THE LANTERN BOATS an utterly gripping and heart-breaking historical novel set in post-war Japan (Historical Fiction Standalones)

by TESSA MORRIS-SUZUKI

  ‘You know what the penalty for murder is, don’t you?’ said the policeman with the gold tooth, who was not as patient as his older colleague.

  Jun wasn’t sure, but he could guess, so he nodded.

  ‘They will hang you. If you tell us lies and try to deny your crime, they will certainly hang you. Law courts don’t believe fairy stories, you know.’

  The policeman didn’t seem to expect an answer, and when Jun remained silent, he got up, stood over him and placed both hands around Jun’s neck, squeezing, though not very hard.

  ‘That’s what it feels like,’ he went on, ‘when they put the noose round your neck. It’s just quite loose at first, and then — boom — they open up the trapdoor and you’re gone.’ When he said the word ‘boom’, his thumbs dug into the sides of Jun’s neck just for a moment, but so sharply that the blood drained from Jun’s head. The policeman’s hands felt like the gloved hand of the man on the train. Jun could remember that moment on the train very vividly, even though it seemed as though it were a hundred years ago.

  ‘There is no “Z Unit”,’ the policeman continued, returning to his seat. The exaggerated way he pronounced the words ‘Z Unit’ made them sound ridiculous. ‘It never existed, did it? It’s another fantasy, like your fantasy that this woman, Miss Toko, was in love with you. You wanted to have sex with her, didn’t you? You couldn’t control yourself.’

  ‘No!’ cried Jun, but he could feel himself blushing, and the two policemen looked at each other and smiled again.

  ‘If you sign the confession,’ the older man explained softly, ‘it will at least show that you have some sort of conscience. You’re young, after all, and you’ve obviously had a hard life. If you confess and apologize to the court, there is just a chance that the judge might take pity on you. They might not execute you after all. They might just send you to prison. You’re only, what? Eighteen. You could live for another sixty years.’

  The words of the confession swam before Jun’s eyes. He could sign it. Perhaps it would be easier that way. He could just sign it and then go to sleep. Maybe the story written on the page was true. Maybe he had killed her.

  But on the paper was the word ‘baby’.

  Jun tried to focus his eyes on that word. He didn’t know what had happened anymore. He didn’t know what was real and what was fantasy. But the one thing that he knew for sure was that he had not killed the baby. He had put it in a blue canvas bag, and then . . . he had not killed it. The baby was still alive. He had abandoned the squirming pink baby who grew up to be Kiyo. He had run away and left her playing patience with a battered pack of cards on the dusty street in front of Toyohara Station, and then she had died. But he hadn’t killed this baby.

  He could tell them. He had proof. Go to the Ruskins’ house at Atago-yama, he could say, and you will see that I didn’t murder the baby. But what then? They would still accuse him of murdering the Fox. The fact that he had taken the baby and kept it with him for days would only confirm his guilt in their eyes. And what would they do to the child?

  He shook his head. ‘I’m not signing,’ he said.

  The policeman with the gold tooth sighed deeply.

  ‘OK,’ he said wearily. ‘Let’s start all over again from the beginning, shall we? You admit that you smuggled yourself into Japan on a boat that was engaged in illegal activities. You admit that you had been following Miss Toko for months. You admit that you entered her apartment without her permission . . .’

  But at that moment another policeman, one whom Jun had never seen before, stuck his head around the door and made a little coughing sound.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. I need a word with you both for a moment. Something’s come up.’

  The two policemen left the room, locking the door behind them, while Jun remained sitting there, gazing at the map of Tokyo that was still spread open on the table in front of him. It was like a giant puzzle, he thought — a maze. All those little veins and arteries weaving their way in complicated patterns full of dead ends and false turnings, but all, in the end, leading to the great blank space in the centre. He kept staring at that void, which mirrored the void in his head. And then his eyes traced the route from there to another space on the map: the garden surrounding the great mansion near Ueno Park, with its windowless cellars flooded with water. Tokyo Anglican Theological College. So many hidden places. So many places concealed behind other names. Places that would never appear on any map.

  With no one here, he could put his head on the table and go to sleep, but the bright light above went on shining and his eyes would no longer close, so he kept on staring at the map as though it contained the answer to everything.

  After what seemed like a very long time, the older policeman came back, frowning.

  ‘Come!’ he said.

  He guided Jun out of the room and along a corridor to a desk on which lay a brown paper parcel. Protruding from the parcel were Jun’s wallet and the buckle of his belt, which had been removed when he first arrived at the police station.

  ‘Sign here,’ said the policeman.

  It’s a trap, thought Jun. They’re tricking me into signing the confession.

  ‘Come on. We haven’t got all day.’ The policeman’s finger was pointing at an open page of some kind of register, which had a column of signatures on it. Jun picked up the pen and signed, and the policeman handed him the paper parcel and took him to the front door of the police station. ‘You’re free to go now,’ he said, when Jun hesitated on the threshold.

  Outside, it was daylight, and raining. A jeep was parked immediately in front of the police station with its rear door open. Next to the door of the jeep stood Eugene Goto.

  ‘Well, Kamiya-kun. What have you been up to now?’

  Jun stared at him silently.

  ‘Not a word of thanks?’ said Goto, smiling and slapping him on the shoulder. ‘You ought to be grateful to us. You should be glad that you’re under the protection of Colonel Canon. Japan, after all, is still an occupied country. They can’t just go around arresting special agents like you, can they? That would never do. You should have known we wouldn’t leave you to the tender mercies of the Japanese police.’

  Goto gestured to the open door of the jeep, and gave a little bow.

  ‘After you, Kamiya-kun,’ he said.

  CHAPTER 23

  ‘But I thought it was a little girl,’ said Mother, when Elly tried to explain that their plans for adoption had changed.

  They had moved Mother into a tiny single room now. It barely had space for her bed, but did provide a little more privacy and quiet. She looked drowsy. Her eyes were puffy and partly closed, and Elly thought that she must have been given some kind of sedative or painkiller. She seemed calm, though — almost content.

  ‘No,’ said Elly with a sigh, starting the explanation all over again. ‘We were planning to adopt a little girl called Maya, but then her mother decided that she didn’t want to put Maya up for adoption after all. She found that she could look after her herself. But meanwhile, a friend of ours who had just had a baby boy died, only last week, and the baby’s father can’t look after him, so we’re taking care of him instead.’

  She was not going to talk about the way that Vida had died, and she was certainly not going to talk to anyone about the extraordinary way in which the baby had appeared in their lives.

  ‘So are you going to adopt this little boy?’ asked Mother. ‘What’s his name? Did you tell me his name?’

  ‘It’s still early days,’ said Elly. ‘We haven’t worked out the details — whether we’ll adopt or just foster. We’ll sort all that out later. His poor mother didn’t even have a chance to choose a name for him before she died. We’re calling him Jack for now, but that’s just a nickname, really. We’re going to talk to his father about choosing his real name.’

  ‘I thought that little girl looked very sweet,’ said Mother, sounding confused and dubious.

  ‘She was,’ said Elly. ‘But you’ll love little Jack w
hen you see him. I’ll try to bring you a photo soon. His mother was Japanese and his father is American. He has grey eyes and beautiful downy black hair. His father had to return to America and, well, there are complications that make it difficult for him to get back here right now. That’s why we’re looking after baby Jack for the moment.’

  ‘That’s good, then,’ said Mother, closing her eyes again. ‘You know Ken came to see me last week.’

  It was the third time she’d said this. ‘Yes,’ replied Elly, ‘that’s wonderful. I know he was really glad to see you.’

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ said Mother. ‘I always knew he was a good boy.’

  She reached out her hand and took Elly’s.

  ‘And you, Eri-chan. Are you happy?’ she asked.

  Elly paused for a moment, and then — surprised by the truth of her own answer — said, ‘Yes. Yes, I’m very happy.’

  * * *

  And she was. Despite the terrors and sadness of the past week, despite the confusion and total uncertainty about what would happen next, she was happy. She had no idea what Ted would want to do about his son’s future. They had sent him another telegram and were still waiting for an answer. She’d raised the idea of going to the police to report the finding of the baby, but Fergus had just shaken his head and said, rather sadly, ‘No need, my love. They’ll find out soon enough anyway.’ He was right, of course. The police here always seemed to be able to extract confessions from criminals, and if the young man confessed to the murder, he would surely also tell the police what he had done with the baby. It might mitigate his guilt just a little.

  Once the immediate astonishment and confusion of finding the baby had started to subside, Elly found her mind going round and round in circles trying to work out exactly what had happened and why. That student must have killed Vida, maybe in a moment of passion or panic, but had been unable to kill the baby. He must have carried the poor infant around for days before finally leaving it at their doorstep. He was clearly mad. She remembered the young man sitting next to her at the meeting in the Lotus Bookshop — the troubled expression in his eyes — and felt a surprising pang of sorrow.

  Meanwhile, Fergus had suddenly become practical and responsible, managing — with relatively little instruction from Elly — to buy baby outfits and nappies, feeding bottles and powdered milk, and even to find a carrycot for the infant. It was absurd to do this. It was insane to feel happy. At any moment now, the police would knock at their door asking about the baby, and then there would be endless convoluted explanations and nightmarish bureaucratic procedures to establish the child’s parentage and register his birth and work out who should be caring for him. She and Fergus were like little children, playing at being mother and father. But for this moment, she loved it, and intended to relish every second while it lasted.

  Fergus was taking care of the baby by himself for the first time while Elly made this trip to the hospital. He had looked almost panic-stricken as she prepared to leave the house, and kept asking her what he should do if the baby cried or needed its nappy changed. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine,’ Elly had said. But now, heading back toward Atago-yama on the tram, she felt rather nervous about what she might find when she arrived home. But also full of excitement. She couldn’t wait to hold the soft, warm, dribbling infant in her arms again.

  At a kiosk on the way to the tram stop, she bought copies of all the major morning dailies, and sat on the tram looking for news of the Toko Kasumi murder case. She expected the young man’s arrest to be top news, but could find no report on the story at all. Feeling rather puzzled, she folded up the newspapers and stared up at the round pink cheeks of a baby in an advertisement for Morinaga Dry Milk that adorned the opposite side of the carriage. Jack was tiny and underweight, unlike the absurdly plump infant in the advertisement. But he seemed to have a healthy appetite and had sucked eagerly on the teat of the bottle that Elly had been giving him every few hours — too often, probably. She had not yet had a chance to go in search of a book on baby care, so was drawing on her hazy memories of the women she had known who gave birth to children in Tatura Internment Camp.

  Next to the advertisement for baby milk, another poster caught Elly’s eye: ‘Visions for a New Nation’, it read, The No. 1 Bestseller by Ogiri Joji, President of the Pacific International Trading Company. And there, sure enough, was a picture of Mr Ogiri standing in front of a stylized outline of Fuji-yama, his image smiling benignly down at her like some guardian deity. It seemed somehow appropriate. Fergus had helped publicize Mr Ogiri, and Mr Ogiri had done his best to help them with the adoption, even though, as things had turned out, his assistance hadn’t been needed. Elly wondered vaguely whether they would ever see the businessman again. He was clearly moving on into circles far more exalted than the ones that they occupied.

  Even before she reached the front door of their house, Elly could hear the baby’s screams from within. For such a small creature, Jack had an alarmingly loud voice. But by the time she had opened the front door and entered the main room, the wails were subsiding into querulous hiccups. Fergus was standing by the window looking out into the garden, humming quietly to Jack as he held the baby in his arms and gently patted his fragile back. When he turned to greet her, Elly could see that Fergus’ face was radiant.

  ‘Isn’t he beautiful!’ said Fergus very softly.

  CHAPTER 24

  Jun fell asleep as soon as the jeep started to move, and woke with Goto’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Still groggy from sleeplessness, he climbed down from the jeep to find himself, of course, in front of the mansion once more. The stone lantern was leaning more drunkenly than ever on its base beneath the cedar tree. The long shadows of a summer’s afternoon stretched across the lawn, and the birds were singing.

  ‘Welcome home,’ said Goto with a grim little smile.

  Inside the mansion, though, things seemed indefinably different. The big room on the upper floor had been tidied, and looked stark and empty.

  ‘I’m sorry that Colonel Canon isn’t here to welcome you in person,’ said Goto. ‘He’s away on a little mission at the moment. I’m not sure whether you have met Captain Yon? He’s in charge while the colonel is away.’

  It was only now that Jun noticed the tall man, rather elegantly dressed in civilian garb, standing in a corner of the room. The man stepped forward and gave a little bow.

  Ignoring the greeting, Jun exploded. ‘Why did you have to kill her? Why did you do it?’ he yelled at no one in particular.

  Captain Yon raised his eyebrows and stared at Jun with a quizzical expression.

  ‘If by “she” you mean Miss Toko,’ he said very calmly, ‘you are completely mistaken. I’m sure Sergeant Goto has already explained to you that Miss Toko’s unfortunate death had nothing whatsoever to do with us. As far as I’m aware, the people responsible had no direct connection to us at all. Why don’t you sit down, Kamiya, instead of standing there working yourself into a state. Have a cigarette.’ And he produced a silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket and opened it. Jun would have liked to smash the cigarette case out of the suave man’s hand, to hurl it across the room. But he was desperate for a smoke, so instead, he took one of the proffered cigarettes, which Captain Yon lit for him with a cigarette lighter shaped like a miniature pistol.

  Jun then rounded on Goto, who had produced a decanter and glasses from a cupboard and was pouring them each a glass of whisky.

  ‘Of course you bastards are responsible,’ he shouted. ‘You said a friend of the colonel’s had taken over the case. You must have told them where to find her. You’re all in this together, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting so excited about,’ said Captain Yon, taking a seat on a chair in front of Jun and crossing his ankles. ‘There’s still a war going on, you know. You people in Japan tend to forget that. You think you’re at peace, but there’s still a war going on just across the waters in Korea. That woman, Miss Toko, worked for the Chine
se when they were at war with Japan, and she’d been passing information to the communists ever since. Her death is regrettable, of course, but, as I’ve already told you, we weren’t responsible for it, and compared with the millions of Koreans who have been killed in the current conflict, this one woman’s death is surely a very small matter indeed. As likely as not she was actually killed by her communist comrades. They do that, you know, if you don’t toe the party line. I hear she’d been spilling the beans to that British journalist, Ruskin. Saying some things that might have made the comrades feel very uncomfortable indeed. And after all, it wasn’t as though you knew her personally. You’d never even spoken to her, had you?’

  But I watched her, thought Jun. I knew her better than anyone else had ever known her. I saw how she joked with the old man in the corner shop when she bought a bottle of soy sauce from him, and the way she gave a little smile to herself as she walked up the hill after consulting the fortune teller. I saw how cleverly she gave me the slip at Karuizawa Station. I watched the light in her eyes when she greeted her lover. I saw how they embraced for the last time outside the airfield.

  ‘In any case,’ the captain continued, ‘you had no business becoming emotionally involved with any of this. Your job was to watch and report and do what you were told and keep your mouth shut. It’s a pity you didn’t manage to do that.’

  He rose to his feet and stretched. ‘Well, you must be tired after your long session with the Japanese police. Please do drink your whisky. It’s not that Torys rubbish, you know. It’s genuine Johnny Walker Black Label, brought over from Pusan by myself last week. I’m very sorry I can’t join you. Would have liked a chat. In fact, I’d really have liked a chance to get to know you better. I hear you have quite a remarkable background. But,’ he shrugged, ‘that’s the way things go here. We can’t afford to have people in the Unit who let their emotions derail their duties. Much too dangerous, in the current circumstances. Anyway, I have some other tasks to attend to and, well . . . I think Sergeant Goto has an issue that he needs to resolve with you . . .’