A Gesture Life Read online

  The one image I preferred was the one of the bath. It was a mostly unadorned scene. With no other props but the tub and a coat hook for the robe and towels, the staging was quite plain. A woman was receiving a bath as she stood exposed, the attendant to the side of her in the midst of sponging her long, pale back. Somehow, I always noticed the helper more than the featured bather. She was younger, and more delicately limbed, like a Japanese, though in truth it was her face that struck me. From her expression, one could think she was truly intent on washing the woman’s body, as if she weren’t concerned with the staging or the camera or the oddity of her own nakedness, but of her task alone.

  Several times the corporal offered to give me that particular card, but I didn’t want the bother and worry of keeping it among my few personal things, should I be killed and those items along with my remains be tendered to my family in Japan, as was customary. In most all cases the officer in charge of such transferrals checked the package to include only the most necessary (and honorable) effects, but one heard of embarrassing instances when grieving elders were forced to contend with awkward last notions of their dead. I feared it would be especially shaming to mine, for as adoptive parents they might shoulder the burden of my vices even more heavily than if I had been born to them, blood of their blood, as there would be no excuse but their raising of me. Troubling to me was the image of my mother, peering at the photo of the bathers, and so inescapably remembering me, and then having desperately to hide it in her cosmetics chest before my father arrived home from his factory. Still, being twenty-three years old and a man and having been only with that Madam Itsuda during my first posting in Singapore, I was periodically given to the enticements of such base things, and unable to help but step into the radio tent whenever the corporal addressed me.

  “Have I shown you this new series, sir?” he said one sweltering afternoon, reaching into the back inner flap of his code book. His eyes seemed especially bright, almost feral. “I traded some of mine to a fellow at munitions. He had these. He said he was tired of them, sir.”

  There were several photographs, which he had pasted into a small journal book, the cardstock and image of much lower quality than the corporal’s Dutch assortment. But these were pictures of women and men together, from a close-in perspective, patently engaging in sexual intercourse. I had never seen such pictures before, or even imagined they could exist. The depicted acts were crudely staged, but seemed actual enough, and the style of the photography, if this could be said, was documentary, almost clinical, as though the overexposed frames were meant for some textbook of human coitus. To my mind, there was nothing remotely titillating in them, save perhaps the shocking idea that people had willingly performed the acts while someone else had photographed them.

  The corporal, unfortunately, took more than a customary delight in the pictures. He seemed to be drawn into the stark realism of them, as if he desired to inhabit them somehow. I would notice him every so often around the camp, lingering about on his own, the private journal always in his clutch. In the week or two after he had first shown them to me, I encountered him several times, each instance finding him further disheveled in appearance, wholly unwashed (and reeking most awfully, even more than the camp norm), as well as being slightly jumpy and skittish, with a scattered gaze. His face had erupted in a sudden rash of pimples. He was, as mentioned, callow and youthful, as yet, at nineteen, without much developed musculature or hair on his lip. He was the youngest boy of a fairly prominent family, whose holdings in our town included a trucking firm and an automobile dealership. He had been trained in coded field communications to take advantage of his obvious intelligence, and to avoid the likely consequences of his physical immaturity if he were an infantry regular, which would be certain injury and possible death at the punitive hands of superiors, long before an enemy confronted him.

  I took pity on him because of this, though I was afraid that lurking beneath his quick mind was a mental instability, a defect of character that I was certain would lead him to a troubling circumstance. As one of the brigade medical personnel, I decided to write a memorandum to Captain Ono, the physician-in-charge, advising that Corporal Endo be evaluated and possibly even relieved of his duties and disarmed; but as with much else in wartime, it was lost, or ignored. I should have understood the corporal’s strange behavior to be an alarm—for example, he had placed among the photographs of his elders in the small shrine next to his bed several of the newly traded pictures, and actually cut out certain lurid forms and applied them in a most dishonoring fashion beside the portraits of his stolid-faced grandparents. When I lingered over this personal shrine, the corporal assumed I was admiring his artistry and even offered to refurbish mine if I so desired.

  This was in the early fall of 1944, when it seemed our forces were being routed across the entire region. Ever since Admiral Yamamoto’s transport plane had been ambushed and destroyed by American fighter planes some eighteen months before, the general mood and morale, if still hopeful, had certainly not been as ebullient and brash as it was in the high, early times of the war, when the Burma Road fell, and Mandalay. And now with our being under threat of attack from British and American dive-bombers—though none seemed to come for us, as if we’d been forgotten—the behaviors of the brigade, and most notably of Corporal Endo, grew increasingly more extreme. Sometimes, if one stood outside the communications tent, one could hear him talking to himself in a singsong voice, pretending—as he readily admitted to me—to be a film star like Marlene Dietrich or Claudette Colbert in the midst of a romantic seduction. Of course the corporal didn’t speak English, but he memorized well enough certain dramatic tones and utterances such that his gibberish seemed almost real. Others had heard him do this as well, and there was soon suspicion among some of the officers that the corporal was a homosexual, and one of the captains even asked me if in my opinion he was a threat to the other men, like a contagion that should be checked. I told him I did not think so, but that I would be watchful of his activities and make a full report.

  I knew, of course, that the corporal was constituted like most men. And not because of his interest in pornography, which was all too typical and rampant around the base. His unusual conduct was, I believe, a simple by-product of the deepening atmosphere of malaise and fear. I myself had developed a minor skin condition on the lower calves, and I was treating many others for similar irritations such as boils and scalp rashes and an unusual variety of fungal infections. It seemed the whole encampment was afflicted. Corporal Endo had no such physical problems, save his acne, and so I began to consider the possibility that his expressions were of a besieged mind, one perhaps innately tenuous and fragile and now—under duress—grown sickly and ornate.

  Late one evening he came to my tent behind the medical quarters and asked if he could come inside and speak to me. He had washed up somewhat, and he looked much like the corporal of old. After awaiting my permission, he sat down quietly on a folding stool. I had been reading a surgery text on fractures under the dim oil lamp, and though I was weary and about to retire, it was clear the corporal was disturbed, and so I thought it best to give him some attention. There was a trenchant, focused look to his eyes, as if a notion or thought had taken a profound hold over him and he was useless before it.

  But he didn’t speak right away, and so I asked him if I might help him with something.

  He replied, “Please forgive me, Lieutenant. I’m rude to request a moment from you and then waste your time.” He paused for a few seconds and then went on. “You’ve been most generous to me, and I feel I’ve only returned to you the most inappropriate conduct and manners. There is no excuse. I feel ashamed of myself, so much so that I sometimes wish I were no longer living.”

  “There’s no need for such a sentiment, Corporal Endo,” I said, concerned by his words. “If your shame comes from showing some of your pictures to me, you must obviously know that it was always my choice to look at them. You did not force them on me. Now,
on the other hand, I would only be insulted if you suggested that I had no autonomy where your pictures were concerned, like any child. If this is so, Corporal, then you had better leave my tent immediately or ready yourself to suffer the consequences.”

  “Yes of course, Lieutenant,” he answered, bowing his head in a most supplicant angle. “I’m sorry, sir, for the implication. But if you’ll excuse me, it wasn’t only the pictures I was talking about. Please forgive my insolence, but it is another thing that makes me feel somewhat desperate.”

  He paused again, crossing his belly with his arms as though he were ill or suddenly cold. Then he said, “You see, sir, it’s about the new arrivals everyone has been talking about. It’s known around camp that they’re scheduled to be here soon, and I’ve received messages for the quartermaster that the supply transport and complement will likely arrive by tomorrow.”

  “What about it, Corporal?”

  “Well, sir, it’s not my task to do so, but I’ve looked around camp yesterday and today, and I haven’t been able to see where they’ll be housed once they’re here. All of us enlisted men are in the perimeter bivouacs, and the more permanent buildings in the central yard are of course being used. I thought as one of the medical officers, you might know where their quarters would be.”

  “I don’t see where this is any of your concern, Corporal. But if you must know, they’ll probably be housed in tents, like everyone else. Where exactly will no doubt be quickly determined, but not by me. I’m not in charge of their status or medical care. That will be Captain Ono’s area, as he’s the chief medical officer. Anyway, none of this is a matter of great importance, particularly to someone like you.”

  The corporal bobbed repeatedly, his face still quite serious. “Yes, sir. Should I then speak to Captain Ono?”

  “If you must,” I said, feeling that I would soon grow most annoyed with him if our conversation went on any longer. But I felt somewhat protective of him, and I feared he might provoke Captain Ono, who was known in the camp for his sometimes volatile outbursts, a mien which should have seemed quite odd for a medical doctor but somehow didn’t seem so at the time. In fact, Captain Ono was quite controlled, if a bit grimly so, wound up within himself like a dense, impassable thicket. A week earlier, however, he had beaten a private nearly to death for accidentally brushing him as he passed on a narrow footpath near the latrines. Ono ordered the man to kneel and in plain view of onlookers beat him viciously with the butt of his revolver, until the private was bloody and unconscious. He treated the same man soon thereafter in the infirmary, in fact saving his life with some quick surgical work in relieving the building pressure of blood on the brain. I know that the commanding officer, Colonel Ishii, had actually spoken to the captain afterward of the benefits of meting out more condign discipline, and the captain seemed to take heed of the suggestion. In fairness, it was an isolated violence. Still, I was concerned for Corporal Endo, and so I said to him: “Will you tell me what your interest in all this is? You won’t find the captain very patient, if he agrees to speak to you at all. He’s a very busy man.”

  The young corporal nodded gravely. “Yes, sir. I should not speak to him until asking you. I’m grateful for your advice. You see, sir, I was hoping that I could be among the first of those who might meet the volunteers when they arrive. If there is to be a greeting in the camp, for example, I would be honored to take part—”

  “Corporal Endo,” I said sternly. “There will be no public greeting or reception of any kind. You ought to strike any such notion from your thoughts. As to meeting the female volunteers, it is the officer corps that will first inspect their readiness. Enlisted men, as I’ve been informed, will be issued their tickets shortly thereafter, and it will be up to you to hold a place in the queue. I’m new to this myself, in fact, and so my advice is that you make do with the limits of your station and rank and fit yourself as such to best advantage. I see you are most anxious to meet the volunteers, as will be most of the men when they learn of their arrival, and so I suggest you remain as circumspect as possible. I am also ordering you not to corroborate or spread further news of their arrival. There will be time enough for foment in the camp.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “The other piece of advice I have is that you put away all the picture cards you’ve collected. Don’t look at them for a while. Resist them. I believe you’ve developed an unhealthy reliance upon them, as if they and not rice and tea were your main sustenance. Do you think this may be true, Corporal?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said regretfully.

  “Then take my advice. Bundle them up and put them in the bottom of your footlocker. Or give them away to someone.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll try,” he replied, his voice drawn low in his throat. “Would you be willing to take them from me, Lieutenant?”

  “Certainly not,” I said, anticipating him, and so, unangered. “You’ll have to find somebody else. I’m already disappointed in myself for having taken an initial interest. As I’ve said, this is not your fault. But now that I consider it, you ought to throw them away or destroy them, rather than blighting another. There’s an atmosphere of malaise in the camp, and I believe it’s partly due to a host of anticipations, both good and bad.”

  “It’s assumed the British and Americans will soon mount another major offensive, in the northern and eastern territories.”

  “No doubt they will. As the commander instructed the officers last week, we must all be prepared for a cataclysm. We must ready ourselves for suffering and death. When the female volunteers do arrive, perhaps it would be good if you make your own visitation. This is most regular. But keep in mind, Corporal Endo, the reasons we are here as stated by the commander. It is our way of life that we’re struggling for, and so it behooves each one of us to carry himself with dignity, in whatever he does. Try to remember this. I won’t always be around to give you counsel.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, rising to his feet. He bowed, but didn’t lift his head immediately, and said, “Sir?”

  “Corporal?”

  “If I may ask, sir,” he said weakly, almost as a boy would who was already fearing he knew the answer. “Will you be visiting the volunteers as well?”

  “Naturally,” I immediately replied, picking up the text I had been reading. “You may take your leave now, Corporal.”

  I didn’t look up again, and he left my tent shortly thereafter. I was glad. In truth, I hadn’t yet thought of the question he’d posed, and for the rest of the evening and part of the night I wondered what I would do. I had answered the way I had for obvious reasons, to assure the corporal of the commonness of all our procedures, and yet the imminent arrival of these “volunteers,” as they were referred to, seemed quite removed from the ordinary. Certainly, I had heard of the longtime mobilization of such a corps, in Northern China and in the Philippines and on other islands, and like everyone else appreciated the logic of deploying young women to help maintain the morale of officers and foot soldiers in the field, though I never bothered to consider it until that night. And like everyone else, I suppose, I assumed it would be a most familiar modality, just one among the many thousand details and notices in a wartime camp. But when the day finally came I realized that I was mistaken.

  * * *

  THE CONVOY ARRIVED a few days after I spoke to Corporal Endo, just as he had heard reported. It had been delayed by an ambush of native insurgents and had suffered significant damage and loss of supplies. There were at least a dozen men with serious injuries, for three of whom there was nothing left to be done. Two trucks had had to be abandoned en route, and I remember the men immediately crowding around the lone one bearing the twenty-kilo sacks of rice and other foods like pickled radishes and dried fish. At the time we were still in good contact with the supply line, and there were modest but still decent rations available to us, though it was clear the supplies were growing stea
dily feebler with each transport. The ambush had left the truck riddled with bullet holes, and one of the sergeants ordered a few of his men to pick the truckbed clean of every last kernel of rice that had drizzled out of pocks in the burlap. They appeared as if they were searching for insects or grubs. It was a pathetic sight, particularly when the sergeant lined up the men after they finished and had them pour their scavengings into his cap, which he in turn presented to the presiding officer-in-charge.

  In fact I believe the whole group of us had nearly forgotten about what else had been expected, when a lone transport drove slowly up the road. It stopped and turned before reaching us in the central yard, heading instead to the commander’s house of palm wood and bamboo and thatch, a small hut-like building situated at the far east end of the expansive clearing. I could see that the doctor, Captain Ono, had just emerged from the commander’s quarters and was standing at attention on the makeshift veranda. The driver stopped in front and jumped out and saluted the captain. Then he went around and folded down the back gate to the bed. He called into the dark hold and helped an older woman wearing a paper hat to the ground. She seemed to thank him and then turned to bark raspily inside. There was no answer and the woman shouted this time, using a most crude epithet. It was then that they climbed down from the back of the truck, one by one, shielding their eyes from the high Burmese light.

  They were dressed like peasants, in baggy, crumpled white trousers and loose shirts. One might have thought they were young boys were it not for their braided hair. The older woman and the driver pulled each of the girls by the arm as she descended and stood them in a row before the steps of the veranda. Captain Ono didn’t seem to be looking at them. Instead he stood at attention, clearly waiting for the commander to call out and have him bring the arrivals—five in all—inside for inspection. That there were only five of them seems remarkable to me now, given that there were nearly two hundred men in the encampment, but at the time I had no thoughts of what was awaiting them in the coming days and nights. Like the rest of the men who were watching, I was simply struck by their mere presence, by the white shock of their oversized pants, by their dirty, unshod feet, by the narrowness of their hands and their throats. And soon enough it was the notion of what lay beneath the crumpled cotton of their poor clothes that shook me as if I had heard an air-raid siren, and which probably did the same for every other man standing at attention in that dusty clay field.