The only effect of this tentative and frightened inquiry was a visit to the Asakusa house by a team of military police searching for evidence of Nicholas's wrongdoing. In the course of this search, the officer in charge appropriated as material to the investigation Nicholai's small collection of prints by Kiyonobu and Sharaku, which he had purchased when he could afford them, feeling distressed that the owners were forced by the economic and moral anarchy of the Occupation to relinquish these national treasures, and eager to do what little he could to keep them out of the hands of the barbarians.
As it turned out, these prints had a minor influence on the downward path of egalitarian American art. They were sent home by the confiscating officer, whose twilight child promptly filled in the open spaces with Crayola, so ingeniously managing to stay within the lines that the doting mother was convinced anew of her boy's creative potential and directed its education toward art. This gifted youngster eventually became a leader in the Pop Art movement because of the mechanical precision of his reproductions of tinned foods.
Throughout the three years of confinement, Nicholai was technically awaiting trial for espionage and murder, but no legal proceedings were ever instigated; he was never tried or sentenced, and for this reason he lacked access to even the spartan privileges enjoyed by the ordinary prisoner. The Japanese administrators of Sugamo Prison were under the thrall of the Occupation, and they held Nicholai in close confinement because they were ordered to, despite the fact that he was an embarrassing exception to their rigid organizational pattern. He was the only inmate who was not a Japanese citizen, the only one who had never been sentenced, and the only one being held in solitary confinement with no record of misbehavior in prison. He would have been a troublesome administrative anomaly, had not those in charge treated him as institutional people treat all manifestations of disturbing individuality: they ignored him.
Once he was no longer tormented by unexpected returns of drug panic, Nicholai began to accommodate himself to the routines and chronological articulations of solitary life. His cell was a windowless six-foot cube of gray cement with one overhead light recessed into the ceiling and covered by thick shatterproof glass. The light was on twenty-four hours a day. At first Nicholai hated the constant glare that denied him retreat into the privacy of darkness and made sleeping fitful and thin. But when, three times in the course of his confinement, the light burned out and he had to live in total dark until the guard noticed it, he realized that he had become so accustomed to constant light that he was frightened by the weight of absolute dark closing in around him. These three visits by a trustee prisoner to replace the light bulb under the close surveillance of a guard were the only events outside the established and predictable routine of Nicholai's life, save for one brief power failure that occurred in the middle of the night during his second year. The sudden darkness woke Nicholai from his sleep, and he sat on the edge of his metal bunk, staring into the black, until the light came back on, and he could return to sleep.
Other than the light, only three features characterized the freshly painted gray cube in which Nicholai lived: the bed, the door, the toilet. The bed was a narrow tray of steel secured to the wall, its two front legs sunken into the cement of the floor. For reasons of hygiene, the bunk was off the floor in the Western style, but only by eight inches. For reasons of security, and to deny materials that might be used to commit suicide, the bed had neither boards nor wire mesh, only the flat shelf of metal on which there were two quilted pads for warmth and comfort. This bed was opposite the door, which was the most intricate feature of the cell. It was of heavy steel and opened out on silent, well-greased hinges, and it fit into its sill so exactly that the air in the cell was compressed when the door was closed and the prisoner felt some temporary discomfort in his eardrums. Let into the door was an observation window of thick wire-reinforced glass through which guards routinely monitored the actions of the prisoner. At the base of the door was a riveted steel panel that hinged from the bottom for passing in food. The third feature of the cell was a tiled depression that was the squat toilet. With Japanese nicety of concern for dignity, this was in the corner on the same wall as the door, so the inmate could attend to his physical needs out of range of observation. Directly above this convenience was a ventilation pipe three inches in diameter set flush into the cement ceiling.
Within the strict context of solitary confinement, Nicholai's life was crowded with events that punctuated and measured his time. Twice a day, morning and evening, he received food through the hinged inner door, and in the mornings there was also a pail of water and a small bar of gritty soap that made a thin, greasy lather. Every day, he bathed from head to foot, splashing up water with cupped hands to rinse himself, drying himself off with his rough padded shirt, then using what was left of the water to rinse down the toilet.
His diet was minimal but healthy: unpolished rice, a stew of vegetables and fish, and thin tepid tea. The vegetables varied slightly with the seasons and were always crisp enough not to have had the value cooked out of them. His food was served on a compartmented metal tray with one set of throwaway wooden chopsticks joined at the base. When the small door opened, the trustee always waited until the prisoner had passed out his soiled tray together with the used chopsticks and paper wrapper (even this had to be accounted for) before he would pass in the new meal.
Twice a week, at midday, the cell door was opened, and a guard beckoned him out. Since the guards were prohibited from speaking to him, all communications were carried out in uneconomical and sometimes comic mime. He followed the guard to the end of the corridor, where a steel door was opened (it always groaned on its hinges), and he was permitted to step out into the exercise area, a narrow alley between two featureless buildings, both ends of which were blocked off by high brick walls, where he could walk alone for twenty minutes with a rectangle of open sky above him and fresh air to breathe. He knew that he was under the constant surveillance of guards in the tower at the end of the lane, but their glass windows always reflected the sky, and he could not see them, so the illusion of being alone and almost free was maintained. Except for two times when he was sick with fever, he never declined to take his twenty minutes in the open air, even during rain or snow; and after the first month, he always used this time to run as hard as he could, up and down the short alley, stretching his muscles and burning off as much as he could of the energy that seethed within him.
By the end of the first month, when the lingering effects of the drugs had worn off, Nicholai made a decision for survival, part of the impulse for which came from bone-deep stubbornness and part from sustaining thoughts of vengeance. He always ate every morsel of food, and twice a day, after each meal, he exercised vigorously in his cell, developing routines that kept every muscle in his wiry body taut and quick. After each exercise period, he would sit in lotus in the corner of his cell and concentrate on the pulse of blood in his temples until he achieved the peace of middle-density meditation which, although it was a pallid substitute for the lost soul-rest of mystic transportation, was sufficient to keep his mind calm and dry, unspoiled by despair and self-pity. He trained himself never to think of the future, but to assume there would be one, because the alternative would lead to destructive despair.