The Girl Who Played Go

56

Captain Nakamura sees spies everywhere, even within our own army. Unsure how accurate the Chinese interpreters are, he begs me to attend the interrogations of our new prisoners.

The cells are in a courtyard in the middle of the barracks, hidden under tall plane trees. I have scarcely set foot through the door when I am hit by the same stench as a battlefield the day after combat.

I am welcomed with open arms by Lieutenant Oka, whom Captain Nakamura has already introduced to me at dinner once in town. His uniform is made to measure, his mustache impeccable; this is a man who attaches excessive importance to his appearance.

He takes me over to a second courtyard where a Chinese man is hanging from the branch of a tree by his feet. His naked body is crisscrossed with black marks. As we move closer a cloud of flies rises to reveal his flesh, which looks as if it has been plowed like a field.

“After I whipped him, I used a white-hot iron on him,” commented the Lieutenant.

The smell of decomposition intensifies inside the building, but Lieutenant Oka seems unperturbed and I force myself to ignore it too. He offers me a guided tour, and he shows me the cells along a long, dark corridor with all the relaxed confidence of a doctor proud of his model hospital. Through the bars I can make out mutilated bodies slumped on the ground. The Lieutenant explains that his first act when he arrived was to have the ceilings lowered so that the criminals could not stand upright; then he cut their food rations.

I am suffocated by the smell of excrement and blood and, while noticing my discomfort, my guide still manages to sound like a conscientious civil servant: “I’m so sorry, Lieutenant, when we hit these pigs with sticks they go and get diarrhea.”

Seeing these men dying in agony makes my skin crawl with goose pimples, but the Lieutenant’s serene and attentive expression forces me to hide my disgust. I must not show any lack of respect for his work and, afraid that he might mock my weak stomach, I choke back the bile rising in my throat and make a few complimentary remarks. He seems satisfied and smiles shyly.

The torture rooms are at the end of the corridor; the Lieutenant put them there deliberately so that the cries of the prisoners could ring throughout the entire building. Keen to show off his expertise, he tells his adjutant to carry on with an interrogation.

I hear a woman screaming.

“They’ve just put salt in the Communist’s wounds,” the Lieutenant explains. “When I was in training our instructors would often say that under torture women show more resistance than men. This one is especially stubborn.”

He pushes a door open: in the middle of the room a fire is blazing in a bronze basin, heating pokers to a red glow. The heat is unbearable. Two torturers with great hairy arms throw a bucket of water over a woman lying naked on the floor.

The Chinese interpreter bends over her and cries, “Talk! If you talk, the imperial army will leave you with your life.”

Between her moans I think I can make out the words: “Go to the devil, you Japanese dogs.”

“What is she saying?” asks Lieutenant Oka.

“She is insulting the gentlemen of the imperial army.”

“Tell her that her friends have confessed. She’s the only one who’s not cooperating. What point is there in resisting?”

She curls up on her stomach with her hands tied behind her back, shuddering with every move. The Lieutenant kicks her and, as she jerks onto her side, I see her face, which is blue and swollen.

He crushes her head with his boot and smiles.

“Tell her that if she doesn’t talk, I’ll ram this poker up her ass.”

The interpreter quickly does as he is told. The moaning stops. All eyes are riveted on the motionless figure. The Lieutenant gives a signal to the interpreter, who picks up a pen and a piece of paper. Suddenly the woman gets up to her knees, like a fury rising from the depths of hell, and she starts screaming, “Kill me! Kill me! You’re all damned…”

The Lieutenant doesn’t need the interpreter to grasp the gist of what she is saying. He has only to glance at the two torturers and they throw themselves at the woman and hold her by her shoulders, as he grabs the glowing iron.

A foul-smelling smoke rises up as the screaming woman’s flesh is seared. I look away. The Lieutenant puts the iron back into the fire and stares at me with an enigmatic smile.

“Stop for now. We’ll start again later.”

He takes me off to see other rooms and comments with all the minute detail of an impassioned scientist on the hooks, whips, sticks, needles, boiling oil, and water spiced with red-hot chilies. Then he offers me a glass of sake in his office.

“I’m sorry, I never drink during the day.”

He bursts out laughing.

“A prison is always a kingdom in its own right. We make our own laws here. Sake activates the brain. Without it our imaginations would run dry and we’d soon be exhausted.”

I take my leave, claiming that I am nearly late for a meeting. On the doorstep he says, “You will come back soon, won’t you?”

I nod vaguely in his direction.

Back in my room, I write my report for Captain Nakamura, and in it I praise Lieutenant Oka: “He is a meticulous man who is devoted to the Emperor. He must be left to act as he sees fit and with the complete cooperation of his assistants. An outsider would disrupt the precision of his work and would interfere with the smooth running of the interrogations. I myself would ask you not to send me there again, Captain. My visit there fortified my conviction that we must never allow ourselves to be taken alive by the enemy.”

Three days later a soldier brings me a message from Lieutenant Oka, who would like to talk to me about something, so I go straight over to see him. Despite the heat, the officer is wearing a new tunic over his shirt, and a pair of boots that shine in the sunlight.

He greets me with a smile.

“I have good news for you. The man you saw hanging in the courtyard cracked. In our last raid we caught a fifteenyear-old boy and his interrogation will take place this evening. Would you like to attend?”

The word “interrogation” makes me feel sick. I compliment him on the competence of the Chinese interpreter and explain that my presence would be pointless. Quite unperturbed, he looks me in the eye and insists, “You really don’t want to come? What a shame. He’s a very good-looking boy and I’ve already chosen several good strong men who’ll keep him talking all night. It’s going to be marvelous.”

It is eighty-five degrees in the shade, but the Lieutenant’s words make me shiver. My only reply is to mumble something about not liking that sort of spectacle.

“I thought you liked that sort of thing,” he says, amazed.

“Lieutenant, your job is difficult and very important to the expansion of Japan and the glory of the Emperor. I wouldn’t want to distract you from it. Allow me to decline your thoughtful invitation.”

I can see the disappointment flit across the man’s face and he looks at me sadly. Lieutenant Oka has shaved so closely that the little mustache on his upper lip looks as if it is quite separate and might fly off at any moment.

“Come on, Lieutenant,” I say, patting his shoulder, “you get back to your work. The glory of the Empire depends on it.”