The Investigation Read online

  Choi’s glares intimidated even the guards. He reeked of the wild. He was poised to attack on a moment’s notice. Nobody knew what he would do next. When Sugiyama Dozan came to the prison fresh from Manchuria, Choi instinctively recognized his own untamed nature in the guard, and Sugiyama detected the Manchurian dust on Choi. The prison was a small, enclosed world and the two had to fight over this limited territory. Sugiyama called Choi into the interrogation room every few days. He had plenty of reasons – Choi had mumbled his answer to a question, he was late for assembly, he stared straight into the guard’s eyes. Sugiyama’s club would ram into Choi’s eyelid, crack open his forehead, break his teeth. With eyes swollen shut, Choi stared down the pain. He had only one weapon at his disposal – his endurance.

  ‘How would you like to die?’ Sugiyama would ask as he pressed his boot down on Choi’s neck.

  Choi would grin, flashing his broken teeth. ‘I don’t want to die. If I die, I lose.’

  Solitary confinement awaited him after each interrogation. It was as dark and quiet there as the inside of a coffin. Three days would pass. The cut near his eye would heal and the bruises would fade. Choi would go to the window, thinking he would suffocate from the stench. A weak wind blew through the ventilation window under the toilet. He would grip the bars as a wonderful scent wafted in – of life and hope, tender new shoots, overgrown spring grass, the scent of a young mountain bird’s feathers.

  One day something occurred to him as he walked out of solitary into the blinding sun. It wasn’t enough simply to survive. He had to do something. First, he bulked up his weakened body. He began to do chin-ups on the bars of his cell and toned his muscles by doing squats and push-ups. When he was outside he walked around the yard to strengthen his shrunken heart. But his newfound focus only lasted a fortnight. He punched another prisoner and attacked a guard. What waited for him again was the smelly solitary cell. One week later he spat through his blood-crusted lips as he walked out of the cell. It was after this trip to solitary that he determined on new attempts at escape.

  The first time he shoved the guard on duty and hurtled towards the wall. As he struggled to clamber up the high wall, a guard reached him and beat him. It was clumsy, an afterthought. It was too ridiculous even to call it an escape attempt, but the punishment was severe: ten days in solitary. The second time he volunteered for the night-shift work team and sneaked out of the workroom. He was caught climbing over the back wall of the prison. The warden was woken at home and rushed back to the prison. He viewed the entire incident as a challenge to his authority and personally interrogated Choi. Even a failed attempt deserved a summary conviction. But Choi wasn’t executed; his stay in solitary lengthened to a fortnight, then a month. The curious part was that while most people couldn’t make it out of their first solitary confinement alive, Choi walked out on his own two feet every time. Oddly, he tried to escape a third, fourth and fifth time, even though he hadn’t fully recovered his strength. His attempts kept evolving and were as entertaining as a well-choreographed play or an acrobatics show. The time he sneaked into a military truck loaded with bricks made by the prisoners, it seemed he’d made it, until the truck was stopped just before it drove out of the gates. He almost succeeded the time he crawled through a narrow, 300-metre-long sewer pipe, until he lost consciousness from poisonous gas with thirty metres to go. Soon he and the guards came to a silent agreement. When a fortnight passed after his last stint in solitary, the guards moved first. They sent him back under the guise that he’d violated some trivial rule, before he could do something more serious again. The guards could stop Choi’s violent behaviour and he could avoid the beatings. The solitary cell was occupied more often than not. So it was like clockwork; he and his gang went to and fro between Ward Three and the solitary cells like honeybees to a hive. Nobody thought twice about their trips, even though it happened at regular intervals. Until Sugiyama sniffed out the plot.

  One day Choi was called into the interrogation room. Sugiyama held out a cigarette. Choi sucked on it deeply before hacking.

  ‘I see you’ve forgotten how to smoke. Don’t worry. If your plans go off without a hitch you’ll be able to smoke as much as you want.’ Sugiyama’s sunken eyes glinted.

  An artery throbbed in Choi’s neck. This guard had a dog’s nose, he thought. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I ask the questions!’ Sugiyama slammed his club down on the desk. ‘I won’t ask how long you’ve been at it. I don’t want to know why you’re digging the tunnel, either.’

  Choi felt as though he had been dunked in cold water. But at least it was Sugiyama. If another guard had discovered the tunnel, he would immediately have pressed the emergency alarm. But Sugiyama thought the world revolved around him. Choi took a breath. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier to press the emergency alarm or report the tunnel to your boss? Why make things more complicated?’

  Sugiyama let out a long trail of cigarette smoke. ‘As soon as I do that, this incident leaves my hands. All the guards would get in on it. The machine gun on the watchtower would be aimed at the solitary cells and the searchlight would shine all around the prison. The guard dogs would chase after your scent. You’d be shot or mauled by the dogs and dragged back for your execution.’

  ‘Are you letting me live?’

  ‘No. I just don’t want you to die at another’s hands. We’re not done here,’ Sugiyama smirked.

  Choi’s heart sank, as though he were watching a heavy metal bar being lowered over the door to freedom.

  Sugiyama continued slowly, ‘You might think everything is over, but the battle has just begun. Fill up that rat hole with your own hands. You can’t leave even a tiny gap. If you do that for me, I’ll take your secret to my grave.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Choi said. ‘The dirt from the tunnel blew away in the wind, so I can’t replace it.’

  ‘I’m sure you can figure it out. I don’t care if you vomit dirt or if you dig another hole. Otherwise I’ll have to send you and your idiot mole comrades to the cemetery.’

  The hairs on Choi’s forearm stood on end. He thought of each Korean who’d gone into solitary to dig that tunnel.

  Sugiyama continued, ‘If you don’t like my terms, keep digging that tunnel and get out of prison. If you win, you’re free. If I win, you’re right back here. Wouldn’t you say it’s a fair fight?’ Sugiyama looked at Choi with dark, brooding eyes.

  Sugiyama continued to watch him over the next three months; the tunnel wasn’t complete and escape seemed impossible. Killing Sugiyama was the only way. If he disappeared, the only person who knew about the tunnel would be gone. It wasn’t an easy choice for a cornered mouse to bite the cat, but it wasn’t impossible, either. Choi started to dig a new tunnel towards the cemetery, branching off the original tunnel to make it look as though he were simply digging to get enough dirt to fill up the first tunnel. Choi carefully observed Sugiyama’s rounds. Finally the tunnel to the cemetery was complete. The night Sugiyama was assigned to make the overnight rounds, Choi crawled to the cemetery. He came up to ground level, uprooted a stake that marked a grave and waited, hiding around the corner from the solitary wing. Sugiyama’s route was precise. Choi smashed the stake into the guard’s shoulder as he rounded the corner. He heard bone breaking. Choi then held a spoon that he had filed down to Sugiyama’s neck, prodding him towards the administrative wing. It was completely dark that night, without even a strand of moonlight. Sugiyama must have thought the heavens were on Choi’s side. They went through the doors of the administrative wing and through to the inspection office. Sugiyama took out his bundle of keys and opened the small door; he was pushed along the corridor, past the inspection office, towards the central facilities. The block was deserted and silent. In the central building Choi led Sugiyama up the stairs to the banister. Sticky blood trickled down Sugiyama’s neck.

  ‘I’m sorry. But there wasn’t any other way, was there?’ Choi whispered.

  Suigyama nodded. He knew there weren’t any
rules in war, just that you’d be killed if you didn’t strike first. Choi snapped Sugiyama’s neck, then tied him to the banister with the rope that he undid from Sugiyama’s belt and stabbed him with his weapon. He was as skilled as a butcher handling a side of beef. He retraced his steps back to the cemetery, avoiding the blue searchlight that intermittently lit the darkness. Choi then calmly disappeared back into the tunnel.

  Choi seemed spent. I put the pen down and blew on my hands. I was chilled, and not because of the sub-zero temperature in the interrogation room. ‘It would have been easier to kill him in the cemetery or near the solitary wing. Why did you take him to the central facilities?’

  One side of his mouth turned up in a cold smile. He spoke slowly, as if enjoying my terror. ‘My purpose wasn’t to kill him, but to escape. If I killed him near the cemetery or the solitary wing, the whole area would have been torn apart. The farthest place from the tunnel was the lobby between the administrative wing and the wards, the centre of the prison.’

  ‘Where did you get the surgical needle and thread that you used to sew up his mouth?’

  ‘I can get my hands on anything in this prison. I have skilled men: the craftiest, deftest pickpocket, an irresistible charmer, a con man who can seduce a nurse. And how convenient is it that the fancy infirmary is right here in the prison? It’s child’s play to steal a suture set.’

  ‘So the intricate suturing is your work, too?’

  ‘Remember, I grew up on the battlefield. I had to learn how to do many things. That was the only way I could survive.’

  I put my pen down. What he was confessing would lead to his hanging. Why was he telling me this? What was he plotting? I summarized Choi’s statement into a four-page report. I included everything he had confessed to me, but my report wasn’t the entire truth. Even if everything I wrote down was accurate, it couldn’t be truthful if anything was missing. I didn’t record Choi’s life as a fugitive or the emotional stand-off he’d had with the man he killed. I didn’t write down the exact point in time when Sugiyama discovered the tunnel, or the fight over it. My report concluded with a simple cause and effect: Sugiyama Dozan found the tunnel and Prisoner 331 killed him to keep it a secret.

  Things happened quickly after I submitted my report. Choi was thrown into a cell on death-row and a group of selected prisoners was ordered to fill up the tunnel. But unanswered questions continued to run through my head. Why, when he knew he would fail, when he knew what awaited him, did he put his life on the line, trying to escape in the most hopeless ways? And why did the warden let him live?

  Three days later, I was called into the warden’s office. I was given a promotion for my role in the discovery of the tunnel and the investigation of the murder. All the prison executives were there, including Maeda, the head of security, the head investigator, the head administrator and the head surgeon. The warden personally pinned a corporal badge on my cap. One man had been murdered, another was sentenced to death, while I was rewarded with a promotion. I felt hopelessly confused.

  A PIANO’S ENEMIES

  The auditorium, bathed in light from the setting sun, looked like a painting. Midori was a priestess in prayer behind the piano. The piano laughed and wept beneath her touch. I realized I’d heard the beautiful notes she was now playing the first time I went to the warden’s office. She turned to look at me. I averted my eyes and lowered my head; I’d been humming along.

  ‘Schubert’s “Der Lindenbaum”,’ she said. ‘It’s a movement in Die Winterreise and part of Professor Marui’s repertoire.’ She played on.

  I wondered what the bleak title, the subtle, sorrowful allusion to melody and all the terse German words meant. ‘I’ve heard it before, but I couldn’t understand the lyrics.’

  ‘Schubert devotees usually prefer the original lyrics. German is rough and turbid, so it goes well with the masculine tone and heavy atmosphere. Die Winterreise is a song cycle based on a serial poem by the German poet Wilhelm Müller. You can really understand the piece if you pay attention to the sound of the original language.’

  She played another tune, low and sorrowful. I stole a glance at the neat parting in her hair. The sunset caressed her rhythmically moving shoulders.

  ‘This is “Gute Nacht”, the first lied in Die Winterreise.’ She spoke without turning around.

  That was when it came to me. ‘Good Night.’ It was the mysterious poem I had found in Sugiyama’s pocket. I recited it aloud. ‘As a stranger I arrived, as a stranger again I leave . . . Now the world is bleak, the path covered by snow.’

  She froze like a salt pillar. Fear pooled in her eyes. Why was she so frightened? She must know something.

  My face betrayed no emotions. I told her, ‘I found that poem in the dead guard’s pocket. He was a violent guard they called the “Angel of Death”.’

  She curled her white fingers into a fist. ‘Don’t talk about him like that,’ she said warily, shooting me a hostile glance. ‘You don’t know anything about him.’

  My mouth went dry. ‘What do you know about him?’ I asked, and turned around to hide my upset expression.

  I heard the piano then, as mournful and majestic as a large collapsing building. I looked back. She had stood up, slamming both hands on the keyboard. Through her tangled hair that cascaded in front of her face I could see her wet eyelashes and the tip of her reddening nose.

  ‘He wasn’t violent!’

  The heavy notes reverberated in my head. I thought about my promise to Choi that I would record the truth about Sugiyama’s death. He had confessed everything, but I still didn’t feel that I knew the truth. Really, I didn’t know a thing.

  ‘What was Sugiyama like then?’ I asked, trying to appease her. Truly, I did want to know about Sugiyama Dozan’s life. I knew she wouldn’t know the whole story, either. But I wanted to know about the aspects of his life that Choi didn’t tell me. The sunset was dissolving now, giving way to crisp darkness that settled beyond the windows.

  She looked out. ‘Sugiyama Dozan was a sensitive man. He knew music, appreciated poetry and loved life.’

  What killed the gentle Sugiyama was this insane era, these times that demanded ever more blood, ever more hate, ever more death. Incarcerated in his uniform, he died in his own solitary hell.

  One snowy winter morning two years ago, as a nurse in the newly established Kyushu Imperial University Medical School infirmary at Fukuoka Prison, Midori stepped onto the prison grounds. Specialists spent all day in the laboratories studying English medical texts, their eyes glued to microscopes, concentrating on significant research. If, thanks to these efforts, they could advance medical knowledge and develop groundbreaking new medications, they would be able to save thousands – even tens of thousands – of lives. Midori was proud to be a member of a team responsible for safeguarding life during this era of slaughter. Nursing was difficult work; she was assigned to double shifts every day.

  She heard the name Sugiyama about a fortnight after she began working there.

  ‘Sugiyama, that son-of-a-bitch. He’s a butcher!’ hollered a worked-up Japanese prisoner with a head injury. ‘He clubs anything that moves. If he didn’t have anyone else to beat up, he’d probably bust his own head open.’

  A few days later, a guard came in clutching a swollen finger. Midori secured his finger with a splint and asked how he had injured it. He looked down at his bandaged finger and snapped, ‘The Koreans got into a fight. Sugiyama clubbed one of them over the head and didn’t stop. I ran over to pull him off, but he slapped me away, completely enraged. Eventually he did step back, but if it weren’t for me, that Korean would be dead.’

  Sugiyama again. What happened to the Korean who had been beaten like a dog? Was he in solitary, writhing in agony and cradling his broken bones? She realized she had never seen a Korean prisoner in the infirmary. She learned that the prison had a firm policy of disallowing unnecessary medical care for Korean prisoners. Unless there was a special circumstance, the guards sent injured Koreans to
solitary confinement instead of the infirmary.

  ‘I should actually thank him,’ the guard was saying, grinning smarmily. ‘I got to meet a pretty young thing like you.’

  Sugiyama’s name continued to come up frequently after that. A prisoner whose shoulder was shattered and a guard who got a fat lip both referred to him resentfully. The gashes and broken bones were enough to paint in her mind’s eye a portrait of a cruel, merciless man who didn’t care a whit about anyone else and forced his rage onto the world. Like a virus, rage spread its roots even into the hearts of good people; it eventually infected her, too. Tending to the cuts and broken bones, she grew hostile towards him. Sugiyama was evil. People like that should be behind bars.

  Then, finally, she met Sugiyama in person. Every Monday morning at assembly 200 or so guards and sixty-odd doctors and nurses stood in rows in the auditorium; they acted as one, praising the Empire and the Emperor. The assembly began with a chorus of the ‘Kimigayo’, the national anthem, and ended with three rounds of ‘Long Live the Emperor!’ Midori chafed at its required reverence, but she stood in front and performed dutifully, to be near the piano.

  One day, after assembly, she went up to the piano and opened the lid. She wiped the dust off each key with the tip of her finger, wondering whether it still played. She cautiously pressed a key. A low G grasped the ankles of those who had turned to leave. She pressed another key. A silvery F tapped their shoulders. Murmuring, the others waited for the next note. Midori set her hands on the keys and caressed and pounded them in turn. Music spooled out, like silk unravelling from a silkworm’s cocoon.

  A young nurse hesitantly sang along. ‘’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam . . .’

  The melody spread slowly. People’s collective longing was expressed through song. They remembered each of their homes – the guard who’d left his wife behind in far-away Hokkaido, the conscripted guard who thought of his elderly mother in the mountains of Niigata and the intern who missed the meals around his family’s dinner table in Tokyo.