Boris’s favorite among his handpicked guard was a prisoner known as “The Tartar,” who had supposedly been a Mongolian wrestling champion. The man stuck to Boris like a shadow. He had a big burn scar on his right cheek, which people said he had gotten from torture. Boris no longer wore prison clothes, and he moved into a neat little cottage that was kept clean for him by a woman inmate.
According to Nikolai (who was becoming increasingly reluctant to talk about anything), several Russians he knew had simply disappeared in the night. Officially, they were listed as missing or having been involved in accidents, but there was no doubt they had been “taken care of” by Boris’s henchmen. People’s lives were now in danger if they failed to follow Boris’s orders or if they merely failed to please him. A few men tried to complain directly to Party Central about the abuses going on in camp, but that was the last anyone ever saw of them. “I heard they even killed a little kid—a seven-year-old—to keep his parents in line. Beat him to death while they watched,” Nikolai whispered to me, pale-faced.
At first Boris did nothing so crude as that in the Japanese zone. He concentrated his energies instead on gaining complete control over the Russian guards in the area and solidifying his foothold there. He seemed willing for the moment to leave the Japanese prisoners in charge of their own affairs. And so, for the first few months after the reform, we were able to enjoy a brief interval of peace. Those were tranquil days for us, a period of genuine calm. The committee was able to obtain some reduction in the harshness of the labor, however slight, and we no longer had to fear the violence of the guards. For the first time since our arrival, we were able to feel something like hope. People believed that things were going to get better.
Not that Boris was ignoring us during those few honeymoon months. He was quietly arranging his pieces to gain the greatest strategic advantage. He worked on the Japanese committee members individually, behind the scenes, using bribes or threats to bring them under his control. He avoided overt violence, proceeding with the utmost caution, and so no one noticed what he was doing. When we did finally notice, it was too late. Under the guise of granting us autonomy, he was throwing us off our guard while he fashioned a still more efficient system of control. There was an icy, diabolical precision to his calculations. He succeeded in eliminating random violence from our lives, only to replace it with a new kind of coldly calculated violence.
After six months of firming up his control structure, he changed direction and began applying pressure on us. His first victim was the man who had been the central figure on the committee: the colonel. He had confronted Boris directly to represent the interests of the Japanese prisoners of war on several issues, as a result of which he was eliminated. By that time, the colonel and a few of his cohorts were the only members of the committee who did not belong to Boris. They suffocated him one night, holding him down while one of them pressed a wet towel to his face. Boris ordered the job done, of course, though he never dirtied his own hands when it came to killing Japanese. He issued orders to the committee and had other Japanese do it. The colonel’s death was written off simply as the result of illness. We all knew who had killed him, but no one could talk about it. We knew that Boris had spies among us, and we had to be careful what we said in front of anyone. After the colonel was murdered, the committee voted for Boris’s handpicked candidate to fill his chair.
The work environment steadily deteriorated as a result of the change in the makeup of the committee, until finally things were as bad as they had ever been. In exchange for our autonomy, we made arrangements with Boris on our production quotas, the setting of which became increasingly burdensome for us. The quota was raised in stages, under one pretext or another, until finally the work forced upon us became harsher than ever. The number of accidents also escalated, and many Japanese soldiers lent their bones to the soil of a foreign land, victims of reckless mining practices. “Autonomy” meant only that we Japanese now had to oversee our own labor in place of the Russians who had once done it.
Discontent, of course, only blossomed among the prisoners of war. Where we had once had a little society that shared its sufferings equally, a sense of unfairness grew up, and with it deep hatred and suspicion. Those who served Boris were given lighter duties and special privileges, while those who did not had to live a harsh life—if allowed to live at all. No one could raise his voice in complaint, for open resistance meant death. One might be thrown into an icy shed to die of cold and starvation, or have a wet towel pressed over one’s face while asleep, or have the back of one’s skull split open with a pick while working in the mine. Down there, you could end up at the bottom of a shaft. Nobody knew what went on in the darkness of the mine. People would just disappear.
I couldn’t help feeling responsible for having brought Boris and the colonel together. Of course, if I hadn’t become involved, Boris would have burrowed his way in among us sooner or later by some other route, with similar results, but such thoughts did little to ease my pain. I had made a terrible mistake.
Suddenly one day I was summoned to the building that Boris used as his office. I had not seen him for a very long time. He sat at a desk, drinking tea, as he had been doing the time I saw him in the stationmaster’s office. Behind him, standing at attention with a large-caliber automatic pistol in his belt, was The Tartar. When I entered the room, Boris turned around to the Mongolian and signaled for him to leave. The two of us were alone together.
“So, then, Lieutenant Mamiya, I have kept my promise, you see.”
Indeed, he had, I replied. What he said was unfortunately true. Everything he had promised me had come to pass. It was like a pact with the devil.
“You have your autonomy, and I have my power,” he said with a smile, holding his arms out wide. “We both got what we wanted. Coal production has increased, and Moscow is happy. Who could ask for anything more? I am very grateful to you for having acted as my mediator, and I would like to do something for you in return.”
There was no such need, I replied.
“Nor is there any need for you to be so distant, Lieutenant. The two of us go way back,” said Boris, smiling. “I want you to work here with me. I want you to be my assistant. Unfortunately, this place has a critical shortage of men who can think. You may be missing a hand, but I can see that your sharp mind more than makes up for it. If you will work as my secretary, I will be most grateful and do everything I can to see that you have as easy a time of it here as possible. That way, you will be sure to survive and make your way back to Japan. Working closely with me can only do you good.”
Ordinarily, I would have rejected such an offer out of hand. I had no intention of selling out my comrades and securing an easy time of it for myself by working as Boris’s assistant. And if turning him down meant that he would have me killed, that would have suited me fine. But the moment he presented his offer, I found a plan forming in my mind.
“What kind of work do you want me to do?” I asked.
What Boris had in mind for me was not a simple task. The number of chores waiting to be taken care of was huge, the single biggest job being the management of Boris’s personal assets. Boris had been helping himself to a good forty percent of the foodstuffs, clothing, and medical supplies being sent to the camp by Moscow and the International Red Cross, stashing them in secret storehouses, and selling them to various takers. He had also been sending off whole trainloads of coal through the black market. There was a chronic shortage of fuel, the demand for it endless. He would bribe railroad workers and the stationmaster, moving trains almost at will for his own profit. Food and money could make the soldiers guarding the trains shut their eyes to what he was doing. Thanks to such “business” methods, Boris had amassed an amazing fortune. He explained to me that it was ultimately intended as operating capital for the secret police. “Our activity,” as he called it, required huge sums off the public record, and he was now engaged in “procuring” those secret funds. But this was a lie. Some of the
money may have been finding its way to Moscow, but I was certain that well over half was being transformed into Boris’s own personal fortune. As far as I could tell, he was sending the money to foreign bank accounts and buying gold.
For some inexplicable reason, he appeared to have complete faith in me. It seems not to have occurred to him that I might leak his secrets to the outside, which I now find very strange. He always treated his fellow Russians and other white men with the utmost suspicion, but toward Mongolians or Japanese he seemed to feel only the most openhanded trust. Perhaps he figured that I could do him no harm even if I chose to reveal his secrets. First of all, whom could I reveal them to? Everyone around me was his collaborator or his underling, each with his own tiny share in Boris’s huge illegal profits. And the only ones who suffered and died because Boris was diverting their food, clothing, and medicine for his own personal gain were the powerless inmates of the camp. Besides, all mail was censored, and all contact with outsiders was prohibited.
And so I became Boris’s energetic and faithful private secretary. I completely made over his chaotic books and stock records, systematizing and clarifying the flow of goods and money. I created categorized ledgers that showed at a glance the amount and location of any one item and how its price was fluctuating. I compiled a long list of bribe takers and calculated the “necessary expenses” for each. I worked hard for Boris, from morning to night, as a result of which I lost what few friends I had. People thought of me (probably could not help but think of me) as a despicable human being, a man who had sold out to become Boris’s faithful bootlicker. And sadly enough, they probably still think of me that way. Nikolai would no longer speak to me. The two or three other Japanese prisoners of war I had been close to would now turn aside when they saw me coming. Conversely, there were some who tried to approach me when they saw that I had become a favorite of Boris, but I would have nothing to do with them. Thus I became an increasingly isolated figure in the camp. Only the support of Boris kept me from being killed. No one could have gotten away with murdering one of his most prized possessions. People knew how cruel Boris could be; his fame as the “manskinner” had reached legendary proportions even here.
The more isolated I became, the more Boris came to trust me. He was happy with my efficient, systematic work habits, and he was not stinting in his praise.
“You are a very impressive man, Lieutenant Mamiya. Japan will be sure to recover from her postwar chaos as long as there are many Japanese like you. My own country is hopeless. It was almost better under the czars. At least the czar didn’t have to strain his empty head over a lot of theory. Lenin took whatever he could understand of Marx’s theory and used it to his own advantage, and Stalin took whatever he could understand of Lenin’s theory (which wasn’t much) and used it to his own advantage. The narrower a man’s intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything. A Russian who uses his imagination is done for. I certainly never use mine. My job is to make others use their imaginations. That’s my bread and butter. Make sure you keep that in mind. As long as you are in here, at least, picture my face if you ever start to imagine something, and say to yourself, ‘No, don’t do that. Imagining things can be fatal.’ These are my golden words of advice to you. Leave the imagining to someone else.”
Half a year slipped by like this. Now the autumn of 1947 was drawing to a close, and I had become indispensable to Boris. I was in charge of the business side of his activities, while The Tartar was in charge of the violent side. The secret police had yet to summon Boris back to Moscow, but by then he no longer seemed to want to go back. He had more or less transformed the camp and the mine into his own unimpeachable territory, and there he lived in comfort, steadily amassing a huge fortune, protected by his own private army. Perhaps, too, rather than bring him back to the center, the Moscow elite preferred to keep him there, firming up their foothold in Siberia. A continual exchange of letters passed between Boris and Moscow—not using the post office, of course: they would arrive on the train, in the hands of secret messengers. These were always tall men with ice-cold eyes. The temperature in a room seemed to drop whenever one of them walked in.
Meanwhile, the prisoners working the mine continued to die in large numbers, their corpses thrown into mine shafts as before. Boris did a thoroughgoing assessment of each prisoner’s potential, driving the physically weak ones hard and reducing their food rations at the outset so as to kill them off and reduce the number of mouths he had to feed. The food diverted from the weak went to the strong in order to raise productivity. Efficiency was everything in the camp: it was the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. And whenever the work force began to dwindle, freight cars would arrive packed with new convicts, like trainloads of cattle. Sometimes as much as twenty percent of the “shipment” would die on the way, but that was of no concern to anyone. Most of the new convicts were Russians and Eastern Europeans brought in from the West. Fortunately for Boris, Stalin’s politics of violence continued to function there.
My plan was to kill Boris. I knew, of course, that getting rid of this one man was no guarantee that our situation would improve in any way. It would continue to be one form of hell or another. But I simply could not allow the man to go on living in this world. As Nikolai had said, he was like a poisonous snake. Someone would have to cut his head off.
I was not afraid to die. If anything, I would have liked Boris to kill me as I killed him. But there could be no room for error. I had to wait for the one exact moment when I could have absolute confidence that I would kill him without fail, when I could end his life with a single shot. I continued to act the part of his loyal secretary as I waited for the chance to spring on my prey. But as I said earlier, Boris was an extremely cautious man. He kept The Tartar by his side day and night. And even if he should give me a chance at him alone sometime, how was I to kill him, with my one hand and no weapon? Still I kept my vigil, waiting for the right moment. If there was a god anywhere in this world, I believed, the chance would come my way.
Early in 1948, a rumor spread through camp that the Japanese prisoners of war were finally going to be allowed to go home, that a ship would be sent to repatriate us in the spring. I asked Boris about it.
“It is true, Lieutenant Mamiya,” he said. “The rumor is true. You will all be repatriated before very long. Thanks in part to world opinion, we will not be able to keep you working much longer. But I have a proposition for you, Lieutenant. How would you like to stay in this country, not as a prisoner of war but as a free Soviet citizen? You have served me very well, and it will be extremely difficult for me to find a replacement for you. And you, for your part, will have a far more pleasant time of it if you stay with me than if you go back to endure hardship and poverty in Japan. They have nothing to eat, I am told. People are starving to death. Here you would have money, women, power—everything.”
Boris had made this proposal in all seriousness. He was aware that it could be dangerous to let me go, knowing his secrets as I did. If I turned him down, he might rub me out to keep me from talking. But I was not afraid. I thanked him for his kind offer but said that I preferred to return to Japan, being concerned about my parents and sister. Boris shrugged once and said nothing further.
The perfect chance to kill him presented itself to me one night in March, as the day of repatriation was drawing near. The Tartar had gone out, leaving me alone with Boris just before nine o’clock at night. I was working on the books, as always, and Boris was at his desk, writing a letter. It was unusual for us to be in the office so late. He sipped a brandy now and then as he traced his fountain pen over the stationery. On the coatrack hung Boris’s leather coat, his hat, and his pistol in a leather holster. The pistol was not the typical Soviet Army-issue monster but a German-made Walther PPK. Boris had supposedly taken it from a Nazi SS lieutenant colonel captured at the battle of the Danube Crossing. It
had the lightning SS mark on the grip, and it was always clean and polished. I had often observed Boris working on the gun, and I knew that he kept it loaded, with eight shells in the magazine.
For him to have left the gun on the coatrack was most unusual. He was careful to have it close at hand whenever he was working, concealed in the drawer of the right-hand wing of his desk. That night, however, he had been in a very good, very talkative mood for some reason, and because of that, perhaps, he had not exercised his usual caution. It was the kind of chance I could never hope for again. Any number of times, I had rehearsed in my mind how, with my one hand, I would release the safety catch and send the first cartridge into the chamber. Now, making my decision, I stood and walked past the coatrack, pretending to go for a form. Involved in his letter writing, Boris did not look my way. As I passed by, I slipped the gun out of the holster. Its small size fit my palm perfectly, its outstanding workmanship obvious from its heft and balance. I stood before Boris and released the safety. Then, holding the pistol between my knees, I pulled the slide with my right hand, sending a cartridge into the chamber. With my thumb, I pulled the hammer back. When he heard the small, dry sound it made, Boris looked up, to find me aiming the gun at his face.