Then, very slowly, without taking his eyes off the ceiling, he reached into his pocket. It must have taken the better part of a minute for him to remove those vines. He was so measured in his action, so prepossessed and resolute about it as he removed them, staring ceilingward as if he was not in fact wholly there at that moment—and by that I meant mentally, as if his mind had crossed over to other places—that I could not take my eyes off him. Maybe it is a Japanese thing: economy is everything to us—the most minute things, done with exactitude, are sublime. And then he just lay there. Vines in hand, his body unmoving, his gaze at the rafters.
A minute or more passed. I remember everything in that moment being heightened, the vines in his hand framed and accentuated by his stillness, the rest of the usual goings-on of the barracks slipping into the peripheries of my awareness, then completely disappearing.
There were only those vines.
His hand moved after another minute or two.
Reached out over the edge of his bunk, and slowly sunk toward the bunk beneath. There it opened, revealing the vines to the man huddled in the bunk there.
That man I recognized as one of the larger prisoners in the camp. My first instinct was, because of his size, he was the dominant one, and that the dynamic was therefore fairly predictable. Gray, being a new prisoner, and severely diminished by his time with the Kempeitai, would be an easy target for the more aggressive prisoners, particularly ones like this one who were large in stature. I believe his name was Jefferson. He was a Negro. Very tall, and thick around the middle as only Americans could be at that time. Japanese, you see, there were very few fat Japanese. We were told this was just another illustration of our superiority: Japanese had willpower when it came to food; Americans, barbarians that they were, were gluttons—they got fat, sloppy, and suffered ill health because of it. Not that many of the prisoners were any longer fat—the diet they suffered ate first through any fat they had, then muscle, then internal organs, and then they were dead. Some, like Jefferson, with healthy reserves of fat—at least when he’d come in—had more of a store to draw from and thus tended to live longer. Especially if they intimidated other prisoners into giving them a portion of their food.
I was inclined at that point to think that the mystery had been solved. Gray had risked life and limb to smuggle the vines out of the mine to placate and feed a much-larger tormenter, a man he apparently feared more than the guards. He was caught between three equally harrowing threats if this were the case: discovery by the guards, violence by a fellow prisoner, and starvation. You can only imagine the calculation that must have gone on in his head as he considered his already insufficient ration of sweet potato vines every day: if he ate them, he might stave off starvation a little longer, and thus would not be carrying any contraband that might result in his execution when he left the meal, but then, returning with empty pockets to the barracks, he would be subject to the wrath of a much larger and more dangerous man behind closed doors once his shift was done. Alternatively, he could ignore his own hunger and deteriorating body, risk discovery by the guards, which would certainly subject him to another visit to the Kempeitai, one that would likely kill him, and were he successful in running that gauntlet, watch as another man ate the food necessary to sustain his own life.
I was allowed these thoughts, because Gray remained still and Jefferson quietly clutched the sweet potato vines in his hands. Jefferson was indeed a feral thing, his large frame pulled into fetal position as he lay on his side, as if using it as a protective fortress to surround the meager vines from the other prisoners. Jefferson then began shoveling the vines into his mouth.
I wondered if this was why Gray was a bōrei. Why his eyes were so lifeless and unreadable as he stared ceilingward. Maybe he did know he was dead, that day by day, meal by meal, he was surrendering his life in tiny increments to this brute in the bunk below.
Yet, after some minutes, once Jefferson had finished all the vines, something unexpected happened. Jefferson slowly reached up—Gray had not moved this entire time—and with his large hand gripped Gray’s shoulder. It was a tight grip, filled with meaning. For though Gray couldn’t see it, I could: Jefferson’s eyes in that twilit netherworld were gleaming. They were glassed with a thin sheen of tears. That tight hand on Gray’s arm and those tears bespoke only one thing to me: not dominance, but gratitude. Need. And in a strange way, love.
Gray in no way reciprocated. The only movement he made in the following minutes was to close his eyes. Within a very short time he was asleep.
I left shortly thereafter. I didn’t know what it all meant. Candidly, I did not think it meant much.
But one thing it was, undeniably, was information. Not so much information about them but about me. That’s the way I wanted to frame it anyhow.
So, I went to the Kempeitai. I went to Morio. I lament this now, because what I was essentially trying to do was cast myself in a good light—gain favor with the Kempeitai—over something that was in the war effort completely irrelevant. The only thing such a revelation could really do, besides perhaps earn the esteem of the Kempeitai, was get both Gray and Jefferson killed. But, as I say, I was young then, and I did not think about such things—the Allies were subhuman and I was eager for promotion.
When I approached Morio’s quarters on the far side of the facility, I was beset by vertigo—like I was floating, like the earth’s surface had fallen away beneath me and yet I still walked on. I suppose it is that nervous energy youths get when they’re about to encounter someone they’re trying to impress—that disjointing infatuation—like so many young lovers have as they near their beloved. Remember, as soldiers, we were denied that aspect of youth, so it found outlet in other ways. I loved the Kempeitai, not in the physical sense, but I desperately wanted their acknowledgment, the warmth of their approbation. I wanted to belong. I wanted to feel the safety of their acceptance.
It was early evening; I was not sure Morio was still taking visitors, but I was determined to follow through with my plan. Better to err on the side of overstepping one’s bounds on account of zeal rather than run the risk of being discovered to possess information that one would have been expected to divulge immediately. The latter scenario would lead to questions as to where your allegiances and focus lay. And you did not want the Kempeitai asking those questions about you.
As his quarters came into view, I saw him standing out front, quietly studying the sky. I neared. I could tell he was aware of me, but he did not divert his gaze from the firmament above, which was purpling toward black. I can remember that sky well, the way a few errant clouds hung in tiny dark silhouette against an otherwise uniform layer of twilight.
I approached him, saluted as crisply as I could. He regarded me without moving his head. His eyes rolled to me; as always they were unreadable. He had a peculiar but effective way of beginning a conversation with silence. He engaged you with his eyes, and where everyone else would say something, he would say nothing. Instead, it was as if his gaze was a prompt, an indication that you were the one to initiate dialogue. In some ways it’s akin to that idea that one should never negotiate against themselves—never divulge their position too early—allowing the other person to play their cards first. If nothing else, it illustrated the principled efficiency Morio operated with. Small talk was unnecessary. Only the crux of things mattered.
“I have information,” I said. I tried not to stammer.
This caused no ripples in those eyes, in that silent gaze he focused intently upon me, that gaze that implored me to get to the heart of the matter.
“It’s about the prisoner you’re interested in.”
A slight flicker in his eyes, a twitch in his brow, as if I had challenged him by suggesting I could possibly know anything about what he was interested in. He looked again skyward, as if it held more interest and promise than I did.
“The US prisoner Gray Allen. That’s who I speak of.”
He smiled ever so slightly then, a thin smile
of reproach aimed more inward than at me, as if admonishing himself for slipping somewhere, inadvertently leaving bread crumbs that an inconsequential private such as myself could trace back to him. His interest in Gray Allen had not gone unnoticed. He looked down, and without looking to me, nodded to his quarters, inviting me in.
As we moved to step inside, he called out to another Kempeitai officer, who stood out front of his own quarters some twenty yards distant. “I’ll be just inside. If they come, I want to know.” The other Kempeitai officer—Isa, I believe his name was—nodded solemnly, then resumed looking up into the darkening sky.
As Morio opened the doors to his quarters, I decided the two men were talking about the Allied bombers that filled the skies most days and nights. But it was a curious thing if this was the case. For when the Allied bombers came, you knew it. You didn’t have to look for it, as those two seemed to be doing, squinting their eyes heavenward. There was no need to look: when the bombers came, they were everywhere. And even before that, their noise was everywhere. An ever-burgeoning, slow-building drone from beyond the clouds and horizon. A harbinger of the destruction to come. Something about it did not fit, but by then we were in Morio’s quarters and he had shut the door.
His quarters were meager by any standard, but by wartime standards, they were quite ideal. Most importantly, he had his own space—his own four walls and his own door. The room was about the same size as this one: perhaps twenty feet by ten. He had a bunk with a thin mattress, which was an unheard-of luxury; we enlisted men slept on the floor on tatami mats. Besides this mattress, there was a small wood-burning stove, a fair amount of personal effects, and a porcelain tea service. All of these things were upgrades by degree over what we had—an existence of heightened material quality compared to ours, I suppose you could say. Because we had bedding as he did; his was just finer. We had tea as he did; again, his was just finer. And we had a stove as he did, but ours was shared by a dozen men. The great luxury he had was the ability to close that door. Solitude. It was not something we had. And sometimes, when the stress of the world is crushing down upon you, when hierarchal expectation seems to permeate the air around you, every minute of your day, the only respite a man has—the only thing that will keep him sane in the face of it—is a door. One that can be closed, and if only for a moment serve as a bulwark against those relentless waves of obligation and anxiety that would otherwise wear him down to nothing.
I envied him that door!
A place to breathe. To realize you’re breathing.
Sometimes that’s all you need.
It can be a matter of life and death. I really do believe that.
Anyhow, he caught me a little off guard with the first words he spoke: “Talk, Kesuke, tell me what you know.” His voice was confident, matter-of-fact.
I was taken aback by his usage of my first name. People did not use first names in the army. Moreover, how did he even know my name—and for the briefest of moments, I entertained the dreamy idea that the Kempeitai had marked me, shrewd, perceptible men that they were—they had recognized my potential simply by observing the effortless competence with which I dispatched the remedial jobs of a private and prison guard!
But then I realized he must have taken it off the tag on my uniform. Right there above my heart. As I said, my head was aswim when I approached that building; now, inside, I verged on dizzy!
I told him what I knew. It tumbled out of me as I recounted watching him watching Gray—all the while, in the back of my head, wondering whether this was a wise thing to disclose, that I was effectively spying on the Kempeitai—but my lips just kept moving. I told him about my surveillance of Gray after he’d left—making sure to highlight the initiative I took, my nimble skills as an investigator. I was, in a way, writing my own Kobayashi story, with me as the central character! Once I’d reached the end—the part where Gray surrendered the contraband food to Jefferson—Morio nodded, absorbing it all. I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t look up, didn’t direct those coaxing eyes toward me. I assumed this was a prompt not to talk.
Finally, he asked, “And what is it you want in revealing this information?”
I told him I didn’t understand. I did it out of duty—the one and only motivation a soldier in the Imperial Army should have. It was a rote answer; a private that said otherwise was in trouble.
“You’re clearly smart,” he said. “Duty is not the reason you did this. Otherwise, you are dutiful to a dying cause.”
I didn’t know how to respond. I was shocked. One did not say such things about the Imperial War effort. Was this somehow a test?
He crossed to a stack of ratty shoeboxes on the far side of his quarters. They were the only thing that seemed out of place in the otherwise spit-shined room. The boxes were dog-eared, stained, haphazardly placed.
“The Battle of Midway. In reality, that’s probably when the war effort was doomed. Three years ago. And yet we persist. Fools hell-bent on oblivion.” He said these things as he laid his hands on those boxes, considered both the boxes and his hands, the interplay between the two.
“Maybe money would be a more intelligent motivation,” he said after a moment. I admit, I was so confused as to his intent! He rarely looked at me. He seemed rather to be experimenting with his sentences, feeling his way through them, uncorking a thought and letting it flow to its natural conclusion, however apostate, irrespective of the fact that I was there.
“Sir?” I managed.
He reached beneath the dog-eared lid of one of those boxes and removed a stack of yen notes. I could see that the box was filled with similar bundles. There must have been twenty other such boxes. I assumed they, too, were filled with cash. It would have been an incredible amount of money.
“One thing that has been happening in those three years,” Morio said, “is the Mitsui Coal Company is making money like they never have before.”
He handed me the bundle like it was now mine. “They reward me,” he said, “so I in turn reward you.”
I was completely surprised by this. Seeing my hesitance, he again implored me to take the money. I did, if only haltingly.
He laughed like I should not take myself so seriously. “It’s not much more than toilet paper these days. Inflation has seen to that.
“All those boxes might buy me a pair of shoes. Might.”
I looked at the money in my hand a little uncertainly, then back at him.
“Even the rich can’t win the war.” He smiled, sitting.
We looked at each other in silence. He looked faintly bemused. He rolled up one hand, as if cradling something invisible in it, then the other. “So then, if it is not country, and it is not money, what is it?”
Now I was the one answering all his words with silence! I hadn’t a clue how to proceed. I began to suspect that Morio’s usual silence and introversion were not merely out of shrewd calculation, but out of a little madness too.
“If the winners are lucky enough not to die in the war,” he continued, “they die anyhow, soon enough. And the rich man’s money will be withered by inflation. Empire is built on money, but if money itself has no foundation…you see the problem, don’t you? It’s a great moving-around of chips that in the end are worthless.
“It will kill most of us, if not now, then later. No one will win the War.
“Except maybe the one you saw me watching—the one you, too, spied on—he might be the only one.”
I asked him what he meant by this.
“First off, know that you underestimate me when it comes to this prisoner. I’m fully aware he is not eating all his food. I got to the point that I’d instructed the cook to distribute to Gray Allen exactly eight sweet potato vines each meal. And in turn, I saw as you did, that Gray Allen ate only two of them while the other six disappeared. It was clear he was smuggling them out, given that nothing was left behind.”
“Then why didn’t you pursue it further?”
“Who says I didn’t?”
We sat there for a moment as he considered me. “Who is to say that I did not sit in the exact same surveillance perch as you, and witness the same interaction in the barracks with this other prisoner, Jefferson?”
I immediately felt stupid. I had, in my own zeal and ambition, underestimated him. Of course they’d known this! They were the Kempeitai!
I was ashamed suddenly, and suggested that perhaps I should leave. I wanted to be as far from that place as I could. Who knows how great an affront a man like Morio might consider the presumptive bravado I’d arrived at his door with, implicit within which was this idea that I knew something that he did not. Soldiers could be beaten for this. Worse.
He told me I was not to leave.
I dared not look up from the floor. I had willingly, because of my pride, walked into the lion’s den!
He neared me, craned his neck forward before my bowed head in a fashion that coaxed a gaze out of me despite myself. Those eyes were indeed dimensionless. Windows into untellable places.
“You and I,” he said, “we made the same investigation, went through the same steps. And yet…came to different conclusions about what we witnessed. The reasons for it. Now, why, private, do you think that would be?”
I was far too scared to speak.
“We see the human condition differently perhaps?”
“No, sir,” I said instinctively, though I had no idea how he actually saw the human condition.
He rapped his knuckles hard against my cheekbone. I winced, but tried to suppress any further reaction.
“Tell me, private,” he hissed, “tell me what is the human condition. Why does one man give another the very food he needs to survive? Tell me now or I will strike you again.”
“A man…a man will always address his immediate fears first, his immediate threats,” I stammered. It was the beginnings of a strain of logic I had been piecing together since witnessing the interplay between Gray and Jefferson. And I worried immediately upon saying it that it was too complex a thought—too heady—and exactly the wrong thing to say to an officer who wanted to be the smartest person in the room, as I perceived Morio to be. But I was scared, and just talking, because I knew I had to fill the air with something.
The Far Shore Page 23
