The general was giving a speech that used the words “victory” and “massacre” and “pride” a great deal. But it was then I noticed something else. All the men in my unit were looking at me and smiling. And behind them, every eye on every man, wherever that eye had settled in those shifting faces, was also looking at me. To my left, Major General Dorari was looking at me. And when I turned, the general, his mouth now as big as his entire head, was looking at me. The speech came to an end and Colonel Konko took me by the hand and invited me to enter the house with him. He showed me to a spare room and suggested I sleep. I was fatigued and greasy from the heavy rain and tired, so I lay down.
I was awoken by a chorus of screams. My room was dark. The door was open. I passed a bathroom on my left and a cockroach the size of a crocodile ran in front of me, leaving a trail of slime. It stopped and looked up at me and I could clearly see the face of Private Oshiira, the toilet licker. He vomited over my boots. I was terrified. What was happening to me? My legs refused to run. The screams were louder now. Awful smells wafted around me. The cockroach stopped at another door and like a greasy trained seal, it beckoned me forward. I stepped over it and entered the next room. The house inside had changed shape. The rooms were larger now and there were doors everywhere. An earthquake below me seemed to be rearranging the parquet flooring. This next room contained a large king-size Jacuzzi. All around the four walls were some hundred women in sheer negligee chained by the necks. They were lined up numerically with the numbers pinned to their breasts. Many were dead. Many were wishing they were. Major General Dorari in leather was leaning over one, about to climb on top of her. His body had shrunk since I’d last seen him and his head had stretched upward and backward like a giant gourd. He looked at me and smiled before burying his bayonet in the woman. Her scream ceased but those of others around them grew louder. I couldn’t stand to watch so I made for one of the doors. But as I passed the bubbling Jacuzzi I could tell from the smell that it was not full of water but of stale sake. Lying on the bottom of the Jacuzzi beneath the surface of the liquid was Lance Corporal Hokofugu Hama. He was no longer a man. His face was unchanged but his body was that of a wizened old lady and her skin was covered in hard blisters and lumps like a smallpox victim. She was inhaling the sake, sucking it in through her mouth and her nose and her anus, getting larger and larger with every suck until her skin burst and the Jacuzzi was filled with her organs.
(I did warn you. It doesn’t get any better. SP)
I ran to the nearest door, tripping over cockroach Oshiira as I went, so I stumbled into the next room. But this was no ordinary room. It was constructed entirely of the enormous scrotum of Corporal Yatsusuki, which formed a perfect cube, small festering hairs poking out here and there. And through the translucent skin I could see him sitting in the ceiling rafters masturbating. In his other hand he held the severed head of a Chinese woman.
As there was only one door, I returned the way I’d come, but that room had also changed. It was now a slop kitchen and on the central gas range were several enormous pots full of unskinned rats being stirred by Warrant Officer Ukabane Orimimi. He had taken the shape of an ox with six legs. His breath was now so toxic that when he breathed into the pots the rat stew turned red as chili and sizzled. It was too much for the rats, who tried desperately to escape the pots, screeching. Ukabane breathed in my direction and I could feel my uniform stick to my skin as if I were in the path of a nuclear explosion. I had to get out. The Oshiira cockroach—his legs dropping off one by one—was indicating another door through which I ran, but on the far side I dropped into a pit and sprained both ankles. It was as silent as a tomb down there and I could see nothing. Then, slowly, I heard the flap of a bat above me. Its excrement dropped onto my head. But it was no usual bat. I could sense its wingspan was some ten meters. It came closer and at one point it opened its eyes and emitted a bloody red glow. It was the face not of a bat but of Second Lieutenant Tetsukimo Souben. His body was one long white strip of cloth and he began to wrap himself around my neck. I felt the noose tighten. Because of my injury I could not run. I fell to the ground and a pack of rabid wolves surrounded me, prowling closer. Its leader was Taigou, my once faithful dog. He pounced on me and buried his teeth into my arm. He was eating me alive. I kicked and punched my way free and dragged myself through the next door. I was in a concrete room and sitting in a far corner was Captain Jame, naked. He had removed his wooden leg and the eye patch. He now had only the one eye in the middle of his forehead. His withered leg was tiny and gangrenous and it dangled from his hip.
“What is happening, Jame?” I asked.
He opened his mouth to reply but from his throat came the loudest sound I’d ever heard. I put my hands to my ears but my head vibrated from the noise. It was like the roar of a dozen jet engines. My eardrums burst and pus shot from my ears. The walls began to crack and one huge slab of concrete fell onto Jame and crushed him. His one eyeball rolled out from under the rubble and across the floor to me. Before my eyes it started to grow a new Captain Jame around it. I could stand it no more. I crawled to the next door and let myself in. Great General Shosen Umiji was asleep in a king-size bed. All around the bed, half asleep but with one of their many eyes on me, was a barrier of oni devils faithful to the demon overlord. He wore nothing and his huge bloated stomach seemed bigger than was humanly possible. His skin was wrinkled, and his toenails and fingernails were bloody. Beside the bed was a drip tube running from a cask of whisky to an artery in his arm. From a distance it appeared he was wearing makeup, but further inspection told me he was sleeping in a white mask with horns and huge fangs. Across the room was a cage and inside were some ten blond European children crammed together, petrified. My every instinct told me I had to kill this general, but I didn’t know how. I had no weapon. I knew the oni were lazy beasts and that they would soon fall asleep if I was patient. Within an hour my suspicions were confirmed. I took a scabbard from one sleeping oni and I leaned over the bed. I needed to be sure this was the general. I tried to remove the mask but it was stuck. I pulled harder and still it would not give. The mask opened its eyes and its mouth drooled blood and it smiled. I happened to look at the bedside table and there I saw my mistake. There was the actual mask, that of a wrinkled old man with a red nose, the impassive face of a military tactician—General Shosen Umiji. That was the mask behind which Shuten Doji dwelled.
“You have no way to destroy me,” said the general. And all the oni came to attention at the sound of his voice. They gathered around me and pulled and pushed and grabbed at my flesh and drew their daggers and I chanced to look up. There was a mirror above the bed like that in the most respectable brothels and I could see myself clearly. I was no longer Hiro Uenobu or Kangen Toshimado. I recognized this new me immediately. I was Minamoto Yorimitsu the warrior and I knew my mission. I looked back at the general and I said,
“I know exactly how to destroy you.”
Epilogue Two
Tomorrow I Rise
It wasn’t the first time Hiro had stolen the village longboat and traveled back through the tunnel, but it would be the last. Without a lamp he negotiated the caverns instinctively, as if he had always been an eel or a bat. He emerged even before the sun had risen and he took in the scents of the early morning blooms and enjoyed the laughter of the shrews even louder than the growl of the boat engine as he worked his way to Thakhek. He had two visits to make. The first was to the old white colonial house where the senior officers had met the evening before. There were sentries at the bottom of the driveway, but they had no discipline. They played cards under a bamboo shelter and barely looked up when he passed. The empire had fallen to ruin. It was decaying before his eyes. But Hiro was at his most senior, his most decorated. He had spent many hours embroidering his new rank and his esteemed ribbons of valor. He was a full general now and deserved to be.
The front door to the house was ajar. He walked through the large, high-ceilinged rooms
, stepping over drunks and debaucherers. Whores from Thailand gathered in the kitchen, cackling and comparing their bruises and their take-home pay. There were puddles of vomit and urine and empty bottles and broken glass. Somebody had been mortally injured judging by the amount of blood everywhere. Hiro went to the master bedroom. The door wasn’t locked but when he pushed against it there was resistance. He had to lean into it with some force in order to give himself a view inside the room. There was a body behind the door, a boy, fourteen or so, covered in blood. But it didn’t concern Hiro whether he was dead or not. In the scheme of things, it was irrelevant. All he needed was to identify the figure on the bed: sleeping deeply, naked, snoring. He entered the air-conditioned room, which stank of sweat, and leaned over the man. There is often little in an old man’s face to distinguish him from any other old man. With hair cut close to his scalp and skin browned by a tropical sun, he could have been a cyclo rider or a street barber. There was nothing of character in the face Hiro saw before him. There was no smile of contentment. There was no outward sign of a dream under way: no evidence that this old man was living in two dimensions simultaneously. The only thing clear was that this was General Shosen Umiji, who had wreaked brutality upon innocents in China, who had destroyed lives and handed out party favors as a reward; this was the same bastard demon Shuten Doji who led the dark forces of the underworld. There was no mistaking him.
Hiro was about to leave when he discovered a third identity. Beside the bed was a passport and air ticket. Both were in the name of Lee Kwan Hong, a Singaporean. The ticket was from Bangkok to New York. The passport contained an unlimited visa for the United States. The photograph was that of the devil who lay there on the sprung mattress.
General Hiro walked in sprightly fashion—somewhere between a march and a fox-trot—to the airfield. He handed his flight papers to the second lieutenant in charge of aircraft. The man, his neck button unfastened, looked Hiro up and down and saluted halfheartedly. He stamped the orders and led the general to one of the newest Zeros. It was fitted with canisters of high explosives and three additional gas tanks, two of which were not connected to the engine. Every day, the second lieutenant escorted young fliers to the craft that would become their coffins. The youths were always silent, resolved, sad that they’d lived so little, dreamed so wastefully. They were all trapped in the purgatory of imperialism, unable to confess they felt no allegiance to that old man locked away in his palace in Tokyo. He rode a white horse and spoke only to his nearest advisors. None of the young pilots wished to die for him. The honor they carried to their violent cremation was one not of nationhood but of personal pride. They would not be remembered as cowards by their peers, or the ground crew that waved them off. They kept their spines straight and their lips clenched. If one man refused to take to the sky, if he dared question the sanity of sending an entire generation off to a fiery death, if he wondered aloud how his country had sunk to allowing a gang of old generals to pervert its customs and hold its culture to ransom for glory, every other suicide pilot would echo those thoughts silently. But they’d band together to hammer down the nail that stood up and they’d climb into the cockpit and shed tears all the way to hell, but not back.
The second lieutenant looked again at the decorated general who stood bolt upright before him. He, too, was silent but there was no doubt, no fear in his eyes. This general climbed the ladder, inserted himself into the cockpit like a foot into a tight shoe, engaged the engine, checked the instruments, and taxied to the end of the runway. The ground crew might have admired him, a high-ranking officer who was opting to give his life for the emperor sooner than surrender to an inferior enemy. Or they might have felt pity for him, a lonely general with nothing to live for. But they had to admit he sure as hell could fly. He turned into his takeoff and was airborne in seconds. He was soon in the clouds and on his way to Halong Bay, where kamikazes were reportedly picking off cruisers and landing craft at will and bidding their farewells to the world. The second lieutenant sighed and returned to his logbook, but another sound made him look up. The Zero was back. It performed a perfect loop-de-loop followed by a figure eight. The Zero was never known for its maneuverability. Inexperienced pilots had trouble just keeping it on an even keel. But the general was putting on a show like no one had ever seen before. He barrel-rolled and rose skyward and again he was gone. The second lieutenant smiled and raised a thumb to the mechanics and when they all believed he’d finally gone on his way, there he was again, flying low and straight now. He barely missed the top spire of the temple.
“He’s too low,” shouted one of the mechanics.
“I think he knows exactly what he’s doing,” said the second lieutenant. He laughed. He knew that what was about to happen would never find its way into the war records. Some historian would turn it into another myth of valor and honor. The guilty victims would become the heroes as they always had and those who knew the truth would be snuffed out. A row of tents shimmered as the Zero skimmed over them. Infantry men looked out from the flaps. The horses panicked in the corral. The engine roared. The Zero tipped a wing over the market, leveled, and slammed in a ball of fire and a thunderous boom into the side of the old colonial house.
The Delightful Life of a Suicide Pilot Page 22