Jung-myung Lee - The Investigation

‘You’ll be fine,’ I said, more to reassure myself. ‘The doctors said your side-effects will disappear. You’ll leave this place on 30 November and write poems and publish books. After the war, when the world becomes a better place, countless people will read your poems.’

‘That’d be nice,’ he said, smiling faintly; he, too, must have been hoping for a happy ending.

Secretly, I was afraid that I already knew this story would end differently.

The New Year brought nothing new. The winter deepened; there was no sign of spring. Something had tipped; the war wasn’t going as well and Japan was starting to lose. Nobody said it out loud, but everyone could tell. Citizens sank into torpor and anxiety infected everyone with lightning speed. An angry voice on the radio promoted a final battle to defend Japan; flyers were plastered all over the city, urging us to defend our country with our lives. I wasn’t convinced that victory would bring us anything other than more death and shattered consciences.

The prison was no longer a safe zone. In the middle of the night an immense shadow covered the city. Explosions overshadowed screams, blanketing everything in silence in their aftermath. The streets were engulfed in a sea of fire and later settled into ruin. Everything — love, belief, hope, dreams — burned. That January twenty metres of the northern prison wall collapsed under heavy bombing. Ensuing attacks cratered the yard, and two poplar trees on the hill were burned to a crisp. When the loud siren blared, the frightened guards dashed into bomb shelters; sometimes, the enemy planes flew in ahead of the warnings.

Everything hung on the abilities of the nation’s air defence. Warden Hasegawa ordered a review of the prison’s facilities; the newer Wards Four, Five, Six and the infirmary were fine. Stairways in the corridors led directly to the solid underground bomb shelters. The problem was the old central facilities, which didn’t have an underground shelter. Fearing retaliation after Pearl Harbor, the warden had tried to build one, but it had been determined that digging under the building would risk collapse. As a last resort, a bomb shelter was built outside, about thirty metres away, but it was too far to run to when sneak attacks were launched.

One early morning I finished my shift and left my office, rubbing my eyes. A group of guards pushed past me, heading down the corridor. I wondered what was going on; the inspection ward was usually deserted. Cold sweat pricked my spine as I watched the guards enter the library. Would they discover our secret? I sprinted after them, the sound of my footsteps whipping my back. I reached the door to the library, which had been flung wide open. The guards were talking among themselves in the doorway; they looked at me oddly and let me by. I stepped inside, willing my trembling legs not to buckle.

The desks and bookshelves that lined the wall were gone. The floor had been ripped out. The darkness below spread open its maw, with a faint trickle of light shining out. I slowly approached the opening and went down the narrow stairs. At the bottom I involuntarily closed my eyes. All the shelves had been smashed; the books had been flung onto the floor.

Maeda, his expression deadly serious, was down there, surrounded by guards. He grabbed a black book. ‘These Korean arseholes dug their way into the heart of the prison,’ he spat out. ‘As if this is their playground!’

I looked around, shell-shocked.

‘Take everything out of this rat hole and put it in the yard!’ he shouted. ‘It’s going up in flames! In front of all of them! Find out who did this!’

I froze.

Maeda whacked his thigh with his club in anger as he went up the stairs. The others began to gather the torn books and haul them upstairs. I picked some up, too. Gulliver’s Travels, Great Expectations, Sonnets of Shakespeare, Poetry of Jeong Ji-yong . I couldn’t believe that these beautiful stories would soon be destroyed in the flames.

A senior guard followed me up. ‘I guess we need to thank the damn Yankees. If it weren’t for the bombings, this rat hole would never have been discovered.’

I must have looked puzzled.

‘Maeda examined dozens of blueprints from when the central facilities were constructed,’ he explained. ‘So that we could build a bomb shelter under this building. That’s how he discovered this basement. It used to be an interrogation room. Since this space already existed, we could save time and money. We could just expand and fortify the space, instead of digging somewhere new. So we came down here to see where the non-load-bearing walls and beams stood. And then we found this shit!’

My heart rattled like a worn-out cart. What if Maeda discovered my involvement? I thought of my mother, and my eyes clouded over in sorrow and fear.

The senior guard spat in disgust. ‘The Japanese handwriting is clearly Sugiyama’s. Can you believe he was in cahoots with those Koreans? He should have known better. But that’s what happens when you get mixed up with them. You get yourself killed.’

So I wasn’t a suspect. I was safe. I wiped my eyes furtively. ‘Why would a Korean kill Sugiyama, if he helped them?’

‘They’re like that. They pay back a favour with revenge. Or maybe he tried to reveal their secret.’

Just then a loud siren screamed, signalling prisoners from Ward Three to assemble in the military training ground. The prisoners lined up, trembling from cold and fear, avoiding the guards’ vindictive gazes.

‘We have granted excessive special privileges to you seditious, delinquent Korean prisoners!’ Maeda boomed. ‘But you abused our goodwill. This morning we exposed yet another plot. Now you’ll watch what happens.’

A guard wheeled a cart to the front of the platform. Another cart came out, and yet another; the pile of books grew. A senior guard poured a steel can of petrol on the pile. I stood to attention nearby, nearly overwhelmed by the noxious fumes.

‘Watanabe! Incinerate!’ Maeda’s voice was chilling.

My heart flipped. Perhaps he wouldn’t notice my anxiety. I knew I had to demonstrate how deeply I despised these banned volumes. I flicked the lighter and its blue light danced. Maeda’s eyes glinted coldly. I picked up a book with a trembling hand; it smelled of oil and the pages were practically transparent.

I remembered a passage from Crime and Punishment :

‘Where is it,’ thought Raskolnikov. ‘Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!. How true it is! Good God, how true!

I could never write something that examined life with such deep, thought-provoking insight. But as I read that passage, I’d become convinced that I was in conversation with Dostoyevsky. We existed in different eras and places, but we dreamed the same dreams and understood the same truth. At this moment, the very moment I was forced to burn his masterpiece, I was seeing the clearest vision of his soul.

The prisoners watched the spark at my fingertips. I spotted a pair of clear, deep eyes amongst the blank gazes; Dong-ju’s face lit up when our eyes met. I wanted to think that he was telling me, ‘Yuichi, light it. The books won’t die.’ Just then my grip loosened and the lighter slipped. The oil-soaked paper sucked in the flame and burst into an immense column of fire. Planks crackled, the wind fanned the flames, and black smoke rose, heat pushing against our faces.