.

  The insect that cries all night

  Does because of its sorrow about its shameful name.

  But after winter passes and spring dawns on my star,

  On the hill where my name is buried

  Grass will stand thick and proud

  Like green grass blooming on a grave.

  Sugiyama carefully folded the report form and slid it into the inner pocket of his uniform.

  PART TWO

  HOW DESPAIR BECOMES A SONG

  Warden Hasegawa and Director Morioka were immersed in Midori’s playing, their eyes closed. Hasegawa began to clap when she finished. ‘Wonderful performance, Miss Iwanami! Thank you in advance for your efforts in preparing for the concert. The entire city of Fukuoka is waiting with anticipation.’ He laughed loudly, revealing molars capped in silver.

  Thanks to the newsworthy concert, the Interior Minister and high-level officials in attendance would be favourably inclined towards him, Hasegawa thought. Reporters from leading newspapers would rush in; he might become a nationwide celebrity. He planned to invite the ambassadors of allied countries, Germany and Italy, as well as the foreign press; his fame might stretch beyond national boundaries. He couldn’t keep the pleasant thoughts away or tamp down his gleeful smile.

  Midori spoke up, taking advantage of the moment. ‘I have one request.’

  Hasegawa nodded eagerly.

  ‘I would like to include a chorus at the end of the concert.’

  Hasegawa twisted his moustache, looking amused. ‘A chorus? Who will sing? And who will lead the practice?’

  ‘This prison is filled with people who can sing.’

  ‘You mean the prisoners?’ Hasegawa’s face contorted.

  ‘The concert would be more noteworthy precisely because they are prisoners. Their beautiful song would demonstrate how the Empire’s incarceration system has reformed them.’

  ‘But it’s a solo recital by the respected Professor Marui Yasujiro. You’ll ruin the stage for the best singer in all Japan!’

  Midori hesitated a moment before taking out a pristine letter from her pocket and handing it to the sceptical warden. ‘This is Professor Marui’s letter. It arrived yesterday. He’s already agreed to it.’

  Hasegawa hesitated. A chorus of prisoners couldn’t do much harm, could it? He appraised Midori coldly. ‘But who would want to sing? And even if we had volunteers, I don’t know what the prisoners might do, if we don’t watch them carefully.’

  Sugiyama jumped in. ‘I can take care of that, sir. I’ll bring them to practice and guard them.’ He would do anything to provide an audience for the piano he had tuned, no matter what everyone else’s hidden intentions were.

  ‘The repertoire is “Va, pensiero” in Scene Two, Act Three of Verdi’s opera Nabucco,’ Midori said.

  ‘Verdi . . . Verdi?’ Hasegawa looked puzzled.

  ‘Verdi, to our ally Italy, is what Wagner is to Germany,’ Morioka explained. ‘Nabucco was a huge success at La Scala. Everything about the opera represents Italy’s hopes. It reminded Italians, who were suffering from division and war, of their love for their country. And of all the songs, “Va, pensiero” is in effect Italy’s second national anthem – it was sung at Verdi’s funeral. It’s majestic and powerful, so it would work for our purposes, even if we only have male singers.’

  Hasegawa was pleased. To encourage participation, he decided to exempt volunteers from labour and give them an additional meal a day. Morioka excused Midori from her medical duties in the afternoons, to allow her to conduct the auditions and oversee practice.

  The auditions took place over a week. Each volunteer was escorted to the auditorium, where Midori observed as the prisoner vocalized. She recorded her opinion on the prisoner’s tone, vocal strength and suggested chord-part in a meticulous log, and seventy-odd prisoners were selected. She launched an even more detailed and complex second evaluation, checking to see if the candidates could sing precise notes. Many men’s voices cracked on the higher notes; others had no sense of rhythm. Three days later, she had thirty men, ten each assigned to baritone, bass and tenor. Prisoners with excellent vocalization and tone were to be leaders. A Korean, who’d been taking preparatory courses at Ueno Music School before being sent to prison for his ideology, was made the concert master. Hasegawa allowed the singers to change cell assignments so that everyone in the same vocal group was together. On Mondays, Sugiyama went out to the cells, put manacles and shackles on the singers and led them to the auditorium, where he stayed to observe them. He also listened carefully to the piano, in case it needed tuning.

  The auditorium erupted into chaos during the first practice – the singers didn’t know how to read music and they didn’t have even a basic understanding of how scales worked. Verdi’s opera was ill-fitted to men who didn’t know what sheet music was. They were there solely for the perks. Midori asked the warden to allow the prisoners to shed their manacles. With their hands bound together, she argued, the prisoners were forced to lean forward, compacting their lungs and making it difficult to draw in a breath or vocalize.

  Hasegawa scoffed. ‘And what will you do if they riot?’

  Midori slammed both hands down on the keyboard. The majestic roar of the piano curtailed the jungle of the men’s murmuring.

  ‘Fine!’ Hasegawa said. ‘But not the shackles.’

  The singers, their hands freed, stood around looking lost. Midori handed out sheet music to the leaders. She played the melody of ‘Va, pensiero’ over and over again, familiarizing each part with what they would be singing.

  For weeks the auditorium was a crucible of cacophony. Voices cracked, tangled and flipped. Vocalizations were terrible. The prisoners seemed incapable of singing a simple lullaby, let alone the magnificent Verdi. Midori played the piano tirelessly, correcting the prisoners’ vocalizations, giving sug
gestions on how to breathe deeply. Slowly, the mass of noise turned into sound, and the sound into music. The men could hear their own voices, once lost. Singing was no longer performed for special treatment; the prisoners were recovering their lost selves. Their voices told them who they were. After practice, they lined up as tenors, baritones and basses. Sugiyama counted the men, manacled them and shouted, ‘Return to cells. Forward, march!’ The line of prisoners snaked along the corridor, back to their cells, and now they sang of their own volition. They practiced vocalization and harmonized with others in the adjoining cells. The thick walls couldn’t keep their voices apart. Each part began to shine.

  Back in rehearsals, Midori carefully regulated the brightness and darkness, forcefulness and frailness, cold and warmth. The prisoners sang bluer than the sky, clearer than the wind and brighter than the stars. They concentrated on extracting the purest sounds from their bodies, like monks in meditation. Watching it all unfold, Sugiyama felt his heart warming; moved by beauty, he realized he was still human.

  SANITATION INSPECTION

  Each season brought grave disappointment – spring’s blooming leaves pushed prisoners into a deep depression, summer’s brutal temperatures and humidity overwhelmed them with sweat and swarms of mosquitoes, autumn’s falling leaves and cold wind reminded them of the coming temperatures and every second of winter bared its sharp teeth in attack.

  One day in the late summer of 1944 Hasegawa and Maeda escorted Director Morioka and his team of doctors into Ward Three. A parade of white coats filled the corridors; never before had so many medical staff entered the ward.

  From one end Hasegawa called out, ‘Open all cell doors!’

  The guards dispersed with a loud thudding of boots. Keys jangled as locks turned. When the doors opened, the sour smell of sweat and filth rushed out. The guards lined up on each side of the corridor, equidistant from one another. Morioka gave a signal and doctors in masks and rubber gloves entered the cells, followed by the guards. ‘Special sanitation inspection!’ the guards called. ‘Strip!’

  The prisoners glanced at one another warily as they took their clothes off. The hesitant were met with clubs. The prisoners lined up on either side of the cells facing each other. The doctors estimated each prisoner’s height and weight; with gloved hands they looked into their eyes and examined their mouths. Afterwards the doctors gathered in the corridor and submitted their inspection logs to Morioka, who left, leaving behind a sharp antiseptic smell.

  Twisting the ends of his moustache, Hasegawa watched the medical team disappearing down the corridor. ‘End of sanitation inspection! Close the cell doors!’

  Sugiyama looked on nervously. He knew that everything was a prelude to something else; no single incident existed in isolation. But he couldn’t tell what was about to happen, whether it would bring an unbelievable stroke of luck or terrible misfortune.

  The following day Hasegawa ordered Ward Three prisoners to line up in the military training grounds. The tight ranks squeezed everyone’s freedom; nobody could burst out of line or fall behind. By obeying, the prisoners forced others to follow suit. Hasegawa looked down silently from the platform, appearing to enjoy the prisoners’ growing anxiety. Time was on the side of the powerful; the more one delayed, the more worried the powerless became. The prisoners watched the warden’s lips. A long time passed before Hasegawa spoke into the microphone: ‘You should all be grateful to the medical staff of the Kyushu Imperial University Medical School!’

  The prisoners began to murmur.

  Hasegawa paused, fanning their curiosity. ‘Thanks to the magnanimity of the Great Emperor of Japan, the best medical staff in the nation gave you an inspection. It was revealed that a large number of prisoners are suffering from ill health. The medical staff will provide free medical treatment to those prisoners.’

  Hasegawa stepped away from the crackling microphone. A guard tacked a piece of paper filled with prisoner numbers on a bulletin board next to the platform. The prisoners crowded around it, the illiterate openly fretting. As Maeda opened a log and began to call out the numbers, the yard erupted in excited shouts.

  Several men who were not selected crowded around Maeda.

  A pale man walked up. From the yellowed whites of his eyes, it was clear he was jaundiced. ‘I’ve been suffering for a long time from anaemia,’ he said dejectedly. ‘Why are you helping people who are fine, but not me?’

  ‘You’re disqualified because you have a wound on your forehead,’ Maeda said. ‘But there will be more chances. The inspection will continue at regular intervals.’ He laughed arrogantly.

  The prison hummed with cheers and laughter. Only those who weren’t selected were unhappy, as was one guard standing in the corner, nervously watching the celebrations.

  TO BE, OR NOT TO BE

  Every time I walked into the censor office, I was on the lookout for any evidence of Sugiyama’s life. The desk, the bookcases and the boxes of documents weren’t illuminating, and the only other furniture in the office was an old wooden cabinet with a broken lock, squeezed in the narrow space between the bookcases and the wall, which Sugiyama used to store his clothes and personal effects. I opened the cabinet. Inside hung a well-ironed dress uniform, a brown winter uniform and two grey summer uniforms. The drawer near the bottom contained worn underwear, socks, gaiters and a few neatly folded handkerchiefs. A large box sat in the bottom, probably filled with dirty laundry. Right after the murder I’d taken an inventory of his things and noticed how everything was in perfect order, revealing Sugiyama’s obsessive personality. I closed the cabinet door. Something made me open it again. I took the top off the large box. It smelled sour – sweat and mould. Dirty laundry, like I’d thought. I caught sight of a pair of winter uniform trousers, dirt embedded in the baggy knees. It gave me pause. Come to think of it, the dust in the prison yard flew away easily. I examined the trousers hanging in the cabinet. The knees showed faint traces of having been dragged along damp dirt. I remembered the scratches on Sugiyama’s knees. What could that be about?

  The heavy doors to the interrogation room opened and Choi walked in. His sunken, glinting eyes glanced at my shoulder, at my new, stiff badge. ‘Congratulations. I see you’ve got yourself a promotion.’

  I was embarrassed. I’d got my corporal’s badge by making him out to be the murderer.

  ‘Well,’ he said, noticing my discomfort. ‘People who will die should die, and those who survive should live well. Get a promotion, go on leave.’ He sat himself on the chair, looking tired and anxious.

  I felt warm. I unfastened a button on my uniform top. ‘I have a few more questions about Hiranuma Tochu.’

  ‘Him again?’ he snapped. ‘That man’s a different breed. I don’t want to get involved in any way.’ His eyes flickered.

  ‘You’re right. Hiranuma is very different from you. I know why you and your men kept going to solitary. Why did he?’

  Choi rubbed his beard. ‘How am I supposed to know? Why don’t you ask him?’

  I had to trip him up. ‘You’re lying. Or you’re not telling me the whole truth. I know your men beat him up when he got out of solitary.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘It was written in Sugiyama’s daily log. He watched Hiranuma very carefully. So don’t bother lying.’

  ‘Don’t you find that people usually lie because they’re afraid or because they’re hopeful? Since I’m neither, I might as well tell you.’ Choi drew in a breath. ‘We tried to pull him into our plan. Of course, we didn’t like him, but we thought he would be someone the other Koreans would look up to.’

  Choi kept his eye on Yun Dong-ju from the very beginning. Dong-ju was gentle; he exuded helplessness. Choi was disgusted that the young man had changed his name, as he believed that was equivalent to denying one’s country. His men gathered information about the new prisoner. Man-gyo wheedled out Dong-ju’s story from the guards – a student from Manchuria who attended the prestigious Yonhi College in Seoul and ended
up in Japan. An intellectual, the kind of man Choi despised.

  But something shifted when Yun arrived. The Korean prisoners started to crowd around him. Choi couldn’t understand it. After all, Yun didn’t have either the acumen to rally the men or the brute force to overpower someone. But he seemed to draw people in with spellbinding power, though all he did was listen to their stories, write their postcards and fly a kite. All he had going for him was his talent for writing. But that was how he unified all the Koreans. Choi didn’t fully understand how language could move a man’s heart, but he wanted to harness Dong-ju’s influence for his own use.

  It was obvious that they were extreme opposites. Choi considered Dong-ju to be sentimental, and Dong-ju probably thought Choi a boor. But Dong-ju’s undeniable magnetism pulled Choi in. So Choi sent his men to set up a meeting with Dong-ju, who claimed he wasn’t interested. Finally Choi took matters into his own hands and approached Dong-ju himself.

  ‘Aren’t you hard to pin down! We need to talk. I think it’ll interest you.’

  Dong-ju gazed up at the empty sky without answering, and the others began to turn their heads to look at the two men, aware of the roaring silence.

  Choi laughed heartily and stalked off, not wanting his authority to be flouted in the presence of the rest of the prisoners.

  After that encounter Choi began to approach Dong-ju daily. It was patently obvious that Choi was desperate to get this inexperienced young man on his side. Finally, one day, Choi revealed his true feelings. ‘Don’t you want to get out of this place?’ he asked. ‘Listen to me if you want to leave this prison alive.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Dong-ju said placidly. ‘I’m going to walk out through the front gates on my release date, 30 November of next year. No sooner, no later.’

  Choi wanted to stab this idiot; he wanted to brandish his metal shaft and force Dong-ju to understand that these were tools with which to break out of prison. He wished he could drag him into solitary to show him the tunnel to freedom. But he had to be careful. He grinned. ‘Then you must not realize how terrible this place is. There’s no way a puny bastard like you could last until next year.’