So unsurprised, so unperturbed was Hara, Lawrence said, that as his escort snapped the handcuffs on him and ordered him to step down to his cell below, he stopped on the edge of the concealed stair, turned round with the utmost self-composure, sought out Lawrence and Hicksley-Ellis who were sitting side by side next to the prosecuting officer. When his eyes met theirs, he raised his manacled hands above his head, clasped them together like those of a boxer who had just won the world championship and waved gaily to the two of them, grinning a golden smile from ear to ear as he did so.
How clearly I saw him do it: that gesture was all of a piece with the character also as I knew it, for whatever it was that held Hara together, I too knew that he could never fail it. Suddenly I was glad, almost grateful to him that he had taken it like that, gone from our view with a gay, triumphant gesture of farewell, for somehow, I imagined, that would make it easier for us now to have done with his memory.
‘So that was how he went,’ I remarked, not without a certain unwilled relief, ‘that then was Hara’s that.’
‘No, not at all,’ Lawrence said quickly, a strange new ring in his voice, a passionate and surprisingly emotional undertone for so calm and contemplative a person. ‘That by no means was his “that”. As far as I am concerned “that” was only the end of the beginning of the “that” . . .’
It came out then that the night before he was hanged, Hara got a message through, begging Lawrence to come and see him. Hara had made the request – his last – many days before but it was not surprising to anyone who knew the ‘usual official channels’ as well as we did that the request did not reach Lawrence until ten o’clock on the night before the morning set for the execution. Lawrence got his car out as fast as he could; his chivalrous nature outraged by the thought that the condemned man would now most certainly have given up all hope of seeing him, and be preparing to die with the bitter conviction that even his last slight request had been too much. Hara’s prison was on the far side of the island and he could not, with the best of luck, get there before midnight.
The evening was very still and quiet, rather as if it had caught its own breath at the beauty and brilliance of the night that was marching down on it out of the East like a goddess with jewels of fire. An immense full moon had swung itself clear over the dark fringe of the jungle bound, like a ceremonial fringe of ostrich plumes designed for an ancient barbaric ritual, to the dark brow of the land ahead. In that responsive and plastic tropical air the moon seemed magnified to twice its normal size and to be quick-silver wet and dripping with its own light. To the north of the jungle and all along its heavy feathered fringes the sea rolled and unrolled its silver and gold cloak on to the white and sparkling sand, as lightly and deftly as a fine old far-eastern merchant unrolling bales of his choicest silk. The ancient, patient swish of it all was constantly in Lawrence’s ears. But far out on the horizon, the sea too went dark, seemed shrunk into a close defensive ring, in face of the thunder and lightning hurled against it by curled, curved and jagged peaks of cloud which stood revealed on the uttermost edge by the intermittent electric glow imperative in purple and sullen in gold. It was the sort of night and the kind of setting in a half-way moment between the end of one day and the beginning of the other, in which Lawrence’s articulate knowledge seemed to hold the same urgent, spasmodic and intermittent quality as the electricity and lightning quivering along the horizon; yet his inarticulate, inexpressible awareness of the abiding meaning, beauty and richness of life was as great as the vast, eager-footed and passionate night striding overhead like a queen to a meeting with a royal lover. All that we had been through, the war, the torture, the long hunger, all the grim and tranced years in our sordid prison, he found light and insignificant weighed in the golden scales of that moment. The thought that yet another life should be sacrificed to our discredited and insufficient past, seemed particularly pointless and repugnant and filled him with a sense of angry rebellion. In this mood and manner he arrived at the prison just before midnight. He found he was expected and was taken at once to Hara’s cell.
Like all condemned persons Hara was alone in the cell. When the door opened to let Lawrence in, although there was a chair at hand Hara was standing by the window, his face close to the bars, looking at the moonlight, so vivid and intense by contrast to the darkness inside that it was like a sheet of silver silk nailed to the square window. He had obviously given up all idea of visitors and was expecting, at most, only a routine call from one of his gaolers. He made no effort to turn round or speak. But as the guard switched on the light he turned to make a gesture of protest and saw Lawrence. He stiffened as if hit by a heavy blow in the back, came to attention and bowed silently and deeply to his visitor in a manner which told Lawrence that he was moved beyond words. As he bowed Lawrence saw that his head had been freshly shaven and that the new scraped skin shone like satin in the electric light. Lawrence ordered the sentry to leave them for a while, and as the door once more closed he said to Hara who was coming out of his low bow:
‘I’m very sorry I am so late. But I only got your message at nine o’clock. I expect you gave me up as a bad job long ago and thought I’d refused to come.’
‘No, Rorensu-san,’ Hara answered. ‘No, not that. I never thought you would refuse to come, but I was afraid my message, for many reasons, might not be delivered to you. I am very grateful to you for coming and I apologize for troubling you. I would not have done so if it hadn’t been so important. Forgive me please, but there is something wrong in my thinking and I knew you would understand how hard it would be for me to die with wrong thoughts in my head.’
Hara spoke slowly and deliberately in a polite, even voice, but Lawrence could tell from its very evenness that his thought was flowing in a deep fast stream out to sea, flowing in a deeper chasm of himself than it had ever flowed before.
‘Poor, poor devil, bloody poor devil,’ he thought, ‘even now the problem is “thinking”, always his own or other people’s “thinking” at fault.’
‘There is nothing to forgive, Hara-san,’ he said aloud. ‘I came at once when I got your message and I came gladly. Please tell me what it is and I’ll try and help you.’
From the way Hara’s dark, slanted, child-of-a-sun-goddess’s eyes lit up at the use of the polite ‘san’ to his name, Lawrence knew that Hara had not been spoken to in that manner for many months.
‘Rorensu-san,’ he answered eagerly, pleading more like a boy with his teacher than a war-scarred sergeant-major with an enemy and an officer, ‘it is only this: you have always, I felt, always understood us Japanese. Even when I have had to punish you, I felt you understood it was not I, Hara, who wanted it, but that it had to be, and you never hated me for it. Please tell me now: you English I have always been told are fair and just people: whatever other faults we all think you have; we have always looked upon you as a just people. You know I am not afraid to die. You know that after what has happened to my country I shall be glad to die tomorrow. Look, I have shaved the hair off my head, I have taken a bath of purification, rinsed my mouth and throat, washed my hands and drunk the last cupful of water for the long journey. I have emptied the world from my head, washed it off my body, and I am ready for my body to die, as I have died in my mind long since. Truly you must know, I do not mind dying, only, only, only, why must I die for the reason you give? I don’t know what I have done wrong that other soldiers who are not to die have not done. We have all killed one another and I know it is not good, but it is war. I have punished you and killed your people, but I punished you no more and killed no more than I would have done if you were Japanese in my charge who had behaved in the same way. I was kinder to you, in fact, than I would have been to my own people, kinder to you all than many others. I was more lenient, believe it or not, than army rules and rulers demanded. If I had not been so severe and strict you would all have collapsed in your spirit and died because your way of thinking was so wrong and your disgrace so great. If it were not for me, Hicksley-Ellis and all his men would have died on the island out of despair. It was not my fault that the ships with food and medicine did not come. I could only beat my prisoners alive and save those that had it in them to live by beating them to greater effort. And now I am being killed for it. I do not understand where I went wrong, except in the general wrong of us all. If I did another wrong please tell me how and why and I shall die happy.’