Sugiyama carefully folded the report form and slid it into the inner pocket of his uniform.
PART TWO
HOW DESPAIR BECOMES A SONG
Warden Hasegawa and Director Morioka were immersed in Midori’s playing, their eyes closed. Hasegawa began to clap when she finished. ‘Wonderful performance, Miss Iwanami! Thank you in advance for your efforts in preparing for the concert. The entire city of Fukuoka is waiting with anticipation.’ He laughed loudly, revealing molars capped in silver.
Thanks to the newsworthy concert, the Interior Minister and high-level officials in attendance would be favourably inclined towards him, Hasegawa thought. Reporters from leading newspapers would rush in; he might become a nationwide celebrity. He planned to invite the ambassadors of allied countries, Germany and Italy, as well as the foreign press; his fame might stretch beyond national boundaries. He couldn’t keep the pleasant thoughts away or tamp down his gleeful smile.
Midori spoke up, taking advantage of the moment. ‘I have one request.’
Hasegawa nodded eagerly.
‘I would like to include a chorus at the end of the concert.’
Hasegawa twisted his moustache, looking amused. ‘A chorus? Who will sing? And who will lead the practice?’
‘This prison is filled with people who can sing.’
‘You mean the prisoners?’ Hasegawa’s face contorted.
‘The concert would be more noteworthy precisely because they are prisoners. Their beautiful song would demonstrate how the Empire’s incarceration system has reformed them.’
‘But it’s a solo recital by the respected Professor Marui Yasujiro. You’ll ruin the stage for the best singer in all Japan!’
Midori hesitated a moment before taking out a pristine letter from her pocket and handing it to the sceptical warden. ‘This is Professor Marui’s letter. It arrived yesterday. He’s already agreed to it.’
Hasegawa hesitated. A chorus of prisoners couldn’t do much harm, could it? He appraised Midori coldly. ‘But who would want to sing? And even if we had volunteers, I don’t know what the prisoners might do, if we don’t watch them carefully.’
Sugiyama jumped in. ‘I can take care of that, sir. I’ll bring them to practice and guard them.’ He would do anything to provide an audience for the piano he had tuned, no matter what everyone else’s hidden intentions were.
‘The repertoire is “Va, pensiero” in Scene Two, Act Three of Verdi’s opera Nabucco,’ Midori said.
‘Verdi. Verdi?’ Hasegawa looked puzzled.
‘Verdi, to our ally Italy, is what Wagner is to Germany,’ Morioka explained. ‘Nabucco was a huge success at La Scala. Everything about the opera represents Italy’s hopes. It reminded Italians, who were suffering from division and war, of their love for their country. And of all the songs, “Va, pensiero” is in effect Italy’s second national anthem — it was sung at Verdi’s funeral. It’s majestic and powerful, so it would work for our purposes, even if we only have male singers.’
Hasegawa was pleased. To encourage participation, he decided to exempt volunteers from labour and give them an additional meal a day. Morioka excused Midori from her medical duties in the afternoons, to allow her to conduct the auditions and oversee practice.
The auditions took place over a week. Each volunteer was escorted to the auditorium, where Midori observed as the prisoner vocalized. She recorded her opinion on the prisoner’s tone, vocal strength and suggested chord-part in a meticulous log, and seventy-odd prisoners were selected. She launched an even more detailed and complex second evaluation, checking to see if the candidates could sing precise notes. Many men’s voices cracked on the higher notes; others had no sense of rhythm. Three days later, she had thirty men, ten each assigned to baritone, bass and tenor. Prisoners with excellent vocalization and tone were to be leaders. A Korean, who’d been taking preparatory courses at Ueno Music School before being sent to prison for his ideology, was made the concert master. Hasegawa allowed the singers to change cell assignments so that everyone in the same vocal group was together. On Mondays, Sugiyama went out to the cells, put manacles and shackles on the singers and led them to the auditorium, where he stayed to observe them. He also listened carefully to the piano, in case it needed tuning.
The auditorium erupted into chaos during the first practice — the singers didn’t know how to read music and they didn’t have even a basic understanding of how scales worked. Verdi’s opera was ill-fitted to men who didn’t know what sheet music was. They were there solely for the perks. Midori asked the warden to allow the prisoners to shed their manacles. With their hands bound together, she argued, the prisoners were forced to lean forward, compacting their lungs and making it difficult to draw in a breath or vocalize.
Hasegawa scoffed. ‘And what will you do if they riot?’
Midori slammed both hands down on the keyboard. The majestic roar of the piano curtailed the jungle of the men’s murmuring.
‘Fine!’ Hasegawa said. ‘But not the shackles.’
The singers, their hands freed, stood around looking lost. Midori handed out sheet music to the leaders. She played the melody of ‘Va, pensiero’ over and over again, familiarizing each part with what they would be singing.
For weeks the auditorium was a crucible of cacophony. Voices cracked, tangled and flipped. Vocalizations were terrible. The prisoners seemed incapable of singing a simple lullaby, let alone the magnificent Verdi. Midori played the piano tirelessly, correcting the prisoners’ vocalizations, giving suggestions on how to breathe deeply. Slowly, the mass of noise turned into sound, and the sound into music. The men could hear their own voices, once lost. Singing was no longer performed for special treatment; the prisoners were recovering their lost selves. Their voices told them who they were. After practice, they lined up as tenors, baritones and basses. Sugiyama counted the men, manacled them and shouted, ‘Return to cells. Forward, march!’ The line of prisoners snaked along the corridor, back to their cells, and now they sang of their own volition. They practiced vocalization and harmonized with others in the adjoining cells. The thick walls couldn’t keep their voices apart. Each part began to shine.
Back in rehearsals, Midori carefully regulated the brightness and darkness, forcefulness and frailness, cold and warmth. The prisoners sang bluer than the sky, clearer than the wind and brighter than the stars. They concentrated on extracting the purest sounds from their bodies, like monks in meditation. Watching it all unfold, Sugiyama felt his heart warming; moved by beauty, he realized he was still human.
SANITATION INSPECTION
Each season brought grave disappointment — spring’s blooming leaves pushed prisoners into a deep depression, summer’s brutal temperatures and humidity overwhelmed them with sweat and swarms of mosquitoes, autumn’s falling leaves and cold wind reminded them of the coming temperatures and every second of winter bared its sharp teeth in attack.
One day in the late summer of 1944 Hasegawa and Maeda escorted Director Morioka and his team of doctors into Ward Three. A parade of white coats filled the corridors; never before had so many medical staff entered the ward.
From one end Hasegawa called out, ‘Open all cell doors!’
The guards dispersed with a loud thudding of boots. Keys jangled as locks turned. When the doors opened, the sour smell of sweat and filth rushed out. The guards lined up on each side of the corridor, equidistant from one another. Morioka gave a signal and doctors in masks and rubber gloves entered the cells, followed by the guards. ‘Special sanitation inspection!’ the guards called. ‘Strip!’