“Did you find something?” I asked.
Menshiki didn’t answer. Carefully, he ascended the ladder. Each rung gave a dull creak under his weight. I kept close watch, my flashlight trained on him. The vantage point made me realize how well his daily routine had trained his body. Not a motion was wasted. Each muscle played its role perfectly. When he was back on the ground he gave a big stretch and then brushed the dirt from his trousers with care. Not that there was much to brush off.
“You can feel how intimidating the height of those walls is from down there. You really feel powerless. I saw something similar in Palestine a while ago. Israel erected a twenty-five-foot concrete wall there, with high-voltage wires running along the top. That wall is almost three hundred miles long. I guess the Israelis figured ten feet was too low, but that’s enough to do the job.”
He set the lantern down. Now the ground around our feet was illuminated.
“Come to think of it, the walls of the solitary cells in Tokyo prison measure about ten feet as well,” Menshiki said. “I don’t know why they made them so high. All you had to look at were those blank walls, day after day. Nothing else to lay your eyes on. No pictures or anything like that, of course. Just those damned walls. You start feeling like you’ve been thrown into a pit.”
I listened in silence.
“I did some time in that place a while back. I haven’t told you about that, have I?”
“No, you haven’t.” My girlfriend had told me he had spent time in prison, but of course I didn’t mention that.
“I figure I should be the one to tell you. You know how gossips love to twist facts to spice up their stories. So it’s better if I give it to you straight. It’s not pretty, but this might be a good time to tell you. In passing, so to speak. Do you mind?”
“Not at all. Tell me.”
“I’m not making excuses,” he said after a moment’s pause, “but I’ve done nothing to feel guilty about. I’ve tried my hand at many things in my life. Borne many risks. Still, I’m not stupid, and I am cautious by nature, so I’ve always been careful to avoid anything illegal. I know where to draw the line. In this case, though, I happened to take on a partner who was careless. Because of him, I suffered a great deal. That experience taught me never to join forces with anyone again. To take responsibility for myself and no one else.”
“What were you charged with?”
“Insider trading and tax evasion. What they call ‘economic crimes.’ I was indicted and tried, but in the end they found me not guilty. All the same, the investigation was grueling, and I spent a pretty long time in prison. They found one reason after another to keep me locked up. I was in there for so long that now being surrounded by walls makes me a little nostalgic. As I said, I had done nothing to warrant punishment. My hands were clean. But the prosecutors had already concocted their scenario, and in it, I was guilty as sin. They had no desire to go back and rewrite it. That’s how bureaucracies work. It’s practically impossible to change something once it’s been decided. Going against the current means that someone, somewhere down the line, has to take responsibility. As a result, I spent a long time in solitary.”
“How long?”
“Four hundred and thirty-five days,” Menshiki said, as if it were nothing. “A number I’ll never forget, no matter how long I live.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine what spending that much time in solitary meant.
“Have you ever been confined in a small space for a long time?” Menshiki asked me.
“No,” I said. My experience being locked in the back of the moving van had given me a bad case of claustrophobia. Now I couldn’t even ride in an elevator. I’d fall apart if I were confined as he had been.
“I learned how to endure it,” Menshiki said. “I spent the days training myself. In the process, I learned several foreign languages. Spanish, Turkish, and Chinese. They limit how many books you can keep in solitary, but those restrictions don’t apply to dictionaries. In that sense, it’s the ideal place to study languages. I’m blessed with good powers of concentration, so when I was focused on a language I could forget the walls. There’s a bright side to everything.”
Even the darkest, thickest cloud shines silver when viewed from above.
Menshiki continued. “What terrified me was the thought of earthquake and fire. Trapped like that, I could never have escaped. Imagining myself crushed or burned to death in that tiny space scared me so much sometimes I couldn’t breathe. That was the one fear I couldn’t overcome. It woke me up some nights.”
“But you got through it.”
“Of course. I’d be damned if I’d let those bastards beat me. Or let their system grind me down. If I had signed the papers they laid in front of me, I could have walked out of my cell and returned to the world. But signing them would have meant my utter defeat. I would have admitted to crimes I hadn’t committed. So I decided to treat the experience as an ordeal sent from above, an opportunity to test my strength.”
“Did you think about your time in prison when you spent that hour alone down in the pit?”
“Yes. I need to return to that experience once in a while—it’s my starting point, so to speak. Where the person I am today was formed. It’s easy to get soft when life is comfortable.”
What a peculiar guy, I thought again. How would another person react to treatment that harsh—wouldn’t they try to forget it as soon as possible?
As if remembering, Menshiki reached into the pocket of his windbreaker and pulled out something wrapped in a handkerchief.
“I found this at the bottom of the pit,” he said. He unfolded the handkerchief, took out a small plastic object, and handed it to me.
I examined it under my flashlight. It was a black-and-white penguin, barely half an inch long, with a tiny black strap attached to it. The kind of thing that schoolgirls like to attach to their cell phones and schoolbags. It was clean and looked quite new.
“It wasn’t there the first time I went into the pit,” Menshiki said. “I’m sure of that.”
“So it must have been dropped by someone afterward, when they were down there.”
“I wonder. It looks like a cell phone ornament. And the strap isn’t broken. So someone had to unhook it first. Doesn’t that suggest it wasn’t dropped—that whoever left it did so intentionally?”
“You mean they entered the pit just to leave it there?”
“Or dropped it down from above.”
“Why would anyone do that?” I asked.
Menshiki shook his head. As if he couldn’t understand either. “It’s possible that whoever it was left it as a charm or talisman. That’s just a guess, though.”
“You mean Mariye?”
“Probably. After all, it’s doubtful anyone else was near the pit.”
“So she left it as a kind of charm?”
Menshiki shook his head again. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to read a thirteen-year-old girl—their minds can come up with all sorts of stuff, can’t they?”
I looked again at the tiny penguin in my hand. Now it struck me as a charm or amulet of some kind. An aura of innocence clung to it.
“Then who pulled out the ladder and dragged it over there? What was the reason for that?” I said.
Menshiki shook his head again. He had no idea either.
“Anyway,” I said, “let’s call Shoko when we get back and find out if Mariye has a penguin charm on her cell phone. She should know one way or the other.”
“You hold on to the penguin for now,” Menshiki said. I nodded and put it in my trouser pocket.