The Investigation (17 page)

Maeda quickly conceded. ‘Yes, sir. We’ll have them fly kites every Tuesday afternoon then!’

‘You might want to get them involved in kite-fighting. People always fight, no matter where they are. We’ll have fewer incidents if their violent tendencies are channelled that way.
Of course, we’ll have to keep a close eye on them.’ The warden licked his thin lips in satisfaction.

Sugiyama quietly let out his breath. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding it the entire time.

The autumn deepened. Cold air burrowed into uniforms. Leaves rustled and rolled around; bare branches brushed against each other. Puffs of dust rose up from the grey yard.
Sugiyama had more work to do, constructing a big, strong kite that would be able to fly high. He prepared small scraps of paper, glue made from boiled rice, bamboo shafts and cotton thread for the
kite lines. He kept the white kite in his office until Tuesday afternoon, when he handed it to Dong-ju. The prisoners gathered in the yard. The kite line twinkled as it unravelled. The kite flapped
like a white flag above the walls. The men stared at it, recalling a time when the high walls and thick barbed wire didn’t block everything from view. Now they remembered running freely
through fields and rice paddies, feeling the breeze in their faces. The kite shot up, staggered, plummeted and circled dizzily; their wishes flew up and their dreams breached the walls. They
shouted and laughed, seeing not the kite, but themselves. Free.

With the tips of his fingers, Dong-ju read the capricious wind as it changed direction and speed with every second; with his eyes, he followed its movement. Once, a gust of wind snatched the
kite and made it tilt, triggering a burst of moans from the prisoners. With skilled hands, Dong-ju unwound the line and rewound it and the kite regained its balance. His deft touch made it seem as
though he’d made the kite circle the air twice on purpose. Finally Dong-ju let go of the spool; it spun like a top and the line unwound quickly. The kite sank, its tail wafting behind it
languorously. The prisoners groaned.

Sugiyama grabbed some line and wrapped it around his bare hand. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ The line dug into his palm, making him bleed.

‘You have to give it more slack to get it up higher. Then the kite can ride the wind and lift up.’ Just then, the trembling kite caught the wind and shot up higher than before.

The men shouted, pointing the other way. A large blue kite with a sky-blue tail had risen from the other side of the walls, and it attacked Dong-ju’s kite like a shark preying on smaller
fish.

Sugiyama murmured, ‘A fight. The prisoners are getting too excited.’

Instead of answering, Dong-ju quickly dodged the new kite. The blue kite attacked Dong-ju’s, which lost its balance and wavered. The blue kite changed height and direction and persistently
tried to tangle its kite line with Dong-ju’s. The men, holding their breaths, watched as their sad kite avoided the attack. Finally Dong-ju’s kite emerged unscathed, and the prisoners
let out cheers. Dong-ju quickly wound in the line; the kite dropped down and came back within the walls. The men let out a loud, wounded sigh.

The siren blared, marking the end of break. The men disappeared one by one into the work area or the cells. The yard returned to its quiet.

‘Why did you avoid the fight?’ Sugiyama asked.

Instead of answering, Dong-ju finished winding the kite line.

Sugiyama wondered if Dong-ju had decided that it would be better to avoid the battle instead of disappointing the prisoners by losing. Perhaps he figured it would be better to shield the hopes
and dreams of the Koreans than risk them being felled by an aggressive kite. It had to be better than losing hope.

Maeda crumpled the piece of paper in his hand and threw it on the floor. ‘What have you been doing as the censor? Explain how these seditious writings were
circulated!’

Sugiyama picked up the ball of paper.

‘Look at what’s written on it!’

Sugiyama unfolded it. His eyes bulged. The tiny letters were in Korean. His face went rigid, as though it would crack at a soft tap. ‘I’m unable to decipher it, but—’

Maeda cut him off. ‘The fact that it’s written in Korean means it’s seditious!’

The coals in the furnace crackled loudly.

‘I discovered the Korean prisoners passing it round. You must know who wrote this damn document?’ Maeda barked.

Sugiyama felt perspiration running down his back. There was only one person in the prison who wrote with such a neat hand. He swallowed the name on the tip of his tongue. ‘Sir, I’ll
find out who it is immediately!’

‘No need!’ Maeda opened the confiscated documents log and stepped closer to Sugiyama. ‘I already know who did it.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Who else would do this?
It’s Hiranuma Tochu. Why weren’t his confiscated documents incinerated?’

‘Sir, I wasn’t able to get to it because there has been too much to do.’

Maeda glared at him. ‘You mean you were lazy. Get me all of his documents right away! I’m going to handle this myself. You just give him a good beating!’

Sugiyama gave his superior a stiff salute and turned around.

Sugiyama whacked his club across the prisoner’s bare torso tied to the torture rack. It sounded as though something was breaking within Dong-ju. His thin shoulders were
bare, his joints bulged. Under the light his pale skin was almost translucent. Sugiyama had been foolish, lazy. Despite knowing what would ultimately happen, he’d been lulled by the
arsehole’s mellifluous words. He hadn’t dealt with the danger lurking within. He’d been practically criminal. He should have burned the confiscated documents at the very
beginning. He should have turned Dong-ju into a cripple then.

‘You fucked me over,’ he panted, his voice cracking. ‘Talk! What does this goddamn poem mean?’ He tossed a pen and piece of paper on the desk. ‘Translate it into
Japanese!’

Dong-ju picked up the pen with his swollen fingers. The pen trembled as it pushed across the crumpled paper. Words poured out like river water, words that signified innocent confession, pure
anguish and embarrassed guilt. Finally the pen fell on the paper, heavy as a rock. Reading it, Sugiyama felt rejuvenated, as though he’d become a boy again. He threw a glance at the waiting
guards. They melted into the darkness, knowing from experience that this was when Sugiyama began the most brutal phase of his interrogation.

Sugiyama picked up the paper with the original Korean poem written on it. It had been constructed from several different pages, cut into long strips and pasted roughly together with glue.
‘Where did you get this goddamn paper?’

With great effort Dong-ju moved his bloodied lips. ‘I cut tiny slivers off the bottom of the postcards and pasted them together with rice.’

‘The rice is for you to fucking eat, not for you to make paper for your scribbles!’

Dong-ju flashed him a faint smile.

Sugiyama’s club trembled in the air. ‘What were you planning to do with this dangerous poem?’

‘That’s not a dangerous poem.’

‘Is that so? When Koreans read this poem, it’s obvious they’ll think about home and get disgruntled. Were you planning to start a riot?’

‘There’s no proof that this poem makes anyone feel that way.’

‘No proof? It’s obvious this poem will make anyone’s emotions run wild!’ Sugiyama hesitated. He couldn’t reveal that it had made his own cold, violent heart falter.
He threw down his club and lowered his voice. ‘When I read your stupid poem just now, I felt dizzy.’ Sugiyama paused for a breath. ‘This will be the death of you. I’m not
going to kill you. But I’m going to wash the inside of your head. You’re going to solitary. Fifteen days!’

Two days later, Maeda called for Sugiyama to meet him at the incinerator. The head guard was looking more relaxed. ‘We got him quickly, so we were able to stop this
document from spreading. You made the right decision, Sugiyama. Two weeks in solitary will either make him a corpse or wipe his mind clean.’

Sugiyama stood to attention. ‘He’s a writer. Words are branded on his mind. He’ll survive just so he can write again.’

‘No matter,’ Maeda said, smiling, a gold-capped tooth glinting in his mouth. ‘A danger that’s discovered is no longer a problem.’

He tossed Sugiyama a bundle of papers. Red letters were stamped on the top.
To Be Incinerated.
Sugiyama flipped through them. ‘Boy’, ‘Snowing Map’, ‘Night
Seen from Here’, ‘Morning of the Beginning’, ‘Another Home’, ‘Night Counting Stars’. The words trembled.

‘Strictly speaking, this incident wasn’t your fault,’ Maeda reassured him. ‘Really, it’s his fault. He’s being punished accordingly. You just need to clean
up. Go ahead and burn these.’

Sugiyama felt his heart drop. ‘I’ll finish reviewing them as soon as possible and incinerate them after sorting.’

‘Do it now!’ Maeda snapped. ‘Just throw the whole bundle in. He violated the Maintenance of Public Order Act. Resistance runs in his veins. Just look at this poem here!’
Maeda impatiently snatched the manuscript out of Sugiyama’s hands and flipped through it until he found the page he was looking for. He shoved it in Sugiyama’s face:

‘See?’ Maeda spat triumphantly. ‘Everything from the first line to the last is seditious. This poem contains explicit anti-Japanese themes. What else would it mean for a
dignified dog to be barking at the darkness? The dog is the stubborn Korean prisoner, the darkness means the occupation. Another home is a liberated Korea. It’s urging the Koreans to fight
for the liberation of Korea!’

Sugiyama stared at the poem. ‘You’re being too generous, sir. He wrote this in September 1941. He visited his home in Manchuria during his studies in Seoul. He was just anxious about
the future. These are just a kid’s worries. The skeleton and beautiful-soul image are just a fancy way to admonish himself. It’s not deep enough to be grandiose nationalism. Sir,
it’s just emotional drivel.’

Sugiyama’s heart quaked. The young man from the poor Japanese colony desperately longed for home, but he wasn’t able to hide even there. He was describing an era when he had nowhere
to turn to, an era when longing was banned.

Maeda turned the pages to another poem. ‘Well, this one’s very obviously anti-Japanese!’

‘White towel, white rubber shoes, white everything!’ Maeda trumpeted. ‘You know that the colour white is beloved by Koreans! Black hair, rough feet, sad body, thin waist
– these are complaints! The white garments are a coded suggestion for the Koreans to fight us off.’

Sugiyama swallowed. ‘As you said, that poem definitely contains an inflammatory nationalism. He’s Korean, so this is of course inflammatory. But not all the poems are like
that.’ He flipped quickly through the manuscript and began to read another poem out loud:

His own low voice lingered in his ears. Sugiyama looked down at his palms, at his hands as cold as the river. With those hands he’d beaten people without discrimination. He was suddenly
ashamed.

‘Nowhere in this poem can you find nationalism or a hint of rebellion. It’s just the pure heart of a boy who is in love for the first time.’

Maeda glared at him, suspicious. ‘Hiranuma is a careful man. He would have stuck a lyric poem in with the rest just to confuse the censor. He probably knew he would get
arrested.’

‘That’s not true. This poem conveys Hiranuma’s true feelings.’

‘No, he’s hiding his true colours. Suni probably doesn’t even exist!’

‘Suni is not an imaginary woman!’ Sugiyama unwittingly raised his voice.

Hasegawa glared at him.

Sugiyama tore through the manuscript again to the page he was looking for:

‘“Boy” and “Snowing Map” are serial poems written two years apart,’ Sugiyama explained, pointing at the dates. ‘“Boy” depicts the heart of a
young boy in love, “Snowing Map” is about a young man’s despair at lost love. If the first poem was only here to fool us, he wouldn’t be able, two years later, to miss the
same character this desperately in the same tone.’