The Investigation (21 page)

It was obvious that they were extreme opposites. Choi considered Dong-ju to be sentimental, and Dong-ju probably thought Choi a boor. But Dong-ju’s undeniable magnetism pulled Choi in. So
Choi sent his men to set up a meeting with Dong-ju, who claimed he wasn’t interested. Finally Choi took matters into his own hands and approached Dong-ju himself.

‘Aren’t you hard to pin down! We need to talk. I think it’ll interest you.’

Dong-ju gazed up at the empty sky without answering, and the others began to turn their heads to look at the two men, aware of the roaring silence.

Choi laughed heartily and stalked off, not wanting his authority to be flouted in the presence of the rest of the prisoners.

After that encounter Choi began to approach Dong-ju daily. It was patently obvious that Choi was desperate to get this inexperienced young man on his side. Finally, one day, Choi revealed his
true feelings. ‘Don’t you want to get out of this place?’ he asked. ‘Listen to me if you want to leave this prison alive.’

‘No, thanks,’ Dong-ju said placidly. ‘I’m going to walk out through the front gates on my release date, 30 November of next year. No sooner, no later.’

Choi wanted to stab this idiot; he wanted to brandish his metal shaft and force Dong-ju to understand that these were tools with which to break out of prison. He wished he could drag him into
solitary to show him the tunnel to freedom. But he had to be careful. He grinned. ‘Then you must not realize how terrible this place is. There’s no way a puny bastard like you could
last until next year.’

‘I don’t need your protection. God will protect me.’

Everything changed when Dong-ju was sent to solitary. Choi watched anxiously as Dong-ju walked in there with his shoulders hunched. He was worried that the sensitive boy might
discover his secret. Choi was on tenterhooks until Dong-ju limped out after a fortnight.

‘Glad you made it out alive,’ Choi said, smiling nonchalantly.

Dong-ju squinted against the strong sunlight. During his stay in solitary his face had grown paler. ‘It was hard, but not hard enough to die. Agony can’t kill a man, not like despair
can. People who have hope live, and people who lose it die.’

‘What are you talking about? Your poems? Poetry isn’t hope. It doesn’t help you overcome reality. It just makes you forget it. Sinking into sentimentalism doesn’t make
the world disappear. Escaping these bars and walls and barbed wire – that’s the only way.’

‘Yours is an impossible dream. There’s no freedom for the colonized.’

Frustrated heat spread inside Choi’s heart. He wanted to tell Dong-ju his entire plan; Dong-ju wouldn’t talk lightly if he knew. But he suppressed the urge with a deep sigh.
‘Don’t talk like that. You don’t know anything. Behind these walls we have our own rules and secrets.’

‘And you might die because of those secrets.’

Choi leaned forward and whispered, ‘What do you know? What did you see?’

It was a useless question – their secret was already cracking at the seams.

Choi swallowed. ‘You have good eyes, buddy. Okay. You don’t have to say anything.’

‘How can you be so sure I saw anything?’

Choi’s sharp eyes cut to Dong-ju’s dirty knees. ‘The cell floor is cement. Where else would you have got your knees muddy?’ He shot a glance at his men, waiting at a
distance.

The group exchanged furtive looks. One hitched his trousers up, grabbing a shaft of metal from inside his pocket. Another began to walk towards the other prisoners. Their movements were in
perfect synchronicity – the man approaching the other prisoners would start shouting to draw the guards’ attention, while the man with the weapon would stab Dong-ju and disappear back
into the crowd.

‘I found some dirt around the latrine,’ Dong-ju said. ‘So I took it out and found a tunnel below.’

‘Then you must know that now’s the time to make a choice. You either join in on the plan or . . .’

Dong-ju’s mind raced. Should he do nothing, or should he act? A rash action could be dangerous, not only for him, but for others. The man with the shaft was approaching quickly.

‘For the last six years I’ve thought up dozens of ideas,’ Choi said. ‘Before digging the tunnel, I measured the length of the yard with my footsteps and figured out the
right direction. I got trustworthy people to help.’

‘What will you do when you get out?’

‘Go away. Away from this filthy war, from this country.’

‘How long do you think you can be on the run for? You’ll be caught in less than twenty-four hours and shot. You have nowhere to go. You’ll end up getting killed like a dog.
That’s exactly what the Japs want.’

‘So, according to you, the Japs
want
me to escape.’

‘Of course. To make you an example. To show everyone what happens when someone tries.’

‘If you don’t join, you’ll be the one killed like a dog.’

The man with the metal shaft was almost in front of Dong-ju, the muscles in his forearms bulging. Dong-ju had intruded on something he wanted nothing to do with, like an insect caught in spider
silk. There was no telling to what the strand that tangled him was linked. Everyone was tied to something, but nobody knew what tied him down. Even if he did know, there was nothing he could do.
‘Okay, I’ll do it!’ Dong-ju blurted out.

Choi shot the man with the shaft a look. He whirled around and walked off. Sweat trickled down Dong-ju’s back.

‘So Hiranuma was in on your plot?’ I leaned forward, my forehead almost touching his.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know if he did his share of the digging or not. I didn’t care, though. All that mattered was that he was with us. He’s resourceful and
intelligent, and he could rally all the Koreans. That in itself was a huge advantage.’

‘He didn’t help you at all, though. He just joined your conspiracy to avoid getting killed. He wouldn’t have escaped even if you’d managed to complete the
tunnel.’

‘What does it matter? My secret was safe as long as he was in on the plan. He knew his life would be over if he stayed in prison after we escaped.’

None of it made any sense. According to Choi, Hiranuma wasn’t important to the escape plot, so then why did Choi work so hard to bring him into the fold? I scanned his written confession.
‘Why is Hiranuma not mentioned here?’

Choi’s features darkened. He stroked his beard. ‘Because he’s not an important figure in the plot.’

Was Choi protecting him? Why? What was he hiding?

Choi stared at the report in front of me. ‘Can I have a piece of that paper?’

I was suspicious. ‘What for?’

‘I don’t know when I’m going to die,’ he mumbled. ‘I should like to write my will.’

I ripped out the last, blank page of the file and handed it to him. He folded it carefully and slid it into his breast pocket. ‘Thanks. I owe you one.’

I brushed it aside. What else could a death-row inmate do as he waited for his end in a tiny solitary cell?

Back in the inspection office, I flipped through the log of incinerated materials. Nothing caught my eye until I got to 18 September. Eighteen books were burned that day, more
than the usual ten. They were mostly confiscated items from new prisoners or records that were due to be destroyed, but there was one book without an identification number –
Birth of an
Empire
, issued by the Citizens’ Education Bureau of the Interior Ministry. I took the log and headed to the tiny library next to the office. The limewashed walls were peeling and giving
way to mould. The library contained only two desks, four chairs and rickety bookcases that held guard-education publications distributed by the Public Security Bureau:
How to Make Rounds
,
Prison Administration Regulations
and soldiers’ manuals distributed by the Army Ministry. There were some war novels, too:
The Way of the Empire
,
The Cherry Blossom
Warrior
,
Cherry Blossoms in the Blue Sky
. It was part of the censor’s job to sort the books distributed every month and incinerate older volumes to make room for new ones.

I traced a finger along the spine of each book. I noticed two lines drawn in the dust. Someone had taken out those books. Additional lines, thick and thin, were marked around them, both faint
and clear, marking the time when books were removed. These books didn’t have identification numbers on their spines. They must have been brought here before Sugiyama became the censor, as
he’d created a list of all distributed materials when he took over. I flipped to the back of the books to check the publication dates and found that most of them were much older. I opened the
log I was holding in my hands: there was no mention of any publication without identification numbers. A waterwheel began to spin in my heart, creaking, circling, pounding. There was only one
conclusion I could draw from all of this: books were disappearing. Dozens of them. They must somehow be related to Sugiyama’s death.

I spent the rest of the day in the quiet, cold library, my mind grappling with the dust marks on the bookcases. I was getting tired of chasing secrets. My legs gave way, and I slid down to the
floor, leaning against a bookcase. I picked out a book at random. It was about the war; it argued that we would soon be victorious, and it was filled with incitement and the promotion of national
sacrifice. I shook my head. Who was victory for, anyway? Countless children were orphans, thousands of women were widows and many more had been imprisoned or lost their lives. The old spine broke
in half, revealing long, narrow furrows created by book-worms.

My heart leaped with joy. I wanted to be even more like the book-worms – to be born in books, live among them and die in a library.

‘
Oecophora pseudospretella
,’ I murmured, looking around.

Then I spotted white powder in the cracks on the shelves and in the corners. I nodded. Sugiyama wouldn’t have let book-worms proliferate. But where were they coming from? There must be a
safe haven for them nearby. I stared at the walls, and something wriggling caught my eye; a bug’s glistening back and two long feelers seeking the smell of paper and ink. It crawled up the
bookcase. Another crawled up from behind, and another. A mature bug must have laid eggs inside the wall. They kept crawling out of the faded grey wall. I walked up to it and heard my footsteps
ringing hollow, as though I were walking over empty space below the floorboards. My heart began to pound. I pushed the desk aside and noticed a dislocated square wooden tile. The insects were
crawling out of there. I levered up the board and damp, mouldy air washed over me. An old wooden staircase revealed itself, leading underground. I forced my trembling legs into the darkness and
descended one step at a time. At the bottom, I took out my lighter. Its tiny flame illuminated the small space. Books. At least fifty volumes were stacked on a makeshift shelf, fashioned from a
piece of wood placed on top of two bricks. I ignored my pounding heart and caressed the books’ fat spines. Bricks, pieces of wood and planks were piled all around. This narrow, dark and
lonely underground space made for a marvellous library, suffused with the smoky scent of dust. I recognized the books with a start. They were the very publications that I’d noticed had
disappeared upstairs, but the titles were crossed out and in their place someone had written new ones, both in Korean and in Japanese:
Don Quixote
,
Les Misérables
,
Robinson Crusoe
, Greek mythologies,
Romeo and Juliet
, André Gide, Stendhal, Baudelaire, Rilke and Jammes. I pulled one out, its cover worn and shiny:
German Love: From
the Papers of an Alien
. I remembered how the book began:
Childhood has its mysteries and its wonders; but who can describe them? who can interpret them?
But when I opened the book
eagerly, I couldn’t read it; the pages inside had been blacked out, and new writing was done by hand, in white – in Korean. I closed the volume and returned it to its place. Some books
were in Japanese, mostly difficult ones, like Kierkegaard, written in a clumsy but powerful hand – Sugiyama’s. Those in Korean were entertaining novels, like Dumas or Stendhal. They
were obviously in a different hand. I recognized it. Why would Sugiyama share this clandestine library with him?

I knew I had to report my discovery. Otherwise, I would be a traitor. But this was a perfect little library, with an excellent selection of titles that would satisfy beginners as well as the
erudite. The architect of this hidden library knew well how intellectual adventures were shaped, leading uneducated travellers down the path of knowledge, starting with Dickens and Hugo, then to
young Werther, and beyond to an even greater city of literature. Adventures, the romances and mythologies, romantic poetry and biographies, arriving finally at the humanities – indeed, this
was the very same intellectual path I’d taken.

Should I act? Or should I not? I needed to know more. And there was only one person who could tell me the truth.

Dong-ju stepped into the interrogation room, looking spent. His sallow face was tense with nervousness. I untied the ropes binding his wrists. Dozens of questions floated in my
head. I didn’t know where to begin.