The Far Shore

by Paul T. Scheuring

  So I deftly attended to things that kept me near Morio. I indeed felt like a detective, tailing a man (who in turn was tailing a man!) with supreme nuance. In some ways it was a game, though it would not be a game if Morio realized what I was doing.

  I didn’t glean much. Morio’s face belied nothing over the hours that he was there. He patiently moved through the place, never losing sight of Gray for more than a few minutes at a time. It was only at lunch that I thought I might be on to something, though I was likely only grasping at straws.

  Gray ate with the other men, though didn’t engage them. Lunch was the prisoners’ only meal of the day, and it was pretty meager: a bowl of boiled sweet potato vines. Morio as usual stayed at a remove, ostensibly focusing on other things—the journal he kept with him, within which he occasionally jotted down notes—the other workings of the mine, but as subtle as he was (and he was subtle—a worthy mark for the boy-Kobayashi detective I fancied myself!), I saw him cast a well-timed glance over at Gray every few minutes, monitoring everything he did. And when lunch was done, and the prisoners were ushered back toward their stations, Morio, that peerless Kempeitai officer, played his hand. I watched with subtle fascination as he went to the bin where Gray had deposited his bowl. Morio separated it out—as if he had marked it with his eyes from the moment Gray dispensed of it—and looked it over. He then went to the patch of floor where Gray had sat, and surveyed that as well. Satisfied apparently with whatever he’d seen, he tossed Gray’s bowl back into the bin, and left the mine a moment later.

  What did this mean? For all I saw was an empty bowl, no different from the others around it, and a patch of coal-stained earth, equally indistinguishable from what was around it.

  A day or two passed. Morio did not return. Gray continued to work explosion security, a solitary man down there in the darkness, forever struggling in silence with that heavy hose and mine cart. I, however, could not leave it alone, because I was convinced there was some larger mystery here. What did Morio think Gray was up to? Whatever it was, it must certainly be tied in some way to the reason the Kempeitai had allowed Gray to survive their interrogation. He must be of some value, worth more alive than dead. But why?

  Since Morio wasn’t returning, I took it upon myself to surveil Gray. Perhaps there was something there I could discover—some nefarious activity he was engaged in—something that Morio had missed but had been seeking out. I suppose I was driven by that aforementioned boredom, that adolescent romanticism around those detective novels, and in some ways, I wanted to impress the Kempeitai. If I could come to them with a crucial piece of information that they’d sought but had themselves been unable to uncover, perhaps, well, who knows what they’d do. But I don’t doubt, somewhere in the back of my mind, I hoped they’d see my innate sleuthing genius and promote me to be Kempeitai alongside them! Which again would have resulted in a far different destiny for me; I would in all likelihood be a far different thing today than the monk you currently see sitting before you. Kempeitai or monk, both potentialities are within me, I know that now. It just goes to show we have the seeds of many different paths and outcomes inherent in us; it’s just a matter of which ones are nourished by action and circumstance.

  Anyhow, I began monitoring Gray. I watched him as he worked. It tended to be that the intransigent prisoners tried to find moments within their forced labor to be subversive, to undermine the Imperial War effort. I assumed that was what Morio was looking for—evidence that Gray was involved in sabotage. Because, if you think about it, due to the circumstances I mentioned earlier, in which explosion security had been reduced to one man, if someone like Gray wanted to single-handedly bring mine production to a halt, he could. It would involve killing himself—but here was a man with access to the potentially most combustible areas of the mine. All it would take is a spark—metal against metal, or a contraband match—and a good portion of the mine would go up. No one would be able to stop him. Naturally, this was my first assumption. And, as I began to watch him, it filled me with a creeping dread. Each moment that I beheld him, usually twenty or thirty yards away, I knew deep down that should he have this plan, and were he to execute it in that moment—say producing that contraband match and striking it to ignite the coal-dust-laden air—I’d largely be helpless to do anything about it. It would be done before I could react, before I could even unsling my rifle, let alone sight it and put a bullet in him. Which made me think about Morio. Did he have a similar dread? Did he have such surpassing confidence in his ability to gun the man down with his sidearm in the split-second before that man attempted a sabotage that would immolate both of them almost instantaneously?

  I began to doubt this theory after a while. If a man such as Gray, who had come out of the worst, most protracted interrogation and torture, was truly a sabotage threat, why would you put him in the job that arguably had the most potential to damage the mine’s coal production, and thus impede the Imperial War effort? Still, if there was one thing I learned from Kobayashi, it was that however improbable a theory, one needed to explore all potential avenues in association with it before abandoning it as a possibility. To dismiss something purely on the grounds that it was improbable was the mark of a shallow detective. The best criminals operated in the world of the improbable because they knew that they were less likely to be discovered there. I determined, for instance, that Gray wore no metal on his body, nothing that could be used to strike a spark—his belt was of hempen rope and the buttons on his uniform—the ones still remaining—were plastic. Surely Morio must have catalogued this. Now, Gray did have the hose, with its brass dispenser, and the mine cart beside him, so he didn’t necessarily need anything else to enact such a plan. Surrounded by volatile air, he could smash the end of the hose against the cart, and the mine would likely burn. But he didn’t. Every day, for twelve hours a day, he toiled alone in those dark tunnels, with that ability to wreak immense havoc, and he did not. I became convinced that he had been placed there for precisely that reason—because he was not a threat. However they’d determined it in those mysterious interrogation sessions, the Kempeitai had identified this man as one who would categorically not blow the mine. But then why watch him? If he was not a threat, then certainly there were more pressing issues the Kempeitai could be focusing on. So, the mystery persisted—one that was as much about the Kempeitai as it was about this broken prisoner, with his distended hands and dumbfounding will.

  I made a discovery a few days later that I was quite proud of. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but it was something. Gray was up to subversion, something that set him apart from the other prisoners. He was smuggling food, which was not unheard of. But unlike other prisoners, he was not smuggling it for himself. And he was quite deft, which is why it took so long to catch wind of it, and perhaps why Morio himself had missed it. As I mentioned earlier, the prisoners at that stage of the war were exclusively being served a ration of sweet potato vines, one time a day, seven days a week. They were to eat everything in their bowl, leave nothing behind, and carry nothing out with them. They were patted down on the way out to make sure no one used food as a contraband currency out in the laterals. The thought was that if a group of men had a currency, there could be an understanding between them, one within which a power hierarchy would naturally develop, and with power came influence. Ideas could be passed along, leaders could arise. And leaders invariably proved a problem when it came to subversion. Better to have the men isolated, stripped of any societal structure, so that they would not rebel or in any other way impede the War effort. Now, I’m not saying this is a sound logic, but this is what we were taught. The closer they are to animals, the easier they are to contain.

  Nevertheless, one day at lunch, I was idly watching Gray, watching him eat those sagging, near-rotten sweet potato vines, and I was thinking how terrible it must be to eat those things day in and day out. I mean, the caloric content in a bowl—which was a man’s allotment for the entire day—couldn’t have been more than
five- or six-hundred calories. But really, I was probably thinking about how bad it must taste, to have to chew that mush. We as privates, especially at that point of the War, near the end, didn’t exactly eat like kings—we had a ball of sticky rice most meals—but we had salt available to us, occasional dried seaweed, and maybe once or twice a week, some form of meat. I think it was that moment, where I was mostly lost in thought, eyeing Gray as he chewed another monotonous mouthful of sweet potato vines, that I had my Eureka moment. You see, Gray was not chewing.

  Well, not most of the time. At the beginning of the meal, he’d eat a few mouthfuls, fully masticate them, and swallow. But then ever so subtly, he’d place another vine into his mouth, then another, and sort of rotate his jaw as if eating, but it was clear to me that this was just an act, because never once did he swallow. What helped with this deception was that he had a beard, one that must have been a month or two old at this point (and perhaps marked how long it had been since he’d last been behind Allied lines and in the presence of a razor). I watched with some fascination. One root would go in, then another, then another. But never once was there that telltale constriction of the throat that would suggest he’d actually swallowed the roots.

  Then lunch would be done, he’d deposit his empty bowl in the bin, and file out with the rest of the prisoners.

  He was indeed smuggling food. The question was why, to what end?

  I could have confronted him. That was what I was obligated to do as a guard. But I, boy-detective Kobayashi that I was, planned instead to parlay whatever was happening here into a promotion. I would uncover the larger scheme that the Kempeitai had themselves been unable to.

  I followed him back into the darker, unstable lateral to which he was currently assigned. I stuck to the shadows well behind him, moved with supreme deftness, my tabi shoes on those dusty floors making no sound. And when he came to a halt at his hose and cart, I did too, shrinking perfectly back into the darkness amongst the other mine carts and machinery. It was just him and me down there, though he didn’t know that he had anything other than the silent mine walls around him for company. I was still, unmoving, and candidly, I was having fun. I was having as much fun as I’d had since I’d been conscripted. I was a detective. An unveiler of secrets.

  There was something quite unsettling about that moment, too. The fact that it was only the two of us that shared that space. The rest of the world seemed a mile away, which, of course, the surface world nearly was. The rest of the activity in the mine was only a few hundred meters away, but it seemed further than that, perhaps because noise is relative. When you are ensconced for twelve hours at a time in a horrid, constant din such as the mine operation gave off, it seems like a brief, considerable respite to be even a few dozen steps away from it, tucked around a corner as we were, insulated by the sturdy walls of the earth. There was still the noise, but it did not grate here, did not rattle your teeth and the back of your skull. It was a more civil level, the amount of noise the world should be giving off were it not engrossed with the rapacious fever of war. And as such, it seemed silent.

  I was a little uncomfortable watching him. I suppose I am even now a little uncomfortable reflecting on it. To watch someone when they have no idea they’re being watched…it’s quite an intimate thing. They are at their most authentic then, and in a way most vulnerable. Gone is the shield of pretense. They are who they are, without fear of judgment or recrimination. They are naked in their actions to the universe.

  I watched as Gray cast a glance back over his shoulder. Until this moment, he had always maintained a stoic veneer. A wholly unreadable man, like there was no soul left within. Like he was the bōrei I mentioned earlier. Yet in this instant, with that gaze, with the brief, searching look he cast over his shoulder to see if he was being watched, I saw him. I saw his fear, which meant that I saw him. You cannot know yourself, or another, or anything at all about humans, unless you see and understand the fear that underlines and informs all of their actions. It is the central thing that drives us, the truest thing about us. You shouldn’t take my word for this, but I suspect if you sit long enough, stare at the back of your eyelids as I have, you will realize this is an unshakeable truth. We are a foundation of fear with a thousand reactionary patterns built on top.

  Yes, anyhow, Gray was afraid. He knew full well he was doing something that could get him executed. But convinced no one was watching, he proceeded with his scheme.

  He slowly withdrew those sweet potato vines from his mouth—one, two, three, four—and neatly folded them as if they were precious fineries, and slid them into his pocket.

  Then he resumed his struggle with the hose and mine cart.

  I slipped away a bit later, once he was lost to the clatter and toil of his work.

  I waited some hours until he emerged from that lonely tunnel at the end of his shift. My shift was done as well, but I wanted to see what he intended to do with those sweet potato vines. I kept a close eye on him as he shuffled out with the rest of the spent laborers, bound for the small city’s worth of barracks situated above the mine. All the while I watched him, he had that same original countenance—that inscrutable face that told you nothing of the man within, nothing of how the day or his surroundings affected him. But I knew! I knew it was in part an act. For he was scared. He carried contraband in his pocket, and with it a deep fear in his heart. He was, if nothing else, a good actor!

  When the men took to the barracks, I took to the crawlspace. You see, the barracks were designed in two-unit “wings.” Each unit was a smallish room that held somewhere around two-dozen bunks, stacked three high. The prisoners were first ushered inside, then the windows were shuttered, so they had no awareness of what was going on outside. This was in part to prevent them from seeing the movements of the guards, for the barracks had an additional design component that they did not know about: a narrow crawlspace between units through which we could monitor the prisoners’ activities. It was designed this way so that should a prisoner accidentally hear a guard’s movement within the crawlspace, he’d naturally think it was movement in the adjacent barracks rather than emanating from a hidden observation post. Again, I must tell you that I developed a particular revulsion to voyeurism like this, watching men who do not know they are being watched. The things that we witnessed from that crawlspace in the months I was stationed at Mitsui. Men—proud in the mines—reduced to blubbering children once the lights were out, safely in their bunks and behind closed doors, where no one else would see. Men who dominated one another, sexually, or who hoarded resources, taking whatever was valuable from the weak. I think for many years, in all of our societies, there has been this romantic notion of the prisoner of war—the defiant patriot who sticks with their own—but what I witnessed over those months put an end to any such romanticism. The more you deprive a man—of food, freedom, dignity, and orientation to the outside world—the more he sinks toward a feral state. We are not for the most part wired to be heroes.

  Nevertheless, that night, I never took my eye off Gray. My peephole was a small grate up near the ceiling, perhaps ten feet off the ground, so that on the prisoners’ side, no one was able to reach or investigate it. On our side, a small platform had been erected, one you had to climb a few steps to arrive at. It was perhaps two feet deep and wide, and had a bench for the monitoring guard to sit upon. A sheet of black fabric was draped over the grate on our side, with a tiny aperture cut out of it to peer through. The idea here was to reduce exposure so that the prisoners, should they happen to be looking up at the vent, would be unlikely to spot telltale signs of movement. There was always some debate whether the prisoners knew they were being watched. For, one thing you learn, besides an imprisoned man’s capacity for feral behavior, it was that incarceration also heightens a man’s ingenuity and perception. Some guards maintained that virtually everything that we saw was actually a very shrewd act by the prisoners—that they knew they were being watched—but I didn’t think this could be the case.
There’d been too much depravity. The sexual violence wasn’t an act. But the other guards maintained that yes, it was, and it was an ingenious act, for it convinced more dubious guards like me that everything that was being witnessed was authentic. But I just didn’t see it. People in general are not very good liars, and every single action I’d witnessed over the months bore the hallmarks of authenticity. No one was putting me on. They couldn’t be.

  Still, it is always in the back of your mind. One must remember their Kobayashi: dismissing something purely on the grounds that it was improbable was the mark of a shallow detective. So, I watched with 95 percent certainty that what I was witnessing was real, while reserving 5 percent dubiety.

  Gray was, like the other prisoners, already in the building once I took my post. The shutters were closed, reducing the interior light to a gray netherly twilight. Light, like sound, is also relative. After being so long beneath the earth, anything above ground felt comparatively luminous, even if it was an interior like this one, shuttered to the outside world, and lit only indirectly by the dying ambience of the setting sun, which leaked in through the meager gaps between the slats that made up the roofing and walls.

  I watched him as he took his place in his bunk. It was the top bunk; he climbed up to it, lay down in silence. Didn’t acknowledge any of the other men. All the while I knew those vines were in his pocket. What did he intend to do? Stare stoically at the ceiling all night while those vines soaked his pocket and rotted?