A Gesture Life Read online

  In fact a few minutes later I found the soldier and asked him to explain himself and his usage, but he was so bewildered by my question he could hardly speak. “I don’t know what to say, Lieutenant,” he said sheepishly after a pause, “but isn’t that what they are?”

  From his perspective, I suppose, he was telling only what he knew. And had I been of the slightest different opinion, I too would probably have thought of them that way, as soft slips of flesh, a brief warm pleasure to be taken before it was gone, which is the basic mode of wartime. But with K, I was beginning to think otherwise, of how to preserve her, how I might keep her apart from all uses in any way I could.

  After returning from the gravesite, we sat under the cool cast of the moonlight in the small yard behind the infirmary. There was a dense ring of wide-leafed vegetation enclosing the space, and no one could see us. She was not so obviously upset at having seen her sister’s grave; she had not cried out or made any sound of mourning. Now in fact there was a lightness to her voice, as if she were almost being playful with me, though I knew it wasn’t that either. It was something different, a strange kind of release or relief. For the first time she seemed truly vulnerable to me, not just her physical body, which was always endangered, but her spirit. She would not come closer to me, as much as I thought she wished to, hungering not for anything like love but for plain, humble succor. And though I wanted to, I did not attempt to embrace or touch her or reach out. I did not shift or move at all. What prevented me I can’t know, whether it was deference or detachment or a keening heart of fear.

  Earlier she had wanted to speak in the darkness, and now, too, she asked if we could sit close to the building, beneath the low eave, every part of us in the shadows. I could finally understand what she was wishing for. I believe it was so she couldn’t see my uniform or the shine of my boots or even my face; I realized that she was trying to pretend we were other people, somewhere else, with the most ordinary reasons for keeping such furtive company, just our whispering voices apparent to the night air.

  We stayed there until just before the light began to rise again. Then I led her back inside and to the closet-room where she slept. I undid the brass spike lock and opened the door and she quickly stepped inside the cordoned blackness. Again I could hardly see her. I bid her good night and told her I would be shutting the door and locking it again. She didn’t answer, and as I was closing the door she pressed her weight against it, and I thought for an instant that she was trying to force it back open. But the pushing stopped and it was her pale fingers curled around the door edge, and then the fall of her long straight hair loosely covering the side of her face. Her eyes were cast downward, and as the door swung open a little, I took her hands cupped weakly into fists and she let me open them and hold them, her hands in my own tremulous hands. I was breathless. I had closed my eyes. And I remained there for what seemed a very long time, drawing no closer to her as we stood in the threshold of her cell, unmoving, unspeaking, barely resisting all.

  * * *

  TWO MORE WHOLE DAYS I had, before I saw the black flag raised upon the tilted pole of the infirmary. I was heading there in the early morning, in my hand the long, flat, two-pronged key for the lock to the supply closet, when I saw that piece of cloth. At first I thought it was a blank spot in my vision, a colorless void. Then a patch of sky opened low in the east and the light hit the door, and the flag next to it became unusually lustrous, reflective and yet flat-seeming with its absolute stillness. It was larger than I had first thought, a perfect square of black silk. I thought it was of the Chinese kind, its texture subtly striated and banded; and the way it fell stiffly from the two holes cut out along one edge, through which a rough twine was looped and then lashed to the short pole, it was like a piece of shiny, burnt parchment.

  I did not touch it. Instead I let myself inside and went directly to the back of the building, to the closet where I had left her. I took my key and pushed it up through the brass slots of the lock. When I opened the door she was already standing up, waiting for me. I gave her the rice balls hidden in my pockets; I had saved them from the officers’ mess the night before, not eating two of my own and taking two others when I saw that the cook had stepped outside for a smoke. We sat on the blankets she had laid out over the floor. I let her eat a little while before speaking.

  Then I said to her, “He did not come here last night?”

  She shook her head, swallowing the last of the rice balls. “I woke up when I heard someone walking around this morning. I listened but he seemed to go away. It was the captain, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said to her, not meeting her eyes. She was staring at me, I could feel it. I told her, “I think it is this evening, K, that he will come to the infirmary.”

  She nodded to herself. We were quiet for some time, and I felt I ought to do something for her, or at least say a few words. I had nothing ready to offer, however, though not because there wasn’t any feeling inside me. I had too much feeling, perhaps. I felt a stone in my chest, which seemed almost to pin me down.

  She spoke softly now: “I must ask you again if you will help me.”

  “I am sorry, K, but I have told you there is nothing I can do.”

  “Yes, I know, but we are friends now,” she said, “and I only ask that you give me something now. I don’t expect you to help me in any other way. You’re a medical officer, and you must know what to give me, so I won’t wake up again.”

  I could hardly bear to picture her that way.

  “Please, Jiro,” she said, using my name for the first time. She had asked what it was the night before, and I had felt strange telling her, though now the sound of her speaking it was like a balm. “Please. You can help as no one else.”

  “I won’t.”

  “How can you not wish to, knowing the captain will come here tonight?”

  “I do wish to help you.”

  “Then you ought to do so,” she said, somewhat harshly, her voice ringing in the ensuing silence. But then she gathered herself, her hands clutching her elbows. She tried to smile. “You have been too kind, spending time with me and bringing me extra food. I have told you how you’re so much like my brother, generous and innocent like him. Blessed that way. But I’ve thought you’ve been a little brave, too.”

  “I don’t think I am brave.”

  “You are.” She sat up on her knees. “I don’t know what risks you’re taking by being kind to me. But I know you are taking risks. What would the captain have done if he had found us in the other room yesterday or the day before that, sitting and talking as we were? What would he have done then?”

  I couldn’t say what would have occurred. I still couldn’t imagine myself challenging him, or being insubordinate in any way, and yet the thought of accepting whatever punishment he deemed deserving for me, and especially for her, seemed equally impossible. In the last few days I had begun to find myself defending her, at least in my mind, stepping between her and others, or pulling her from some faceless danger. But in truth it was solely the doctor and surgeon, Captain Ono, who ever had any purpose and intention for her, who even knew, besides myself, where K was, and it was his narrowed, severe visage that I could not yet conceive of repelling.

  “I want to help you,” I said to her. “But I can only do for you what I have done already, and nothing more. I have tried to keep you in a state of healthfulness, which is my responsibility, and the captain would ultimately understand that, I believe.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t have to speak like that, Jiro. I know you don’t believe only what you say. You’re not just being a dutiful medical officer. I thought we had talked yesterday about what might happen after the war. What your hopes and plans were, to go to medical school and become a respected physician in Kobe. And then meeting a nice girl from a good family and having many children, all of you in a fine house with beautiful grounds. I enjoyed talking like that, about what the future would hold. Didn’t you?”

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bsp; “Yes,” I answered.

  “And remember what you said? How we could perhaps meet again, in an interesting place like Hong Kong, or Kyoto. What fun times we might have, seeing the sights together. We were just talking, I know, but sometimes that’s enough to make everything seem real.”

  “I would like it to be real,” I said, recalling the serene temples I had described to her, the ones in Kyoto I had visited on school trips, the plum trees blooming about their hilltop perches in fantastical color. “I stayed awake until almost morning, thinking of other places you might like to see.”

  “What were they?”

  “I thought of the rocky seasides on Shikoku, the steep cliffs above the water, the humble fishing villages there. Because you said you liked the water, and swimming. And then of course there is Tokyo, which I have not yet been to, but which must be wondrous in all its activity. They say it is a hundred Kobes, put all together.”

  “My father was there once,” she said, surprising me. “When I was eight or nine. He brought back a fancy set of brushes for us girls to share, and brand-new English lesson books for our brother. For my mother he brought a tiny chest filled with European face powder and perfume and lip pencils.”

  “Why was he there?” I asked.

  “He was a kind of ambassador, I think. My mother told us that a number of noblemen and civic leaders were going to Japan, to have discussions on the issue of the Japanese colonists coming to Korea. They were trying to come to an agreement, of sorts, to make it better for everyone, and fairer for those who were being displaced from their homes and shops. I remember how pleased my father was when he returned, as pleased as I have ever seen him, even taking us girls to be photographed the next day, with our mother. But by the end of the year he was most disillusioned. Nothing had changed. In fact there were more settlers than ever. And in town people began to blame my father, as he was the local official who had gone on the mission. One night we came home from a farmers’ festival to find our house burning down. We had to leave our land and move into a house-for-let, and soon after that he hardly spoke to anyone. Even our brother. He just stayed in his room of books, reading Chinese poetry and practicing his calligraphy.”

  “You never mentioned what kind of family you were from.”

  “Would it have made a difference in anything?”

  I shook my head, knowing that it would not have. But nonetheless it explained her speech, her education, what I was finally understanding to be her class, which I hadn’t quite fathomed until then, having had no contact with such Koreans. In fact she had poked fun at my own talk, which was to her rough and slangy and of the streets, the twisty, cramped ghetto alleys of Kobe. And it seemed incongruous, as well, how it was that I, the only child of a hide tanner and a rag maid, should come to wear a second lieutenant’s uniform of the Ocean Sky Battalion of the Imperial Forces, and that she, born into a noble, scholarly house (if perhaps one fallen), would have to sleep in a surplus closet of a far-flung military outpost, her sister already dead and buried, wishing upon herself the same horrid end.

  “I want to believe that you and I will do all the things we spoke of,” I told her. “I am hoping the war will end soon, as has been rumored, and perhaps much sooner than anyone knows. It is said the war in fact has been going very badly. There is even talk the Americans will soon attempt to invade Japan itself. No one will say it, but the end is likely coming, and an accommodation will be made. It must. Perhaps it will be next month, or next week even. Then we can go out of this place, we can go out of this place together, and I will take care of you and protect you no matter where we go.”

  “But you say he is coming tonight,” she said sharply. “The doctor will come here tonight. Tonight! Will the war end before then? This afternoon? Will you spirit us away before the dusk falls, Jiro? Because if not there is nothing more to talk about in a real way. There is dreaming and dreaming talk and little else, which is happy enough, and maybe all that remains to us. But please don’t try to make things sound real anymore. It makes me feel desperate and mad. You’re a decent man, Jiro, more decent than you even know, so please. You can pretend, if you wish, and I’ll pretend with you, as much as I am able. But I ask you please no more than that.”

  She became weary all of a sudden, and let her arms fold beneath her as she lay on her side on the meager blanket. The crown of her head was almost touching my knee where I sat beside her, and after a moment I reached out and began stroking her hair. She had let me do this before and she did not mind now. Her hair was unwashed and heavy and unsweetly redolent but to me it was a perfect mane. Two nights before I had done the same when she grew tired and lay down, stroking her gently at first but then more vigorously and deeply, running my fingers down to her soft scalp, until my hands were warmed and smooth with her oil. She fell asleep and I went to my tent and could not sleep myself, the rich, bodily smell wafting over me. I held up my hands as I lay on my bedroll, and before I knew it I had tasted and kissed them and rubbed them on my face and neck and elsewhere, and in the morning I wanted to be with her like nothing I had ever known. But on sight of the closet door I had to retreat and scrub my hands in the exam room, ashamed by the feeling that I had secretly profaned her.

  But now she closed her eyes as I stroked. She had told me she was no longer sleeping much at night or any other time, hardly shutting her eyes even a few minutes a day. She wanted to fall asleep but could not. But I thought now she was very near it, her breathing steady and rhythmical, and it seemed with each pass of my hand through her hair her exhalations grew longer and lighter. It had been many years since I had watched a woman sleep; the last time was when I lived with my first parents in Kobe, where we slept all together in a one-room house. My mother and father would be heaped in the corner like a mound of sackcloths, the noise of their exhausted slumber keeping me awake, my mother tittering in her dreams. Some mornings her pants bottom was pulled half-down, her long straight hair fallen down into the corners of her gaping mouth, my father’s hand clutching her breast. I remembered wanting to brush the loose strands away from her mouth, to cover her nakedness with the blanket.

  But here beneath me, K was falling away, the line of her mouth softening, and though someone (even the doctor) could come by at any moment, I crawled around and lay down behind her, so that our bodies were aligned, nestled like spoons. She was warm and still and I gently pressed my face into the back of her neck and breathed in the oily musk of her hair. And it was so that I finally began to touch her. I put my hand on the point of her hip and could feel all at once the pliancy of it and the meagerness and the newness, too. I felt bewildered and innocent and strangely renewed, as though a surge of some great living being were coursing up my arm and spreading through my unknowing body. She was sleeping, or pretending to sleep, or somehow forcing herself to, and she did not move or speak or make anything but the shallowest of breaths, even as I was casting myself upon her. I kissed as much of her body as was bared. I kissed her small breasts, which seemed to spill a sweet, watery liquid. I gagged but did not care. Then it was all quite swift and natural, as chaste as it could ever be. And when I was done I felt the enveloping warmth of a fever, its languorous cocoon, though when I gazed at her shoulder and back there was nothing but stillness, her posture unchanged, her skin cool and colorless, and she lay as if she were the sculpture of a recumbent girl and not a real girl at all.

  I said then, I love you, and she didn’t answer. I love you, I said again, in Korean, not whispering it this time but speaking it as clearly as I could, and when she didn’t reply I assumed she was completely asleep. I rose carefully and stepped back and buckled my trousers, wanting desperately to wake her and kiss her on the mouth but instead letting her remain, recalling how restive and sleepless she said she’d been. I would have done anything then to lend her some peace. I would have executed whatever she asked of me, helped her even to escape. I would have willingly injured another human being had she asked, or needed me to. And it unnerves me even now
how particular and exacting that sensation was, how terribly pure. That a man pleasured could so easily resolve himself to the whole spectrum of acts, indifferent and murderous and humane, and choose with such arbitrary will what he shall have to remember forever and forever.

  I went out of her closet-room, whispering to her that I would return in several hours, with food for her and maybe something to drink, and thinking ahead to an entire evening in her company; but as I gently shut the door I thought I heard a murmur. I couldn’t lock it; to do so seemed at that moment too cruel. Instead I stood quietly for a moment and waited and indeed it was K, saying over and over very quietly what sounded most peculiarly like hata-hata, hata-hata. But as I listened more closely I realized that she was fitfully crying, though in quelled gasps, as if she were trying to hush herself. I was afraid to move, lest she hear me, and so I remained, my ear lightly pressed to the worn wood of the door, until she quieted and was silent again and in fact fell asleep, her breathing deep and certain.

  After I left her I found myself in a state of unease and exhilaration. I could understand why she should become upset, that she was perhaps sad for the end of her maidenhood (which I thought then was the most precious ore of any woman), but hadn’t I professed my devotion to her, hadn’t I in mitigation said the words that should let her know what I was intending for us, after the war? I thought I should have also told her that I was now resolved to speak candidly with Captain Ono, that I was prepared to suggest to him my keeping a log of my duties around the camp and infirmary—which I had indeed begun compiling. At least I would not wilt and fade and disappear before him, as I had score upon score of times.

  And yet I had no other, further plan; there was no good recourse from her required duties to the camp, there was no actual reprieve I was offering her. I loved her, though I cannot say how that love was or if it was true or worthy in any sense, having never in my life been sure how such a thing should be. I can say I wanted her and could not bear her being with another, and if those are veritable signs, then I should rightly hold her in memory in every way that I am able, and to the last of my days.