by John Boyne
“But I did not kill him!” I protested.
“No, but you sent him away. He would not have died, had you allowed him to continue in your workshop.”
I turned away, my gaze taken by a small stream of water that flowed down a series of rocks in the corner of the garden. A judgment all those years ago that the integrity of my art was more important than the welfare of a stranger had led to so much misery and death. It was true. I could have allowed him to remain under my charge. I could have trained him.
“When I wrote to your wife’s father,” continued Hachirou, “I had no idea of what he would do when he found her. I thought that he would simply come and take them both away. That you would then suffer as I had.”
“As if I had not suffered enough,” I said. “You saw how I was after my first wife died. You were there.”
“It is true,” he replied, closing his eyes. “You had already lost someone you loved. But I was too racked with self-pity even to consider this. Still, you must believe me when I tell you that writing to Katsumi’s father was not entirely my idea. It was suggested to me by another.”
“By whom?” I asked, although I could already guess the answer.
“By your sister Aiko. It was she who told me where he lived. Without this information, I would never have been able to contact him.”
“She hated my wife from the start,” I said. “She was jealous of my love for her.”
“And Aiko?” he asked. “She is—”
“Dead,” I told him. “I killed her that same night. While you were riding through the night like a coward, her body was growing cold on the floor of her genkan.”
He swallowed and closed his eyes. “And now you have come to kill me,” he said.
“And after you had hurt me so much,” I said, ignoring his question, “why take Sanyu, too? And Bashira? What injury did they ever do to you?”
“I knew you were looking for me,” he explained. “I knew that you were intent on hunting me down.”
“How?”
“Cousin, you have traveled across the breadth of Japan in search of me. I have money. I have resources. There are many men who want to be in my good graces and they bring me information. Did you not think that I would find out?”
“I hoped that it would bring you out into the open.”
“Instead, it simply made me wary of you. I had men keep track of you and you were always a lot easier to find than I was. Temples, monasteries, at the kabuki theatre. I was aware of your movements at all times. When I found out that you had a new woman, I thought that if I took her, one day I would be able to bargain for my life.”
“But you killed her instead.”
“No, Cousin,” he said, looking up and shaking his head. “I did not kill Sanyu, I swear it. I would never have done such a thing. In fact, I have never taken a life with my own hands.”
“Of course you haven’t,” I replied. “You get others to do it for you. Such is the way of those who lack courage. You think that I would believe you simply because you say it? You’re just hoping that I make your death quick and painless.”
“You may believe whatever you want. I can’t control that. But it is the truth.”
“And if you did not kill her?” I asked. “Then who did?”
“Me,” said a voice from behind, and I spun round in surprise. Again, so lost had I been in our conversation that I had failed to hear footsteps coming through the house as a familiar figure stood by the fusuma leading onto the garden.
Bashira.
* * *
• • •
“You?” I asked, standing up slowly and looking across at her. She, too, had aged since I had last seen her. She was very beautiful now, almost a replica of her mother, but there was a coldness in her eyes that had never been there with Sanyu. “But why would you do such a thing?”
She stood very still, looking from me to Hachirou and back again, her expression so ruthless that I began to wonder whether she was ever going to speak. I had not known Bashira well during the short period that she had lived under my roof but I had tried my best to be a father to her. She had been receptive to kindness from me but had treated her mother with a mixture of disdain and contempt. Of course, I had understood this, putting her disfavor down to the traumas to which she had been subjected at the hands of her father, and had been certain that one day, when time had placed a salve upon her wounds, relations might improve between the pair. But clearly, that day had never arrived.
She stepped out into the garden now, standing across from us both, and I saw that she was carrying a yumi longbow across her back as well as a kaiken dagger around her waist. I reached down and lifted my swords and stood up to face her.
“She left me alone with him,” said Bashira, her face an emotionless mask. “She abandoned me.”
“She didn’t,” I told her. “Your father exiled her when she discovered what he was doing to you. And your grandmother even assisted him in his foul deeds. It was their fault, Bashira. Not Sanyu’s. She would have taken you with her if she could.”
“She could have come back,” she snapped, raising her voice now, and I could see the fury growing behind her eyes. She reached down to her belt and removed her kaiken, holding it in her right hand while her left thumb stroked the blade like the skin of a lover. Blood began to drip onto the grass beneath her feet, but she appeared immune to it. “Instead, she stayed away. She left me to his ministrations.”
“The day I met your mother, do you know what she was doing?” She blinked but did not answer, her expression unchanging. “She was crying,” I continued. “I discovered her weeping as she sat in a garden much like this. I asked her what was wrong but she would not tell me. It was your birthday, I discovered later. She was inconsolable because she missed you so much.”
“Then she should have returned for me!” she screamed, turning her dagger around and pointing the blade in my direction. “Instead she left me alone with that monster. Do you know what he did to me?”
“I do,” I said. “And I’m sorry for it.”
“I was a child.”
“It wasn’t her fault. She would have swapped places with you in a heartbeat, had such a thing been possible.”
She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “You were there the day that I pushed my father into that well,” she said. “Don’t you remember what I said afterward?”
I threw my mind back to that fateful afternoon in Yokohama, shortly before I had fallen ill. It was a long time ago but yes, now that she asked me, I did remember. I hadn’t understood it at the time, but it made sense now.
“One of two,” she repeated. “My father was the first and I knew that one day my mother would be the second. They’re both dead now. Both punished for their crimes.”
“But you remained here,” I said. “After you killed Sanyu. You stayed with him,” I added, nodding in the direction of Hachirou. “Why? Why not just leave? What hold does he have on you?”
She shrugged. “Where else would I go? He takes care of me. He gives me money. He used his influence to ensure that I was not investigated for my mother’s death. Do you want to know what I did to her? I cut her head off!” She started to laugh now. “I cut her head off!” she repeated, shouting now and dancing around in a circle so that it seemed as if she had lost control of her senses. “And I enjoyed it. She knew that I was going to do it, too. I tied her up, then I told her my plans and I made her wait. She begged for mercy, but I did not give it. Instead, I simply—”
I did not hear what happened next, for I had already raised my sword and, without any preamble, I drove my katana into her heart while using my tantō to separate her head from her body. It rolled to the ground at Hachirou’s feet and he let out a cry, stumbling to his feet and reaching for his sticks, darting away from the horrible artifact. The girl’s body fell to the grass, the
blood quickly spilling from its neck, and I could feel my own body begin to tremble in response to what I had just done.
When I turned around, I saw that Hachirou had picked up the dead girl’s kaiken and was holding it in his hands. I frowned, wondering whether he really meant to fight me. When I looked into his eyes, I saw something of our shared boyhood there and, to my surprise, my anger began to dissipate. Perhaps, I thought, there was a route toward forgiveness after all. A dead girl lay at my feet. A girl who had never deserved such an ending. Perhaps enough blood had been shed. Perhaps it was time to forgive.
“Hachirou,” I said, but before I could utter another word, he turned the kaiken to face himself and plunged it deep into his abdomen, before dragging it across his stomach from left to right. A wound opened, the blood flowed, and yet he stood still for a few moments, a half-smile on his face, before collapsing to the ground.
GERMANY
A.D. 1790
MY CELL WAS SMALL, no more than twelve feet in length by six feet in width. A cot with a hard mattress was pressed along one wall while a pail that served as a toilet sat in the corner. Beyond that, there was no extra furniture. Some prisoners were lucky enough to have a view through the bars but mine overlooked a courtyard and, when storms blew, the wind was often so strong that it left me huddled in my bed, my arms wrapped around my body for warmth, the threadbare blanket a poor defense against the cold. I knew that on the other side of the building, prisoners could see a series of rocks in the corner of the garden and I longed for such a simple pleasure. Still, I was fortunate that I had the cell entirely to myself, for many of the inmates of Hohenasperg Prison were forced to share, with the more fearsome one taking the bed and the other reduced to a spot on the floor. Anyway, I preferred isolation to company, particularly when the potential for violence in such a claustrophobic environment was high.
The daily routine never changed. Each morning we were woken at six o’clock by the sound of gongs and made our way in single file toward the large dining hall on the ground floor, where we were handed a bowl containing a stale bread roll, a lump of hard cheese and a cold sausage, along with a mug of some hot water that might have once had a passing acquaintance with tea leaves. This was not food as I understood the term and it took a long time for me to grow accustomed to the pangs of hunger that made my stomach ache. Sometimes, when a rat passed through my cell, I imagined how it would feel to trap it, skin it and roast it over a flame.
In all weathers we were taken outside to the yard after breakfast, where we paraded around in silence for an hour before returning to our cells for the rest of the morning. Most of the men had perfected the art of sleeping at will, in order to make the time pass faster, but this was not something at which I was particularly skilled and I usually remained awake, working on my poems. In the midafternoon we marched again and, occasionally, the guards would play music so that we could dance, which allowed us a better opportunity to stretch our legs and increase our circulation, even though we must have looked ridiculous from the outside. I had read that the captains of British naval ships encouraged their sailors to do likewise on deck every evening for the same reason and, while it felt strange at first to be performing a Zwiefacher or Ländler with a bunch of murderers, thieves and rapists, I soon got over any discomfort and learned to get on with it. In fact, I joined a group of five other men—an arsonist, a pedophile, a thief and two men who had murdered an old woman for her pocket watch—in perfecting the Schuhplattler, which we performed to the delight of the other prisoners and guards equally, standing in a circle and repeatedly hitting the soles of our shoes, thighs and knees in the traditional Bavarian style.
Later in the day, we were given another plate, which the guards humorously referred to as dinner, usually an impenetrable stew with dumplings that could crack teeth and more stale bread on the side. Why the bread was always stale, I never did find out. It seemed to me that we were constantly using yesterday’s baking when surely it would have made more sense to discard one day’s produce entirely and start from scratch every morning. I suggested this one day to the governor and he simply stared at me before bursting into laughter and patting me on the arm, as if I had been sent to lighten his day. Which was ridiculous, as I was German, had never left my homeland, and jokes were not my specialty.
Once a week we were brought to the basement of the prison, where we were forced to stand naked in rows of ten while the guards turned the hoses on us. Although we were soiled and stank to high heaven, it was a painful experience for anyone stuck at the front, as those hoses had the most extraordinary pressure. I welcomed the pain, however, and always brought myself to the fore, stretching my arms wide and allowing the water to pound against my filthy skin. The evening that followed was the only time of the week when I felt close to being clean.
Afterward, I would continue to read or write before all candles were extinguished at nine o’clock. The routine was the same, seven days a week, and I had long since lost track of what day of the week it was. It didn’t matter anyway. Nothing ever changed.
* * *
• • •
I might have been able to make good my escape from my cousin’s house were it not for the fact that, only a minute or two after Heinrich shot himself in the heart, his maid, Magnilda, arrived to begin her daily chores. Stepping into the garden, she discovered not only the body of her employer sprawled on the grass but also the corpse of Bathilde, with half her face blown away, and a stranger—me—standing between the two, holding a gun in my hand. I heard a cry from behind and spun round to see the unfortunate girl’s face turn pale, no doubt believing that she would be my next victim. Walking quickly toward her, I hoped to persuade her to let me flee without punishment, but she turned and ran, letting out such an ear-piercing scream that even the deaf must have wondered what horrors had taken place behind those doors.
Running howling from the house, she charged down the street, telling everyone who would listen of the murders, and before I could find a place to hide, the police arrived to arrest me. I was taken to the local barracks and held overnight before being brought before a magistrate the following morning, where I was told that I was being remanded for trial.
I thought long and hard about whether I should confess to my crimes and ultimately decided to do exactly that, hoping that if I threw myself upon the mercy of the court, then they might spare my life. I recounted for the judge the story of my unhappy journey through adulthood, recalling the various losses I had suffered and explaining my reasons for hunting my cousin down. I swore that I had never intended to hurt Bathilde but that she had made a grave error in taunting me over the murder of her mother. I insisted, too, that Heinrich had taken his own life in remorse for his actions, although it seemed obvious to me, even as I told the story, that no one believed me. In the end, I was found guilty as charged and sentenced to ten years in jail.
Hohenasperg Prison was a dispiriting place in which to be exiled. Located near Stuttgart, it overlooked the town and had, at different times in its history, been a parliament, the seat for a feudal lord and a garrison, before being turned over to the government, who adapted it for its current usage. It held about two hundred prisoners in total, all men, and the guards and prison staff numbered a further thirty.
The cell next to mine was occupied by a prisoner named Niko Kalawai’a, of Tasmanian birth, and as the walls between us allowed the slightest sounds to pass through, we often talked to each other to relieve the boredom, recounting the misadventures that had brought us to such a desolate place. I was unfamiliar with the part of the world from which he hailed but he enlivened my evenings with stories of his early life on the beaches and in the forests of his native land. It turned out that he had been an outlaw, a gang leader, and been convicted of the murder of a policeman in Cologne and was now languishing in Hohenasperg Prison awaiting death while his lawyer continued lengthy court proceedings in an attempt to commute his sen
tence. I sometimes read to him from the verses I composed, and he listened in silence, occasionally asking me to repeat a favorite phrase or stanza.
“I never much saw the point of poems,” he told me one night, his voice carrying through the gaps. “Give me a good story any day over rhymes. A hero to root for. A damsel to dream about.”
“My father felt much the same way,” I replied. “He said that poetry was the domain of women and feebleminded men.”
“Seems to me that a poem never says what it means to say. There’s always something hidden behind the words. Why not just come out and say what you want in the first place? Call a brick a brick. Ideas don’t always need dressin’ up in fancy clothes, do they, like they’re on the way to Sunday school?”
“Not always, no,” I said. “But if it makes the reader think about the world in a different way—”
“I mean no offense, friend,” he grunted. “But I’m living in the same corner as your father on this one. Give me a good honest story,” he repeated. “That’ll do for me.”
“I think you and he might have got along well,” I said.
“Was he a tough man?”
“Oh yes. A soldier. He did not suffer fools.”
“Mine was much the same,” said Niko. “He spent a fair amount of his time in jail, too, for his villainy, the poor bastard, so the apple didn’t fall far from the tree in my case. How did yours die?”
“Old age.”
“Well, that’s the best way to go, they say. Mine met his maker only a few days after being released from jail. Go on, then, read us another poem. I’ll see if I can make sense of it. And if I can’t, maybe it’ll send me to sleep.”
Over time, my pages increased in number. I composed poems about my mother, about each of my wives, about my children, about the towns and villages that I had visited during my travels. And then, occasionally, I found myself writing poems about places that came to me in my dreams, people and situations that I had never known or visited. And while these often proved to be among my most original work, I sometimes wondered from where these strange imaginings had come. When I read them to Niko, he told me that I must have lived other lives in other lands, but I dismissed this idea as fantastical.
