A Choice of Evils

by Meira Chand

  At first there was no recognition. Martha’s eyes slid from side to side, taking in the chances of escape, her lips munching on each other. Then her eyes returned to Nadya, resting upon her. They became luminous slowly with knowledge, dredged up from a locked chamber in time. Nadya waited for this recognition to peel away the madness. She took another step forward.

  The sound seemed to come from far away, like a singing creature strangled in mid-song. Martha rose from the chair, and stood to face Nadya in a shapeless white shift. And now, with recognition came a new expression. Malevolence flamed in her eyes. Her mouth stretched to scream its terrible words over and over again.

  ‘You. You killed them.’ Her body began to twist and heave, like an ocean whipped by storm. She flailed about, scratching at her own eyes and face. The novices stepped forward, one on each side, and dragged her to the bed. Nadya saw then that it was hung with straps. These were bound back and forth across the struggling, demented woman, until she could not move.

  ‘Come.’ Mother Superior led Nadya from the room.

  ‘Calm yourself, child,’ she said outside. ‘To expect different would be a miracle.’ Nadya trembled with the shock.

  ‘Sometimes it helps me to think of her as a visionary,’ the Mother Superior said slowly. ‘The visionary experience is not always blissful. There is Hell as well as Heaven. Everything that for the healthy visionary is a source of bliss, brings to her tormented soul only further nightmare. Everything for her, from the stars in the sky to the flowers in the gardens below her window, appear charged with hateful significance. We pray for her each day.’

  ‘Pray?’ Nadya looked up, her face streaked with tears. She felt a hysterical urge to laugh. ‘Pray? You were not here during the sacking, you were evacuated. ‘If you speak of Hell, we saw it here. And where was God then when he was needed? She lived her faith, every day in her deeds. She did not just waste her breath in prayer.’

  ‘I know.’ Mother Superior held her peace.

  ‘It is guilt for being left alive that has done this to her. She cannot let go of that guilt. She is alone with a punishment she has devised for herself. Madness is the only retribution she can make.’

  ‘In that case perhaps, for her, madness is a kind of sanity. It is her last refuge and given by God.’

  ‘If you take it from her she will kill herself,’ Nadya was sobered by the thought.

  ‘I fear so,’ Mother Superior answered. ‘Strangely, that is one thing she has not yet tried to do. The infliction of self-punishment is all she is intent upon.’

  Nadya sent a cable to Bradley Reed. ‘Martha unusable as witness. Mental health does not permit. Have idea to trace Professor Teng, witness to mass killings of soldiers.’

  At the Metropolitan Hotel sleep evaded her, even with the swallowing of pills. Every time she shut her eyes she saw once more Martha’s unrecognisable face. The mad words screamed through Nadya’s head. And as they died, there was always Kenjiro again in her mind, the pressure of his body against her. She remembered the icy, dusty odour of that temple pavilion and in the darkness high above, the rustle of birds or bats. She pressed her lips together; even now those feelings he had ignited still flamed through her, although she could barely remember his face. It was as Kenjiro had said. They had sought only life from each other. But immediately came that other memory, of the cry she had ignored. On the bed she tossed and turned. Sleep did not come until the first light eased into the room.

  She went first to the university. The great barn of a place where once the compilers of TECSAT swarmed, was deserted. Even here the ghosts of voices echoed about her. At the university office no one knew anything about Professor Teng. There were few faces or names she now recognised in the Department of Religious Studies. The whole faculty seemed new. She sat down on a low wall outside the university. In her mind China spread out before her, vast and impenetrable as the cosmos. Where could she begin to search for Professor Teng?

  A young man hurried out of the building and strode towards her. ‘You wish to contact Professor Teng? I was a student of his once. Now I am teaching here. He is alive, and I have seen him recently. Some professors at the university collaborated with the Japanese during the occupation. But Professor Teng is of different political allegiance and could not have returned here without great danger. Had he done so it would have been the end for him. I can direct you to him. He is in the mountains near Hankow.’

  It took some days to reach the village beyond Hankow, and a temple on a hill. Nadya was instructed to wait in a draughty hall upon a narrow chair. Light seemed to come from far away, through dusty, latticed windows. A door opened in the far wall and a shaven-headed monk appeared whom at first she did not recognise. He walked towards her and smiled. She stood up in shock. Without the mop of unruly grey hair, Teng appeared a different man. His head, now polished as a nut, reflected the diffused light.

  ‘You did not recognise me in my metamorphosis?’ His smile was the same. The robes of the monk became him.

  ‘You are cold? Come.’ He led her further into the depths of the temple to a smaller room and a brazier of coals before which he motioned her to sit.

  ‘The war has been good to you,’ he acknowledged, looking at her hard.

  ‘Only because I was out of it all. I spent it in America working at Stanford University for Bradley Reed. I’m now in Tokyo with him.’ She explained Bradley’s position with MacArthur and SCAP, and then explained about the Military Tribunal.

  ‘Ah,’ Teng breathed. ‘A trial. Here news comes to us slowly, if at all. We live in another world, both physically and metaphysically. You must forgive me. I knew nothing of this.’

  ‘How have you come to be here?’ she asked, looking out of the window of the small room upon a strip of garden. Beyond it tiers of yellow-tiled roofs descended precipitously down the hillside.

  ‘It was a natural progression. I realise now it is the only life I ever wanted. For the first time I am at peace. Many facets have come together, like a jigsaw settling into place.’ Teng poured tea from a small pot into thick, tall Chinese mugs.

  ‘I have come from Nanking.’ Nadya told him then about Martha and the two girls. The sight of Teng and his compassionate face seemed to bring to a head everything she had tried to hold back. Teng shook his head sadly but said nothing.

  ‘Does nothing disturb you?’ she asked, drying her eyes. He smiled slightly.

  ‘Why do you say I am never disturbed? Each one of us, saint or murderer, contains within us a divine spark. We are born with it and forget it as we grow. It is our task in this life to re-find that spark. But for this war I would not have found my way here. I would still be compiling history books,’ he laughed. Nadya saw him again with his untidy grey hair and the long scholar’s robe.

  ‘Would you come as a prosecution witness to Tokyo?’ she asked at last, after they had talked, drinking the clear amber tea. He seemed bemused.

  ‘A prosecution witness? What good is a trial? What can it do?’

  ‘Bring to justice those who deserve it. You were there in Nanking. You saw what we all saw,’ she replied.

  ‘To meet vengeance with vengeance, what good is that? I am not interested in such schemes. I cannot believe in the trial you speak of. Each man is tried by God and indeed tries himself by the deeds of his life.’

  ‘But in worldly terms it must be done. In Germany too such a trial is going on. These criminals must be brought to justice,’ Nadya insisted.

  ‘Criminals or victims, all are caught in the same cage. Those who do violence only enslave themselves. But there is a Buddhist proverb that says: “He who lays down the butcher’s knife can become a Buddha immediately.” I know such a man, a Japanese soldier,’ Teng informed her.

  ‘A Japanese soldier? Where can I find him? If he would testify it would be excellent.’

  A look of annoyance passed over Teng’s face. ‘This man is not a man for your trial. Forget him.’ He spoke brusquely.

  ‘But we live in this wor
ld and it wants its pound of flesh. It wants also a memory defined for future generations. And would you see people who maybe helped you escape condemned because you were not there to collaborate a story?’ She thought suddenly of Kenjiro, not knowing what had become of him, or what this trial might hold for him. She had found out only that he had spent time in prison on several occasions because of his beliefs. She turned to face Teng again.

  ‘The world cannot take your spiritual way. This trial is a complex thing. The world is watching and Japan is waiting. Perhaps your testimony may save the innocent rather than condemn the guilty.’ She was desperate to persuade him.

  He was silent for some moments. ‘I will think about it,’ he said at last. ‘The way will be shown me. I will send you my answer.’

  Outside the sun was setting now upon the roofs of the temple, the ripe crimson light reflecting across the sky, streaking the undersides of clouds and spreading to enclose them. They watched in silence as the sun sank lower towards the crest of the hills, and finally vanished beneath it.

  ‘Like a penny down a drain, that last sinking of the sun. Here one moment and then gone the next, irretrievably. Like a man’s life.’ Teng smiled.

  He did not let her see his confusion. Before him the world appeared peaceful, touched as it was by an omnipresent light. He had come here to find that still core in himself, to shut away experience. Now, suddenly, he wondered if such a sequestering was right. It had been a shock to see Nadya. Her face brought back the world. A trial. Trials were a game of winners and losers. Nobody was interested in the truth. The truth was incidental. What good would it do? Society seemed never to advance, it receded as fast on one side as it gained on the other. Its progress was only apparent. Civilized man might build a train, but lose the use of his feet. What good at this trial would his testimony be? Confusion pressed hard upon him.

  Yet he knew already that he must go. Memory passed into history, and history was quickly forgotten. What meaning was there to his life if accountability was absent? He had been witness to the death of thousands who could give no testament. He had stood in the midst of a brutal history. If he turned his back, if he did not speak against that darkness buried in each man, the rape of Nanking might sink from sight, unknown in the ocean of time. Teng sipped his tea thoughtfully.

  The world existed for the education of men. History had value only when a man could use events as a means to read himself. Then the panorama of the past, gloried or sullied as it might be, could be used for his own development. Nations, like men, had their subconscious into which Teng saw now he must place his own splinter of knowledge. Not to stand witness to experience would be to negate reality. Here in this temple, like a fisherman with a rod, he had sought the minnow of truth that swam within himself. He saw now at last that Truth stood outside him, held in the hands of the dead.

  ‘I will speak to the Chief Abbot. Perhaps I do not need to think so much about this. Perhaps it is destined that I should come to your trial.’ He bowed his head to her, as if in supplication to something greater than himself.

  38

  Full Circle

  1946

  Even on the first day of the trial, Nadya had still heard nothing from Donald. Perhaps he would not come. With Donald anything was possible. She told herself she did not want to see him, that it was no great matter if he appeared or not. But, as the days to the start of the trial drew near, she knew the tension in her body had nothing to do with the issues of impending criminality.

  ‘Where is your boyfriend, husband or whatever he is?’ Bradley stormed, as the days closed in with no news of Donald’s arrival. Bradley finally cabled The Times in London, but they knew only that Donald Addison had already left to cover the trial. Nadya felt sick with apprehension. Adrenaline raced through her body.

  ‘He will turn up,’ she said.

  ‘Like a bad penny,’ Bradley fumed. ‘Every other witness we called has already either arrived, or is in touch with us. The China evidence consists of the first phase of this trial. We can’t wait forever for people. In Nuremberg the Germans are holding their war crimes trial parallel with this. I’ve heard Addison has been covering that too,’ Bradley admitted and Nadya frowned, annoyed at not being told this news before.

  The day of 3rd May was overcast, grey but breaking in places as the sun pushed through. The spring weather was at its best, not yet touched by humidity. A sense of history edged the day. From early in the morning people made their way up Ichigaya. The hill rose over Tokyo. Upon its crest sat a powerful three-storeyed building that until the surrender had housed the Ministry of War. From this hill the building had reared above the town like a temple to an insatiable God. To stage the trial here had been seen by General MacArthur as poetic justice.

  It was also one of the few large buildings to have escaped Allied bombing. The great hall in which once the cream of Japan’s military cadets celebrated graduation, had been transformed through months of work into a modern courtroom. Walls were panelled and floors thickly carpeted. There were special sections for the defendants and their attorneys, the prosecution, and the eleven judges. Translators had a sector of their own; the trial was to be conducted in both Japanese and English. There was a public gallery as well as boxes for special personnel. A large area for both Allied and Japanese press acknowledged world interest in the trial. Huge klieg lights hung from the ceiling to illuminate the proceedings for the cameras. The public atmosphere of the trial was undeniable. All the Class A criminals were to be tried here. Class B and C criminals would be tried simultaneously at a number of courtrooms in Yokohama and also at numerous other courtrooms across south-east Asia. Nadya sat that first day with Bradley in a box for special allied personnel. She immediately scanned the press below but could not see Donald.

  All the Class A criminals were held at Sugamo Prison. From there they were brought by bus to the courthouse each day. The judges arrived first, in black limousines. There were eleven judges, nine of whom were nominated by those Allied countries who were signatories to the surrender. They filed in with expressions suitable for the sombre occasion. The courtroom hummed with excitement. At last the twenty-six Class A prisoners entered, and the great hall fell silent to observe in full these architects of death.

  Their shabby ordinariness came as a shock. After months of prolonged stress and prison food, their suits now hung upon them. Several supported themselves upon canes. Amongst them General Matsui shuffled forward and seemed to have shrunk, smaller than a gnome. Marquis Kido, always sanguine, now looked ill at ease. General Tojo strode forward in his inimitable way. Behind him Colonel Hashimoto looked about defiantly as did Colonel Muto. Only the intellectual, Shumei Okawa, stood apart from his colleagues with a vague expression. He removed his jacket upon a creased shirt and clacked about upon Japanese clogs. He was asked to remove these before entering the courtroom, and given soft slippers instead. The defendants filed in and took their seats according to a prearranged plan. They would take the same seats every day for the length of the trial, however long it might last.

  It was then, looking down again to scour the press box, that Nadya at last saw Donald. There was a strange constriction through her body. He sat with his back towards her, but she knew him immediately, even after so many years.

  ‘About time,’ said Bradley, when she pointed him out. ‘Look at Tojo, spry as ever. You wouldn’t think he tried suicide a few months ago.’

  Nadya paid little attention to Bradley’s comments, her eyes were still upon Donald. He made no attempt to look about, as she wished he would. It was impossible to concentrate wholly on the historic events about her, now she knew Donald was there. Eventually, the heavy doors of the courtroom closed. The defendants adjusted their earphones through which the simultaneous Japanese translation would be relayed.

  ‘The International Military Tribunal for the Far East is in session and is ready to hear any matter brought before it,’ a marshal of the court declared. There was a clearing of throats and the rustle
of people settling. The President of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Chief Justice Sir William Webb of Australia, spoke the first words of the trial.

  ‘We fully appreciate the great responsibility resting upon us. There has been no more important trial in history. To our great task we bring open minds both on the facts and on the law. The onus will be on the prosecution to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The crimes alleged are crimes against the peace of the world, against the laws of war and against humanity, and conspiracy to commit these crimes. They are so many and so great that it was decided the appropriate forum would be a military tribunal of an international character . . .’ Sir William Webb spoke fluently. His hawk-like nose seemed to fill his face.

  In the dock General Tojo sat forward, his hands cupped about his earphones, listening intently, as did the other defendants. Behind Tojo sat Shumei Okawa, gaunt and tall, with thick-rimmed glasses upon his nose. He appeared not to heed the proceedings, repeatedly clasping his hands in prayer. He unbuttoned and then rebuttoned his shirt. As Webb finished reading his opening statement there was a moment of silence. In the dock the defendants surveyed the courtroom, as if they were actors in a play, expecting a round of applause. Instead there was silence in the great auditorium. Already it was midday. Soon the court recessed until 2.30 pm.

  Nadya pushed her way down the crowded flights of stairs and made her way to the press section. Donald was nowhere to be seen. She edged her way forward between the mass of people, all animatedly discussing the morning’s events. The heat of the klieg lights beat down from above. She craned her neck to see across the courtroom, searching for him.

  ‘Mrs Addison, I presume?’ Donald spoke from behind her. She swung around to face him.

  The same disrespectful smile, the same quizzical stare. He appeared no different to that first meeting upon Nanking’s walls. The huge lights above illuminated a familiar beige linen suit.