The Investigation (26 page)

I approached him one afternoon. He smelled sour. Strangely, it was a welcome odour; it meant that his body was still functioning. I followed his gaze up to the sky, which stretched low over the
yard like a faded piece of grey fabric.

Dong-ju looked at me. ‘It’s been three days. I haven’t seen the blue kite that usually flies up around this time.’

‘Well, I’m sure someone flew that kite out of curiosity,’ I said. ‘He had fun cutting your line, but when we banned kite-flying, he got bored and left.’

‘That girl didn’t fly the kite just to cut my line. The way she flew the kite – it was delicate. Sophisticated.’ He explained that it had been like a waltz. The girl
gently tugged at his line like a shy girl at her first ball. He would lead her kite, like a young man wrapping an arm around her waist. They had performed a beautiful dance in the sky. He could
sense her careful consideration through her line.

‘Why would she do that?’ I asked.

‘Maybe she was lonely,’ he said. ‘She would often put the weight of her kite on my line, as if she were a puppy cavorting on her master’s lap. Her purpose wasn’t to
boast how well she could fly, but to lean against someone.’

I didn’t know what he was talking about. How could anyone show their feelings through kite lines?

Dong-ju looked up at the sky beyond the walls, searching for the blue kite again.

‘She probably lost interest in flying it,’ I said.

He looked at me hopefully, but quickly grew dispirited. It was then that I finally understood what he was concerned about. Three days before there had been terrible bombings. Dong-ju told me
that he’d stood in the middle of his cell, listening to the explosions. The Korean prisoners had loved it; they’d prayed for the B-29s to turn the city into a fire pit, even if it meant
that they, too, would be swept away by the carnage. He rounded his shoulders. ‘I just want to make sure that she’s alive. I wish I could fly a kite . . . If I could fly mine, I know
she’d definitely fly hers . . .’

‘Kite-flying has been banned,’ I said, feeling suddenly anxious in the face of his despair. ‘I’m sure there’s another way to confirm that she’s safe.’ I
hoped he wouldn’t press me. The siren blared from the speakers on the roof, signalling the end of break; Dong-ju jumped up and went back to his cart.

The next day, after rehearsal, I cautiously brought up the matter with Midori. I asked if she could find out about a young girl who flew a kite near the prison, even though I didn’t know
her name or what she looked like. Midori didn’t answer. Instead she placed her hands on the keys. I shouldn’t have asked; it was presumptuous of me. Two days later, I saw Midori again,
and light returned to my life. We walked side-by-side on the frozen snow, our shoes crunching. I stole a look at her delicate profile, feeling anxious.

‘I know where she lives,’ Midori said. ‘Her house is on the outskirts of the city, closer to Fukuoka than Hakata Bay, in a neighbourhood with about twenty shanties clustered
together.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I’ve gone to her house before. On behalf of Sugiyama-
san
.’

‘What happened to her? According to the paper, the road linking Hakata Port to downtown Fukuoka suffered the most damage.’

‘The bombs dropped along the road and destroyed the neighbourhood. I could still smell gunpowder in the air. Because it’s a poor neighbourhood that’s out of the way, they
didn’t have any bomb shelters.’

My blood chilled. It would have been better if I hadn’t found out.

She continued, her voice cracking. ‘I managed to find her mother in a temporary ward at Fukuoka City Hospital. A beam fell from the roof and broke her leg.’

‘And the girl?’ I almost couldn’t bear to ask.

‘Thankfully, she left Fukuoka before the attack. Following the government’s recommendation for evacuation, she was sent to her grandmother’s house in the countryside.
It’s a farming town an hour away from here, so they wouldn’t have been bombed.’

My body surged with relief, as though a furnace had been lit inside. All I needed was for the girl to be alive. It didn’t matter where she was.

Midori handed me a white bundle and nodded for me to open it. Inside was a battered, yellowed paper kite. The rounded stake in the middle was broken.

‘Her mother was asleep when she woke to the sound of bombs exploding,’ Midori continued. ‘She was running down the stairs when it occurred to her that she should take her
daughter’s cherished kite. When the girl left for her grandmother’s house she took all the kites she’d won in battles, but she’d left this one hanging on the wall in the
attic, telling her mother to look at it whenever she missed her. There was an explosion, and her mother lost consciousness. She was found clutching this kite to her chest.’

Midori told me that this had been the first kite the girl had won, and that her mother had told her that flying the kite had been her lonely daughter’s sole source of happiness.

In my mind’s eye, I saw a girl carefully working on her blue kite, grinding bits of china to embed onto her line, in the afternoons when she was left home alone. While the other children
rushed to the hill near the shore to catch the marine wind, the girl headed to the empty lot near the prison. There, nobody teased her and no bully entwined his thick line with hers. One day, from
within the high prison walls, a kite flew up. With it came faint shouts from the other side of the walls, cheering her on. The girl approached the white kite, danced with it and circled the air.
She eventually cut the white kite’s weak cotton line and watched as it spiralled to the ground. She hung her first prize on her wall.

Dong-ju’s reclaimed kite smelled faintly of ash and gunpowder. The shaft had broken and the bottom was torn. I flipped the kite over and saw traces of black ink. I could decipher a
familiar, careful hand:

Who would have known that gentleness was hiding behind Sugiyama’s hard, metallic voice? I wondered how he’d been with those he loved, like the woman he tuned the piano for. Did he
listen with all of his being as she played clumsy jazz? Did he drink coffee with her? Did he dream of having soft, peachy babies with her? Could he have been a good husband? A wonderful father? Who
had killed him in the end?

I raised my head, realizing that I hadn’t asked the most crucial question. ‘How did you even know all of this was going on?’

‘When the poet gave up writing poems, Sugiyama-
san
came to me for help. Tuning the piano was only an excuse.’

The golden sunset outside the windows pooled on the piano’s shiny black surface. Midori looked down at Sugiyama’s rough hands, at the knife wounds and the twisted
knuckles. She wondered if his hands remembered their victims, then decided that they wouldn’t; they couldn’t produce such beautiful sounds with such brutal memories.

Sugiyama asked her to play something. She began the opening bar of ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’. He closed his eyes, frowning and smiling, revelling in the colour and vibration of
each lingering note. He opened his eyes only after the last note disappeared completely. His rough hands came together to clap. ‘Much better. Almost moving.’

The sunset drew red shadows over Midori’s face. ‘The sound?’

‘No, not the sound – the playing. Your playing has become so natural.’ Thick veins bulged in his neck.

To Midori, he seemed angry, but actually Sugiyama was embarrassed. He was ignorant of most emotions. The world had never been gentle to him and he didn’t expect kind treatment; he had
wrapped himself in the armour of fury. When he hated something he got mad. He expressed his love and embarrassment in anger, shouted to express sympathy and was brusque when he was showing
interest. He was most comfortable with silence.

He placed a hand on the piano and swallowed. ‘I have a favour to ask. I have to find someone outside the prison . . .’ He trailed off. As a soldier he had to maintain barracks life,
but a nurse was free to come and go as she pleased.

She widened her eyes and looked round. ‘Who?’

Sugiyama couldn’t bring himself to speak for a long time. Then he spoke hesitantly. ‘I don’t know whether it’s a man or woman, or their age or address. Or what they look
like. But I know they must live somewhere around here. Every Tuesday someone flies a kite outside the prison walls. Might be young. Supposedly thirteen or fourteen, and lonely.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Hiranuma Tochu. I mean, Yun Dong-ju. You must know him?’

Midori’s eyes flickered in fright. She not only knew Dong-ju, having met him in the infirmary, but she’d grown to know about his poems and his favourite music. She respected him. She
had included ‘Va, pensiero’ in the concert at his suggestion. She hesitated. ‘Has he – done something wrong?’

Sugiyama shook his head. The more he got to know Dong-ju, the more he was convinced that the prisoner had done nothing wrong. He looked down at his thick, calloused hands. ‘He hasn’t
written a single line since he got back from solitary. Makes sense. Solitary destroys your body and soul. And while he was in solitary the child flying the kite disappeared.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Tell her to fly her kite again. Tell her she’ll be able to fight us if she flies it right outside the prison.’ He looked out of the window at the golden sunset that was
listening in on their clandestine conversation.

‘And a few days later the girl’s kite flew up. This must be the one she cut down that time.’ Midori touched the mangled kite, whose broken shaft and ripped
tail contained beautiful memories of soaring in the sky against the wind.

‘So now we won’t be able to see the kite again.’

‘When the war’s over and the girl returns, the kites will fly again.’

‘It was smart of Sugiyama to bring her back into kite-fighting. It enabled him to control the prisoners effectively.’

‘Sugiyama-
san
didn’t bring her in for that,’ Midori shot back. ‘What he sent over the walls weren’t kites. They were poems.’

A stray cat came up to the window. I could hear its footsteps crunching on the snow. ‘What do you mean?’

She explained Sugiyama’s ruse. He’d had Dong-ju write poems and fly kites; he brought the girl into the fight as part of an intricate plan to smuggle Dong-ju’s poems out of the
prison. ‘Sugiyama-
san
had a deal with Dong-ju. He would allow Dong-ju to write poems in Korean if he recited them in Japanese. Sugiyama-
san
became his audience. When Dong-ju
recited his new poem in Japanese, Sugiyama would write it down and then use that paper to make a kite. Dong-ju didn’t know that. But his kites would often fall outside the prison, releasing
his poems into the world.’