The Investigation Page 4

  INTERROGATION

  In the small, dark interrogation room I nodded at Prisoner 331, Choi Chi-su, directing him to sit on the icy wooden chair. Dampness and the sour smell of mould surrounded us. I sat across from him, the old wooden desk between us. His eyes were calm; he seemed at ease in this room. He reminded me of the Koreans I’d seen in my youth in Kyoto. They’d coolly glared at everyone, or else they’d looked around as though they were searching for something. I found out only later why their eyes were empty and accusatory; they’d lost their entire reason to be.

  ‘331!’ My voice was sharp, frightening even myself.

  He replied gruffly. ‘My name isn’t 331. It’s Choi Chi-su.’

  ‘Not your Korean name. Give me your Japanese name!’

  ‘I don’t have one,’ he said, a jeer staining his lips. ‘I don’t care what you call me. How’s this? Since my prisoner number ends with 1, call me Ichiro. It’s not inaccurate, since I’m the leader of the prisoners.’ He was right, since Ichiro meant first-born son.

  ‘Tell me how you got injured on 13 December.’

  He glanced at me, trying to figure out why I was asking about that. ‘It’s no big deal. My wrist was broken and my forehead was bashed. So I bled a little, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s a big deal for me. Because the guard who beat you died.’

  ‘13 December? Let’s see. That day, as usual, we went to our work areas. I dawdled and stayed behind in my cell. That bastard opened the surveillance window and shouted at me for still being there. I told him I had a cold. He came into my cell and clubbed me over the head. But it turned out fine for me, since I was sent to solitary for ten days instead of having to work.’

  ‘I just told you that he died, but you’re not surprised.’

  ‘Should I be surprised? Or afraid? Why? I didn’t kill him.’

  That much was clear. He had a watertight alibi. Between 2 and 4 a.m., when Sugiyama was murdered, he was locked in a cell. In fact, he was locked in solitary, which was always under strict surveillance, away from the regular wards. To ask him about what happened on 22 December was to be suspicious of Fukuoka Prison’s ironclad security system. I felt aimless, like a hunting dog that had lost his prey. ‘331! I’m not asking you about that. I want to know about you.’

  He clasped his hands together and tucked them inside his sleeves. He leaned back on the chair. The cuffs on his wrists glittered. He gave me a cold smile. ‘I forgot who I was a long time ago.’ He shot me an intense gaze.

  I felt cowed. I opened his file and rattled off the facts. ‘Name: Choi Chi-su. Forty-two. From Gaeseong on the Korean peninsula. At age seventeen, attacked a police substation, assaulted a Japanese merchant and attempted arson of a Japanese-owned shop. At age twenty-two, firebombed Gaeseong Police Station and immediately fled to Manchuria. You reappeared nine years ago in the middle of Tokyo. You were arrested on the scene for throwing a bomb at the celebration of the Emperor’s birthday in Ueno Park. You were lucky; you were sentenced to life in prison because that bomb didn’t detonate. You were serving your sentence in Tokyo Prison when the Home Ministry proclaimed that Korean convicts were to be sent to Fukuoka. You were transferred here. You attempted escape sixteen times in seven years, and spent 348 days in solitary for a total of twenty-seven incidents.’

  He glared at me. ‘I was locked up when he was killed.’

  ‘That’s no excuse. You’ve been here longer than anyone else. So you know this place better than anyone. You might know of a way to escape from solitary. You also have a motive. Sugiyama clubbed you.’

  ‘Sugiyama? Should I tell you what I know about him?’ Choi smiled mysteriously.

  What did he know? What was he hiding? I leaned forward swiftly, like a fish taking bait.

  ‘Sugiyama Dozan lived as a soldier his whole life. But in the end he died a weak man.’

  I was sparring with a powerful, cunning bastard. But I refused to yield. ‘Careful. I’m going to figure out whatever it is that you’re plotting.’

  He smiled. ‘How?’

  ‘I’m – I’m going to figure you out.’

  He arched an eyebrow. ‘Yet another guy who says ridiculous shit. I thought it was only Hiranuma who went on about figuring people out.’

  My ears perked. I etched those four syllables in my head. Hiranuma.

  The log of incoming materials had prisoner numbers, book titles and arrival dates recorded in tiny print. The books were behind bars, just like the prisoners – Hugo, Tolstoy, Stendhal, Cervantes – but their souls shimmered, alive between the pages. The paper was their skin, the ink their blood and the binding their ligaments. I’d got to know them in our bookshop; I’d grown up revelling in their reassuring presence. I was orphaned when I was taken away from them. My soul had lost its way and my dreams stumbled around in the dark.

  I flipped a few pages of the log to find Hiranuma Tochu’s records. Prisoner 645. I approached the shelves. A prisoner number marked each dusty box. The sides of box 645 were slick with grime – someone had accessed it frequently. The censor was the only one who could freely look through confiscated documents. Heat shot up my spine. Was Hiranuma involved in Sugiyama’s death? I opened the box and spotted a file containing his biographical information:

  Hiranuma Tochu. Born in 1917 in Mingdong village, Helong Prefecture, Jiandao Province, Manchuria. In 1932 enrolled in Eunjin Secondary School in Manchuria and in 1935 transferred to Sungshil Secondary School in Pyongyang, northern Korea. Returned to Longjing, Manchuria after Sungshil Secondary School was shut due to its refusal to worship at a Japanese Shinto shrine. In 1938 enrolled in Yonhi College in Seoul. In 1942 moved to Japan and enrolled in the English Literature department of Rikkyo University. In the autumn of that same year transferred to the English Literature department of Doshisha University in Kyoto. In July 1943 was arrested as a political offender by the Special Higher Police and incarcerated in Shimogamo Police Station. Indicted on 22 February 1944 and given a two-year sentence for the violation of the Maintenance of Public Order Act.

  His criminal record was similar to most of the others. I opened the log of confiscated documents. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, Strait is the Gate by André Gide, Les Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire, poetry by Paul Valéry, Francis Jammes and Rainer Maria Rilke. I haltingly sounded out those familiar names. The names twinkled like stars inside me; my heart hammered furiously. Hiranuma’s box contained fifteen or sixteen worn books, tattered from frequent handling. The book on top was The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke. I could feel the blood coursing through my veins. I’d hoped to read Rilke again after the war. Instead of granting my wish, God had given me a different opportunity: I could read Rilke now, but in this prison. Something fluttered down from the pages. I carefully picked up the yellowed piece of paper:

  SELF-PORTRAIT

  Alone, I round the bend of the mountain to the solitary well by the rice paddy and look quietly down.

  In the well the moon is bright and clouds drift and the sky is vast and blue wind blows and it is autumn.

  And there is a man.

  I leave, disliking him for some unknown reason.

  On second thought I pity him.

  I return and look down; he is still there.

  Again I leave, disliking him.

  On second thought I start to miss him.

  In the well the moon is bright and clouds drift and the sky is vast and the blue wind blows and it is autumn and there is a man, like a memory.

  This poem was perfect, just like a Swiss-made watch, though made not of screws and springs and saw-toothed gears, but of nouns and verbs and adjectives. I’d always been awed by the grandeur of machines, how, when well made, they serve the soul of humanity. Fabric pours out of a roaring textile mill to allow mankind to luxuriate; a compass, a gun, a steam engine, a car and an aeroplane fire up a man’s will, boost his courage, and each transforms life. This intricate apparatus of words filled a part of my soul with satisfaction. Another poem leap
ed into my mind: Confession. Self-Portrait and Confession. The two smelled the same; they were like twins. They both featured calm self-examination, melancholy and a tiny whiff of hope. They began with despair, but soon transformed into ardent optimism. Though I’d read only these two poems, I felt that I knew the poet. Did Hiranuma write these poems? To find out, I had to meet him.

  The door to the interrogation room opened without a sound and Hiranuma entered. His handsome face glowed in the dim interior. His shaved head and neat eyebrows accentuated his round forehead. He had almond-shaped eyes and a delicate but strong nose. A smile hung from his blistered lips. He looked as though he were dreaming. How could someone like this, with such gentle eyes and a peaceful smile, end up in this place? I checked his file to remind myself of his crime: involvement in the Korean independence movement.

  Hiranuma spoke first. ‘I see you, too, were dragged here for no reason.’

  Was he proclaiming his innocence? He’d said ‘you, too’. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t a judge; I was only a lowly guard. ‘Every prisoner says he’s innocent,’ I told him. ‘Even a cold-blooded murderer. But if you’re in prison it means you committed a crime of some sort. Unless you’re Edmond Dantès.’

  His eyes gleamed in recognition. ‘What about Prometheus, chained to a rock in the Caucasus?’

  I started. We’d read the same books, knew the same authors and shared the same memories. ‘Prometheus stole fire. No matter what you steal or for whom, theft must be punished.’

  ‘Is it a crime to be powerless and naive? Like Edmond Dantès, who loved Mercédès but couldn’t stop the conspiracy of Mondego, Danglars and Villefort?’ Hiranuma wasn’t really asking a question. He seemed to want to talk about the fictional characters confined in his head, just as I did.

  ‘To be innocent and powerless isn’t itself a crime, but it could be the cause of a crime. Because nobody can protect someone who won’t first protect himself,’ I said.

  He nodded, acknowledging my oblique argument that Koreans were criminals for being unable to hold onto their own country; that being Korean was a crime in itself.

  I took out the two pieces of paper from my shirt pocket and spread them on the desk. Self-Portrait. Confession.

  Surprise and fear flashed across his face.

  ‘Self-Portrait was written on paper torn out of Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge. That book was in your box of confiscated documents. This is something you wrote, isn’t it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, the Special Higher Police confiscated that book. But I bought it at a used bookshop. How can you be so sure that I wrote that poem?’

  ‘Language is a person’s signature, like his fingerprints. It contains his birth and growth, memories and past. Self-Portrait and Confession are twins. If you wrote Self-Portrait, it’s obvious that you wrote Confession too.’

  ‘Prove it!’

  ‘This person is used to loneliness. He’s taciturn – he reduces his confession to one line and he wordlessly goes back and forth to the well. He hates and pities himself, but misses himself. He accepts the weight of life. The man who uses his entire body to polish the rusted artefact of a fallen dynasty in Confession is despairing but tenacious. That expression, “a relic of which dynasty?”, refers to his identity. As in: he’s Korean.’

  Hiranuma looked at me with an odd expression. After a while he raised his shield. ‘I’m just a prisoner. None of that is proof that I wrote those poems.’

  I was waiting for this opportunity. ‘There’s decisive evidence that you wrote Confession. Twenty-four years and one month, that’s how old the poet was when he wrote it. Why would he have written a poem called Confession at such a young age? What would he have to confess?’ I wasn’t looking for an answer; I already knew it. According to the sentencing records, Hiranuma had come to Japan in the spring of 1942 to enrol at Rikkyo University. He had turned twenty-four that past December; he must have written that poem a few months before coming to Japan.

  I continued: ‘A Korean needs a certificate to come to Japan legally. You could enter illegally by stowing away on a ship, but not if you were officially enrolling in a university. In order to receive that certificate you are required to have a Japanese name. Your Korean name is the artefact of the fallen dynasty. The “disgraced face” reflected on the rusted bronze mirror refers to your name change. That’s what distressed you. That’s what you were confessing to, as you stared at the person you had to discard in order to come here.’

  Hiranuma looked tired. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. ‘It’s just a poem I wrote before coming to Japan. Is that a crime? It’s never even been published.’

  ‘No, that’s not a crime.’

  Then why am I here? his eyes asked.

  ‘This poem is linked to a murder case. I found Confession in the desk drawer of the guard who was killed three days ago. The same poet wrote Self-Portrait. Now, why did that guard copy down your poem? What do these poems have to do with his death? That’s what I want to find out.’

  His eyes were neither guarded nor tense as a smile lingered on his lips.

  HOW A BOY BECOMES A SOLDIER

  The stove in Maeda’s office was still emitting heat. My blood warmed, making me tired and lethargic. Maeda barely glared at the censor log I handed him before stamping it. I wasn’t sure what to say and what to keep to myself. ‘Regarding Sugiyama’s case,’ I said hoarsely.

  ‘What about him?’ Maeda asked with a bored expression. ‘Did he rise from the dead?’ He shoved a finger in his ear as though to dig out what I’d just said.

  ‘I think I’m starting to understand the significance of the poem I found in his uniform.’

  He removed some earwax and wiped it off his finger, looking puzzled. I couldn’t blame him; a few anonymous scribbles couldn’t be evidence of anything much, let alone murder. ‘There’s nothing of note about that case. Just focus on your censorship duties.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I won’t neglect my duties because of the case. If you look at the log you’ll see that I’ve been on the task. But I would still like to investigate the cause of death and the situation surrounding Sugiyama’s murder.’

  ‘That’s all in the autopsy report the infirmary sent over.’

  ‘There are certain facts I can’t determine from that document. I think it would be a good idea for me to go to the infirmary and talk to the doctor who performed the autopsy to find out more about—’

  Maeda flung aside the newspaper he’d begun to read. ‘You’re in over your head, boy. Do you realize what the infirmary is? It’s solely for Kyushu Imperial University Medical School researchers. It’s a first-tier security zone where guards aren’t even allowed! You can’t just waltz in whenever you want.’

  I persisted. ‘I’m conducting the murder investigation according to the warden’s express orders. Something caught my eye on the daily-duties log and that led me to interrogate Prisoner 331. Sugiyama had beaten him so badly that he suffered broken bones.’

  Maeda’s wrinkled face showed a glimmer of curiosity. ‘Are you telling me that he killed Sugiyama because of a grudge?’

  ‘To confirm that I have to interview the doctor who performed the autopsy and take a look at the corpse.’

  ‘All right. I’ll write you a note. But be careful.’ He stamped a form granting me permission to enter the infirmary. ‘Just do what you need to do and leave. Be invisible!’ Strangely, his order sounded more like a plea.

  The infirmary was a two-storey building to the right of the central facilities. From the outside it looked like a single structure, because a long corridor linked the two. Inside, however, it was a different story. The tart smell of disinfectant floated around the infirmary corridor, in stark contrast to the stench of sweat and bodily waste in the central facilities. The clean scent made me faintly dizzy, but it was a small price to pay. The infirmary was built when Fukuoka Prison became a national long-term prison. Before then, nobody gave a second thought to the health of criminals and traitors. So instead of an infirmar
y, there was a makeshift ward in the administrative wing, without adequate medical equipment and staffed by a doctor pushing sixty and a nurse in her forties. They dealt mostly with corpses fresh from execution, illness and riots. There was no need for medicine, as there was no saving the dying or curing the sick. The situation changed thanks to Professor Morioka of the Kyushu Imperial University Medical School, the country’s foremost medical expert. A charming, sociable man with a deep appreciation for the arts, Morioka was well known in Kyoto as a philanthropist and intellectual. His decision to leave the university for the prison system was therefore a shocking event, and the media covered the move with a tinge of hysteria. Morioka, explaining his decision as a strict adherence to the Hippocratic Oath, said that prisoners, too, had the right to receive medical treatment. As university hospitals were overflowing with good doctors, he would serve those who needed him most. He emphasized that he would continue to conduct research in the prison. The head of the university hospital was flummoxed, and even the mayor tried to persuade him to stay. Morioka recruited a medical staff of ten specialists, a dozen interns, twenty researchers and twenty-odd nurses. When he arrived at the prison, everyone greeted him expectantly. The prisoners were elated that their health, ruined from the cold, starvation and harsh beatings, would now be monitored by Imperial University doctors.