A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  ‘Now tell me more about this man. Why should we not hold him? What proof is there he is not a common soldier?’ Kato’s tone was conciliatory. He refilled her cup with coffee. It was then that she told him.

  ‘He is known also to your Embassy personnel. He is an old friend of Mr Nozaki. They were in France together as students. Mr Nozaki had a French wife.’ If Colonel Kato felt the Embassy was involved, they might then release Professor Teng.

  ‘He will vouch for the Professor,’ she promised in a rush.

  ‘He has said nothing to me as yet. And you too know this Mr Nozaki?’ Colonel Kato raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I met him at Professor Teng’s,’ she confirmed.

  ‘At his house?’ Kato enquired. Nadya nodded.

  ‘Then certainly we must release Professor Teng. I had no idea he was known to so many important people,’ Kato agreed. She did not like his tone of sarcasm, but he called in a subordinate and wrote out a message on a piece of paper.

  ‘I cannot of course guarantee he is still alive. Our soldiers are sometimes impetuous in meting out executions to those prisoners who unfortunately must be seen to in this way. If we can find him we will bring him here. Some formalities and questioning will be needed before his release. I will send a message to your Headquarters about your friend’s position.’ He gave a curt bow.

  She was suddenly anxious then to distance him, and walked quickly back down the echoing corridors, her heels clicking on the smooth stone. The men hurrying past turned to stare. Her heart beat erratically. Beyond the gates she leaned against a wall, weak with relief.

  ‘You don’t know what you have done.’ Kenjiro observed her in disbelief. ‘Kato is part of the Kempeitai.’

  The skin around her eyes was white, almost translucent. A great desire for her overwhelmed him. In this terrible place she seemed suddenly the only thing of beauty. He searched for a way to understand her effect upon him at this dangerous moment.

  ‘Now they will torture Teng.’ He stood up in distress and stood looking out of the window, his back to her. His agitation was divided between his anxiety for Teng, and shock at his feelings towards the woman seated at his desk. How could he feel lust in the midst of disaster?

  ‘Why should they do that?’ she asked, the confidence draining suddenly from her voice.

  ‘To find out who are his collaborators.’ He still spoke with his back to her, trying to calm his emotions.

  ‘Collaborators?’

  ‘Professor Teng is a man of liberal politics, as you know. There are even some who say he is a Communist sympathiser.’ He turned and immediately was gripped again by his physical feelings for the woman.

  ‘What proof do you have? Just because he is a liberal?’ Nadya asked. Teng’s angry patriotic outburst of months before came back again to her now.

  The way Kenjiro looked at her was disturbing. Her emotional discomfort had now nothing to do with anxiety for Professor Teng. It was as if a thread twisted tautly between herself and this man. She recognised too well the nature of the sinuous feeling winding through her body.

  ‘The Communists are peasants,’ she protested trying to discipline her confusion.

  ‘Led by intellectuals,’ Kenjiro replied. He turned back to the window again. ‘Liberal means Communist in this country, the line is negligible.’

  ‘Why should they guess Professor Teng is a Communist, even if he is?’ Nadya answered. He does not want to look at me, she thought, staring at Kenjiro’s back.

  ‘Because of you. It has been put about that you may be a Communist spy.’ Kenjiro spoke without inflection.

  ‘What do you mean? That is nonsense.’ Nadya leaned forward, her face tight. Perhaps the intensity between them was only his disapproval of her action, of the danger she had unwittingly placed them in.

  ‘You and I are both implicated now.’ Kenjiro turned and watched her eyes widen.

  Already he knew the wheels that would have been set in motion beyond this room. The silence about them was deceptive. Even Fukutake could not help him now. With no more than a few words she had linked him to Teng and to herself. His past would be exhumed and bear a strange new fruit. He was finished. And yet, all he could think of was how this woman would feel, naked beneath him. He shut his eyes in protest at his own thoughts.

  ‘You are being watched. Friends of Teng will all be branded suspect Communists, and I will now be included. I once courted arrest in Japan years ago, because of youthful leftist thought. In our country such things are not forgotten. The Military will want to see my records now. Suddenly, in their eyes, we will all appear to be suspiciously tied up together. Comrades in arms. A spy ring complete. What more could they want?’ He pursed his lips, his voice bitter.

  ‘But it is not true,’ she exploded.

  ‘What does that matter? Moscow has well-established spy rings everywhere, to warn them of any Japanese plans to invade Siberia. And an attack by Russia is always Japan’s worst scenario. Japan is paranoid about Communists and Russia. They see spies where none exist,’ he told her.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Nadya twisted her hands in her lap.

  Kenjiro stared at her over the desk. Before her everything seemed to fade. He could think of nothing but his need to touch her.

  ‘There is one man who might help.’ He spoke suddenly as the thought came to him. ‘Let me see what I can do.’

  He watched her leave, listening to her footsteps fade away down the corridor and sat for some moments unmoving at his desk. Then he opened the drawer and took out a photo of his wife. He remembered the day it was taken. Jacqueline had sat upon the verandah, facing the old lantern, her feet on the stepping stone to the garden. The summer heat had already begun, pushing deep into the house. In certain rooms, he remembered, tatami mats had been changed, filling the house with a fresh ripe smell of dried grass. The wooden boards of the verandah seared hotly beneath his feet as he knelt with the camera before her. Her belly swelled gently with the child. She had enjoyed that time of year, stretching her bare arms to the sun, meeting its fiercenes head on. His mother, beneath the shade of a linen parasol, frowned at such a foolish husbandry of summer. Jacqueline did not care. She smiled at him still from the photograph. A gingham dress revealed to him even now, her slim tanned arms, her neck thrown back, the crease of her smile. Her eyes. She had torn through his life, displacing those balances distilled since childhood. She had turned an axis, so that even now he seemed forever angled asymmetrically to the world.

  As a child he had watched sand crabs on the beach struggle out of their burrows into the sun. A wave washed over them and afterwards the sand about them was smooth and hard and their place of refuge was gone. So it seemed with him. He returned the photo to its drawer. In the room the light perfume of the Russian woman still hung about him.

  Kenjiro let himself into the house. He went first to his own room for a bottle of brandy before knocking on Tilik’s door. When he entered the room, he found Tilik sunk deep in an armchair. Depression creased his face. Kenjiro poured out two glasses of brandy and sat down in an opposite chair. He took a breath and began to explain.

  ‘Why should I help?’ Tilik replied, looking immovably sullen as Kenjiro finished.

  ‘Remember, I prepared your papers in Delhi. You could say I got you out of India. You should know what it’s like to face death, to be in need of help.’ Kenjiro replied as persuasively as he could. He let the brandy burn down him. He had little trust of Dayal, and knew he was taking a risk with the man.

  ‘My position is difficult,’ Tilik answered, his tone evasive. ‘If the woman is a spy and the professor a Communist, where does that leave me? Sooner or later the truth will out. I might face death on their account.’ He had seen three men gunned down that morning like rabbits, for no reason other than that they were walking along a road.

  ‘Many terrible things are happening about us.’ Kenjiro frowned, speaking slowly, searching for words. He took another mouthful of brandy. ‘In these circumstances we all f
ear for our lives. We are submerged in something none of us understand. It is a horror beyond anything we could ever have imagined. We have become part of it just by being here, by absorbing its sickening knowledge. We are imprisoned in this evil.’ He hesitated before speaking the word. It was full of Christian connotation to him and yet, in these circumstances, it had taken on for him a new resonance. It was as if he understood the word for the first time in its true blackness. Before him Tilik sat silent. Kenjiro began to speak again.

  ‘I am not religious. I attend to the rites I was raised to perform, and have never thought about these things too much. In Japan we accept that a man has many facets. The part of him that is aggressive is given its place in the balance of things. But what we see here in Nanking is beyond all concept of man’s small irregularities. This blackness blocks out our very humanness. It casts us beneath even the level of animals.’ Kenjiro’s voice was thick with emotion. He paused to swallow more brandy and then continued.

  ‘I find myself forced to seek some way to live through what has caught us here. I fear the future will be little different from the present we have created. And the past will fill our minds forever. If we are cowardly enough to leave within us the residue of this horror, to allow it silently to enter us, it will destroy us eventually, like a cancer. It must be fought. We must know in the future we opposed it in however small a way. Only then will it not destroy us completely. In silence we will die one inner death or another, that only we will recognise.’

  Until the words were out of him he had not even known these were his thoughts. He was filled with relief to hear himself. At last he saw his direction. It was as if he had faced a fork in a road and knew irrevocably now which path he must take. Whatever danger or disgrace might later overtake him, he knew suddenly he had no choice but this one way.

  Tilik Dayal seemed not so sure. He stood up and began to pace the small room. His expression was tense. ‘You are a Japanese. How can you of all people speak like this?’ His tone was angry, his equilibrium further dislodged by Kenjiro’s reasoning. ‘You are asking me to stick my neck out for people I do not know and whose innocence is questionable. You are asking me to put my years of work here for India, and my reputation with your military and government on the line. For what?’ Emotions churned through him.

  ‘If you do not know what to say to me, that means you are not sure of what you feel,’ Kenjiro said quietly. He sat looking down at his hands, afraid any physical movement might frighten Tilik away from a decision. He appeared like a thirsty animal that has seen water but is afraid to drink for fear of an attack.

  Tilik turned in fury raising his voice to Kenjiro. ‘You do not know what you are asking of me.’

  ‘You are angry with yourself, not me,’ Kenjiro replied. He could understand the man’s dilemma. He himself felt calm now he had made his own decision. ‘Do you not understand, even to come and ask this of you is to lay myself open to your trust. I could be shot tomorrow if you wished. You have only to speak to Colonel Kato,’ Kenjiro explained.

  ‘How are we to go about it then?’ Tilik shouted, anger suffused him. He could not believe he was agreeing to help an unknown Chinese professor, at the probable risk of his own life. He had been pushed into a corner. And he could see how Kenjiro had tricked him. He had thrown himself upon Tilik’s trust. Why should he feel trapped by this thing called trust? A gate had suddenly shut behind him that could no longer be unlatched. Wild images flowed suddenly into his mind. He saw himself beside Kenjiro, lined up before a firing squad.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m agreeing to help you.’ His voice broke on the admission.

  ‘You are agreeing because, like me, there is still something left within you that knows we must not be part of this,’ Kenjiro answered.

  Tilik sat down heavily in a chair, his shoulders slumped. Kenjiro leaned forward and pushed the glass of untouched brandy into the Indian’s hand. Tilik raised it slowly and wetted his lips with the spirit. He was not used to strong drink and it fired through his head. He stood up and began to pace about again.

  Once more he saw in his mind the women on the truck, some still little more than children. He remembered his cowardice before the soldiers’ guns. Every day now, each intolerable sight seemed to penetrate his body and fester there. He felt ill with the weight of it all. Unlike Nozaki, he had no time or inclination for painful self-examination. All Tilik knew was that the regime he had joined so glibly had deceived him. It would also destroy him if it saw a need. Hasegawa came into his mind, devouring the live crayfish so long ago, on the evening he had told Tilik about the conquest of Manchuria. Fear gripped him anew.

  ‘Tell me what to do.’ He stopped pacing about and turned to face Kenjiro. Even as he said the words, something seemed righted within himself.

  He sat on for a long time in a chair after Nozaki had gone, sipping at the brandy. It swirled in his head. He looked back on his life in distress. Whenever courage was demanded he had fled or taken the road to easy gain. He thought again of the failed bomb attack so long ago now in Delhi. He had set out to kill an Englishman, and instead killed a countryman through his own cowardice. If it had not been for this cowardice he would never have left India. The memory swept powerfully over him, the brandy releasing his shame. Because of him Jai Singh had died. The memory of why he had left India returned again to him now.

  Tilik and Jai Singh had been sent by Patel, the commander of their revolutionary cell, to get rid of a British Police Commissioner by the name of Tegart. They had gone to the road Police Commissioner Tegart would take. Tilik shone his torch on the rutted surface while Jai Singh placed the bomb in its hiding place.

  ‘There are two detonators, just to be sure. We will each have one. We must not miss,’ Jai Singh instructed.

  In the distance the headlights of Tegart’s car, like a pale, swaying flower, moved steadily towards them. The noise of the car filled Tilik’s ears. Something drew tight in his stomach, his lungs refused to expand. There was just the sound filling him up, ringing through him as it had before in Amritsar. He scrambled from his hiding place in panic.

  ‘Get down, fool,’ Jai Singh had screamed.

  For a moment the headlights of Tegart’s car had blinded Tilik as he stood at the edge of the road. Then, he picked up his bicycle and pedalled away as fast as he could. Behind him he heard an explosion.

  Later, he learned that Jai Singh had been shot by Tegart’s men, alerted to the ambush by Tilik’s panic. In the headlights of Tegart’s car, Tilik had been clearly seen. Overnight he was a wanted man and forced to leave India.

  Now in Nanking, the brandy ran hotly inside him. He took another mouthful of the fiery liquid. Across the room a small mirror showed him his face, filled with resentment and indecision. For a moment he saw himself as others must see him and discomfort overwhelmed him. He threw back the last of the brandy. His mind was made up, whatever the risk, to do as Nozaki suggested. At last he had an opportunity to balance past cowardice and the long-ago death of Jai Singh in Delhi.

  Colonal Kato offered him a cigarette. Tilik took it gratefully.

  ‘We have the man detained here now,’ Kato confirmed in reply to Tilik’s query upon the matter.

  ‘I would like to see him. There was a high-ranking Communist in Manchukuo whom we had captive. He escaped and it was rumoured that he came south, to Nanking, to organise a new cell. I can tell immediately if he is the man.’ Tilik did not lie. If Colonel Kato checked he would find such a man had existed and escaped.

  ‘That can be arranged,’ Kato replied. ‘What about the Russian woman? Have you more information?’

  Tilik shook his head. ‘It is possible she is innocent. The report I filed was a hurried one. I have not as yet come upon anything that confirms my initial suspicions.’

  Kato laughed. ‘She is an attractive woman. Has she charmed you maybe? These people can lay low for a long time. They are adept at diverting attention. Continue to observe her. Now this man downstairs, if he is your Ma
nchukuoan Communist I need to know. Go and look at him. We have tried to get him to talk, to find out who his collaborators are, but he is a hard nut to crack. Your Russian woman came to plead for him here. Is this not suspicious? It seems he also has contact with one of our Embassy personnel, but that is another matter.’ Kato picked up a phone and arranged for Tilik to see Teng.

  Teng was locked into a small, dark room in the basement of the building. The only furniture was a chair, to which he was tied. The glass at the window had long ago been smashed and an iron grille inserted. A biting chill swept into the room, and the walls gleamed with patches of dampness. Teng’s head was sunk upon his chest. Tilik nodded to the guard to leave them. The door closed and Tilik listened to the lock bolted into place. He took a step closer to Teng, but he did not move. Tilik cleared his throat. What if the man was unconscious? After a while Teng stirred, lifting his head.

  ‘I have only a few moments,’ Tilik told him. ‘This room backs onto a field. There are no guards outside, they are only at the front of the building. The bars at the window are thin. You can get through them easily with this.’ Tilik took a file from his pocket and placed it between the folds of Teng’s gown and the chair.

  ‘Who are you?’ Teng asked, his voice a hoarse whisper. He had been beaten badly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Tilik answered, loosening the rope about Teng’s wrist. ‘Keep your hands behind you, I’ve not untied you completely.’

  The man’s eyes were swollen, his face bruised. Tilik looked down upon a head of unkempt grey hair. He wondered why he was risking his life for this unknown man. One mistake and it would be he who was tied to this chair instead. ‘Once you get out, make for the road behind the field. A friend will be waiting there. Start as soon as it is dark,’ Tilik instructed.

  He turned and hammered on the door for the guard to let him out. Teng hung his head again. The soldier opened the door and peered inside until satisfied.

  Tilik returned to Colonel Kato and shook his head. ‘He is not the man. But it was best to be sure. The man we had in Hsinking was half his age, a different fellow completely.’ Kato nodded and offered another cigarette. Tilik sat down and chatted of other things.