The Octopus Gulag

Near the end of my involuntary confinement, Mr. Kinoshita appeared whiter and whiter with each passing day. He simply began to fade more and more with each of our afternoon visits. His face seemed to be draining of blood. Several million corpuscles fled his nose on Monday. His cheeks were evacuated on Tuesday. By Wednesday even his lips had lost that purple wine-drinker’s tinge I had observed during my first week. By Thursday, even his irises seemed as pale as fresh cherry blossoms. By Friday the tall policeman had become a ghost of a man. I feared for his health.

In contrast, Mr. Kato kept his ruddy tan throughout my stay. I would never have taken him for a lawman. He looked more like a fisherman who had spent many seasons under the sun. Kato was the friendlier of the men, and each day he brought a bag of mandarin oranges for us to enjoy.

The weather had broken, the sun beaming in the sky, and the prisoners of the gulag would walk the beach for exercise. Kato and Kinoshita would walk along with me, Kato tearing into the peel of an orange, mangling its skin and leaving it on the beach to be swept out at high tide.

“Wouldn’t you like to return to your family? It must be very lonely without friends here and so far away,” Kinoshita said. It was true. They had allowed me one phone call to my wife and kids. They had not allowed me to contact the embassy.

“Where is your family?” I asked. “I don’t see them here with you unless – Kato-san is family?”

Kinoshita frowned though he did not look angry. He had grown accustomed to my tactic of answering questions with more questions. I was grateful to be in a country that was much too polite and patient to put bullets in the heads of political dissidents. Kinoshita said something to Kato in Japanese.

“Kato-san grew up here. His father is a fisherman and lives on the other side of this island. His wife and brother live outside Tokyo,” Kinoshita replied. “I am unmarried.”

“Have you been looking?”

Kato smiled and spoke to Kinoshita. I continued to nurse the suspicion that Kato knew more English than the two had let on, though Kinoshita, a graduate of an American university, was the spokesman. Kato, the senior, was the leader among the interrogating duo.

“I was to be married once, to an American woman I met in Texas. She was a star in western rodeo. She competed in barrel racing. Do you know?” I imagined that Kato had given his junior permission to open up, allow us some intimacy, become a friend on an otherwise lonely beach.

Nichi-san, one of the other prisoners, had setup a folding card table just beyond the fishermen. The fishermen were hanging freshly cut octopus on bamboo racks, using nails to anchor their tentacles into the wood. The forlorn eyes of the crucified octopods were startlingly human, looking out to sea.

Forgive them for they know not what they do  – or they do know, it just hasn’t sunk in yet.

Nichi, a smoldering cigarette dangling under his graying mustache, was writing with a calligraphy brush and ink well, as he did every day. In the evening he would hand over his daily production to his jailor. The officials would then pore over them back in Tokyo looking for continued signs of dissidence and disloyalty among the sentiments expressed.  

“Why didn’t it work out between you and the rodeo princess?”

Kinoshita appeared uncomfortable at being probed about such intimacies. His back stiffened and he pulled his hands out of his pants pockets.

“Mr. Van Leirop. Do you know how they have made digital records of financial institutions unreadable? What technology are they using?”

“As I’ve said, I don’t know anything about their plans. Their techniques may be highly unconventional. I certainly wasn’t asked to approve or help them in any way.” This had become my mantra since the start of our beach-walking sessions, before our discussions had evolved into talk about taking care of aging parents, past loves gone wrong and dreams put off until retirement. “Now, what happened between you and the rodeo princess? Do you have a photo?”

Kato plopped a wedge of orange in his mouth and pointed at Kinoshita’s breast pocket, uttering something guttural. Kinoshita pulled out a leather wallet from inside the lapel of his jacket and began flipping through images he kept in a plastic photo protector. One of the photos was of a woman I had met at Akayume beer hall.

“Who is that?” I pointed and asked, shocked by the odd coincidence.

“This is my sister Akemi. She is a student at Tokyo University,” he said, dismissing the question without thought and flipping to the photo behind it. It was a photo of Kinoshita and another woman, nearly as tall as he was, standing beside a horse. Both wore colorful western shirts and large silver belt buckles. Kinoshita’s skin glowed scarlet from a fresh sunburn. Both were smiling as if from the pleasure of being in each other’s presence.

“You’re far from home,” I said without much thought as to why.

Just offshore, the daily boat taking the breakfast and lunch shift back to the mainland was motoring away from the dock and turning south to follow the beach. Kinoshita was looking down at the photo, his mind back in the sun and the dust of southern Texas. Kato had thrown the last of his orange peel down and was walking over to Nichi, as usual intent on bumming a cigarette off the literary iconoclast.

“See you, friend,” I said to Kinoshita, kicking off my gulag-issued deck shoes and stepping into the gentle surf. I had always been a good swimmer. I knew the twenty years of fat I had accumulated so far would help stave off the cold of the sea. Moreover, it would keep me buoyant and my head above the surface. I began swimming for the boat, not wondering whether I had it within me to actually reach it, but wondering about the source of a hum coming from behind me. I swear I could hear the crucified octopods with the blank human eyes cheering me on as I made my break. •