Edward Whittemore - Quin’s Shanghai Circus

But although you don’t understand any of this, you mustn’t think I’m a traitor. What I’ve done has been for the good of Japan. I had to make a decision that afternoon and it was the right one. I believed what Quin believed in, I believed it then and I do now. I loved Go as a child and that’s probably how I got into the army in the first place, but what the army was doing to Japan and beginning to do to China was wrong. Wrong then, now it’s much worse.

So no matter what happens I know I made the right decision. I know it. And as for Quin, he’s been a brother to me. Whenever I had doubts or was exhausted or thought I couldn’t live through another headache, it was his courage that kept me going, his confidence in me, his will, his determination to finish what we had started, what we were doing together to help people, to help the Japanese and the Chinese by ending their horrible, futile war.

There have been terrible times, times I can’t forget. And people.

There was the morning I had to call in the gentle Western scholar who has assisted us by handling our courier system. A kindly man, a good man, a man who has taken many risks for the same cause I have. Of course he didn’t know who I really was and of course I couldn’t tell him, but I had to get him to change his behavior because it might have endangered our security.

So I insulted him. I blackmailed him. I humiliated him in the most despicable way. Humiliated him, my compatriot. Insulted the man whom I knew was one of my brother’s most treasured friends.

A small matter. Merely a case of insulting and humiliating a kindly man, a gentle human being. There were worse cases. There were cases of murder.

Once, about five years ago, I had to get to Shanghai to see Quin, to talk to him about the General Staff’s plan to invade north China. I absolutely had to get there but there was no way to leave Tokyo. My office was involved in the planning and my absence from Tokyo then, for any reason, would have been impossible to explain. I was desperate.

And then a way turned up. A disgusting, sickening way. It was ghastly.

The plan called for a man to be assassinated in Shanghai, some well-known Japanese. The assassination would appear to be the work of Chinese patriots, and naturally the repercussions would be great. It was to be the first step, the beginning. A year later the Japanese people would be more than ready for the invasion of China.

Someone on the General Staff suggested a certain Japanese monk who lived in Shanghai, a man who was loved by the Chinese and respected by the Japanese, an ideal target. What little remained of the good feelings between our people was the work of him and a few men like him.

That monk was my cousin, descended from my father’s younger brother. But no one knew this because his family had been in China since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and because they had adopted a Chinese name, and because I’d destroyed certain parts of the Kempeitai files so that no harm would come to him.

Now not only did I have to agree to the plan but suggest it was such a delicate operation it required my presence in Shanghai. Behind my back I saw them smiling at each other, whispering that the real reason I wanted to go was because I was a killer, a murderer, an executioner who liked to sniff and smell and taste the scene of an execution.

They hated me of course. They’d always hated me because I had the files of the Kempeitai behind me and knew too much about them. They’d have gotten rid of me long ago if they weren’t so jealous among themselves about trusting anyone else with my work.

So they smiled at me.

Yes, they said, an excellent idea. Perhaps you should deal with this matter personally. Nothing must go wrong, and with you there it won’t. It will be an efficient murder, that is quite certain, given your skill. Quite certain and most reassuring. An excellent suggestion, Kikuchi.

I had to let them smile at me and get up and walk out the door. I went to Shanghai and met with the agents, telling them that the monk was to be superficially wounded, one bullet in the arm and the rest in the air, nothing more. But in the end that little effort came to nothing. They lost their heads and fired indiscriminately.

Five years ago. There have been other things since then and others before then, things you can’t explain to yourself or anyone else, things that just sit there and sit there and never go away, wounds that won’t heal, wounds open to the wind, wounds that reach to the bone. Once I talked to Quin about it and he nodded to himself. He nodded to himself and said nothing, for there was nothing to say. Nothing. He knew what I was talking about.

The General released her hands. He had finished. He went over to the cupboard and took down an unopened bottle of Irish whiskey that had been left untouched for eight years, a gift from Quin at the end of that afternoon and evening on a houseboat in Shanghai. The General never drank whiskey, but tonight he poured himself a large glass and emptied it.

She watched him refill the glass. He sat down beside her and bowed his head so that she could not see his eyes, neither the one with vision nor the one without.

So tell me what you think, he said.

I think you are a brave man, she answered, and I think you’ve done what you believe in. And I feel sorry for that other woman who can’t love a man the way she wants to love him. And I feel sorry for him, for someday he may discover why.

But most of all I don’t think about them at all. I think of my love for you and that’s all I think about, when you’re with me and when you’re not.

Four months passed. Mama was preparing the special rice cakes with which to welcome the New Year. Late in the afternoon she was given the name of a caller. She bathed and dressed in her finest kimono. Lastly she looked in on her sleeping son.

It was snowing when she walked down the open corridor that crossed the garden, toward the soft light that lit the rice paper door of the room where she had played the koto for the General. She watched the snow for a moment before sliding back the door on its runners.

A haggard figure knelt in front of her, his forehead pressed to the tatami . She begged him to rise, to sit by the brazier and warm his hands, surely stiff from the harsh wind of many an unfriendly night. She poured tea and placed the cup before him.

Dead, whispered the corporal.

I know, she said.

But there has been no announcement.

I knew last summer.

The corporal kept his head bowed. He cradled the steaming teacup in his hands.

I feel uncomfortable sitting here, he said. This was his place.

You need not, my friend. You loved him and tried to make him happy. No one can do more.

The corporal shuddered, but not from the cold. The spasm came from the fires that still burned behind his eyes. He was too frightened to go on. He felt a hand touch his arm and looked up to see a very old face, a tiny woman smiling gently in the yellow light.

It’s all right, she said. You can tell me. Life is brief and we must listen to every sound.

December 1937.

Nanking.

The ancient capital of the south was the only stronghold on the Yangtze River still under Chinese control. The Japanese armies had advanced from victory to victory. Whole Chinese divisions broke ranks, were slaughtered, surrendered. The better regiments had already been isolated or defeated. Radio messages told the General that he was ahead of the other columns. That day, he knew, he could reach Nanking if he pushed his troops hard enough.

The General called in his senior officers at five o’clock in the morning. He told them what he intended to do. His deputy and several colonels disagreed. The men were too exhausted, they had seen too much killing in the last few days. Some had been caught looting, fires were breaking out. It was dangerous. The breakdown in discipline could be contagious.