‘How do you feel about an outing to Tokyo?’ asked Mike, as they climbed into the back seats of the jeep.
Jun didn’t know how to answer. He felt both excited and confused.
They drove through the dark to a building that Jun instantly recognized: Aomori Station again. A soldier was waiting for them just inside the station entrance, with a railway ticket each for Jun and Bill, but none for Mike. The soldier’s face looked Japanese, but he wore an American military uniform.
‘You’re not coming too?’ Jun asked Mike.
‘No,’ replied Mike, ‘I’ve some things to see to here. Bill and this gentleman here, Sergeant Eugene Goto, will take you to Tokyo.’
This time, the station was full of people. There was a group of American soldiers at one end of the platform, and nearer by were crowds of Japanese passengers laden with suitcases, backpacks, canvas sacks and babies strapped to backs. One woman, Jun noticed, had a large basket full of live chickens. The express train to Tokyo’s Ueno Station was standing in the platform, emitting billows of steam and smuts.
When Jun turned to say goodbye to Mike, the American solemnly held out his hand and said, ‘Goodbye and good luck, Kamiya-kun.’ Jun smiled at him, but Mike remained unsmiling. His face was suddenly looking sad and tired, and somehow older than it had seemed the previous day.
The three men boarded the train, and Jun turned to wave through the grimy window to Mike, who stood staring at the express train as it departed. Mike just raised one hand in farewell greeting, almost like a small salute.
He still didn’t smile.
CHAPTER 4
They had a little section of the train at the very front, just behind the engine, all to themselves. There were only four seats. Bill and Eugene Goto exchanged a few sentences in English, but mostly remained silent. They sat with their backs to the engine, facing Jun. When a ticket inspector appeared, Goto spoke to him briefly in fluent Japanese with a slightly odd accent, rather like Mike’s. Jun would have liked to ask Goto where they were going to stay when they got to Tokyo, but the expression on the soldier’s sullen face did not invite questions. The sergeant had puffy eyes, as though he had slept badly, and his wide mouth seemed permanently turned down at the corners. Jun guessed that Goto must be the son of Japanese migrants to America, and wondered if that was what happened to your mouth if you grew up speaking English.
Gradually the darkness melted into the dim light of a cloudy day. The railway carriage was heated, and condensation misted the windows. Jun wiped a patch of glass with his sleeve, creating trickles of water that ran down the window. As they headed south the snow thinned, and he could see endless rice fields, still brown and dry, interspersed by patches of thick green forest. The train plunged into and out of tunnels. Jun glimpsed small figures in the fields, some of them tilling the earth with ox-drawn ploughs. There were thatched farm houses and houses with tiled roofs, and occasionally a shrine or temple surrounded by its own grove of trees.
At one relatively lengthy stop, Sergeant Goto disappeared for a while and returned carrying three packed lunches in little wooden boxes tied up with strands of bamboo leaf. Inside were rice, a piece of fried fish, slices of lotus root and a pickled plum. It was, Jun thought, one of the most delicious meals he had ever eaten. Goto produced a flask and three tin cups from his knapsack and poured them each a cup of almost cold tea. Jun thanked him, but Goto didn’t respond. A little later, though, the soldier started asking Jun questions: Where were you born? What was your father’s name? What was your mother’s name? Where did you go to school?
Goto posed these questions mechanically, as though he had absolutely no personal interest in the answers, though he scribbled rapid notes in a small green notebook.
The journey seemed to go on for ever. Once Goto had stopped asking his questions, Jun nodded off to sleep, waking now and again to see the same landscape unfurling endlessly like a scroll outside the train window. By late afternoon, the spaces between towns were becoming shorter, and the train stopped more frequently than before. A blood-red sun sank behind the belching chimneys of something that looked like a steelworks. It was already dark before they reached the outermost fringes of Tokyo. Jun fell asleep again, and woke only when he felt his shoulder being roughly shaken.
‘Get up,’ said Goto. ‘We’ve arrived.’
Ueno Station was vaster and more full of people than anything Jun had ever seen in his life. He would have liked to stop and stare at the huge station hall and the streams of people flowing like ants in every direction, but Bill and Eugene Goto shouldered rapidly through the crowds and out into the station forecourt, where another jeep was waiting for them. Jun had assumed that Bill would accompany them on the next stage of the journey, but instead, after a few brief words to Goto, the older American headed back into the station without so much as a word of farewell to Jun, who climbed into the jeep next to the taciturn Goto. The driver, also dressed in US army uniform, did not speak to him at all.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Jun, but neither man replied.
The Tokyo streets outside the railway station were astonishing. Although it was night already, everything was light and movement. The jeep, horn blaring, crawled along a narrow road crammed with people and lined with brightly lit stalls selling clothes and shoes, pots and pans, cast-off army uniforms and garish children’s toys. Illuminated posters on the walls of buildings advertised mosquito coils and Asahi beer. They passed a crowded bar with, above its doorway, a large picture of a half-naked woman, her legs stretched enticingly towards the street.
Then they turned into a narrow and deserted lane, and stopped in front of an iron gateway. The driver hooted his horn and revved the engine impatiently, and the gate was swung open. They seemed to be entering a large park. The lights of the city disappeared. Jun could see nothing but the looming shapes of trees on either side as the vehicle swerved up the unlit narrow driveway, and jolted to halt in front of a building.
The scene that confronted Jun as he scrambled down from the jeep was astonishing and bewildering. He was standing in front of a huge but dark and silent European-style mansion, with only a few lines of light visible from the shuttered upper windows. A flight of stone steps led up through the pillars of a portico to its open front door, above which rose a tall domed turret. It looked like something from a movie — Jun thought of the grand house in Masquerade, one of the films that Colonel Brodsky liked to show to favoured guests on his private projector.
Eugene Goto had taken a pistol out of his holster, and was holding it in one hand.
‘After you,’ he said, with a little sarcastic bow. Intrigued, Jun made his way up the steps and into the mansion, with Goto and the other soldier following close behind. The entrance hall inside had an ornately decorated ceiling and wood-panelled walls adorned with stags’ heads. The place was dimly lit, but Jun could see a dark staircase leading from the far end of the room to the floor above. The two soldiers herded him towards the staircase.
Upstairs was a huge but untidy reception room with several old-fashioned armchairs placed at random around the walls. Scattered among these were army knapsacks, some golf clubs and a couple of lengths of metal piping. A record player and a stack of records stood in one corner, and a rifle was casually propped in another.
‘Sit,’ said Goto, pointing to one of the chairs.
Jun obeyed, but Goto and the other soldier remained standing just behind him, and they waited in uneasy silence until a door at the far end of the room opened and a voice said, ‘The colonel is ready for you now.’
By this time, Jun was so thoroughly confused that he half expected to find Colonel Brodsky sitting behind his desk on the far side of the door. But of course, when he and Goto walked through the doorway into the darkened room beyond, Jun found himself facing a completely unfamiliar American colonel.
* * *
The first thing that Jun noticed about the colonel’s room was the pipe smoke. The room was hazy and filled with its cloying smell. It
was difficult to make out the colonel’s face through the fog, because the only light came from a single lamp, which stood on the large desk in front of the colonel, its beam shining directly on to an empty chair on the opposite side of the desk.
‘Sit down,’ barked Goto.
No tea and chocolate biscuits this time, thought Jun.
‘Your name’s Kamiya Jun, right?’ said the colonel in heavily accented Japanese.
After that, he spoke in English, while Goto interpreted and, Jun guessed, sometimes added comments of his own.
No friendly opening greetings either. ‘You may have thought you could bullshit those morons in Aomori, but don’t imagine you’re going to be able to bullshit us here. Answer when you’re spoken to!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jun, sitting very straight on the edge of the chair.
As Jun’s eyes adjusted to the dazzling light, the colonel’s heavy face began to emerge from the darkness, the way the brown stain of invisible ink starts to appear when it is placed near a flame. The colonel had a perfectly round skull with thinning dark hair slicked straight back from his forehead. His large hands rested on the desk, with his pipe propped in an ashtray in front of him. There was a pistol lying on a blotting pad next to his right forefinger.
Jun wanted to explain to them that he had already told everything there was to tell — everything, that is, apart from irrelevant details they wouldn’t want to know about, like his awkward sexual encounter with a prostitute in Naha. But a barrage of questions was fired at him so rapidly and with such certainty that he started to believe there must be something else important that he hadn’t told. If only he knew what it was.
‘What was the name of the captain on the spy ship?’
‘We just called him “The Captain”.’
‘Are you trying to be funny? You worked on the ship for two years and you don’t even know the captain’s name? Don’t give us that shit. What was his name?’
Jun was about to say that he didn’t think it was a spy ship, but perhaps this wasn’t the moment. He remained silent.
‘Why did Brodsky send you to work on that ship? What was your real mission?’
‘He didn’t exactly . . .’
‘What was the connection between Brodsky and the spying vessel?’
‘There was no connection, as far as I know . . .’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ yelled the colonel, slamming his fist on the desk so that the gun next to his hand jumped slightly. His words really needed no translation.
If they would just give me a bit more time, Jun thought, I could make something up. Anything to get out of here. The pipe smoke was making him feel queasy and woolly-headed. But nothing came to his mind, and he was afraid that lying might just make things more complicated.
‘Who were Ellinsky and Zaitsev? You told those idiots in Aomori that they were special friends of Brodsky’s. Who were they? Were they MGB like Brodsky, or were they MVD or Smersh?’
Jun had no idea. He’d heard the terms, of course: MGB, MVD, Smersh. People used them from time to time, but no one ever told him what they meant, and he’d never thought to ask. All that came to his mind was a gathering of Colonel Brodsky’s friends where he had been serving the drinks. Lev the cat had been sleeping draped across the arm of Brodsky’s chair, but just as Jun bent over to pour the Russian colonel’s brandy, Lev had opened one golden eye and then leaped across the room, almost upsetting the drinks tray, pounced on a hapless butterfly, and proceeded to tear it to shreds. One of the guests — Jun couldn’t remember which one — said solemnly: ‘Nikolai Aleksandrovich, I’m afraid we are going to have to requisition Comrade Lev. We need him to retrain those Smersh boys.’ And everybody had laughed.
‘I don’t know. You’ve got to believe me. I just don’t know.’
‘What documents did Brodsky show you? You said he showed you Japanese documents and asked you to read the place names. What documents? What was in them?’
‘I don’t know. He never showed me the whole documents. Just the line he wanted me to read. He covered over the rest.’
‘What were the place names? You said he asked you to read place names? Which place names?’
‘I can’t remember. Half the time I didn’t even know how to read the characters.’
And so it went on, and on, and on. And round and round.
Back to the Tsushima-Maru’s captain: ‘Give us his name!’
‘I think some people called him Captain Li . . .’
‘Captain Li? You trying to play games with us? There gotta be about five thousand “Captain Li’s” in this part of the world. Stop wasting our goddamn time!’
And then back to Brodsky’s guests again. Who was MGB? Who was Smersh?
Jun’s mind was spinning and he wanted to scream at them, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know!’ But instead he just screamed silently inside his own head.
Finally, Goto walked across to Jun, bent down to his level, and placed his face so close that Jun could feel the spray of spittle on his cheek.
‘You’re lying,’ he said very softly. ‘We know you’re lying.’
He and the American colonel exchanged glances, and the colonel gave a little nod.
‘Get up,’ said Goto.
The sergeant wrenched Jun’s right arm back, making pain surge through the nerves in his shoulder and neck. Jun felt the muzzle of the pistol pressed against his spine. They marched him down the stairs and into a corridor that led towards the back of the house. The second soldier, who was following close behind, produced a bundle of keys from his belt and opened a door, beyond which a dark and narrow winding staircase descended even deeper, into a basement.
At the bottom of the stairs was a very long underground passageway with an arched ceiling. The walls and ceiling were covered in white tiles. The cramping pain in his right arm made Jun want to cry out, but he clenched his teeth together and looked around, trying to make sense of where he was. He needed to understand. He needed to remember. There were electric wires strung along the sides of the passageway, and yellowish light bulbs punctuated the darkness. The three men marched in silence down the length of the passage. Jun noticed grey metal doors on either side, and round glass skylights in the ceiling. The passage, he guessed, must extend beyond the house itself, into a tunnel under the garden. What was this place? Some kind of wine cellar or storage for food? The air was much colder here than it was above ground, and smelled of decay.
The soldier produced another key and opened one of the grey metal doors on the left of the passageway. ‘OK. Listen up good,’ said Goto, ‘You have one chance to get your memory working. Don’t waste it. We want answers when we come back for you.’ And then corrected himself: ‘If we come back for you, that is.’
He released his grip on Jun’s arm and, at the same moment, pushed him forward.
‘Mind your step, now,’ added Goto mockingly.
Jun nearly lost his footing as he stepped through the doorway. There was a deep step down to a stone floor which was flooded with freezing water that reached almost to his knees. He turned back towards the other men in time to see the metal door slam shut. The key turned in the lock. The echoes from the closing door faded away, and he found himself in total silence and absolute darkness.
For a long time, Jun stood absolutely still, afraid to move. He could see nothing: not the walls of the room, not his own hand when he tried holding it in front of his face. Were there more steps in the room, which might plunge him even deeper into the stagnant-smelling, icy water? At last, very slowly, arms stretched out in front of him, he plucked up his courage and started to inch his way back in the direction where he thought the door was. His hands struck a wall, which seemed to be covered with the same slippery tiles as the passageway outside. He reached out to the left and right, and, groping along the wall, found a corner. Little by little, he managed to edge his way right around the room.
It was quite small — probably about six feet square. There were no windows and, as far as he cou
ld tell, no air vents. The very thought made him feel stifled. Were they going to leave him in this confined space until he suffocated?
He pressed his body into one corner of the room and rested his shoulders and head against the wall. Suddenly he was exhausted, and just wished it would all end. The purpose of the water had become clear to him. He couldn’t lie down. If he fainted, or even fell asleep, he would drown.
I should have run away while I still had the chance, he thought.
The darkness pressed on his eyes like a smothering hand. In this silence and blackness, there was no time. Minutes and hours merged into one another. He tried to think of something from his past to tell his captors, if they ever came back. If they didn’t leave him here to die. Anything to silence their questions. But nothing came to him. He had no idea what they wanted him to say.
Instead, he found himself thinking about the prostitute in Naha. Ayako was the name she used. The Russian crew member Orlov had found three girls and brought them on to the boat while the captain was off negotiating some complex deal. Orlov had treated the whole thing as a big joke. Perhaps he had guessed that Jun was a virgin. The girl Ayako had big round eyes and a sweet smile that revealed one missing front tooth. She seemed to be about the same age as Jun, but was infinitely more experienced, and gently calmed his fears. For half an hour, he believed that this was love and that she was sharing his delight and relief. But afterwards, when Orlov came to pay her, she quickly stretched out one arm to take the money, and at that moment Jun noticed the web of blue scars across her wrist. In the end, what he felt most of all was a vague sadness that lasted long after the girl had departed, laughing, arm in arm with her two companions.
That memory took him back to the Tsushima-Maru. In his mind’s eye, he could see his cramped bunk with its curtain made of frayed sacking, and imagine the howling of the wind and the rising and falling roar of the sea beyond the wooden hull of the boat. Where was the Tsushima-Maru now? Had the boat ever come back to the sea lake to look for him? Would any of the crew care whether he lived or died?
THE LANTERN BOATS an utterly gripping and heart-breaking historical novel set in post-war Japan (Historical Fiction Standalones) Page 6
