At the top of the stairwell, the door opened. Carmen drew the sheet out, to wring it fast before Papa could make her carry it upstairs sopping wet.
The old man did not come down the steps. He held the door open for a small girl clutching her own armload of sheets.
The girl tottered down barefoot. Beneath a green silken haori, she was naked.
Quickly, Carmen reeled her pillowcase out of the basin, to make room for the girls washing. She squeezed cascades back into the tub, pulled her wet things away, and gestured for the girl to use what little soapy water remained.
With short strides the Korean girl approached into the glow of the electric bulb. Blue bruises circled her ankles. She’d been in manacles. One side of her jaw appeared swollen. She stood a full head shorter than Carmen, no more than a child.
Carmen backed off from the basin, holding her damp linens. She pushed away, too, the laden straw basket. The girl came to the washtub with slow, careful movements. Carmen stood in the recesses of light, motionless.
The girl set to her washing without hurry or glancing around. She dunked her sheet, not letting it soak, and ground her knuckles into the fabric. She laundered like a farm girl. Her hair was jet like Carmen’s and boxed short below the ears.
Carmen asked, “Do you speak English?”
The girl made no response. Carmen repeated, “English?”
Pounding her laundry, the Korean shook her head.
Carmen stepped into the ring of light. At the top of the staircase, Papa shouted, “Songu!”
Carmen halted. The little girl did not interrupt her scrubbing. Carmen stared at the Koreans back. She wanted to tell her, Do not wash your bright green robe unless you must. Do not fade.
Carmen dropped her linen on top of the straw basket and gathered it up. She headed to the stairwell.
The girl turned, expressionless. She said, “Songu.”
Carmen halted. “Yes.”
The girl released a hint of a smile, a guarded thing. She said only, “Yumi.”
Carmen nodded, as if to seal a secret. She climbed the steps to Papa.
~ * ~
The sun fell beside Mount Makiling. Carmen knelt in her window eating a rice ball, fish gruel, boiled weeds, and a cup of carabao milk. She wore her robe, dried and fresh from the afternoon’s sun and jungle breeze. The dusk deepened to indigo behind the mountain, vermilion clouds in the west like a fire in heaven. Carmen imagined herself in her crimson haori a part of the sunset, dropping from sight and gone.
Beyond the barbed fence, curfew hushed the camp with the settling twilight. The Japanese restricted the Americans and Europeans to candlelight or coconut-oil lanterns. Few internees had these luxuries. The barracks dimmed into starlight and the glow of a rising moon. Even the guard’s barracks and offices stood dark. Red dots bobbed along the boundaries, where soldiers smoked and patrolled the wire. From the Protestant chapel at the northern end of the camp, hymns floated over the nipa roofs, beneath the bolstering constellations. To the south, closer to her perch, stood the hut built by the Catholics for their worship. The Catholic songs, familiar to Carmen, seemed stodgy compared to the Protestants’ praise. Over the past year, though she had lost God, Carmen found herself preferring the Protestant service.
Through the rest of the afternoon, she’d heard nothing from the girl Yumi. After dark, Carmen could not sneak across to the south wing and sit with her; either Mama or Papa was always on guard; they slept on mats on the landing. Carmen, a Filipina, was being held captive by her own countrymen. When the Americans returned, and they promised they would, there would be a reckoning, not only for the Japanese but the makipilis. Carmen mulled over vengeance while listening to the hymns. She’d grown up Catholic, and the faith held that revenge belonged to God alone. She assumed the Protestants believed the same. Carmen accepted this without concern because it had no relevance for her. She’d abandoned the God who’d abandoned her. Perhaps the two of them could make peace after the war. Carmen suspected they would not. Just the same, she hoped He would avenge her.
A bustle sounded outside her curtain. Mama pushed the drape aside. The old woman fluttered to her. Carmen faced her with the same stoniness she mounted for the soldiers.
“Girl, come here. Let me see you. You’re a mess. Why anyone would touch you I can’t understand.” Mama pinched both of Carmen’s cheeks. “I’ve told you to wash your face with tea, you’ll look younger.”
Mama untied the sash holding shut the red robe, to expose Carmen’s front. Carmen gazed down at her own jutting pelvis and ribs. She noticed that even Mama was losing her fat.
The old woman said, “Officers are here. Chew this.”
Mama rolled blades of sweet grass between her palms into a pulpy ball. Carmen parted her lips to take the mint taste on her tongue.
“Give me more.” She held out her hand. Mama dug a few green bits from a pocket. Carmen stuffed them into her nostrils to ease the stink of the man waiting outside her door. The officer was likely passing through Los Baños on his way to Manila with the rest of the troops shed serviced that day. But unlike regular soldiers who dropped only their pants, officers stripped bare to lie with her on the tatami, sometimes until dawn. The smell of their feet and boots, unwashed chests and armpits, their nocturnal gases ... Carmen would lie awake until he left.
Mama gathered up the plate, soup bowl, and cup from Carmen’s supper. At the curtain, the woman spoke into the hall. “Irasshaimase” Please come in.
The makipili woman held back the drape for the approaching officer. His boots marched down the hall in a quickened pace. Carmen drew a breath through her nose to test the grass blades.
Nagata stepped past the curtain. Mama bowed low and left, pulling shut the drape.
Carmen stepped off the mattress. She copied Mamas deep bow, using the moments facing the floor to compose herself.
Why had she been given this devil? The brute Nagata. Watching over the camp, she’d seen him swagger and bellow, slap prisoners, even his own soldiers. Every sunup he stood at the head of roll call, sweat-stained, croaking orders, more like a frog than a human. Nagata had gone to Hua, but had never come to Songu’s room. The commandant himself had visited twice, a fragrant, tired old man who slept quietly like the flowers in his garden. But Nagata? Why was he here? She stared at his boots until he grunted that she was permitted to straighten.
He strode close, shorter than her. He pulled down his cap, spun it into a corner. Without a word, standing at arm’s length, he stripped away his uniform. Button by clasp, Nagata did not pull his eyes from Carmen, measuring her. His glare made clear his disgust. Carmen could not guess what rankled him, her brown flesh or his own need of it?
He kicked away his boots, adding to the pile in the corner. He peeled down his leggings and pantaloons until he stood only in a frayed loincloth. Nagata had a gluttons gut in a camp of starving people. His cheeks and shoulders were soft. Carmen checked her own features, keeping mute when Nagata pushed the robe off her shoulders. She did not kick the robe away but let it pool at her feet. He pressed down on his loincloth, tugging out to avoid the head of his risen penis.
Nagata moved close. He breathed as if sniffing her. His hand circled her wrist to raise it between them. He pincered her skin between his fingers.
“Speak Eng-rish?” he asked.
Carmen nodded.
Nagata pursed his lips. He pinched harder. Carmen swallowed a squeak.
“Spanish,” he muttered, gauging the skin between his fingers. “Shita no ningen” Nagata made a dry spit. “West. No good.” He thumped his own sternum. “Yamato minzoku.”
He let loose her wrist. Carmen did not rub the spot he’d pinched but dropped the arm to stand nude and erect.
“Saku,” she said.
Nagata rubbed hands over the globe of his belly. He shook his head. Carmen shook hers in return.
Nagata muttered, “Pii”
He grasped her shoulders, spun her to face away from him. He shoved her, pushed
until she feared he might drive her out the open window. She braced against the sill. From behind, Nagata lowered his grip from her shoulders to her waist. He kicked at one ankle to spread her legs.
She felt his belly first against her buttocks, then the shaft of his penis searching for her vagina. Nagata had trouble entering her, his girth, his short stature, her dryness. He growled at his failures, dribbled saliva into his palm and rubbed between her legs. He would not turn her or throw her onto the mattress. Carmen held tight to the sill. The hymns from the Protestant church reached her. She shut them out.
His penis entered. She buttressed her arms against the sill, fixing her focus again on the Tuck boy’s sleepy barracks. Where was he? She needed the boy outside her window to see this degradation, lock eyes and share this, divide it and carry half for her. The boy was not there. He surely was not watching, or he would have run to the wire below her window, risked anything. She feared she might crumble before Nagata’s slamming belly, his grunts, and the stench, even filtered by the sweet grass in her nose. She was rammed into place, framed in the window. This was what Nagata intended. The show of domination was not for her but for the entire camp to watch.
Don’t run, boy, she thought. Stay inside, stay safe. I will do this.
She stiffened her legs, whitened her knuckles. When Nagata’s satisfaction arrived he endured it silently, as though in a display of discipline. He separated from Carmen. Her legs failed. She buckled to the mattress below the sill, out of sight.
Nagata replaced her in the open window. He spraddled his legs and stood above her, testicles drawn up tight. She crawled from beneath him. Beside the tatami, she squatted over the basin of manganic acid and water to splash between her legs. The disinfectant stung. She welcomed it to rout Nagata out of her.
Swelling his naked chest, he put fists to his waist. Nagata pouted, gazing over his camp. She dried herself and slipped her robe on. Outside, the Christian hymns were done.
Nagata raised an arm at the night. He passed his hand across the camp, a broad arc from the ravine on the left to the bamboo grove on the right.
“Aw-rr,” he said. He meant all of them.
Nagata reeled the hand in. He turned to Carmen to finish the sentence.
“Aw-rr die.”
With that, he lay facedown on the tatami. His stomach squashed beneath him. Nagata waggled a finger at the electric lamp on the small table, for Carmen to extinguish it. She pulled the chain. In the dark, she stood beside the mattress.
All die. Was Nagata going to murder everyone in the camp? How could he do that? Why do it? The internees weren’t soldiers, just famished civilians, women and children. The boy Tuck, would he die?
She knelt to the tatami. Gulping down fear and revulsion, she lay beside him.
~ * ~
Nagata snorted, awake with the first dribbles of light in Carmen’s window. She pretended sleep. With one eye, she watched him don his uniform. Nagata sat roughly on the tatami to slide on his boots. This made it difficult for Carmen to continue her deception. He stood and kicked the mattress.
“Okinasai”
Carmen stifled a fake yawn and rubbed her eyes. She got to her feet in the dim room. Outside, jungle birds twittered at the rising dawn.
He said, “Rei.”
She bowed. He put on his cap.
He waited at the curtain for her to pull it aside. She did not. He grunted and did it for himself. Carmen followed.
Mama was puffy-faced on the landing. She bowed to Nagata.
The three waited. Outside in the camp, the morning gong rang.
Nagata faced the south wing, hands behind his back. The curtain across Yumi’s room slid aside. Commandant Toshiwara emerged, hat in hand.
Nagata watched his superior advance. Little Yumi padded on bare feet in the old man’s wake, her robe belted and verdant even in the drab light. When the commandant reached the landing, Nagata snapped into a bow, Mama, too. Carmen caught Yumi’s eye and both bowed low.
They held until Nagata straightened. Toshiwara put on his cap, inclined his head in a shallow nod to Mama. To Yumi, the commandant gave a deeper nod.
“Sayonara, Yumi-chan”
The girl curtsied on bare legs. “Sayonara, mata irashitte kudasai, onjinsama”
Toshiwara headed down the stairs. Nagata strutted after him.
When the pair of officers was out of sight, Mama sloughed back to her mattress in a corner of the landing. A half-drunk bottle of rice wine waited on the floor.
“Go back to your rooms. Don’t make me chase you off.”
Carmen retreated toward her wing, Yumi to hers. Carmen tapped her forefinger and thumb together, to mimic a speaking mouth. She pointed down the stairs after the officers.
“Nippon?” she asked, aiming a finger now at Yumi. Did the girl speak Japanese?
“Go,” Mama muttered.
Backing away, little Yumi answered. “Hai.”
~ * ~
Chapter Five
T
INSLEY, a tobacco buyer before the war, elbowed Remy.
“Look at the little bastard go.”
“Shut up, Tinsley.”
Old McElway, also crowded into Tinsley’s dark cubicle, added, “Shut up, both of you.”
The tobacco man answered with a licentious cackle. He stepped away from the window facing the animal husbandry building to lie on his bunk.
McElway whispered at Remy’s shoulder, “This is hard to watch.” The piano man coughed into his palm, then looked into his open hand with disgust and wiped it on his pants. He left the window, muttering, “I ain’t had none in three years. I got to watch this shit? I don’t think so.” Mac pushed aside the sawali mat covering the door to head down the hall.
Seeing Nagata, the most loathed man in Los Baños, having sex was difficult enough. Nagata did it openly, lit up in the third-floor window, taunting the camp. Seeing him screw the girl his son had somehow idealized made Remy’s mouth go dry.
Remy wanted to join Mac and mope back to his own cubicle. He hadn’t had a woman in a long time, either. Two American prostitutes were in the camp; Remy had known them both in Manila. In Los Baños their trade was banned by the Japanese and the Internee Committee. Privacy existed nowhere in the camp, even if a man could find the money and the energy. Both whores had become irritants to the Internee Committee, with little taste for manual labor and few valuable skills on their feet. Remy avoided them.
He stayed fixed in the window. Remy kept private that he was absorbing this insult in his sons name.
He ignored Nagata writhing behind the girl. Even from three stories below he could see the man’s expression was a gloat. Remy focused on the Filipina, braced hard against the windowsill. She kept her face turned from Nagata, a cold, absent expression. Remy did not see in the girl what his boy did, neither nobility nor beauty. He did see that she suffered.
A dozen barracks had a view of this, many of them bachelor quarters. Likely, a couple hundred men were scuffling for window space to see this, maybe a few priests in Vatican City. The girl stared straight ahead. Where was she looking?
Remy strode out of the room. Tinsley sent him along with a hoot. “Gotta go take care of business, Tuck?”
Remy made his way through the building as quietly as he could. Many of the men had left their bunks when Tinsley rumbled through the building hissing that there was something to see. Monitors in every barracks were assigned to maintain curfew and lights-out hours. Remy tiptoed to the back door. He ducked, waiting for the guard to stroll out of sight.
Darting across the open path, he shot up the bamboo steps of Tal’s building.
Barracks No. 11 was where the Japanese put those internees they believed required the most vigilance. All young men, these were the camp bravos, with defiant attitudes, troubled pasts, and recurrent infractions of camp rules, petty thieves like Talbot. The residents of No. 11 bore their lodgment here like a badge; their misbehavior was resistance. The Internee Committee branded them hooligans,
claiming their pranks and misdemeanors did nothing but increase tension with the guards and risk retaliation. Remy’s sympathies, as a gambler living on the fringes of the rules, were often with the boys.
He crept down the hall, shushing the voices who greeted him, and made his way to Tal’s room.
Remy pushed aside the woven mat covering the doorway. Tal lay shirtless, facedown on his lower bunk behind mosquito netting. He hadn’t moved in five days except to sit up and eat the meals Remy brought him, take a leak in a bucket, or sit on the floor for a sponge bath. The stripes on his back appeared mottled and gruesome, but healing. All five of his roommates were absent.
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 5