The Investigation Read online

  The dark scent of tobacco and mahogany washed over me as I stood at attention in the warden’s office. The bracing morning air came through the open window. An award certificate stamped with the Emperor’s royal seal was hanging on the wall and underneath it, side by side, were the crest of the samurai and the Rising Sun. A long military knife and a gleaming rifle were displayed on a solid-wood cabinet. Warden Hasegawa, whose balding pate was ringed with a thatch of hair, waved a long baton as though it were an extension of his body, his eyes closed. His chestnut-brown trousers were sharply creased and badges flashed on his chest. A man’s powerful, elegant singing, edged with sadness, reverberated in the room. A record was spinning on the phonograph, which stood on a table draped with red velvet. The warden’s office, complete with elegant floor-to-ceiling windows, sonorous singing and blinding morning sun, was a sanctuary. I had no idea that such a plush space existed in this drab brick building. Hasegawa picked up the needle and the phonograph’s crackling halted. Stroking his neatly trimmed moustache, he seemed to revel in the music’s lingering resonance.

  ‘Watanabe Yuichi, Ward Three, sir!’

  Hasegawa moved the baton to his other hand and stood up. The thoughtful middle-aged man enjoying a mellifluous song quickly transformed into a cold prison warden, his smile stiffening and his eyes emitting a chill. ‘I already heard all about the dead guard, from Maeda.’

  I wondered why he’d called me in. That was when it dawned on me – I was the last person who had seen Sugiyama alive. I clenched my molars to still my trembling lips.

  ‘Are you a student-soldier?’ His voice, as sharp as a hawk’s talons, sank into me as if I were a field mouse.

  Was I a suspect? ‘Yes, sir. I was a liberal-arts student at the Third High School in Kyoto.’

  ‘Lucky fellow. Your friends who were conscripted at the same time would have been sent to the Southern Front. You were assigned in Japan – to a prison, at that – not even to a military battalion.’ His eyes glinted as he appraised me. ‘You’ll take this incident.’

  Did he mean I should take care of the funeral? Or was he accusing me of the murder? It would have been preferable to go to the Southern Front. ‘I will report the murder to the Special Higher Police,’ I managed to squeak.

  Hasegawa nodded and looked at me with his piercing gaze. ‘Right. That would be the standard procedure. But here in Fukuoka Prison we can’t follow standard procedures. We have the most dangerous elements of the archipelago here – men who need to be eliminated from society, people who shouldn’t have been born to begin with. You can’t employ common sense with them. The military can’t do anything with them, let alone the Special Higher Police. Everything that happens here is a battle, and we’re the only ones equipped to deal with what goes on in here. So don’t bring up the goddamn police again!’

  There was nothing I could say in reply.

  ‘Take over this investigation. Find out which criminal element killed Sugiyama Dozan and why. Get yourself immediately to the head guard’s office and request assistance. He’ll see to it that you don’t have any difficulty with this investigation. He’ll get you the documents you need and set up interrogations with the prisoners. I want to know immediately if anything new is revealed!’

  I clacked my heels together and froze at attention, feeling lost. I gave him a military salute, turned around and left.

  The guard office was at the end of the administrative ward, where Wards Two and Three split off. Behind the wooden door were the guardroom and the holding cell, a neutral space between the prisoners and the guards. At one end of the guardroom was a shabby office, sectioned off by temporary walls. I opened the crooked door. Water was boiling in the kettle on top of the rusty stove, tended to by Maeda, his dress-uniform cap pressed firmly over his eyebrows. He never took off that cap; it made him taller, covered his balding head, and cast an authoritative shadow over his close-set eyes, drooping eyebrows and flat nose. Nearing fifty, Maeda looked much older than his years; he’d spent his entire life trapped in the brown uniform, surrounded by people who’d reached the end of their lives. He nodded to me and murmured, ‘So it’s finally come to this.’

  I wasn’t sure if he was addressing me. ‘Did you know Sugiyama-san would be killed?’

  His face became impassive, as though a curtain had been drawn. He tossed a file onto his desk, the Ward Three shift report. He licked his finger and flipped through the document. ‘I’m not the only one who thought something would happen to him. I didn’t know it would be in this horrible way . . .’

  ‘What kind of shit was Sugiyama involved in?’ I deliberately chose to call him by name, without the polite -san. That removed any suggestion of sympathy.

  Maeda softened. ‘When he came back from Nomonhan, he couldn’t rid himself of his wartime habits. He treated prisoners as if they were enemies. He acted as if he were waging battle. I mean, someone had to. The prisoners here look submissive, but don’t be fooled. They’ll rip you apart if you give them the chance. Sugiyama became an animal, too.’

  Outside, the wind blew through the gaunt spindle trees, creating a piping sound. The kettle on top of the stove stopped boiling; the fire was dying down.

  ‘This isn’t just a guard’s death!’ Maeda shouted suddenly. ‘This is war. They’ve declared war! The murderer is here, somewhere. Let me tell you, Ward Three is a different beast. It’s where the worst of the criminals go, the most vicious – Koreans, traitors and Communists. This place stinks of blood. They bare their fangs and rip into each other. If you aren’t careful, you could end up just like Sugiyama.’ His words dripped with hatred and derision.

  The coal in the furnace crackled. I didn’t know what he was talking about. I felt like a pilot who’d made an emergency landing in enemy territory, unsure of which direction I was facing. But I had to do my job. I picked up the file Maeda had tossed aside. I opened its worn, glossy cover. I inhaled the scent of sweet paper, losing myself for a moment in delicious ink and fragrant trees. The last entry was dated 22 December.

  Guards usually scribbled ‘nothing out of the ordinary’ instead of a detailed record of the day or, if even that proved too difficult, they wrote: ‘N/A’. But Sugiyama’s reports were notable for their detail. Even almost-identical events from the previous day were recorded slightly differently. On the night before he died he’d written: ‘349 prisoners sleeping in a total of 48 cells. Patrol time 2–6 a.m. 348 steps round-trip along Ward Three corridor. Many patients with colds. Slow recovery of one patient with contusions and fractures.’ The previous day he’d written: ‘From 2 to 6 a.m. checked 346 prisoners in 48 cells through the surveillance window. More patients with colds, one patient with fractures and contusions.’ The patient with contusions and fractures was mentioned daily; I became curious about his identity and the source of his injuries. I flipped back, page by page. The first clue I found was in the 13 December report. ‘Prisoner 331 in Cell 28: repressed with club for refusal of orders and inappropriate actions. Moved to infirmary after collapse, took emergency measures. Contusions all over the body including the head, suspected fracture to shoulder and ribs.’ I was a little surprised that he’d faithfully recorded the conditions of the men he’d personally clubbed. I looked up 331’s records. Name: Choi Chi-su. Crime: study of Communism and overthrow of the government, assassination attempt of a key government figure, rebellion plot. He was a long-term prisoner.

  I stood up and adjusted my uniform. I wondered whether this man could illuminate the mystery of Sugiyama’s death. But when Sugiyama was killed, all the prisoners were in their cells. Only guards and rats were awake and mobile. Still, 331 was the only person I could think of to question.

  Later, under the faint shadow of the tall brick wall lining the yard, I studied the piece of paper I’d found in Sugiyama’s uniform. Its worn corners were disintegrating, but it seemed to retain his body heat. I turned the paper over; it was a ledger of incoming and outgoing post for Ward Three. 27 March 1942. Incoming: 14; Outgoing: 5. At the
bottom the sender’s name, address and the prisoner number of the recipient were written in black ink. The first hesitant stroke revealed a careful personality, while the following clumsy but sure strokes suggested a strong sense of purpose.

  I believed handwriting revealed one’s soul. The shape and position of the script announced not only a person’s character and desires, but also his mood and feelings at the time he was writing, as did the space between the letters and lines and the speed with which he scrawled. Even a blank piece of paper tells the reader something about the person who chose not to write. As for the content – I was well aware of the magic of consonants as they ruptured in my mouth; of the elegance of vowels as they tumbled out fluidly; and of the way they created pitch and meaning and feeling as they mixed and crashed into each other. I recalled characters from novels I’d read long ago. The bleak prison yard became the snow-covered Siberia in Tolstoy’s Resurrection; if I were to love someone, I would love a woman like Katyusha. If words could explain lives, why couldn’t they illuminate death? I searched for Sugiyama’s core in his strokes and punctuation, but I soon grew confused. I glimpsed two very different people. The exact same writing was on the shift report and the post ledger; the writer was confident and fearless, like the Sugiyama I was familiar with. Though the poem seemed written by the same hand, the strokes seemed bashful and hesitant. Did Sugiyama write both the official reports and the poem, too? Or did someone copy Sugiyama’s handwriting? And, most importantly, why was that piece of paper in his pocket?

  THINGS THAT POOL IN THE HEART BEFORE TRICKLING DOWN

  Darkness began to descend over the prison walls. Every afternoon at this time I heard the same seductive piano melody playing somewhere; I hummed along automatically. A light was on in the infirmary. Drawn by the music, I started walking towards it. I stopped at the auditorium window and looked in; a grand piano stood imposingly, as confident as a boat with expanded sails voyaging through the red sunset. Its colonnades, curves and the fine, elaborate carvings – it created an otherworldly effect. A woman was sitting at the piano, which let out a clear, delicate sound each time her fingers caressed the keys; I felt as though I’d seen the source of a majestic river, a small spring deep in the mountains. Her white fingers undulated like waves, scurried like mice and flitted like curious birds. In a trance, I gazed at this forbidding world from the other side of the clear glass. Time passed ever so slowly. She was like an exotic bird flying into the sunset, into darkness, into silence. As the air absorbed the last melodies, she straightened and looked out the window. Was she looking at me? I stared at her, bewitched; she was indeed real. She was wearing a neat white nurse’s uniform; her slender face was as smooth as a ceramic pot; her hair glistened in the amber light of the waning sun. Her high forehead, slender eyebrows and the corners of her almond-shaped eyes were enchanting, her cheeks were flushed, and her slightly parted lips prodded my curiosity.

  I wanted to introduce myself, but my shabby appearance made me hesitate. I watched as she held a hairpin in her mouth before securing her nurse’s cap. She glanced down at her reflection on the piano lid before taking her files and hurrying across the auditorium. With each step, her white skirt flapped at her calves. Before I realized what I was doing, I stepped into the building. I walked down the pristine corridor to the auditorium. The doors opened silently as though they had been waiting for me. I approached the glistening piano, awed by its black-and-white keys, the vibrant grain of the wood, its sturdy tendon-like strings. I looked down at the back of my cracked, rough hands, at my fingernails rimmed with grime. Could fingers this dirty make a melody? I pressed a key; a clear note rang out, thawing my heart. I closed my eyes.

  ‘That’s soh.’ A voice twinkled like the scales of sweetfish swimming upstream. Hundreds of bells tolled in my ears.

  I looked behind me. Her lips were pursed, but she didn’t seem reproachful. She held black files against her chest, creating a vivid contrast against her white uniform. Her fingers were pale and long and delicate; her pinkish nails had a transparent lustre. How long had she been watching me?

  ‘It’s also called G. It’s the fifth note. For your little finger. It’s the arbiter of sound that harmonizes with all notes, a bridge that links the ponderous dark low notes and delicate high notes.’ She looked me over.

  I shrank. I was bedraggled; my uniform was covered in dirt, my skin had been pummelled by dusty winds, my lips were blistered, I hadn’t bathed in a while. She smiled slightly. Was she jeering silently at me? Or was it compassion?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, stiffly. ‘Coming in here without permission and touching this object . . .’ I searched for a way to end the sentence. I wanted to bite my clumsy tongue for calling this enchanting, captivating instrument an object.

  She said it was fine, that it wasn’t her piano, and reached over to pick up the sheet music she’d left on the rack.

  I mustered up the courage to speak to her again. ‘The piece you just played – what is it called? I think I’ve heard it before, but I don’t remember the title.’

  Instead of answering, she opened the sheet music. The title was written on the top. Die Winterreise. ‘It’s German. Winter Journey.’

  ‘Winter Journey . . .’ I echoed.

  ‘Schubert composed these lieder for Wilhelm Müller’s poems. It’s a total of twenty-four songs published as Opus 89. The singer tells of the loneliness of life and the pain of love, but even played with just the piano, it’s truly beautiful. The piano in Die Winterreise doesn’t merely accompany the singer. It sets the tone of the whole piece. I would say it’s a duet of a pianist and a singer.’

  ‘It makes me wonder which singer would be able to hold his own.’

  ‘Professor Marui Yasujiro. He’s the foremost tenor in Japan. He teaches at Tokyo Imperial University Music School and has made several records. He’s renowned worldwide, especially for performing Schubert. To really express the loneliness and gloom of this piece, he sang it as a baritone. His performances are some of the best interpretations of Schubert’s work.’

  I was sufficiently awed, and it must have shown on my face.

  ‘Professor Marui is planning to give a concert, wishing for peace in Asia, here next February,’ the nurse told me. ‘He decided not to use his usual accompanist for this concert; he wants someone working here. He thought that was more fitting with the themes of hope and peace. That’s why I’ve been practising so hard.’ She smiled, revealing her even teeth, which resembled the piano’s white keys. ‘I’m Iwanami Midori,’ she said. Her words rippled like water and pooled in my heart.

  ‘Watanabe – Yuichi . . .’ I stammered, disgusted with myself that I couldn’t utter my own name without stuttering.

  She nodded before walking across the wooden floor.

  ‘Iwanami Midori . . .’ I murmured. Her name sounded like a melody.

  It was snowing outside. The snow fell through the darkness, crackling like thin ice. The night air was heavy with ice and cold and heartlessness and conspiracies and secrets and other unknowable things. Our barracks formed a makeshift structure on the west side of the central facilities. By the time I returned, the lights were out and the other conscripted guards were deep in slumber. The coal stove glowed in the middle. I stumbled into my sleeping bag, which smelled of other people. It had been a long day. Sugiyama’s death, searching for clues but learning nothing, the mysterious poem. I wasn’t Sherlock Holmes or a Special Higher Police detective. I didn’t have the skills to solve a gruesome murder, let alone the means to catch the perpetrator.

  The wind swept the snow off the galvanized iron roof above my head. The amber light, the warm air, the elegant piano, the girl in white . . . I folded my hands on my chest and felt the piece of paper that I’d retrieved from Sugiyama’s uniform:

  As a stranger I arrived,

  As a stranger again I leave.

  May was kind to me

  With many bunches of flowers.

  The girl spoke of love,

  Her
mother even of marriage,

  Now the world is bleak,

  The path covered by snow.

  That violent guard wrote such poetry? It didn’t match up. Was it a clue, or a sign left by the murderer? Why would a criminal leave a mysterious poem in the victim’s pocket? I was as puzzled as ever, but grew convinced that the poem contained the key. The song I’d heard Midori playing earlier circled in my head – the song of one man’s despair, of painful love. Melody embraced poetry, and poetry was laid over melody. The harmony of sounds layered over the verse; the tinkling of the piano sparkled in the golden light of the furnace. Three faces hovered in my mind – Sugiyama, Hasegawa, Midori. Poetry, melody, piano.

  Before the war tore my life into pieces, my days began in a single-storey house topped with an attic in the outskirts of Kyoto, and proceeded to a small used bookshop run by my mother. I spent hours among the old wooden bookshelves piled with dust, surrounded by paper. Walls of books protected us from the ominous news of the war. Nothing could filter in through the hundreds of thousands of pages; not the brawling of merchants or the clomping of marching soldiers or the cold of the winter night. The books protected me from the era’s rebellions and from my anxiety about the future. I snuggled deeper in my prison-issue sleeping bag, recalling forgotten names, their faces as vivid as a new photograph – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, André Gide, Lord Byron, Rainer Maria Rilke.

  We opened the bookshop the year I went into middle school. Three years earlier my father had applied to the Manchurian military academy, but he was too old. He was finally able to enrol after audaciously demonstrating his sincerity with a letter written in his blood and sent to the Army Minister. Early in the morning on the day of departure, my mother and I followed him to Kyoto Station. From behind, amid the plump flitting snowflakes, he looked like a wooden toy soldier, weighed down with gear. Thick, solid icicles clung to the dark wheels of the train that was puffing out white steam. Father’s scratchy beard was caked with frost. His eyelashes were long, like mine.