That night, kneeling before Otto Hansel, Shinobu Kochou began the brutal and sentimental journey that would make her realise; but she wouldn't be robbed of childlikeness yet, and she fled the caverned office and across Ninoshima and descended to the quarters that knifed a rising sun on its flag–mast, and begged to be let in.
This was the guards' barracks – she imagined they wouldn't refuse her. But when they didn't, she realised the story for her panic wouldn't give, and she played the guise that she'd finished supper with the prisoners and was going to spend the night there on the colonel's orders. The watchmen's befuddlement did not sway her: she would leave on the ferry the next day, and Otto Hansel was to become an afterthought among the rest of her flowering life, filled with auburn palm tree sunsets and clear, iridescent moons.
At eleven in the evening, the colonel of the guard awoke to news of an anxious Japanese girl. Ten minutes later, he sat weary and morose in the sake steam and the mosquito heat, and when the vagabond he sent for came in the room the medals on his chest jangled with a twist of his shoulders, and the confronting, inorganic figure of Otto Hansel was ordered to be uncuffed and left alone with him.
"Were you dreaming about your girlfriend in Germany?" the colonel said, without looking into his rainbow eyes. "Sit down."
He complied. On the table between them was the lacquer sake set that danced on the ceiling its patterned red light. The colonel offered a cup, and when it was denied, he sighed and asked, "How far done is the bridge?"
"Almost there," Hansel replied.
"But my soldiers tell me something different. They say, recently, construction's been slowed. On your orders."
The colonel stood, went to the grate window of his office, and opened the curtain. Moonlight had settled over the island and replaced darkness, and silver–rimmed hills glimmered like oval quartz stones on their side.
Into the mist the skeleton bridge jut. So thin that only the illuminated dew revealed it, it stooped like the line of a witch's neck: an onlooking child might have fantasised to see it blown down by a strong poof of wind. It began from the flat point of the island, a fenced worksite. It was meant to end on the mainland. The colonel placed his hand on the grate.
"I must carry out my orders. My orders are to complete the bridge by the tenth. It's already the first. Time is short."
"It is."
"Therefore, I am compelled to use all available labour on this island to complete it."
"But no excessive tasks for prisoners–of–war, as ratified by the Hague Convention. I believe your government signed it," Hansel said. "No other German prisoner in Japan does work. We've had this talk before, colonel."
"The War Ministry doesn't reach this place. You know that. I know that!"
The colonel glanced at the prisoners' hut. By now it was lights out and he was moderately pleased to see it was dark. There was only the hawing of cicadas to be heard. He turned around again.
"You have good men, captain," he said, and frowned. "Unfortunately, when you came here, they lost all rights. It became the island of the infidel."
And he sat and leaned, and rebound with dangerous confidence. The colonel said in a most tyrannical tone, "An infidel has no right to put his hands on a Japanese girl. She came back quite shocked after your supper. Won't you tell me what happened?"
Hansel replied in a low voice:
"If you kill me, the men won't listen to you."
The colonel's samurai mask broke into a roar of a laugh, and he took out the pistol he held below the table and slapped it atop. He lofted again out of his chair, to a matchstick model of the bridge on the sill. He looked admiringly at it.
"Indeed, the bridge is the most important thing. I don't care about the girl. But she is a demon slayer – and uncle Morinaga would hate to have anyone intertwined with the things he authorised here. With you, or those experiments he permits you…" he said, and then asked: "Do you know what will happen to me if I don't finish the bridge on time?"
"I haven't a clue."
"I'll be obligated to kill myself."
"That's inefficient."
"It's honourable," the colonel said. "But if I have to die, others will die before me. If you don't want that, captain, hurry up."
Hansel thought they were done, but did not prepare to leave, and was unsurprised by the colonel's quiet explosion of venom: "But don't take it any other way. You have already been treated far too well for the boys you butchered in Tsingtao. The white man has been too arrogant for too long. If not for the Shina, we will bring you to justice!"
Though the colonel's anger was flashy, and false. Hansel's eyes went to the table and he saw the sake, the gun, the sword leaning on the leg, a lone hazelnut, a cornflower and a chrysanthemum resisting each other in the same vase, a deck of gypsy cards lying scattered below, prophesying nothing. But he would be the one to arrange them. Yes, he would.
Hansel knew what to do in an instant. The colonel, faced away, was too drunken to hear. He stood without crouching and picked up the sword, and held the hilt atop his thumb and unsheathed in a pose that one would consider only fitting of samurai.
The colonel had no chance to turn. The sword, like a broken fountain pen, split a feathering line across his spine: the iron–red ink spilled from the loose vacuum and turned the khaki paper its colour. He doubled over the matchstick bridge and the final thing he saw was his blood becoming the water underneath. Then he passed without making a sound and without any amount of resistance.
Outside, the guard nodded to Hansel and locked the office door behind him. He was cuffed for appearances and they descended towards the prisoners' barracks wrapped in darkness. On the colonel's permission, it was explained to the watchmen, the captain wants to see his soldiers. He was accepted and Hansel went inside hovering his sleeves over his vest to hide the only speckle of blood.
Uncuffed, and now the greatest officer on the island, the Captain did not give to the way his men thought they found him, at forty minutes to midnight, powerful and lonely and old under a paraffin lamp, that astute Heinrich held and kept his finger against his mouth for the others to be quiet. After Shinobu fled he had been confused, and remorseful, but was ordered to awake the rest and wait for the Captain there. And he anticipated it as much as the others did, even if he was the exception: for it was their first time seeing him in two weeks, and it was known that on every occasion they did he always brought news. But the Captain pulled a stool under him, did not greet, and finally, in a most exhausted tone, asked them instead, "Have you heard any news of Germany?"
Their answer was one, from the mouth of Wittekranz:
"We haven't been allowed to hear anything for the last two years."
Colder now, the Captain asked for a jacket and buttoned it to his neck. He flattened the collar. Field–grey and manageably ironed, he felt truer in this: he had a soldier's job, even now, and he pointed downwards to stowed guns and told them the colonel was dead. Then the scheme of two months becoming was ordered to be brought out without excessiveness and without further wait.
Shinobu was awakened at one and lay staring at her watch, and at three past she heard the second gunshot and she couldn't stay quiet anymore and went down to the window. One guard in green uniform smoked on the patio: he was on night shift, or she supposed he couldn't sleep. Another guard padded across the garden with his rifle pointed into the forest, and she could see lamps burning between the trees on the hills. But there was no sign of anything unwanted.
The third bullet came across the sky and split the wood head of the window apart. The splinters fell like sand. A two–tone alarm washed the halls and spotlights in other areas turned green moss to canvas white. In the forest, the lamps disappeared. Then there was no light anywhere besides the wet crackle of smoothbore fireworks in the bushes coming nearer.
Beautifully, soundlessly, the first guard dropped. The maroon on his neck looked like spilled wine. His fall was gentle because of the dirt. It was the first dead man Shinobu saw, but his passing was so friendly that it set an unnatural portrait of death in her mind. It would persist right until the end, after she had been disappointed countless times.
Shinobu ducked against the wall, next to a radiator, and thought she should hide; but she heard the close wrestling of men through covered ears and slowly unfurled. The noise at once became thunderous. The crossfire at Tsubone's home had forcefully taught her to distinguish between fists and bullets, but it was useless now. The smell of smoke had glued it all. The feverish cries of foreigners, the incited surge of gunpowder, her cramped, breathless heart…
Shinobu heard the rap on the door. She looked through the keyhole and saw not brown and black but blue and blond. Alone in the room, there was no duty of protection she thought should bind her, and she tumbled out of the window and fled.
For all she knew she was the first runaway of a tongueless people, half–free. Shinobu didn't look at the dead man when she passed. Someone'd seen and announced her, but she'd already plunged into the forest. After a minute Shinobu realised they chased. She passed the hut and fence, another dead watchman, and saw the bridge sprout from grassed speckles of brown. She hadn't been told of it yet, and did not care: any end would be better than this! But when she came to the unfinished edge, and saw the waves rising and going below her like an unending, hibernating animal, she must have been disappointed. She thought to jump but the overriding and recent memory of water had her hesitate. In that instant, she was then caught and forced asleep.
Cicadas in Spring.
That's not right.
They kept her in a container, and it must have been a few hours in the darkness before they opened it, and she wanted it to be anyone but Otto Hansel, but this would not suffice. He pushed aside the rest of the door's weight, and sunlight trickled in and burned its golden imprint into Shinobu's eyes. The sounds of the jungle slowly appeared. Then the Captain sat on a block of grass and took out a frayed newspaper and read the title.
"Vollgemeine Zeitung. December 14th, 1914. Volume 90, Number 12. 'The Status of the War'."
He was translating as he went. A troop of macaques nearby were playing and they came to watch the Captain. The bulky white man must have interested them far more than the girl he kept in the coffer, and the lightness of their innocence was unbearable. The Captain went on.
"Some people may find it hard to believe that Germany is winning the war in the west. Nevertheless, one of the most exhaustive inquiries into the conflict yet compiled offers considerable evidence that the weight of German military power is beginning to make itself felt, six months after the big build–up began.
War Ministry officials maintain the impact of that strength will bring the enemy to a point where he could be simply unable to continue fighting, and quickly. Is this familiar?"
Shinobu didn't nod. Singed against the back, and sweat pooling in bubbles afront, she felt her body stretch and turn to paste while the Captain talked. But she did not sleep, no matter how exhumed. There was always the nip of a leech, the zing of a mosquito, a fly, to interrupt. The Captain changed the page.
"The next article. Vollgemeine Zeitung. October 11th, 1915. Volume 111, Number 3.
After a string of victories across the Western Front, most recently being of that at Loos, the German people may be inclined to think that after over a year of fighting the promised 'quick war' is coming to an end.
However, some experts are in no mood to accept this optimistic conclusion. After last year's strategic manoeuvre through Belgium having brought the British into the war, their blockades have already necessitated the rationing of food – they state that the shortages will only get worse. This has also cut Germany off from her colonies: Togoland, South–West Africa, Samoa, New–Pommern, and Tsingtao have by this time been captured. It is becoming increasingly difficult to send reinforcements to the remaining possessions, and much–needed resources to the mainland otherwise.
There has also not been a single overwhelming victory dealt against an enemy yet, besides at Tannenberg. Many have begun to wonder if this is not indicative of a greater strategic inadequacy.
The German soldiers captured in the overseas territories have also brought home to the nation the question of their recovery. In a statement made by Minister of War von Hohenborn last Saturday he declared this is presently impossible, but as the enemy are fellow signatories of the Hague Convention, there is no need to worry over the conditions of their incarceration. Unfortunately, a scheme will not be introduced to assist separated wives in this time. He also stated: 'I confirm, on behalf of the members of the War Ministry, that we have taken a defensive stance in the west … however, that is only to reciprocate, in superior effect, a looming war of attrition which the front appears to be turning into. We will focus on achieving the decisive victories in the east.'"
The Captain read recovery and his rainbow eyes halved and glimmered against the reflected sun. Then he folded the newspaper. "I know about the demon slayers' war. I know Morinaga," he said. "The news of the ship sinking will spread soon. You'll be kept here, under guard. Don't try to escape; you'll be shot. We'll talk of these things later."
The Captain stood and pushed his hand into the darkness. He said that Shinobu and he should shake – because one was of Europe, one of Asia, one was a prisoner and the other as well, yet they stood under the same sun. But insulted by his indignance, Shinobu feigned to receive it and bit him to the knuckle. Blood fell in a line of perfect purity.
The Captain kneeled. He writhed, was still for a long time, and faced away so that she would not see him. Left and making to close the container door, Shinobu witnessed his face in the last flash of light. A cruel and brittle frown crossed his mouth, and two tears jangled beneath his eye.
A Japanese man convinced to betray it had taken them, and two months' worth of the disciplined and lucrative stockpiling of armaments, but suddenly the German prisoners professed revolution, and despite a failed ambush that alerted the garrison of their attempt they managed within the hour to choke the Japanese, and by the time dawn levitated and the misted leaves of dew began to steam, the rising sun fell and the island was theirs.
Heinrich and the others found the Captain floating with his eyes open in a hammock between two birch trees, and thought that he dreamt. He knew this was one of the many ways the Captain meditated, but the repose in which he lay drifting seemed not of a man who had, a short time before, been confronted with every truth of the world. Called out to in a hushed voice, he grasped the sides of the hammock without rocking it and rose with submarine–like steadiness. He took one minute to say what he had to say. Born in a wedge between a Protestant and a Catholic, he had withstood nine and six years of Realgymnasium and medical school, and two months of residency, before he defied premeditation and joined the Medical Service of the German Army with the minute hope the profession would be parallel to the dreams of that unchildlike child in Hessen. With a warrant from an indolent higher–up he was allowed to occupy ranks of the army proper simultaneously. When he departed for Tsingtao, he left behind a quiet woman and a prudent family, three of whom who did not know how to read or write, but whose reputation as illiterates never preceded what some deemed his genius. Every Monday after work, he would descend the barracks overlooking the mandarin hills and slip ten Pfennigs into the telegram booth beside the contents of his transmission written during his shift. On evenings that were orange it was a message of love, and on those that were blue it was for strained academic accomplices with whom he communicated pearls of medical discoveries. He was intelligent and modest, and when the war in Europe broke he had nothing to say but toiled behind secret doors – and his letters became even more outlandish. When the Japanese came he only saw himself as an enthusiastic accomplice to the decisions of his mixed Christian faith, and gracefully recognised the cuffs around his wrists as knotted fine ivy from Eden's garden. But slowly disillusioned in his captivity, and thirty by the point it came to a head, he found himself burned for home by the embers of his own brazenness. The rainbow–coloured eyes had been an unforeseen sponsor in coming to this conclusion, even before the prison revolution, even after. "I want to tell you something," said the Captain. He put his field grey jacket on, buttoned it and massaged out the wrinkles, then concluded in a sorrowful voice: "Germany has been destroyed."
Heinrich was so absorbed in the disclosure of his past that he did not ask himself when it was his turn to announce the successful bounding of the Japanese: silence was his custom in front of the officer. But when he realised the totality of his confession, he was frightened because the Captain did not seem not lie.
"Where did you hear that?" he asked.
"I went to see the girl. She told me."
Heinrich fell back. He was yet to be intimidated by the Captain's news rather than his fallacy. "Shinobu said that, and you believe her?" But still no falseness was detected in his eyes.
"You haven't been allowed to read no new newspaper and listen to no radio since you came here," the Captain said. "Your ears have been closed for so long they hurt when you hear the birds sing in the morning."
"But it can't be," one soldier reasoned. "Germany is…"
"The strongest?" the Captain said. His voice had become plaintive. "It was the strongest. But one against many. Two, three, four. France, Britannia, Russia, America…"
"If you're so sure," Heinrich said, "tell us how it was destroyed."
The Captain recounted from the most hidden depths of his memory, where his mind belonged not to even him. "They dropped the fire from the sky. From planes with steel noses and red tails. Not yet napalm, but incendiaries…" As he went on with the description, he felt the men grow more attentive. He told them of the first days of suffering, the inferno, the glass, the heat, the anger, and the melancholy. Then he started on anecdotes of the experience: melted cornflowers in pots on the sills of sandblasted apartments; a streetlamp lost in the solitude of an evaporated plaza; the brown and sugary remains of a black eagle beside a dahlia. The heat–furled edges of stained pink dresses in a boutique; a damp cart filled with overlapping bodies under a smelly sun, a stew with too much meat; a tall and skinless man beneath a den of rubble, attended futilely by a too–worldly nurse…
Certain they had watched a thread of all–seeing untangle to trace a hallowed picture, the men were terrified, and as convinced as their leader was. They cried with neutral faces and dry eyes; they had been swallowed and spat out; they had walked through the nettles, alive and peeled. But the pain was so strong they could not immediately mourn.
Heinrich sat on the ground and watched the slicks of dew on his folded heels. He hid his face from the others. But he was touched on the shoulder and asked to be resolute.
It was the Captain. He had slept near a cliff, and he went parallel, over by the edge, and pointed. Beyond his scarred finger was a forest, an unpaved road, a worksite, and lastly, the bridge. The men descended the hill and walked through the palms. At the bridge's mouth, they realised there was no reason to continue it: and above all the purposelessness made their grief heavier. This is where they stood, in Japan, as the otherwise, the unseen counterweight of a detached elevator. Home was the other end, the fourth floor, never to be found. But the Captain would not have it. He gave his ultimate order, unbroken, illusioned, arrogant: "We will go on building the bridge."
