by Meira Chand
Kenjiro poured into glasses some beer he had been able to buy on the black market. He half-expected Teng not to accept the drink now that he was dressed in monks’ robes. Instead, he sipped at it meditatively. As always, Teng obeyed rules entirely his own.
‘The whole trial is in some ways a travesty,’ Kenjiro complained, taking a gulp of the warm beer. ‘And too big a thing for human integrity to ever get right. They say hundreds of thousands were killed in Nanking. Each of those was killed individually. One by one. Man to man. Eye to eye killing of defenceless victims. And an almost equal number they say were killed anonymously by one bomb and a single man in Hiroshima. Tell me which is worse? On the desert where that bomb was tested they say the sand turned to glass. And yet they still dropped it . . .’ His voice trailed off. A great anger rolled through him. ‘Sometimes I wonder if we have not already paid a suitable price for whatever atrocities we committed in Nanking and elsewhere. In some way you could say the slate is wiped clean.’ His feelings were forever in flux. He swung equally between emotions of guilt and those of rightful anger.
‘Because we don’t know when we will die, we think of life as an inexhaustible world. Our lives seem limitless because we can conceive of nothing else.’ Teng sighed, but Kenjiro returned to more secular matters.
‘Even though the Americans plan a new Constitution and a new society for us, I doubt that anything very basic will change in this country. A new dress upon the same old body perhaps? The Emperor is to be left in place, and so the country will not break with its recent past. The same bureaucracy that ran Japan in the war will now, with modifications, run it in peacetime. The same corrupt parties will remain in power. The past will be ignored, political debate stifled and this country will not grow up politically. The ghost of militarism will remain as long as the Emperor system remains.’ Kenjiro spoke in a resigned manner. His anger dissipated as he pondered the future.
‘Is there news yet of Dayal?’ Teng asked to change the subject. Some weeks before, at the trial of Tilik in Yokohama, on charges of conspiracy, they had both given evidence for the defence of his collaboration at the risk of his life in the escape of Teng.
‘I heard only yesterday. He has been acquitted and will be released this week,’ Kenjiro replied.
‘I am glad,’ Teng nodded. ‘Very glad.’
Later they drove together to Sugamo Prison in a taxi. It looked like a rundown factory with a white wooden gate and two small guard shacks. The American flag flew on top of its three-storeyed building. Still in ill-fitting prison uniform, Tilik Dayal was waiting for them in a meeting room.
‘I return to China tomorrow,’ said Teng.
Tilik nodded, as if still dazed by the verdict of acquittal and his imminent freedom. ‘I owe you so much,’ he said.
‘On the contrary,’ Teng laughed out loud, but Tilik shook his head insistently.
‘I must tell you, I am not a brave man. I might not have helped you if Nozaki had not been so persuasive. If they had tortured me, I would have told them all I knew of you both immediately.’ He felt better now he had said it. He remembered again the sight of the beaten Teng, tied to a chair in the dark basement room of Military Headquarters in Nanking. He remembered his hesitation as he had hidden the metal file upon the man.
‘How can you be so sure you would have told them about us?’ laughed Teng. ‘We never know what we will do until we are faced with a decision. Sitting here now I am sure you are perhaps surprised that you did indeed agree to help me? Is that not so?’
‘Perhaps,’ Tilik admitted. He recalled his fear after Teng’s escape. It seemed a miracle that his part in the event had not been uncovered.
‘But you did help. What else matters?’ Kenjiro interrupted.
‘What matters is that every day now when we read the newspapers, it is clear how ruthless the machine was that backed me. I have lived with illusions, about myself, about my ideals, about almost everything I can think of. I backed the wrong God. Vengeance devours you.’ Now again he remembered Rash Bihari’s words of warning on this matter, at their first meeting so long ago.
Tilik did not tell them how much the world beyond this prison terrified him. It was a landscape devoid of the props he was used to. It was another Japan. And he was already a relic of another era. He could understand how so many had committed suicide after the surrender, rather than face the reconstruction of their world.
‘You go too far, I think,’ Kenjiro answered.
Tilik shook his head. He could not rid himself of his depression. Everywhere he looked in Sugamo were men who were now termed criminals. Few seemed to feel any guilt as far as he could see. Anger, acceptance, false bravado; he saw all these emotions, but the despair afflicting him seemed unique to himself.
‘You have recognised that inferior part of yourself. Nothing is more important. Many live out their lives without seeing that person in themselves.’ Teng spoke quietly.
‘What will you do when you leave here?’ Kenjiro asked.
Tilik shook his head in bewilderment. He had no idea how he would support his family. ‘I was useful to a now obsolete regime. It has vanished and I too am now obsolete. Perhaps I can import tea or spices from India. I shall have to think of something.’
‘I will be working soon once more, for the Foreign Ministry,’ said Kenjiro. ‘As long as my health remains, I shall be in a position of responsibility. There is an era ahead of new world relations. Fresh ties will be formed between Japan and India. There is rebuilding in every sphere of life ahead. I see you as a valuable man. You have been cleared of all charges against you, and in fact proved to be on the side of right. You could work for the good of a new India in a new Japan. Independence in your country is now a reality for the future. We shall talk about this once you leave Sugamo. I see nothing for you to be despondent about.’
Tilik looked up at him, his expression clearing for the first time. ‘If this could indeed be my future, there would be much to hope for, much I could do at last for the good of both our countries, and in a more rightful manner.’
Teng sat unmoving, arms crossed in his habitual manner over his chest, each hand hidden in the wide wrist of the opposite sleeve. ‘Cause and effect, means and end, seed and fruit, cannot be severed from each other. The effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed. Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir tree.’ Teng sighed and stood up, ready to leave.
42
A Break with the Past
1946
They noticed first, like the sudden shutting of a door, a silence in the mornings. Only occasionally now was there the lone, shrill rasping of a late cicada. Already it was autumn.
‘Thank God those insects are gone,’ said Donald. ‘They drove me mad. Screaming out all the time. Sometimes, you know, the blasted things reminded me of . . .’ His words trailed into silence. There were many sentences now he suddenly lost all desire to finish. He could not round out in words how sometimes the hysterical insects reminded him of those human cries of terror, that had cut just as shrilly through his body in Nanking. They walked on up the steep hill along a narrow path between the dense slopes of cypress.
‘This reminds me of Purple Mountain,’ Nadya said.
She spoke about Nanking if Donald touched upon it. She knew then that tacitly permission had been granted, that his mind would not be jolted into the shock of remembrance. The doctor had advised letting Donald set his own pace for this reaching back. General MacArthur had sent his own doctor to Donald who, in turn, had recommended the American psychiatrist who now treated him. Donald had been three months in the hospital, and only now had begun to feel any wish to explore the world beyond it, or the many spectres in his past.
‘It is like a road to a house he once lived in,’ the doctor had said. ‘Unless he goes back, unless he travels to his past, ghosts will haunt him for ever. There is only so much I can do to help him. He must find his own w
ay to exorcise his demons.’
Twice a week Nadya made the journey to the sanatorium, a distance from Tokyo. She knew he waited for these visits. The trial at lchigaya dragged on, and work for Bradley was neverending. The China War segment was over and no more evidence was needed from those who had been in Nanking. Air-conditioning had been installed in the courtroom, and a greater war was now under examination. It was obvious to everyone that the six-month schedule originally given for the trial was unrealistic. It might now run into years. For as long as Bradley was here, Nadya had a job. It came as a surprise to find in this land, until now associated only with violence, so much that swung to the other extreme. The gentleness of the people she met came as a shock. She was at a loss to understand where the barbarity she had witnessed was spawned.
They climbed higher. Pine needles were slippery, like glass beneath their feet. The astringent perfume of the forest closed about them. The trees pressed in, casting shadows, as light filtered down with difficulty. She saw Donald glance apprehensively about.
‘It is only a short distance more,’ she encouraged, hurrying ahead, so that he would not decide to turn back. She had been up here by herself before on a previous visit to Donald.
They came at last to the clearing and the shrine. It was weathered and old, its wood splintered by neglect. About it stood trees of a great size. Here too the light was of a filtered quality and a dampness settled upon them. The silence was powerful, as if they had entered a secret world.
‘These cedars must be of great age,’ said Donald, looking up in respect. ‘See the size of the trunks. They can live for hundreds of years you know. Five hundred, seven hundred, even thousands of years, I believe. Think of all they must have witnessed.’ Part of the old shrine was built up the slope. Stone lanterns and two ancient temple lions guarded it in front. Lichen clung to parts of its stone base.
‘They say this shrine is a thousand years old. It must be the age of these trees,’ Nadya whispered. ‘Do you not feel the atmosphere?’
‘It is the residue of centuries of human hope and pain,’ Donald replied, making his way up the wooden steps to the closed door of the place. There was no lock and the doors slid open easily. He took hold of Nadya’s hand, pulling her up beside him.
The smell of dampness and old wood met them as they entered the bare interior. The tatami floor was ripped in places. The many painted amulets hanging upon the walls were faded and weathered. Where the shrine backed up the hill was a narrow arched corridor, like a walled bridge. This ended in a short flight of steps and a wooden cabinet with metal-bound doors. Before it were fresh offerings of rice cakes and sake. Two small lamps glowed in the dimness beside a ritual ornament of folded brass strips.
‘Somebody comes here,’ Nadya said, pointing out the offerings. The strange austerity of the place was unsettling. There was no icon, no decoration, just the cold, charged emptiness, the lighted lamps and locked box.
Why do I feel frightened here?’ she whispered.
‘Because in this place, as one feels sometimes in old churches, nothing can be hidden. We can no longer lie to ourselves before whatever it is that is accumulated here,’ Donald replied. His grip on her hand was hard. He led her back to the bare, matted room and pointed to a beam just above their head. A polished sphere of metal rested upon a base of carved wooden clouds.
‘For many weeks you know, I could not read. The effort demanded was too much. But recently, for a short while, I find I can open a book. I have learned some things. That mirror is the symbol of the soul. It directs that we look into ourselves to find every answer we seek. No false gods, no illusions, no pomp and power and calling for help upon the Almighty. Ourselves, nothing more. And in that simple wooden box on that topmost altar, the most precious thing in this shrine, is no hidden idol or secret text. There is nothing but the emptiness of the universe, from which we came and to which we return.’
He sat down on the matted floor. Nadya settled herself beside him. Donald looked about the walls, covered by the profusion of amulets, each small board inscribed with a wish.
‘What do you think is written upon them?’ he asked.
‘I should think they must ask for sons or husbands or brothers to return from war,’ Nadya replied. ‘In those times what other wish could anyone have had?’
‘A dying man once told me he felt covered all over on the inside by scales, like a reptile. He hated himself so much. I know how he felt. I don’t want to die as he did.’ Donald shuddered just thinking of Mariani and the weight he had carried to his death. ‘I think I knew my father would kill himself. I willed him to. When I saw him dead upon that desk, his brains all over the wall, beneath the shock I remember there was a feeling of triumph. I had had my revenge for what he had done to my mother, for taking Cordelia from me. And for what I thought he had done to me. I was glad he was dead. Perhaps I even drove him to his death, relentlessly, deliberately. I don’t know.’ There were many questions he must ask himself.
It was not yet late but the afternoon sun was already shortening, cut off by the great trees about the shrine. Before the altar the lamps glowed with new strength in the dimness, catching brass hinges and the folded metal ornament.
She took his hand. ‘You wanted to write that book about China and did not, because of that Snowman, that Edgar Snow. Why do you not now write about this whole trial, each phase of it, each part of the war and through it maybe you can reach many things?’
‘Maybe,’ he replied and fell silent for a moment before he spoke again.
‘I cannot do it unless you are with me.’ He said the words slowly, giving weight to each one.
‘What are you saying?’ She smiled in the dying light.
‘Well, I think it is a proposal,’ he answered.
‘But you forget, we have been through all this before. I am already Mrs Addison.’
They stood up then to go. At the door Donald stopped and turned back as if on an impulse, returning to the few steps before the Shinto altar. He dug into his trouser pocket and drew out the bullet that he had carried upon him everywhere since the sinking of the Panay. He laid it before the doors of the metal-bound box, in which was trapped the emptiness of eternity. He closed his eyes but no prayer came to him. Silence seemed enough.
He turned back to where Nadya waited.
43
Shadows
1946
As he climbed higher up the mountain the heat of the plain was left behind. The mosquitoes bothered him less. A distance ahead, perched precipitously upon a crag of rock, stood the monastery. Teng walked easily. His body seemed without weight, as if it had shed many burdens.
In the distance now, on a lower promontory below the main buildings, he could make out a small figure. It jerked suddenly into life and stumbled down the slope towards him.
‘Why have you come? You would be of more use at prayer,’ Teng scolded Akira, but there was little astringency in his tone. They struggled in silence up the slope with little spare breath to converse.
At last they entered the cool interior of the stone buildings. The smell of incense came to them.
‘What was it like?’ Akira whispered at last.
‘Bad. Little is left of anywhere but rubble. The great bomb left only a flat black plain of dust and a town of walking dead. I saw pictures. People looked like lizards, their skin burned off. Do not ask me more.’
‘Did you find out anything?’
‘Very little. Your mother is dead. Of the others I do not know. Small villages escaped the worst bombing. It is probable some of your family survived. Even now malnutrition is a big killer.’ He began to untie his pack of belongings. Akira stood in silence beside him, turning the beads on a string about his wrist.
‘I can arrange for you to go back. I have spoken to people about it. Many such as yourself are returning; those soldiers who were taken prisoner, and others who ran or hid like yourself. Some were prised out of Malayan jungles, or tropical island caves, and did not even know
the war was ended. They are being repatriated. It will be no shame to return in the present climate. Especially with an American occupation.’
‘It will always be a shame,’ Akira answered, his voice sinking low. ‘l am dead to my family and to my country. No American occupation will ever change the thoughts of our people. I am as dead. My family would be dishonoured if I returned.’ He remembered again the senninbari his mother had given him, soliciting for his safety one thousand stitches, walking from village to village.
‘I could arrange for you to go back to a monastery in Japan. You would at least be in your own country,’ Teng insisted.
‘My place is wherever I am,’ Akira answered. There was a hard lump in his throat at the memory of his mother.
The setting sun glowed suddenly through a high window, spearing them with a shaft of light, spreading their shadows across the floor of the narrow room.
‘I do not answer without thought,’ Akira went on slowly. ‘There are millions who have died upon this soil. A greater number of those are my Chinese brothers, and a portion are my own countrymen. In this land I have come to some realisations. I have seen the depths of human depravity. Now, from this place of peace, I tell you honestly, I am not sorry to have seen these things, although I still battle with the residue of nightmare. I feel terror in the sunshine. But I have touched the centre of evil. Many have not to take this road, and they are lucky. It was my destiny to be shown the extreme path. But, is it not through the recognition of such evil that purification can begin? I must stay here. I must pray for the souls of those I wronged. I must pray for the souls of those of my countrymen who, like myself, will never go home. I must pray for those who have returned to Japan but will find no peace. It is my duty to stay here. That is my work. It has been shown me.’
