‘I’m glad. They’re slowly getting better.’
‘The one flaw is that I can’t understand the lyrics. I can definitely feel the emotion. But it’s too bad that we don’t understand what the chorus is singing. I know the prisoners have spent days memorizing the Italian, but — what about translating the words into Japanese?’
‘True emotion transcends language,’ she said. ‘Whether it’s in Italian or Japanese, everyone can understand the true yearning inherent in that song.’ Her hands brushed the keys to pick out ‘Va, pensiero’. She started to sing along in Japanese:
Fly, thought, on wings of gold;
go settle upon the slopes and the hills,
where, soft and mild, the sweet airs
of our native land smell fragrant!
Greet the banks of the Jordan
and Zion’s toppled towers.
Oh, my country, so beautiful and lost!
Oh, remembrance, so dear and so fatal!
Golden harp of the prophetic seers,
why dost thou hang mute upon the willow?
Rekindle our bosom’s memories,
and speak to us of times gone by!
Mindful of the fate of Jerusalem,
give forth a sound of crude lamentation,
or may the Lord inspire you a harmony of voices
which may instil virtue to suffering.
I was stunned. I wasn’t sure what it was about the lyrics that made them seditious, but I knew that they were. It made me even more nervous. I feigned nonchalance. ‘You know, because of the majestic singing, I thought it was an account of the brave exploits of soldiers. I see now that it has a different meaning.’
Midori gave me a wry smile. What was she scheming?
‘Va, pensiero’ hung over me for the rest of the day. I couldn’t work out why it bothered me so. I walked into the inspection office and carefully scanned the log of confiscated materials. I found what I was looking for in the fourth log: The Titans of Classical Music, at the very bottom of box number 645. I opened the book and ran my finger down the table of contents — introductions to classical composers’ lives and works, from Bach and Handel to Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and Schumann. I finally came across an entry for Verdi on the sixth page: ‘Wagner and Verdi, A Two-Horse Carriage of European Opera’. I turned to that page as though I were under a spelclass="underline"
The chorus ‘Va, pensiero’ appears in Act Three, Scene Two of the opera Nabucco. Nabucco is another name for Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar, who appears in the Old Testament, specifically in the Second Book of Kings, the Book of Jeremiah and the Book of Daniel. His powerful kingdom defeated Syria and Egypt and he was thus venerated as the absolute monarch surpassing Hammurabi. King Nebuchadnezzar felled the kingdom of Israel, which had been divided into Judah in the south and Israel to the north after King Solomon’s death, and took the captured Hebrews to Babylon. The enslaved Hebrews were forced to construct the embankment of the Babylon River. Psalm 137 in the Book of Psalms contains the story of the Hebrews who sang longingly for their home along the river bank.
After losing his wife and son, Verdi sank into despair and gave up music, confining himself at home. Merelli, the impresario of La Scala, gave the story for Nabucco to the depressed Verdi. Verdi was moved by the story of the Hebrew slaves who led their lives with resolve, without losing hope of returning to their homeland, and he began to compose again. Nabucco brought Verdi immense success. When it premiered at La Scala on 9 March 1842, the Milanese were moved to tears. The performance fanned nationalist fervour in the hearts of all Italians, who were suffering from the repression of the Austrian Empire and saw parallels in the plight of the enslaved Jews of Babylon; they sang this song all over Italy. ‘Va, pensiero’ injected despairing Italians with a new passion for freedom.
Italians revered Verdi as the nation’s composer and ‘Va, pensiero’ was treated as the second national anthem. Thirty years after the premiere of Nabucco in Milan, Italy became a united country under General Garibaldi. At Verdi’s funeral, ‘Va, pensiero’ was sung in honour of the great man.
I closed the book and returned it to the box. I recalled the lyrics to ‘Va, pensiero’:
Fly, thought, on wings of gold;
go settle upon the slopes and the hills,
where, soft and mild, the sweet airs
of our native land smell fragrant!
And suddenly I remembered another song:
Carry me back to old Virginny,
There’s where the cotton and the corn and taters grow,
There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go.
Something shifted, and everything started to fall into place. The Babylonian Hebrews had lost their country, the Italians had suffered under the Austrian Empire’s repression, and the Negroes had been enslaved in America — these were people whose homes were torn from them, and many became captive far away. And the men who would be singing this chorus were Korean prisoners, whose homeland had been wrenched away from them, too. Dong-ju habitually whistled ‘Carry Me Back to Old Virginny’, Midori played ‘Va, pensiero’ and she defended the violent, despicable Sugiyama, while Sugiyama was moved by Dong-ju’s poems. They were all linked. Somehow Dong-ju was involved in the selection of ‘Va, pensiero’. After all, The Titans of Classical Music, which I’d found in his box, mentioned Psalm 137, and Dong-ju was the only person in this prison with a Bible.
Dong-ju settled on the chair in the interrogation room shivering like a withered leaf. I took off his manacles. His wrists, scraped by the metal, were swollen and red. He placed his Bible on the desk and folded his thin, rake-like hands on top. I glared at the Bible like a cat eyeing a fish.
Dong-ju’s eyes flickered. He looked nervous; he was probably wondering why I’d told him to bring the Bible with him. Would it be burned?
I spoke first. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to your Bible. I’m not going to inspect it or burn it.’
He looked at me doubtfully.
I tried to assume a gentle expression. ‘I just want to read one part of it. You’re the only person with a Bible here. Can you lend it to me? It’ll just be for a moment.’
With both hands Dong-ju quietly pushed the Bible towards me. My heart began to pound when I got to the Book of Psalms. The pages rustled as I turned them. I swallowed. Psalm 137:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
These verses were underlined in pencil. I looked up.