A Gesture Life Page 22

  “Lieutenant Kurohata!” he said sharply, eyeing the women’s tent behind me. “You should be in your quarters or at the infirmary. I’ve been searching all over for you.”

  “Forgive me, sir. I woke early and thought to take a walk.”

  “I don’t want to hear your explanations. They mean nothing to me.”

  K was half-kneeling beside him, propped on the ground by her forearm. Her thick hair had come undone, and it fell in a shiny black cascade, totally covering her face. She hadn’t yet moved. Her clothes were disheveled, her blouse crumpled and hastily knotted in front, her baggy pants torn at the side along the seam, exposing a pale sliver of skin.

  “You must have a penchant for disturbing me,” the doctor said lividly. He was speaking uncomfortably close to me, his breath sour with waking. “It so happened that the commander sent his sentry to my quarters to have this one escorted back to the infirmary. He was extremely upset. It seems she’s bleeding.”

  “Bleeding, sir?”

  “Menstruating,” he said. “How is this possible, Lieutenant? I entrusted you to anticipate these kinds of complications.”

  “Forgive me, sir, but I’m not certain how I could have known.”

  “You could have asked her, Lieutenant,” he said with some disgust. “Simply asked. You should know this wouldn’t be tolerable for the commander. He has particular requirements.”

  “But what could I have done, sir? I cannot stop her menses.”

  “Don’t be insolent as well as stupid!” he shouted. “You should have made certain that it was another of them who would stay the night with the commander. But as is your character, I’m afraid, you are satisfied with leaving things to tenuous chance and hope and faith in the arbitrary. If I had patience I would wonder once more about your training. And so now you see, because I couldn’t find you to escort her, and with the commander requiring a medical officer only, I had to be roused. And so you’ve made me undertake the task of an errand boy. Now you take her, for I don’t want to gaze upon her even once until you hear from me. Do you finally understand me, Lieutenant?” He marched off toward his quarters before I could reply.

  The girl waited until he was completely gone before rising. She didn’t brush away the red-brown dirt from her shirt elbows and her knees, nor did she pull up the hair that was messily covering her face. The light was just now up, and I could see her dark eyes veiled through the skeins of her hair, staring out blankly across the loosely organized squalor of the camp. She was certainly not aware of me in the way she was of the doctor, with her shoulders narrowed with steel and hate. Nothing like that at all. With him gone, she was suddenly present but not present, and would hardly be a person at all were it not for her seemingly insoluble beauty, which the time in our camp had not yet worn away. I spoke to her then, asking her to follow me to the infirmary, where I had already prepared a small space for her behind a curtain in what was originally intended as a second supply area but was no longer, as we were now sorely lacking in most everything and would be until the end of the war. But she did not acknowledge me or move. She barely seemed to breathe. I spoke again, a bit more forcefully, though to no avail, despite the fact that she understood Japanese well enough, as she’d shown on several occasions.

  “Young lady,” I said finally, in her own language, “why not come with me now? The captain could return, and he won’t be pleased on finding us still here. It will make things easier for us both, which is preferable to another course.”

  Her expression turned instantly, not in mood so much as aspect, the way she gazed at me as though I had magically appeared from nothingness. She searched me with her eyes but did not speak, and as I walked to the infirmary she trailed me at a few meters, not from fear or deference but more as though trying to regard the whole of me. When we reached the building I directed her to the examination and surgery room and she went in without pause. As the doctor had generally instructed me, I was to “disinfect” her, treat her for anything she might have contracted en route to us, though of course without lab equipment and certain obvious symptoms it was impossible to tell anything with certitude.

  With Captain Ono, in fact, it was more a point of “purity” than disease; he was particularly fastidious in his personal practices, as he was always groomed and shaved like any town physician, and most often took his meals alone in the officers’ mess, unless he was to dine there with the commander. I was surprised that he didn’t prepare his own meals, given his attitudes, for he was often disgusted with the general state of the camp and of the men, particularly now, when conditions were less than orderly. None of it could measure up to his private standards of cleanliness. The infirmary was of course a model of hygiene and efficiency, which I was most willing to maintain for him, despite his sometimes searing criticisms in this very room (and in front of others), which were aimed not at my specific conduct but at the legacies of my “training” and “background”—the ultimate question being of my ethos, as it were, a term (from his brief university schooling in England) that he seemed to employ often, for my edification.

  In the surgery room, I had the girl sit up on the table. She watched me silently as I laid out the instruments, a swab and probe and speculum, with the uses of which, in all frankness, I had no experience whatsover. I had very briefly observed the doctor conducting such an examination, but my knowledge was relegated to the little I could remember of anatomy texts, with nothing of the practical. I hadn’t expected ever to treat a female in the course of my war service.

  So I was ever more uncertain and confused. I also felt suddenly quite different. I had particular “feelings,” to be sure, though not necessarily or discreetly for her. At least not yet. Rather, these came in the manner in which one normally has a feeling, which I think is governed as much by context as by what is actually happening. And the context that early morning, before the camp had arisen and the day begun, before the resumption of everything having to do with wartime and soldiering, which is the grimmest business of living, was one I had not quite conceived, or experienced, before. There was no protocol I could pattern myself by. Of course one might point out that I had been with Madam Itsuda in Singapore, but there the situation was in fact wholly defined and contracted. K was a young woman, my same age—and in the almost civilian calm of the pre-reveille, with us set apart from all manner of order and rule, I realized I did not know how I should begin to comport myself with her, whether to be forceful or distant or kind. Finally I decided to put away the instruments and asked her if she had any sores or other outbreaks. She shook her head, and I decided not to give her a shot, which would make her terribly sick. I then handed her a vial of a simple cleansing solution, which I told her to mix with clean water and flush herself with several times in the next few days.

  “You should go back now to get your things,” I then told her. “But return here directly.”

  She nodded and stepped down from the table. I locked the cabinet of instruments and supplies, hearing the rustle of her rough-spun trousers as she was leaving the room. Normally I should have had to escort her, to prevent a possible escape, but there was nothing but hilly jungle and forest for many kilometers. One of the others had already attempted to leave after the first rounds with the officers but was eventually found some days later (and quite nearby), dehydrated and half-starved, and when she was recovered she was beaten very badly, as an example to the others.

  But when I turned, K was still standing in the doorway. She had been watching me as I put away the supplies.

  And then she said, quite plainly: “You are a Korean.”

  “No,” I told her. “I am not.”

  “I think you are,” she said, not looking away as she spoke. I didn’t know what to say. She sounded much more confident and mature in her own tongue than when she mumbled and half-whispered in Japanese. And there was an uprightness about her posture. Certainly I had an impulse to order her to be silent, harshly command that she leave immediately. But I felt unsettled by
her forward bearing, as I was at once amazed and strangely intimidated.

  I replied: “I have lived in Japan since I was born.”

  She nodded and said slowly, as if testing my willingness, “But I think, sir, that most Japanese would never bother to learn to speak Korean as well as you do. And if they did know how, they wouldn’t reveal it. There are many Japanese settlers where my family lives, merchants and administrators and police, and this is how I know. When you first spoke outside, I thought it was my younger brother talking to me again. Your voice is just like his.”

  I did not wish to go on conversing with her any longer, and yet I found myself listening to her closely, for it was some time since I had heard so much of the language, the steady, rolling tone of it like ours and not, theirs perhaps coming more from the belly than the throat. It was almost pleasing to hear the words, in a normal register. But her talk was also not vulgar or harshly provincial-sounding as was the other girls’; she was obviously educated, and quite well, and this compelled me even more, though it shouldn’t have. She seemed to sense this, and remained where she was standing, waiting for me to say something. I cleared my throat, but nothing would come out.

  She then said to me, “I thought there was something different about you. I think you are not like everyone else.”

  “I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” I said. “I’m a medical officer of the Imperial Forces, and there’s nothing else to be said. Yes, you are partly correct. I spoke some Korean as a boy. But then no more. Such things are not easily forgotten, and so I have the ability still. But this is none of your concern.”

  “My Korean name is Kkutaeh,” she said, speaking over me. Her expression had brightened, her face wonderful to behold. “But I never really wanted the name. I’m the youngest of four daughters, so you can see how I got it. May I ask yours?”

  “I don’t have one,” I told her immediately. But this was not exactly true. I’d had one at birth, naturally, but it was never used by anyone, including my real parents, who, it must be said, wished as much as I that I become wholly and thoroughly Japanese. They had of course agreed to give me up to the office of the children’s authority, which in turn placed me with the family Kurohata, and the day the administrator came for me was the last time I heard their tanners’ raspy voices, and their birth-name for me.

  I said to her, “This is not necessary conversation.”

  “I simply want to talk with you.”

  “We have talked enough,” I told her, sitting down at the desk, with my back turned to her. “You’ll go now and get your things. When you return, you’ll remain in the other room, where I left you the blankets for your bedding. Please don’t disturb me further. I have much work to do today.”

  “For Captain Ono?” she said.

  “I have many duties, in various areas.”

  “Will you tell me what he wants from me?” she said now, a little desperately. When I turned she was but an arm’s length away. I could smell the lingering air of a musky perfume, which Mrs. Matsui required the girls to wear. But compared to the sharp, sour reek of the men, even the tawdry scent was transporting. She asked, “Why has he kept me from what the others must do?”

  “What are you talking about? You haven’t yet been at the comfort house?”

  “I have not,” she answered. For the first time she looked somewhat frightened. “Last night I was to visit the commander, and so he had to send me. But before that the captain has always ordered Matsui-san to keep me in our tent. Sometimes he has her bring me to his private quarters, when he examines me. He runs his hands over my body and examines me everywhere. But that is all. He has kept me from the comfort house.”

  “You are lying to me.”

  “I would not lie about such a thing. You can ask Matsui-san. I would rather be killed, like my sister, before going to the comfort house. But I am growing afraid of what the captain will do with me. It can only be horrible, I am certain. He is the only one who truly frightens me, and I think he must have a terrible plan. Forgive me for speaking like this, but you have a gentle character to your face. You seem kind and careful, and I feel I can say these things to you.”

  I could not believe Captain Ono had ordered what she described, even if he thought she was “dangerous,” which I could not at all see. I wondered, too, if the commander knew of this arrangement, or whether he would find it (as I or anyone would) to be an egregious mark on the captain’s self-respect, at least in the Japanese sense of the term, which has little to do with pride or one’s rights but with the efforts a person should make to be viewed well by his comrades. Yet I was not about to question the captain in front of her, or show my own hesitance. It was all very disturbing, though in truth a large part of me had indeed begun to sense the irregularity of his requests and the broadening license he seemed to be taking in respect to the camp. The commander, as noted, was hardly evident anymore, and it was Captain Ono who was increasingly charging and addressing the corps of the men; it was his issuances that were being enacted and followed, with Colonel Ishii appearing these days only intermittently before the officers on the veranda of his hut, often pink-faced and slow of speech.

  “The captain must have his reasons,” I said to her, “which I am not privy to and would not speak about if I were. I am responsible for certain medical duties and that is all. I need know nothing about this matter. Furthermore, I think you should not dwell on the present circumstance. Please let me finish. If you are not serving at the comfort house, then there are undoubtedly other duties awaiting you. Whether they will be better or worse no one but Captain Ono can say. And just as with the rest of us here, a fate of life or death awaits you; in this regard, as the commander once said to us, it is best if we all take an accepting path. This way destiny can find its right station.”

  “Is that why the soldier was executed?” she asked. “Because he was resistant?”

  “He was ill of mind,” I said, trying not to remember Corporal Endo’s adolescent, pockmarked face. “And obviously dangerous. You should be thankful for what was ordered for him.”

  “I am only thankful for what he did. I am happy for my sister now. I don’t cry for her anymore. And I am hoping that someone like you will do the same for me. That is why I ask if you know what the captain wants. If I’m to have the same misery, then I would beg you, as a countryman, to take your gun from your holster and put me down right now.”

  “I am not your countryman,” I said to her, pushing my chair back as I rose. “And I will certainly do nothing of the kind. Please stand back now.”

  “But what if I were attacking you?” she said, stepping forward. “What would you do then? If I took one of those surgeon’s blades from the cabinet, and I rushed at you with it, you would have to, yes? You would have to shoot me.”

  “I will not be shooting anyone,” I said to her, almost shouting, my hand hovering at my side, grazing the pistol handle. “I am a medical officer. I have never fired at another human being, much less a young woman. I hope I will never have to. You had better go now and get your things. I am ordering you to do so. I order you!”

  But she stepped forward again and her hands, pale-white and small, lunged out for my throat, my eyes. I had to step aside and then strike her across the chin with the ball of my open palm, and she fell awkwardly and hit her head on the steel leg of the examination table. I was shocked with how hard I had struck her, and it was a half-minute before I could get her to regain consciousness. When she did and opened her eyes she began crying, from the smelling salts, certainly, but also, I thought, from her realization that I had not in fact shot her dead.

  “I didn’t intend to strike you so forcefully,” I said to her. “I am sorry. But you gave me no other choice.”

  “Why won’t you help me?” she said, raising herself out of my grasp. Her mouth was bleeding, as she had bitten her tongue on falling. “If you have any compassion you will help me. You should know I won’t let him do anything to me. I won’t. I will kill
myself before that. Or I will kill him first somehow, and then myself.”

  I let her words pass as she got to her feet, and I decided that I ought to escort her to Mrs. Matsui’s tent to get her things immediately and lodge her inside the makeshift quarters. I was to lock her in the surplus supply closet, which was a lightless space with a narrow door and an iron loop for an old-style brass lock, the kind typically used on a cabinet or chest but this one quite large and heavy. The idea of confining her like this seemed somewhat more reasonable to me now, for it seemed she ought not to be allowed to roam freely about the infirmary or the camp. But it was the first time I had actually spoken at length to any of them, and then in my childhood language, which stirred me in an unexpected way. As we walked to Mrs. Matsui’s tent and back I felt a certain connection to her, not in blood or culture or kind, but in that manner, I suppose, that any young man might naturally feel for a young woman. This may sound ludicrous, and even execrable under the circumstances, but I was youthful and naive enough that I possessed much more of a kind of hard focusing than any circumspection, which one may argue has remained with me for my whole life.

  But I could not lock her inside the supply closet. It had no slatted window or other means of decent ventilation, and with the rays of the afternoon sun directly hitting the outer wall, I feared she might die of heatstroke or else suffocate in the cramped, lightless space. So as often as I could during the day I allowed her to stay with me in the examination room. She was weary from not sleeping the night before and lay down on the floor while I attended to my usual administrative work for Captain Ono. I knew that he could stop by at any time, but somehow I was not thinking about that chance. I was thinking only of K. She did not speak very much, nor ask any more about me, and after some time I turned to see that she had finally fallen asleep, her knees drawn up toward her chest. I stared at her for quite a long moment, taking in her figure and loosely fisted hands and the serene, pale oval of her face, when she slowly opened her eyes. She did not otherwise move. She merely met my gaze and acknowledged it, and then fell asleep again, her breathing light and even. Or perhaps, I thought, she had never really awoken.