The Art of Kozu Page 8

  I said as much to Honma, before adding, ‘Perhaps, it is time I left for Japan. The ship is a week overdue. That alone is dangerous. People will ask questions. Besides, Major, with the utmost respect, it is too dangerous here for Kozu to remain here in Saigon.’ I let the major mull over my proposal, refraining from pushing the point.

  When we walked up to the iron gate of the Yellow House, Honma directed my line of sight to a faint ribbon of smoke lifting straight into the sky from the distillery’s chimney. Already the place was operational.

  ‘Don’t you feel, Takayanagi,’ he said, ‘that it is a great coincidence that your Chinaman’s works were spared last night? The power station over the canal was not so lucky.’ He did not expect an answer, of that I am sure. If I had offered my opinion on the matter, he would have turned on me. With a tight-lipped smile the major passed by the gates, pausing only once to look up at the house’s grand façade.

  ‘Would you come in for some refreshment?’ I asked.

  Honma refused. ‘There is a city to police.’

  Doctor, you must be familiar with the saying, ‘He can recite the morning prayer without learning it: the boy who lives before the temple gate.’ I guess for most of my life I was that boy, living under my grandfather’s watchful eye, the Midori my home-from-home, what with my father’s continual absence.

  To many people – my grandfather and his clients, alike – the gallery was a threshold, more the house beside the temple gate than the temple itself. There one could stand on the edge of the soot and muck of Tokyo, the restraints of business and fine living, and look upon Kozu’s work. His enormous canvases, his Realist mode of illuminating the beauty of the Japanese woman, the care he gave to refining that particular shade of white that defines our beauties’ skin, how it is haunted by an undercoat of pale blue, almost invisible to the eye, a ghostly quality quite unlike the pink bravado of Caucasian women. And the lustre of our women’s hair: only Kozu could capture that tactility and amaze my grandfather’s clients. Sometimes, I believe, my grandfather thought himself alone in his gallery, and not entertaining a wealthy patron, a member of the Matsui clan, or someone of equal standing. I can hear him now, his thoughts spoken aloud, as he wondered why Kozu chose to paint his women with their hair down and not worn up in their usual coiffeur.

  Yes, Doctor, Kozu’s works are as familiar to me as that temple prayer, lodged within my heart, my memory, though I never paid them much attention. It was only after my apprenticeship in the Paris offices that I took note of Kozu as a man, and only then, as an exhibitionist. What did he know of Soutine’s suffering? I asked myself, after having watched him dispose of that horse. Still, his works, so fawned over by both the Paris and Tokyo elite, so praised by the critics and connoisseurs, did not leave their lasting impression until that day of the air raid. Only then did Kozu’s depth as an artist become apparent to me.

  I see I confuse you, Doctor. Permit me to reveal the true nature of Kozu’s crimes, the motive behind the Americans’ search, the reason why I cannot buy your painting. Ask yourself this Doctor, why are the OSS so insistent on collecting any works by the artist? Why those from Indochina, in particular? Why this picture you have brought me?

  Whilst Honma was arranging for one of his trusted rickshaw drivers to return me to the economic school on the Gallieni Boulevard (many of our officers were weary of travelling by such a means of transport, Doctor, fearing French agents – but I can tell you,

  the opposite was true: many of those men, their

  limbs dark and thin like willow branches, were

  under the employment of the Kenpeitai!), Kozu appeared at the gates of his Yellow House. Until that moment, I had never actually seen the two men together, though each man had spoken so much of the other that I felt a bond of brotherhood between all three of us.

  To my surprise, Honma simply gave a curt bow, more in deference to Kozu’s rank than as a mark of respect to the artist, to a man of intangible worth. Or so it seemed to me at the time.

  Kozu told the major that he would accompany me to my billet. Honma grunted his agreement. No mention was made of the painting Kozu was supposed to be creating for the Kenpeitai officer; that was, until our rickshaw was about to pull away. At that moment, Honma leaned into the cab and said in a low voice, ‘Hold on to this fellow, Kozu-sensei. (By which he indicated the rickshaw driver.) He’ll take you to where you need to go. I’m sure Takayanagi here won’t mind. Actually, he’ll rather enjoy the distraction I think, what with the events of last night.’

  At the school, I changed out of my filthy clothes and washed the night’s dirt and soot from my skin, my finger nails. There was no running water; just a large earthen pot, used to collect rainwater. Standing there, naked, dipping a bowl into the tepid water and pouring it over my skin, I felt wretched, like a native. The luxuries of Petrus’ villa were a dream from another world. I longed for the cleansing waters of a hot spring, to go home, to feel the chill of real March air, whilst bathing in an outside pool at my favourite spa resort in the Yatsugatake Mountains, indeed, not far from here, Doctor. If I had only known what would happen after the war. Even the conditions at the school, Spartan as they were, were better than this farmhouse, these tattered mats and millet gruel.

  Kozu, after a quick discourse with the school’s rector on the state of the war, joined me in my room. I showed him my trophy, those four teeth that had struck me on the head and which I had, by then, wrapped in cotton wool, having decided to keep them safe in a glass jar I had removed from one of the school’s laboratories. To this day I don’t understand why I did that, Doctor – why I kept such a grizzly reminder of my fear, why I showed them to the artist. Perhaps a man like you can empathise with such a brutal act.

  The artist turned the jar over in his hands and sighed. ‘I tried to sleep this morning. But the sound of the bombs echoed in my ears – that whistle of theirs in particular. I just couldn’t shake the fatigue. I feel it now. It fills me like water.’

  I told Kozu what I had told Honma; how I thought Cholon wasn’t safe; how the whole of Indochina would fall with an American amphibious invasion within weeks. His painting of Trau, of his liberating warrior, could be left. I recommended to Kozu that he return with me to the homeland. The hospital ship would not hold on much longer.

  ‘I cannot. Honma will not allow it. Besides, I must paint his damned portrait.’

  What he said to me next, Doctor, has haunted me ever since: ‘I know this war is already lost. That is why I must paint what Honma wants me to. I must show the horror of it all. If I do not, I am doomed.’

  I reassured him that the Imperial House would not permit the military police to harm him, at which he smiled.

  ‘It is not Honma that scares me.’

  I pressed him for an explanation, but he just smiled.

  Putting down the jar on my cot, he stood up. ‘You heard the major. Our rickshaw awaits. We can’t keep the major waiting.’

  Doctor, I do not wish to dwell on the nature of the establishment to which we were delivered, but, to be brief, it was a green house, one of the brothels run by the Kenpeitai to garner favours and information from its clients. Honma was waiting for us in a back room, his face and neck a livid red hue. A ceiling fan cut the air above us, stirring up the heat and heavy pall of opium. The major was in good spirits, offering us whiskey, which neither Kozu or I refused.

  ‘Have you ever been to Kure, Takayanagi?’ Honma asked after he had poured out our drinks. ‘Unlike the two of you, I have never been to Manchuria. My previous posting was in Java, but I assure you, Takayanagi, the morning I disembarked from that port, the cold was intense. I don’t think I had ever felt such a chill in Japan before and to think, that was the last time I saw our homeland. The scene was remarkable. Black cliffs fell into black water and great mists rolled down from the mountain peaks, surrounding the port on all sides. You couldn’t see the warehouses clearly, or workshops, or the dock cranes, for that matter. But I tell you what we could see: s
tanding on deck, we could make out the carrier Amagi, moored out a little ways in the bay. Gentlemen, I tell you, the way the cloud cover floated above the sea, breaking up the shape of that great ship, I was speechless. I do not have your expertise, but I tell you her steel hull, it was storm blue, like a hanwei spearhead.’

  The major refilled our glasses.

  ‘Amagi. Educated men like you must be familiar with the Chinese characters of the ship’s name? They mean, “castle in the sky.” In that moment, I thought of how little of our glorious country I had seen with my own eyes. I have never ventured north, not to your home Kozu-sensei, to Hokkaido, or to Aomori, to the Amagi Pass, after which the carrier was named. How insignificant I felt looking out at that ship, at the great beauty of that port in winter, between the sea and the mountaintops. The great sublimity of our land touched me.’

  Kozu shifted in his seat. Though he tried to camouflage his feelings, I could sense he wanted the major to get to the point, to explain what we were doing in there. The major, already drunk on whiskey, was now intoxicated with nostalgia. ‘To think, Takayanagi, I had seen Kozu-sensei’s The Shoukaku Departs Kure at the Holy War Exhibition in ’43. I thought it a fine painting then, but after seeing the Amagi with my own eyes, I felt as though I were seeing the painting again, afresh as if Kozu’s hand was rendering the port, the great ship, as I looked on. I remembered what one of my friends had told me once, about how, at a private viewing of Kozu-sensei’s works at the Imperial Palace the whole of the general staff saw a figure in one of your paintings move. Seeing the Amagi, my heart was stirred with great pride.

  ‘You flatter me too much, Major Honma,’ said Kozu.

  ‘No, no. Quite the opposite. I cannot praise you enough. That is why I am so honoured by your agreement to paint my portrait.’

  A chill went through me. I expected the major to stall, to explain how he would not let Kozu return to the homeland, not until his portrait was complete.

  Kozu said, ‘And I do not see why we don’t get started as soon as possible. The air raid has brought to the surface many unsavoury things.’

  Honma nodded. ‘Yes. Don’t think that your Chinaman’s good fortune last night went unobserved. How convenient that, while the rest of the canal area was hit hard, the power station especially, his whole complex was left unscathed. His distillery was completely left intact. What providence.’ The major’s eyes, wet with drink, glistened. ‘So, I have decided to arrest him.’

  ‘A wise decision, Major.’ Kozu poured Honma another finger. ‘This may be the very opportunity we discussed the other day – when we spoke at the racetrack. Though I must say I am not without reservations. I feel it my duty to say that leaving a man’s wife to fend for herself is a great shame. It will be dangerous for a woman to live alone in that house. Not in Cholon, not with the marshes so close. As such, I would be glad if you decided to remove her into my custody.’

  Honma’s smile grew, but he agreed, adding that Kozu should come by the racetrack the next day. Time was of the essence. Once again, the major made reference to the great preparations he had made, so that his portrait could be completed. You are quite right, Doctor. This time my interest was pricked. I asked the same questions as you: what preparations? What materials? Why would Kozu have to drive all the way up to the north of the city for a commission? Why couldn’t the major come by the villa, to the studio Kozu had already established? Only, I dared not voice my concerns.

  The major continued, addressing me directly. ‘Soon, Takayanagi, Kozu-sensei here will have finished his work for me, if his reputation for speed is anything to go by. Then you can whisk him off to Tokyo, but before you do, you too should come by the racetrack. I’m sure it will be quite the experience for a civilian, such as yourself. Feel free to enjoy the establishment, gentlemen. I feel I must be fully rested for our big day tomorrow. And as for your repository at the church, Takayanagi, your so-called safe house, I have taken measures to ensure the artworks there remain safe. I took care of the matter personally. Not a soul is left who knows of the secrets buried in the crypt, other than you and I, and the guards I personally selected to protect you. I assure you, the church will be quite safe. Quiet.’

  Kozu gave me a knowing look and poured us all another drink.

  Of course, Doctor, I was horrified. Never did I think that the men Honma had provided me with would meet such an end. And that was just the beginning. Remember those preparations I made mention of moment ago? Their true nature I will make clear soon enough.

  Frequent squalls darkened the sky the next day. The rain in the morning was black with ash, but by the afternoon, the windows of the villa were washed clean. Kozu and I were taken to the Saigon Hippodrome in Honma’s Adler. It was during that ride that the major explained his plans, as the artist and I listened to his discourse on sword technique. There was to be an execution and Honma had already formed his opinions on the best angle Kozu should view the beheading from, how close the artist could stand. The tales we may have heard from old army hands, of gushing blood and the like, were an exaggeration, he assured us. As proof, the major said he would not remove his white gloves.

  It took an age for our car to work its way through the network of streets and canals, passing the Chinese Pagoda on the rue de Cay Mai on the way. By the time we arrived at the Hippodrome to the west of Saigon and north of Cholon, the afternoon was all but spent.

  To call the place a race track was an exaggeration. It was little more than a stretch of flat land, the track roughly cut from the grass by the stamp of horses’ hooves, the edges of which were marked by a barb-wire perimeter. The Korean guard who opened the barrier had a bruised face, a closed-over right eye. According to my driver, not a single race had run since the Imperial Army came to Saigon. Still, the grass would not grow back. Spread out across the course’s central expanse was a series of tents, as if a garrison were billeted there.

  On leaving the car, I was overcome by a smell similar to the one I told you of earlier, of the abattoir. When the stench of overripe apricots gets in your nose it will not come out. But this was even darker. Older. Clouds of flies blackened the air. Honma said that there was still some time before the prisoners would arrive. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce Building, the Kenpeitai’s central jail, was even further away than the villa.

  ‘I expect, Kozu-sensei that you wish to continue with your sketches?’ Honma said. ‘I have arranged things as you asked them to be left.’

  A shallow bow and the major paced off to the far side of the compound. Kozu waited until Honma had disappeared into a tent, before saying, ‘Well then Takayanagi-kun, welcome to the realm of hungry ghosts.’ He did not look up to meet my eyes. His hand rested on the flap of the nearest tent. ‘Let me show you something.’

  Lifting the flap to, he asked that I follow him inside. That is how I discovered the true purpose of the tents; that they were there for a reason. Not to billet troops, Doctor, as they appeared to do from outside the wire. No. What I saw inside haunts me to this day. Lines of bodies, Doctor. Those soldiers killed on the night of the coup, or in the air raid, I did not know. Some were Frenchman, others Japanese, though only by their uniforms could I tell them apart in some cases. They were laid out on raised cots. I have not the words to express the scene, Doctor. Magritte, perhaps, could see the sense in it. But only Kozu’s eye could do it justice.

  Kozu began to walk amongst the litters. Many of the bodies had swollen and blackened with the heat, their heads looking like overripe grapes. The swelling face of one soldier had bent the frames of his spectacles out of shape. His lips belonged to a Negro caricature, not an Imperial soldier.

  ‘When I listened to Lieutenant-General Saikai address our troops after the taking of Hong Kong, I heard him call this is a war between races. That when we kill the enemy we are avengers, easing the brooding anger within us, within Asia.’ Kozu pointed to the line of litters. ‘Look at these two: one without an arm, the other a leg. How tranquil they look.’ (I, for one Doctor, co
uld see only dead flesh.) ‘Tranquillity is the absence of emotion. Somebody said that. Don’t you think they whisper to us? Don’t they say, to be whole is good?’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Petrus is to be the star attraction of our little show.’ The artist’s words trailed off. He paced the grid once more, following a column of litters for five or six paces, then a row for two and then changing direction again.

  ‘The rules have changed, Takayanagi-kun. Before, when I painted the rot of the battlefield, my paintings disappeared. The Imperial dead, or at least their images, were not to be exhibited in public. Now the Americans are coming – not just to here, but to the homeland. Now we are asked to depict our fallen, to bind our people, the kokutai, together. We are to be one in our anger and suffering. Honma wants a memento mori of his own, a testament to his power over life and death. I agreed to paint an execution for him, only he didn’t want a formal situation. What he wants is for me to fabricate a battle around him, so it will look like he is performing an action in battle: retaliation, justice. This,’ Kozu motioned to the dead, ‘is all part of his preparations. As you can see, they are extravagant. He offered to have the bodies taken outside if I desired; to lay them out as if in some diorama. The Americans are coming, Takayanagi-kun. What will you tell them about today? About what you have stored under that church in Cholon? Will I doom myself, knowing the Americans will not stand for such scenes, for such uses of art? Never. I will paint the horror so vividly, as to state that I was witness to the brutality of the Imperial Army. I will say that I, Yuichiro Kozu, recorded what I saw on purpose, with the utmost care. Here is my proof. My paintings are records, documentation of my horror. They will have to let me go. They will probably think me a hero.’