The Investigation (5 page)

The next day I continued with my censor duties, culling books to make room for the next batch to be reviewed. I picked ten books and piled them into a wheelbarrow.
Romeo
and Juliet
, a novel by Stendhal, two volumes of Communist ideology and six Korean books. The incinerator was about fifty metres from the inspection room. I compared the log of confiscated
materials with Sugiyama’s list of documents to be incinerated. There was no discrepancy. The incinerator was an altar awaiting offerings. My feet dragged; I felt as reluctant as I imagined an
executioner might feel as he climbed up to the gallows. I yanked the door open – the smell of paper, smoke and ash poured out, sending me into a coughing fit. I pulled out the lighter. Flame,
not poison and dagger, would kill Romeo and Juliet. A small spark would fell Stendhal. And the Korean authors whose names I couldn’t read – I peered at the faded title on the cover of a
Korean book; the author’s name trembled under the bluish light. How would I atone for annihilating the soul of a poet condensed on these pages? It was a good thing I didn’t know Korean;
if I did, I doubt I would have been able to burn that book. I squeezed my eyes shut, ripped out the first page and lit it. I threw the whole thing into the incinerator. The flame licked the edges
of the book and erupted when it reached the middle. Korean letters, round as well as hard-edged, shrivelled in the fire. Into the blaze I shoved the rest, all of which had once comforted me. All
ten books disappeared; only a line of smoke and a fistful of ash remained. I reached out, my hand hovering over the ash blinking with embers. I felt the heat of the dying books. My breath came out
ragged, like a whale spouting after a long-held breath; I reminded myself that incineration was a part of my duties as censor, that I’d burned seditious literature confiscated from
unwholesome elements. These had to disappear from the world. Although, deep down, I wanted to keep guard over sleeping words and sentences, really I had become an executioner of literature.

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:

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:

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 leaped 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.