The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (90 page)

As soon as the battle of Nomonhan ended and the Far Eastern crisis was averted, Boris was called back to Moscow and reassigned to Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, where he worked on the purging of the old Polish Army. That is where he earned the nickname “Boris the Manskinner.” Skinning people alive, using a man they said he brought with him from Mongolia, was his special form of torture. The Poles were scared to death of him, needless to say. Anyone forced to watch a skinning would confess everything without fail. When the German Army suddenly burst across the border and the war started with Germany, he pulled back from Poland to Moscow. Lots of people were arrested then on suspicion of having colluded with Hitler. They would be executed or sent to prison camps. Here, again, Boris distinguished himself as Beria’s right-hand man, employing his special torture. Stalin and Beria had to cook up their internal-conspiracy theory, covering up their own responsibility for having failed to predict the Nazi invasion in order to solidify their positions of leadership. A lot of people died for nothing while being cruelly tortured. Boris and his man were said to have skinned at least five people then, and rumor had it that he proudly displayed the skins on the walls of his office
.

Boris may have been cruel, but he was also very careful, which is how he survived all the plots and purges. Beria loved him as a son. But this may have been what led him to become a little too sure of himself and to overstep his bounds. The mistake he made was a fatal one. He arrested the commander of an armored battalion on suspicion of his having communicated secretly with one of Hitler’s SS armored battalions during a battle in the Ukraine. He killed the man with torture, poking hot irons into every opening—ears, nostrils, rectum, penis, whatever. But the officer turned out to be the nephew of a high-ranking Communist Party official. What’s more, a thoroughgoing investigation by the Red Army General Staff showed the man to have been absolutely innocent of any wrongdoing. The party official blew up, of course, nor was the Red Army just going to withdraw quietly after such a blot on its honor. Not even Beria was able to protect Boris this time. They stripped him of his rank, put him on trial, and sentenced both him and his Mongolian adjutant to death. The NKVD went to work, though, and got his sentence reduced to hard labor in a concentration camp (though the Mongolian was
hanged). Beria sent a secret message to Boris in prison, promising to pull strings in the army and the party: he would get him out and restore him to power after he had served a year in the camp. At least this was how Nikolai had heard it
.

“So you see, Mamiya,” Nikolai said to me, keeping his voice low, “everybody thinks Boris is going back to Moscow someday, that Beria is sure to save him before too long. It’s true that Beria has to be careful: this camp is still run by the party and the army. But none of us can relax. The wind direction can shift just like that. And when it does, anybody who’s given him a tough time here is in for it. The world may be full of idiots, but nobody’s stupid enough to sign his own death warrant. We have to tiptoe around him. He’s an honored guest here. Of course, we can’t give him servants and treat him as if he were in a hotel. For appearance’ sake, we have to put chains on his leg and give him a few rocks to crack, but in fact he has his own room and all the alcohol and tobacco he wants. If you ask me, he’s like a poison snake. Keeping him alive is not going to do anybody any good. Somebody ought to sneak in there one night and slash his throat for him.”

Another day when I was walking by the station, that big sergeant stopped me again. I started to take out my pass, but he shook his head and told me to go instead to the stationmaster’s office. Puzzled, I did as I was told and found in the office not the stationmaster but Boris Gromov. He sat at the desk, drinking tea and obviously waiting for me to arrive. I froze in the doorway. He no longer had leg irons on. With his hand, he gestured for me to come in
.

“Nice to see you, Lieutenant Mamiya. It’s been years,” he said cheerily, flashing a big smile. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head
.

“Nine years, to be precise,” he continued, lighting up himself “Or is it eight? Anyhow, it’s wonderful to see you alive and well. What a joy to meet old friends! Especially after such a brutal war. Don’t you agree? And how did you manage to get out of that well?”

I just stood there, saying nothing
.

“All right, then, never mind. The important thing is that you did get out. And then you lost a hand somewhere. And then you learned to speak such fluent Russian! Wonderful, wonderful. You can always make do without a hand. What matters most is that you’re alive.”

“Not by choice,” I replied
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Boris laughed aloud. “You’re such an interesting fellow, Lieutenant Mamiya. You would choose not to live, and yet here you are, very much alive. Yes, a truly interesting fellow. But I am not so easily fooled. No ordinary man could have escaped from that deep well by himself—escaped and found his way back across the river to Manchuria. But don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone
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“Enough about you, though. Let me tell you about myself. As you can see, I lost my former position and am now a mere prisoner in a concentration camp. But I do not intend to stay here on the edge of the earth forever, breaking rocks with a sledgehammer. I am as powerful as ever back at Party Central, and I am using that power to increase my power here day by day. And so I will tell you in all frankness that I want to have good relations with you Japanese prisoners of war. Finally, the productivity of this mine depends on you men—on your numbers and your hard work. We can accomplish nothing if we ignore your power, and that includes your own individual power, Lieutenant Mamiya. I want you to lend me some of what you have. You are a former intelligence officer of the Kwantung Army and a very brave man. You speak fluent Russian. If you would act as my liaison, I am in a position to do favors for yourself and your comrades. This is not a bad deal that I am offering you.”

“I have never been a spy,” I declared, “and I have no intention of becoming one now.”

“I am not asking you to become a spy,” Boris said, as if to calm me down. “All I’m saying is that I can make things easier for your people. I’m offering to improve relations, and I want you to be the go-between. Together, we can knock that shit-eating Georgian politburo son of a bitch out of his chair. I can do it, don’t kid yourself. I’m sure you Japanese hate his guts. Once we get rid of him, you people will be able to have partial autonomy, you can form committees, you can run your own organization. Then at least you’ll be able to stop the guards from dishing out brutal treatment anytime they like. That’s what you’ve all been hoping for, isn’t it?”

Boris was right about that. We had been appealing to the camp authorities about these matters for a long time, and they would always turn us down flat
.

“And what do you want in return?” I asked
.

“Almost nothing,” he said, with a big smile, holding both arms out. “All I am looking for is close, friendly relations with you Japanese prisoners of war. I want to eliminate a few of my party comrades, my tovarishes, with whom it seems I am unable to achieve any understanding, and I need your people’s cooperation to accomplish that. We have many interests in common, so why don’t we join hands for our mutual benefit? What is it the Americans say? ‘Give-and-take’? If you cooperate with me, I won’t do anything to your disadvantage. I have no tricks up my sleeve. I know, of course, that I am in no position to ask you to like me. You and I share some unpleasant memories, to be sure. But appearances aside, I am a man of honor. I always keep my promises. So why don’t we let bygones be bygones?

“Take a few days, think about my offer, and let me have a firm reply. I believe it’s worth a try. You men have nothing to lose, don’t you agree? Now, make sure
you mention this only to people you are absolutely sure you can trust. A few of your men are informers working with the politburo member. Make sure they don’t catch wind of this. Things could turn sour if they found out. My power here is still somewhat limited.”

I went back to my area and took one man aside to discuss Boris’s offer. This fellow had been a lieutenant colonel in the army. He was a tough man with a sharp mind. Commander of a unit that had shut itself up in a Khingan Mountain fortress and refused to raise the white flag even after Japan’s surrender, he was now the unofficial leader of the camp’s Japanese prisoners of war, a force the Russians had to reckon with. Concealing the incident with Yamamoto on the banks of the Khalkha, I told him that Boris had been a high-ranking officer in the secret police and explained his offer. The colonel seemed interested in the idea of eliminating the present politburo member and securing some autonomy for the Japanese prisoners of war. I stressed that Boris was a cold-blooded and dangerous man, a past master of deceit and trickery who could not be taken at face value. “You may be right,” said the colonel, “but so is our politburo friend: we have nothing to lose.” And he was right. If something came out of the deal, it couldn’t make things any worse for us than they already were, I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Hell has no true bottom
.

A few days later, I was able to arrange a private meeting between the colonel and Boris in a place away from prying eyes. I acted as interpreter. A secret pact resulted from their thirty-minute discussion, and the two shook hands. I have no way of knowing exactly what happened after that. The two avoided direct contact so as not to attract attention, and instead they seem to have engaged in a constant exchange of coded messages using some kind of secret means of communication. This ended my role as intermediary. Which was fine with me. If possible, I wanted nothing more to do with Boris. Only later would I realize that such a thing was anything but possible
.

As Boris had promised, about a month later, Party Central removed the Georgian politburo member from office and sent a new member to take his place two days after that. Another two days went by, and three Japanese prisoners of war were strangled during the night. They were found hanging from beams to make the deaths look like suicides, but these were clearly lynchings carried out by other Japanese. The three must have been the informers Boris had mentioned. There was never any investigation. By then, Boris practically had the camp in the palm of his hand
.

Wearing a sweater and my pea coat, wool hat pulled down low almost to my eyes, I scaled the back wall and lowered myself into the alley. The sun would not be up for a while, and people were still asleep. I padded my way down the alley to the Residence.

Inside, the house was just as I had left it six days earlier, complete with dirty dishes in the sink. I found no written messages and nothing on the answering machine. The computer screen in Cinnamon’s room was as cold and dead as before. The heat pump was keeping the place at normal room temperature. I took off my coat and gloves, then boiled water and made myself some tea. I had a few crackers and cheese for breakfast, washed the dishes in the sink, and put them away. Nine o’clock came again, with no sign of Cinnamon.

•

I went out to the yard, took the cover off the well, and leaned over to look inside. There was the same dense darkness. I knew the well now as if it were an extension of my own body: its darkness, its smell, and its quiet were part of me. In a sense, I knew the well better than I knew Kumiko. Her memory was still fresh, of course. If I closed my eyes, I could bring back the details of her voice, her face, her body, the way she moved. I had lived in the same house with her for six years, after all. But still, I felt
there were things about her that I could not bring back so clearly. Or perhaps I simply could not be sure that what I was remembering was correct—just as I could not recall precisely the curve in the tail of the cat when he came back.

I sat on the well curb, thrust my hands into my coat pockets, and surveyed my surroundings once again. It felt as if a cold rain or snow might begin falling at any time. There was no wind, but the air had a deep chill to it. A flock of little birds raced back and forth across the sky in a complex pattern as if painting a coded hieroglyph up there, and then, with a rush, they were gone. Soon I heard the low rumble of a jet, but the plane stayed invisible above the thick layer of clouds. On such a dark, overcast day, I could go into the well without worrying that the sunlight would hurt my eyes when I came out.

Still, I went on sitting there for some time, doing nothing. I was in no hurry. The day had hardly begun. Noon would not be here for a while. I gave myself up to thoughts that came to me without order as I sat on the well curb. Where had they taken the bird sculpture that used to be in this yard? Was it decorating another yard now, still urged on by an endless, pointless impulse to soar into the sky? Or had it been discarded as trash when the Miyawakis’ house was demolished last summer? I recalled the piece fondly. Without the sculpture of the bird, I felt, the yard had lost a certain subtle balance.