Jung-myung Lee - The Investigation

Director Morioka came up, his thick wavy hair neatly combed back, clad in a white coat and gold neck tie. ‘This is Miss Iwanami Midori, a nurse in the infirmary. She studied the piano from before she entered primary school. She was a promising piano prodigy who won in the Kyushyu piano contest. When her father, a war-department executive, died in the Sino-Japanese War she was forced to give up playing, but — as you can see — she is still very talented.’

Hasegawa let out a delighted exclamation. Everything Morioka described contained all that he desired for himself, but had to satisfy through mimicry: the ability to purchase an expensive musical instrument, a sensibility to appreciate music, a sophisticated character.

The piano had come to the prison more than ten years earlier, before the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, when Fukuoka was a peaceful city known for hosting a large contingent of foreign businessmen on leisure trips. Stevenson, an American importer and a music lover, wanted music to flow through the utilitarian prison. The day the piano arrived, Stevenson held a small performance by an amateur choir that he led. Since then, the piano had languished in a corner of the dark auditorium, covered in dust. Disinterest, humidity, dust, bugs and mice had all attacked it. The strings lost their innate sounds and the frame warped. Many suggested that the eyesore be tossed, or hacked apart to donate the steel strings to the war effort.

‘Awful sound,’ said a rough, creaky voice behind Hasegawa. Everyone turned to look at the guard with wide, sturdy shoulders and a long scar down his cheek. He was looking down at the keys disapprovingly.

Midori closed the lid and stood up. ‘I’m sorry if you didn’t like my playing.’

‘No need to be sorry. Your playing isn’t what’s awful. I don’t have the ability or the desire to judge how you play.’

Hasegawa tensed his small, hard body. ‘Sugiyama!’ he shouted. ‘How can you say something like that? You don’t know a thing about music!’

Midori shivered. It was that menacing butcher, the monster who broke countless bones and ripped flesh.

Sugiyama replied tersely, ‘I don’t know much about music, but I do know about sounds.’

‘What? What could you possibly know about sounds?’

Instead of answering, he approached the piano and put a hand on the keys. Hasegawa watched him in surprise. Sugiyama pressed two keys at the same time. He pressed five keys down. A heavy, powerful noise filled the auditorium. He closed his eyes, gauging the resonance and power of each note. ‘This piano has lost its sound.’

Hasegawa’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Nonsense! Nobody has even touched this piano in the last ten years!’

‘Not playing a piano is worse than pounding on it. Because of the humidity in the wood, the notes can’t stretch out. The strings lose their bounce, become warped and are unable to let out a precise note. A piano that can’t make a proper sound is no better than a dead one.’

Hasegawa smirked. ‘Sugiyama, don’t you dare think about getting rid of a perfectly fine piano by treating it like a broken piece of rubbish. It was abandoned for ten years, but today it finally met a proper player.’ He turned to look at Midori with a gentle expression.

Midori pressed one key with her right thumb and another with her little finger. The low and high G notes stretched out in parallel lines. ‘These are exactly one octave apart, sir. But the G I pressed is a black key. It’s G#, not G. G is a half-note lower. Its resonance is also shaky. The notes are slightly off and the vibrato is not quite right.’

Hasegawa turned to Sugiyama with displeasure. ‘How did you know about the condition of this piano?’

‘Before I enlisted I worked at a piano shop and learned a little, over the tuner’s shoulder.’

‘Then fix it!’

That evening Sugiyama crouched on the auditorium floor and opened a leather bag filled with a variety of metal tools, tongs, wrenches and pieces of leather. He caressed the piano as he would a beloved pet. He opened the lid; he was surrounded by the faint forest scent of antique wood. The piano-felt was ragged.

‘G.’ His monotonous voice was brittle.

Midori pressed the key confidently. The silence was broken by Sugiyama’s voice, followed by the piano. He wound a piece of leather around the bolts and tightened the strings. His expression reminded Midori of a doctor listening to the patient’s heart through a stethoscope, or a surgeon preparing to operate on a doomed patient. Sugiyama was holding tongs instead of a scalpel, but he was as powerful as a surgeon who made the lame walk, the blind see and the dying live.

‘It’s improving,’ she offered. ‘The note is precise and the vibrato sounds better, too.’

He didn’t seem satisfied. ‘I gave it a basic tune-up, but I need tuning instruments and other materials to do it correctly. A hammer and tuning driver, one spring-adjustable hooked needle, new steel strings, glue, wax for shining and a fine polishing cloth. ’

He appeared worried that he wouldn’t be able to find what he needed in these times of shortages and rations. Pianos, once objects of envy, had become the target of rage. No one would buy them, so they were hidden away in rooms or attics like clandestine children, covered with dust, forgotten.

‘I’m going to try the piano shop in town. I may be able to find tuning instruments.’ He started putting away his pliers, metal rods and leather ties.

Midori recognized those pliers; the patients she’d cared for had sported bloody bruises on their fingers made from those steel tips. She’d seen lash wounds on their backs the same thickness as those leather ties. This violent guard menaced powerless prisoners, but he was also the only person who could recover this piano’s sound. Which was his true self?

‘What do you use those tools for?’ she asked cautiously.

Sugiyama’s pupils flickered like candlelight in the wind. ‘Why do you want to know? We each do our jobs. I rough people up, and you treat them. I tune the piano, and you make music with it.’

‘What is it exactly that you do?’

‘My job is to purify the warped brains of those who believe they’re saving the world, but are really befouling society — Communists, nationalists, anarchists. So don’t meddle.’ He tossed her a cold smile and stalked out of the auditorium, leaving her behind in the murky darkness, the metal instruments in his bag clanging with each step he took.

Two days later, Sugiyama went into town. The piano shop there had closed a long time ago. He pounded on the door for a long time until it opened. The bald, moustachioed owner was as lethargic as a dust-covered piano. Sugiyama explained that he was seeking a tuning kit and repair tools. Resigned, the owner opened the door to the storage room. There wasn’t much that was usable, but Sugiyama took a few tools and walked through the grey streets back to the prison.

Midori was waiting for him in the auditorium. Without a word, Sugiyama opened up the piano, revealing hundreds of nuts and dozens of strings, and the crossbeam that stretched across. He tightened hundreds of tuning pins and strings and bearings and nuts.

‘Try any key.’

She played ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’. Her playing sparkled, recalling for him the image of a rainbow, summer rain, amber. Sugiyama glanced at her fingers, which flew across the keys like butterflies, at her thin ankles above the pedals. He softened, looking nostalgic.

‘Tuning isn’t something you can learn in a day or two,’ Midori suddenly said. ‘It’s obvious you didn’t just pick it up — you managed to tune this piano without any real tuning equipment.’

Sugiyama flinched.

Midori could tell that he was recoiling from a memory.