“I suppose.”
Kawamura passed out, hair pasted to his face.
Shozo said, “We wouldn’t worry about those tanks except for your report. Why should the Japanese navy take the word of a gaijin?”
“I’m not the enemy. There’s no war yet.” Harry caught a smirk on Go’s face. “Look, your navy asked me to do a job and I did, although I was not paid and my efforts on behalf of Japan were not appreciated by other Americans.”
“It’s confusing. The five-hundredth piece of the puzzle is still missing. Why would you concoct a story about missing oil or secret tanks in Hawaii? What is in it for Harry Niles?” Shozo paused to watch Go twist his chubby fingers into Kawamura’s hair and force his head into a pail of water. The accountant came up blubbering. “My suspicion,” Shozo said, “is that we have the wrong Harry Niles.”
“How is that?” Harry asked.
“When we went into your apartment, do you know what struck me? I thought, Harry’s home is more Japanese than mine. It’s true. My wife and I have two rooms, and one is entirely Western. We have the usual middle-class pretensions, a Western table, tasseled lamps. A piano. Except for your gramophone and records, your rooms are entirely Japanese. A simple shrine, a hanging scroll of Fuji, straw mats. A low table of fine lacquer. A typewriter but also a brush and inkstone. A tea set. A vase with a single flower. I said to myself, This is the real Harry. There is the Harry who lives for money and the Harry who takes time to see a soldier off to the front. On the outside is the vulgar American, but inside is someone else. The American would never stand up to the Japanese army in Nanking, but the someone inside would.”
“There were plenty of Americans who rescued people in Nanking.”
“But they were priests and ministers. Is that what you are, a religious man? I don’t think so. You know the expression ‘Every man has three hearts’? One he shows the world, one he shows his friends and one he shows no one else at all. I think that’s the case with you. I think that deep within you is an honorable part that is Japanese. That’s the part of you that so dislikes being responsible for the beating of another man.”
“Sergeant Shozo, it sounds as if there is part of you that doesn’t like to do the beating.”
“Harry, you’re too sly, too sly. But I do believe in the value of confession. My work is done only when a criminal sincerely analyzes and confesses his crimes. I have something for you. Remember how we talked on the boat about the truth, how it wasn’t even worth taking the confession of a gaijin because it would be so insincere. Can I treat you like a Japanese, Harry, treat you honorably? Do I dare do that?” From his briefcase, Shozo brought a school composition book, to which he added his own uncapped Waterman pen, the present from his wife. The stiff cover of the book read “The Statement of Harry Niles.” Harry opened it. The pages were blank except for ruled vertical lines and the smell of schooldays. “Can you be honest, Harry? How many company ledgers did you alter?”
Harry knew what Shozo meant. Kawamura had been treated like a Japanese, and look at him. Hamburger. But Harry understood the sincerity of the option, and it took him a second to say, “Not any.”
“Are there any secret oil tanks in Hawaii?
“I have no idea.”
“Or did you just make them up to cause confusion?”
“What confusion?”
Shozo sighed as if a prized student had failed.
Go was infuriated for the sergeant’s sake. “You should be ashamed! An opportunity like that? To be treated right?”
“Back off,” Harry said. He’d had it with Corporal Go. “What confusion?” he asked Shozo. Although he was half in the maw of Sugamo Prison, this new element had his attention. Uncertainty, yes, but why confusion?
“Just a word,” said Shozo.
“A very particular word.” Harry tried to get around Go to the sergeant. “Who wants to know?”
“You don’t ask the questions. We ask the questions,” Go said and broke the cane across Harry’s back.
My mistake, Harry thought. Never provoke police, especially in jail. And never let violence get started. The pain radiated through Harry’s body from kidney level, and he slid down the wall to his knees.
“Are you all right, Harry?” Shozo stooped to ask.
“Sure.” It was a fluid situation, that much was clear. So far as Harry was concerned, Shozo’s push for a confession proved he didn’t have enough for an arrest. However, the Thought Police were capable of anything when antagonized. Harry had just pressed too hard.
“No hard feelings. No warning, sorry.” Go grinned with his upper teeth.
“Now, while you can, Harry, write your statement.”
“Can’t.” He couldn’t even stand.
“Then tell me about the tanks.”
“Don’t know.”
“The Magic Show.”
“No.”
“Lady Beechum. We know she’s a spy.”
A bugle call and the clamor of a bell were followed by a general coughing, a rustle of bodies on thin mats, a sickly chorus of hundreds in a mausoleum above and below. Time to contemplate a person’s spiritual nature, Harry thought. Time to call the bluff.
“I’m ready to go.”
Shozo helped Harry up. “Would you like some water? Tea? Last chance, Harry.” Shozo had the expression of a fireman removing a ladder from someone who refused to leave a burning building.
“No. May I go?”
“Of course.”
Shozo called a guard to return Harry to the processing area. On the way out, he passed a trustee in a patched kimono pasting rules up in the halclass="underline"
NO SPEAKING BETWEEN PRISONERS IS ALLOWED. NO SIGNALING BETWEEN PRISONERS IS ALLOWED. NO DISRESPECT TO WARDS OR GUARDS IS ALLOWED. NO REMOVAL OR DAMAGE OF THE CELL LIGHT IS ALLOWED. NO BLOCKING OR COVERING OF THE DOOR SIGHT IS ALLOWED. RISING IS AT 0600, INSPECTION AT 0630, EXERCISE AT 0900, LUNCH AT 1100, DINNER AT 1600, SLEEP AT 1900. HAIRCUTS TWICE A MONTH. SPECIAL ITEMS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE COMMISSARY. COMMENTS SHOULD BE DIRECTED ONLY TO THE PRISON GOVERNOR.
This time the rules were in English.
HARRY FOUND a train platform half a mile from the prison on a road between potato fields. Scarecrows whirled their arms at the rising sun, and Harry found cheer in the fact that his shirt wasn’t sticking to his back, which meant he had only a welt, not broken skin, a good sign, although the very fact that he construed a lack of blood a good sign was, he admitted, a bad sign indeed. He sucked on a cigarette to ease the pain and read the schedule plaque. There wasn’t much service on a Sunday. And prospects for the rest of the week? He felt the sun stretch his shadow back toward the high walls and chimneys of the prison.
Palm Springs, Palm Springs, Palm Springs, he repeated like a mantra. Alice, Alice, Alice. Sometimes a man sensed a deal falling apart. The blow with the cane was a bad sign through and through. He hadn’t been taken so unawares since school, when Gen once caught him with a wooden sword before Harry had his padding on. Someone in the navy had to be sniping at Gen for Shozo to know so much about oil. Worse than the hit, though, was remembering what he’d done to Michiko. She’d laid herself down to save his life, and he’d reacted like a saint stoning a slut.
A crow trudged up the road and shared a glance with Harry, one wiseguy to another. There was nothing he could do. On Sunday morning there was no traffic, not even a truck to bum a ride with.
The worst sign of all was what had earned Harry the welt on his back.
Confusion.
Harry’s whole story about secret oil tanks on Oahu was meant to cause uncertainty; that was the point of the fabrication. Uncertainty was a paralyzed state where cooler heads could prevail. Confusion was active, committed, a labeling of targets. Confusion was planes in the air.
20
THE TRAIN WAS a narrow-gauge local that rattled across the hard crust of winter fields, and Harry rode standing up rather than let his back touch a seat. Other riders carried dusty sacks of root vegetables. Beer bottles and dead cigars rolled at his feet. He had never had such good posture, or such a watchful eye from fellow passengers, and when the train reached Ueno Station in Tokyo at nine o’clock and emptied at a platform with a sign that said CELEBRATE ANTI-SPY WEEK!, Harry felt as if a spotlight had followed him from the prison.