A Gesture Life Read online

  Captain Ono, however, was seemingly nowhere to be found; I even sought him out at the commander’s hut, rapping on the door sharply until the new sentry ran up around the side and requested that I stop, saying the colonel was “resting” for the afternoon. The captain had indeed been around, he said, with his medical kit, as he had each morning for some days, and in the afternoons the colonel required strictly undisturbed quiet, as ordered by Captain Ono.

  I recalled then the multiple requisitions I had just sent by courier to Rangoon for morphine and ether, as our supply for surgery was curiously dwindling, despite our not having conducted any recent procedures. I had long suspected he was medicating the commander, though certainly not against the man’s will, as one sometimes saw them talking in the evenings on the veranda of the hut, the colonel’s demeanor familiar and jovial, if a bit too loose. The probable fact of this further emboldened me, and as I went around the camp in search of the doctor I felt more determined than ever to withstand whatever insult he might level at me, and somehow influence him to agree to my sole stewardship of “the girl” under some obscure technical or medical rationale.

  So sure of myself was I, so certain of my imminent resolve, that the thought of committing an aggression seemed again suddenly quite natural to me, as if I were a man long accustomed to the necessity of such things. I remember suddenly feeling suited to the notion, perhaps even bristling with it as I strode purposefully about the camp, the image of Ono desperate and pained beneath the weight of my will. For I had been quietly considering various revenges upon him, drawing up the ways I would pay him back for his diatribes and affronts, my plans including, too, the most extreme of acts. Had someone asked, I would have denied any such thoughts, but in the core of my heart I was tending the darkest fires. I had certainly despised others before, particularly the boys in the school I attended after being adopted by the Kurohatas, boys who treated me with disdain most of the time and at worst like a stray dog. Each day I vowed to wreak vengeance upon them, see them through some terrible circumstance I’d contrived, or else await the hand of fate. But nothing ever transpired. I never attempted to mark them, and soon enough we passed on to the upper school and there were plenty of others to befriend, both cause and enmity mercifully fading from my mind. I say mercifully because it was never my nature to harbor such thoughts, which have always been near-caustic to me, but in respect to the doctor a vital, searing charge was propelling me, an ashen, bitter hate whose taste I no longer abhorred.

  And though exactly how I cannot describe, mixed up with this was my feeling for K, and my sudden sense of her nearness to me. It was a connection aside from what we had just done, what I should say I believed already to be a special correspondence between us, an affinity of being. This may sound specious—one may rightly think here was a young man in the blush of his first sexual love, typically conflating sensation and devotion—but I was not thinking so much of her body or even the desirous tentacled feeling of mine. I was considering what she had suggested about our pretending to be other people, like figures in a Western novel, imagining how we could somehow exist outside of this place and time and circumstance, share instead the minute and sordid problems of such folks, the vagaries and ornate dramas of imperfect love.

  So when I finally came upon the doctor, when I finally saw the angular shape of his back and his wiry neck as he berated several soldiers for the dilapidated state of their quarters, it seemed I was summoning the picture of my plunging a long blade into his throat, terrorizing him not with pain so much as the fright of an instant, wholly unanticipated death. In reality I was carrying a scalpel in my holster (pinned against the pistol), and I actually reached into the leather pouch as I approached him and felt the metal handle. I could simply pull out the razor-sharp instrument and insert it a few centimeters into his skin and run it down the length of the carotid. None of the men would protest, and if one did, it would be too late. The doctor would clutch at his throat, the blood would flow forth freely, and in less than a minute he would quietly expire.

  Captain Ono turned to me just as I was a few steps away. But my hand was at my head in salute and he said, with no little irritation, “What must it be now, Lieutenant?”

  “I would request to speak with you, sir. It’s an important matter.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered. The enlisted men were holding themselves in, pleased as they were to witness an officer receiving the captain’s harsh treatment.

  “And what would this concern, Lieutenant?”

  “I was hoping to speak in private, sir. It concerns one of the volunteers.”

  “You surely are being scrupulous, Lieutenant Kurohata. And is right now the most necessary time for you to tell me what’s on your mind?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said sharply, nearly barking. One of the enlisted men couldn’t help himself and let out a snort at my pained rigor. The captain at once wheeled and struck him across the face with his open hand, and the man fell down, more, it seemed, from sheer surprise than the force of the blow. He quickly stood up without any help and stood at attention, as were his fellows. A wide red welt rose up over his eye and the side of his face. The doctor waited and then hit him again, and again the man fell down and then got back up to his feet, this time more tentatively. The whole action seemed somehow self-evident, being strangely mechanical. He then turned to me and in no different a voice said, “Then perhaps you and I should talk elsewhere, Lieutenant Kurohata. I require a few more moments with these men. You’ll meet me at the infirmary shortly.”

  I did not of course want to go back there with him, but he had already dismissed me and immediately resumed addressing the men, criticizing them for their indolence and disorganization. Such a sight was becoming more and more common. Like most others in the camp, the doctor himself seemed caught in a state of increasing agitation, the protracted stretch of waiting and inaction and ennui causing flares of anxiety and disruption. A rash of fights had recently broken out among the men, and the feeling within the officer corps had, in fact, become distinctly chilly and distant, what with the system of command ever loosening and the threat of fighting having clearly passed us over.

  I was walking quite slowly, as I was loathing the thought of the three of us together, her so near to him in my presence, and the doctor actually caught up with me before I reached the infirmary. He took me by the shoulder to stop me, the windowless back wall where K was locked in the closet just in our sight.

  “Perhaps you’ll realize someday, Lieutenant, why I’ve been so hard on you,” he said flatly, no more avuncular than he ever was, or could be. “I say this not because I care what you think of me, or even for your sake. I cannot be concerned with you, as an individual. I think you well know this.”

  I assented openly, for the first time feeling somehow equal to him, imminently free.

  “Good,” he said, taking out a small case of etched silver. He offered a brown-wrapped cigarette to me, but I declined. He took it for himself and lighted it, smoking quickly and deeply. “You are not an incapable young officer, Lieutenant Kurohata,” he said, exhaling the spice-edged smoke. “But you are gravely misguided, most all of the time. I fear I shall believe this about you to my death. You probably don’t care. But I know you believe I take you to task because of your parentage. I’ve always known of this, yes. But that never mattered to me. It’s for the weak and lame-minded to focus on such things. Blood is only so useful, or hindering. The rest is strong thought and strong action. This is why, Lieutenant, I find myself unable to cease critiquing you. There is the germ of infirmity in you, which infects everything you touch or attempt. Besides all else, how do you think you will ever become a surgeon? A surgeon determines his course and acts. He goes to the point he has determined without any other faith, and commits to an execution. You, Lieutenant, too much depend upon generous fate and gesture. There is no internal possession, no embodiment. Thus you fail in some measure always. You perennially di
sappoint someone like me.

  “Right now, you want to speak to me about the girl in there,” he went on, pointing up the path to the homely building. “You wish to be resolute about something about her and yet I see nothing in your face or posture that will convince me of your desires. You sound as if you would trounce me, but I look at you directly and what is solid in you but your sentimental feeling and hope? Tell me, tell me freely, in any way you wish.”

  “I think you have taken questionable liberties about the camp. With the girl, and then also with Colonel Ishii.”

  “What exactly?”

  “You have steadily usurped command, sir. Everyone knows how the colonel remains inside all day and night, how he is hardly awake anymore.”

  “And what do you know?”

  “That we are again out of certain anesthetics and painkillers, which I believe you are offering to the colonel too frequently, perhaps even with the intent to incapacitate him.”

  “Why should I wish to do such a thing, Lieutenant, when I have always had the commander’s ear, on all matters? What pleasure or advantage would it give me?”

  “I don’t know, sir. Perhaps you want complete control,” I said, amazed at my own directness.

  “Over what?” he rasped at me. “Over this meaningless outpost? These stupid, backward herds of men? You are less observant than I gave you credit for. I accepted this posting because I was assured there would be steady fighting in the region, and that I could institute a first-rate field hospital and surgery ward. I expected there would be plenty of casualties, with constant opportunities for employing new techniques and procedures. At minimum there would be the regular exercise of autopsies. Of course there’s nothing now of any interest. It’s a cesspool of nursery maladies, insect bites and rashes. This is a situation that you might appropriately command, but not I. Colonel Ishii naturally understood my frustration and formally requested long ago that I be transferred, but his request has yet to be acknowledged. Meanwhile, I cannot optimally serve our cause, and my skills are no doubt eroding. The colonel, if you are curious, has chronic, severe pain from a shrapnel wound suffered in the early years of the war, in Manchuria, and he chooses to relieve himself of it. It is never my place to regulate him, unless his doing so affects the battalion, which it has not.

  “About the girl, Lieutenant, I will say this. You have obviously taken an interest in her, which is of course unavoidable. She is most comely, though I say that not to describe her sexual attraction, which in this forsaken place and to these men any girl or woman would possess, even that annoying shrew Matsui-san. But as for this girl, she has a definite presence and will and lively spirit. There’s clear breeding there, if you didn’t quite know. Unlike what you were probably taught in your special indoctrinational schooling, Lieutenant, there are indeed Chinese and Koreans of special and high character, in fact, of the same bloodlines as the most pure Japanese. There is a commonality between someone like her and me, a distinct correspondence, if one very distant. This is one of the reasons I’ve separated her—you could say as a means of acknowledging that relation, particularly with her sister having been killed. But you, Lieutenant, you can of course look narrowly upon someone like her, for private uses and pleasures, rather than the larger concerns.”

  “What are those, Captain Ono?” I said sharply. “Will you inform me, sir, as I have little idea.”

  The doctor grinned, the corners of his mouth tight, half-appreciative of the acuteness in my voice. “What are they indeed, Lieutenant! What do you think the Home Ministry has been promoting all these years, but a Pan-Asian prosperity as captained by our people? Do you understand what that really means? I can see you don’t. We must value ourselves however and wherever we appear, even in the scantest proportion. There can be no ignoring the divine spread of our strain. You, it is obvious, are helplessly concerned about the girl—that one female body, there in the infirmary. There is something to this, no doubt. But I am not confined to such thinking. I don’t care about her. She is not of any consequence, except as a kind of rare vessel of us, to be observed and stewarded. For the present time she is important to me, and when she is no longer I shall give her over to you, to do with her what you wish, whether you would bed her or journey the world with her or drown her at the shore. But as long as you see the banner there, Lieutenant, you shall keep to the duties I’ve set out for you and retain her in the manner I command. I raise it for you and you alone, and you will heed it without hesitance or prejudice.”

  “I cannot promise such a thing, sir,” I said stiffly, stepping forward slightly. “And I cannot let you visit her tonight, or on any future day.”

  He stared at me incredulously, searching my face, and then laughed, surprising me, as I thought he would rage and explode at my insubordination.

  “You are an immense fool,” he said. “I almost feel sorry for you. What do you think you are doing, protecting her honor? I suppose you imagine she’s your maiden, and you her swordsman. You do, indeed. And you also think that I’ve been saving her these last few days in anticipation of some memorable evening?”

  “She said you had not visited….”

  The captain shook his head, grinning again, though he was not amused. “The girl is telling stories, and you are believing them. Did she tell you how much she thought of you, too, how much she loved you?”

  “She never professed such things.”

  “Perhaps she suggested how she would like to meet you again, after the war?”

  When I didn’t answer, the captain scoffed and said grimly, “Shut up now. Or better yet, go away. I can’t stand to look at you. Your presence is demoralizing me.”

  “I will not let anyone else go to her, sir.”

  “No more of you, Lieutenant!” he shouted, waving his hand. “You had permission to address me freely but now you will silence yourself and leave me.”

  “I wish her to be my wife. I will marry her when the war ends. I have already decided this.”

  The captain stared at me with an expression of pure disgust, as if I had violated every law and code of his living. “You have ‘decided’ this, Lieutenant? So you have already had your sweet trifle with her, I suppose; you have taken her there on her dirt bed?”

  “I will love her,” I said as fiercely as I could, though the words immediately rang shallow and distant. “No matter what you say.”

  He laughed terribly. “Even if I tell you she is pregnant? Oh indeed, yes. I suppose she must have tricked the commander about her menses. It doesn’t matter now. I’m letting the pregnancy go, in fact, to see how long she’ll stay that way, once she begins servicing the whole of the camp. She was pregnant before even I was able to take my pleasure. Before anyone here had her. Who knows who her real master is? The commander and I certainly aren’t. So now you can fancy yourself to be her foster lover, her foster groom, as it were. And then stepfather to her child, if it ever comes to be….”

  But before he could finish speaking I tackled him square in the gut and the force of the blow knocked the wind out of him. He lay for a moment beside me trying to get back his breath, then rose slowly to his knees. I wanted to get up to strike him but my right shoulder seemed to shear like wet paper when I put weight on my hand, and I knew it had completely separated. The pain was severe enough that it didn’t feel like much of anything when the captain punched me in the belly. I watched, numbly estranged from myself, as he unholstered his service revolver and struck me again, once or twice or several times. He then pulled back the hammer and placed the cold ring of the barrel end to my forehead. He seemed very close, as if he were peering into me. He had no malice or rage in his face, simply a plain expression of purpose. I passed through then to another reach of bodily suffering, the pain already become a thing memorial, an insolvent fever in the tissue and bones.

  13

  AROUND THE TIME that Tommy was likely born, I began to entertain a certain waking nightmare. Sunny was of course long gone, having departed many months earlier w
ithout leaving a forwarding address or phone number. I knew she had taken up with Lincoln Evans, living with him (and probably others) in a squalid flat down in the city, though I no longer had either cause or interest in finding her. I didn’t care to see what was becoming of her. I was saddened, of course, but also in good measure angry, hurt by the completeness of her departure, as if she were a night’s guest at any roadside inn, the room hastily checked out of with that rumple of early morning disorder and abandon. I had offered her all that I possessed or could muster, the run of my house and my business and the willing graces of my town, which I must say is what it felt like in those last days just before I sold to the Hickeys. The streets and sidewalks of Bedley Run truly seemed as much mine as any person’s, their almost affirming solidity underfoot, bouncing me along on my diurnal way.

  The dream, if I can call it that, would come to me at the end of the working day, in the last hour between six and seven when there were never any more customers or calls from salesmen and I was hungry and enervated and in a state that must be a kind of retail beatitude, a mind of placid emptiness and vulnerability. Somewhere in my thoughts I knew that Sunny was close to term, sustaining herself in whatever unhealthful and meager manner, and I summoned an image of myself as a physician, old and wise and sure, who ran a tiny free clinic on the ground floor of a tenement building in the city. Each day until dusk I would treat the ills, both trivial and grave, of the modest neighborhood folks, attending with patience and close application every complaint of cough and rash and ache, gently and somberly addressing the more serious indications, my corner windowed office known all over as a kindly haven, the seat of good Doc Hata of Whatever Street.