Broken Jewel - [World War II 05]

by David L. Robbins

  Ito was telling Remy: You’re not being smart.

  He gestured for Remy to empty his pockets and hand over everything. Remy had no choice and did as he was instructed. He kept secret the stash of tomatoes in his hat.

  Ito tasted one of the tomatoes and found it agreeable. The rest he pushed into his own pockets with the wild gingerroots, until they bulged as much as Remy’s had. The guard nodded. He swept the back of his hand down the path for Remy to move to the camp. Approaching the wire, Remy bit his tongue. He’d been shaken down by Ito.

  At the gate, two guards waved Remy past a pair of dirt pillboxes. Machine-gun barrels bristled in the firing slots. Three other guards lounged on chairs, paying no mind. Far ahead, the bull was led to the kitchen to have his sled unloaded.

  Ito followed Remy into the camp. He stopped for a quiet word with the guards on their feet. He sprinkled some of Remy’s tomatoes into their waiting hands.

  Remy headed for his barracks, steaming.

  “Tuck-san.”

  Ito jogged beside him. He gestured for Remy to follow.

  When they were away from the gate, Ito burrowed into his pockets. He poured the tomatoes and roots into Remy’s cupped hands. Ito motioned for him to put them away quickly. When Ito had returned the stash, he plucked one more tomato to pop into his mouth. He pointed back at the gate, wagging his head, no. You could not have gotten back into the camp with these.

  Remy stowed the foraged food. He bowed again to Ito.

  “Domo arigato”

  Ito inclined his own head. “Kurisumasu” Christmas.

  Remy stood straight and turned to go. Ito stopped him with a hand across his wrist.

  “Tuck-san.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nippon. War.” Ito jabbed a thumb downward at the earth. The war was going badly for Japan.

  “Yes, it is.”

  Ito put the thumb into Remy’s chest. “You,” he said. He hooked the thumb at himself. “Ito”

  When it’s over, you remember Ito.

  Remy handed the soldier another tomato.

  ~ * ~

  Lazlo was a hoarder, the most despised white man in the camp. In the early years of Los Baños, he and his wife had collected food and supplies, speculating on the shortages they bet lay ahead. Now they sold and bartered at exorbitant rates. They lent money for usurious terms. Lazlo and his wife were the only folks in Los Baños to keep a pet alive, an obese Siamese cat. Remy wanted the Elgin watch on Lazlo’s thick wrist. He played carefully, meticulously. He’d lost three hands in a row to Lazlo. He worked on losing a fourth.

  Remy tossed six more tomatoes on the grass between them, adding to the pile of Philippine pesos, a toothbrush, and a small cup of cornmeal. Lazlo pitched in two more pesos. The other three players in the poker game had already folded, the stakes had outrun them. Remy bid them out, to keep the game between him and Lazlo.

  “Call,” said Lazlo.

  Remy set down his cards. Others outside the circle kept alert for guards and the clergy wandering over to the shade of the dao tree. Remy showed a pair of tens. He figured Lazlo would have two pairs.

  The man laid down his cards, threes and fives. His turkey neck bulged, savoring the pot. He swept his winnings through the grass. Remy admired the Elgin. Time to take it.

  “You know,” Lazlo chortled to Remy, “luck ain’t the only word your name rhymes with.”

  Remy aped a good-natured manner. “Never heard that one before. Good one. Deal.”

  Remy waited two more hands until he had the right combination of cards and Lazlo flush with confidence. Lazlo rubbed his cards between forefinger and thumb, trying to feel the gold in them, betraying them to Remy.

  Again, Remy bet everyone but Lazlo out of the hand, letting his stake get pared down to a handful of tomatoes. The rest of Remy’s stash sat in front of Lazlo, who’d been nibbling at them without sharing.

  “I don’t think you got the muscle, Remy, ol’ boy.”

  Remy scratched his chin. “Sure do like this hand, though. Hmmm. What to do.”

  Lazlo went for the kill. He unfurled an American ten-dollar bill and laid it in the pot. Remy enjoyed the sensation, like a fish striking his lure.

  “Can you cover, Remy?”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  Lazlo rotated a gold ring on his finger. Few in the camp had any jewelry left; most valuables had been traded to the guards for food, medicine, soap, milk for children, cigarettes. Lazlo wore his ill-gotten prosperity on his hands and wrists, in his jowls.

  “Don’t want your ring either.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “That Elgin.”

  The man grinned. It didn’t matter to him which item broke Remy’s bank. He slid off the watch and plopped it on the grass. He plucked away his ten-dollar bill and devoured two more of the tomatoes he’d won.

  “Now,” Lazlo said, “you.”

  Remy lowered his head as if bowing to Lazlo. With both hands on the brim, he lifted off his fedora, careful not to spill the three dozen tiny tomatoes inside.

  With a flourish, he set the hat in the pot.

  “Call.”

  “Well, I’ll be.” Lazlo gestured to the other players in the circle. “He’s slick, ain’t he?” Lazlo spread his cards across the tomatoes in Remy’s hat. “Slick that, mister.”

  Three nines.

  Remy picked the Elgin out of the pot. He held it to his ear to make sure it ticked properly, examined the crystal for scratches.

  “Oh,” he said, as if absentminded. He flicked his cards to the grass. They landed in a perfect fan. Three jacks.

  ~ * ~

  From the Protestant and Catholic chapels at opposite ends of the camp, Christmas hymns spread over the grounds in the lowering sun. The internees had done their best to decorate, stringing shiny tins like tinsel around the taller bushes, tying bows out of colorful cloth. Little of excess existed in the camp, almost everything was used or devoured. The Christmas spirit, like the internees, was starved but not extinguished.

  Remy waited near the back door of the kitchen, where he could keep an eye on the infirmary. Smoke from the day’s final meal billowed out of the iron chimneys Remy had fashioned a year and a half year ago. Six cooks filed out the back door, chores done for the day. Remy waved, knowing the story of each, trapped here with them and two thousand others for so long. The departing four men and two women were as gaunt as any internees, though they worked with the camps food. This credential, more than anything, testified that they were honest.

  With daylight almost gone and the mosquitoes ramping up, the guard Ishikawa left the infirmary. He lit a cigarette strolling across the road toward Remy. The little soldier glanced in all directions, clumsily furtive, plainly nervous. He was not armed.

  Remy did not stroll out to meet him but retreated closer to the wall of the kitchen, under the overhanging eaves. Ishikawa dropped his cigarette. Remy was sorry to see him do that; he would have asked to smoke the remainder.

  Remy held up the Elgin by the band. In the dying light the watch glistened like an ornament. Ishikawa reached. Remy raised it away, Ishikawa was so short.

  Remy snapped his fingers. “Ya. Dame”

  Ishikawa produced two vials of clear liquid topped by rubber seals. From another pocket he drew a syringe with a capped needle.

  “Okay?” Remy asked. “The real thing?”

  The guard may not have understood but nodded enthusiastically. “Okay.”

  Remy swapped the Elgin for the morphine.

  Ishikawa disappeared with his lucre. Remy palmed the drug and syringe and headed for the barracks.

  He found McElway sitting on the edge of his bunk, playing checkers with Father Corrigan by lantern light. The squares of the board had been drawn with charcoal on a plank; bottle caps were checkers. The two sat alone in the cubicle.

  Remy greeted the priest. “Padre.”

  “Remy.”

  Father Corrigan was among the oldest men in the camp. Fo
r twenty years he’d served in the mountains of Luzon in the wildest of regions, even among headhunters. He’d been scrawny the day the Japanese brought him in and had not lost or gained a pound since.

  Though the residents of Vatican City tended to keep to themselves, Corrigan was a garrulous sort and well liked among the lay internees. For old McElway’s three years of imprisonment, he had little truck with the missionaries and Catholics, being for much of that time unrepentant. But he recently told Remy that Corrigan would likely outlive him and he would need someone of God’s folk to speak well of him beside his grave. That was why McElway played checkers with the priest now.

  Remy eased onto his bunk to watch the game. By instinct he looked for stakes; what were the two playing for? Nothing. That wasn’t like Mac, who always angled for an edge or an egg. The man’s darkly veined hand shook lifting a bottle cap. He seemed more frail than when Remy had seen him at dinner picking at tonight’s lugao. The meal had been particularly awful. Bits of grub and worm had gotten cooked into the mush; Nagata supplied the internees with the lowest possible grade of rice. They groaned and ate the bugs for the protein they added, except for Mac, who gave half his bowl away.

  Mac hadn’t shaved, an undeniable sign that he was running low.

  Father Corrigan won the game. Remy thought he should have let Mac win, but the outcome seemed not to matter. Corrigan put the board away. Mac needed the priest’s help to lift his legs into his bunk to lie down. His head, swollen as a jack-o’-lantern, hit the pillow with a groan of pain and disgust.

  Corrigan knelt beside the bunk. Mac’s long, piano hand filled both of the priest’s. Remy bowed his head while Corrigan prayed. Mac did not close his lids but stared into the bottom of the bunk close above him. Both eyes glistened and he seemed afraid, as if his way to heaven, too, might be blocked.

  The priest finished the prayer. He placed McElway’s limp hand on the mattress.

  ‘I’ll stop by tomorrow, lad.”

  After Corrigan left, Remy took the man’s spot beside the bunk. The veins in McElway’s arm stood out like railways.

  “I got you a Christmas present.”

  “Is it a woman?”

  “Nope. That’s for New Year’s Eve. This is for the pain.” Remy held up the vials and syringe.

  Mac lifted his head from the pillow to cough, stifling it into a balled hand. The knuckles showed the scars of his history, smoothed-over wounds from a lifetime of struggle. His father had been born a slave in America. Mac had known little comfort in his life, even after coming to the Pacific. Women and music had been respites from jails and trouble. Once the camp doctors gave him the word three weeks ago that he had lung cancer, starvation and all of its spawn—beriberi, colitis, parasites-robbed him of his reserves, hastening the certain. Remy was determined that his friend’s passage from this world would at least be eased.

  McElway dropped his hand. Blood had spattered the back of it.

  From his vest pocket, Remy unfolded a paper packet. He’d sliced the wild gingerroot as finely as he could.

  “Open up.”

  McElway lowered his jaw. The tumors in his rotting lungs rattled in the well of his throat. Remy laid a portion of ginger on the man’s tongue, ghostly white from anemia. Mac chewed.

  “Its ginger. I found some today. It’ll help with the nausea. Maybe get your appetite back.”

  Mac patted Remy’s knee. “Gimme the jelly roll.”

  “I’ve never done this before. You know how, right?”

  “Yeah, I done a few needles. It ain’t hard.”

  McElway talked Remy through the injection. Remy pierced the point through the rubber cap of the first vial, which contained 10 cc of morphine. Mac told him to draw only one cc into the syringe, and be sure not to suck in any air.

  “Small dose,” Mac said, “we ain’t got much. Go ahead. Find a good vein.” Mac balled a fist to help his vessels protrude. “Now, stick the tip in, come in at an angle.”

  Mac’s skin resisted the needle. He seemed covered in leather. Remy pushed harder to pierce the vein. The skin gave way, the needle punched through.

  “Don’t shove the plunger yet. Pull in some blood.”

  Remy drew back on the plunger. A scarlet swirl entered the syringe, clouding the liquid. Remy pushed in the morphine. Mac released his fist when the needle was withdrawn.

  The opened vein in Mac’s arm wept a bead of blood. Remy tore a piece of cloth from his own bedsheet to tie over the leak.

  “Why don’t you just go to the infirmary like a regular person?”

  “I ain’t regular.”

  “I knew that before I asked.”

  “I’m gonna stay right here. Got a job to do.”

  Mac coughed again, violently. The clatter in his chest reminded Remy of rolling, snake-eyed dice. The old black man raised his chin, the morphine kicking in. His eyelids fluttered, he sank into the pillow and mattress. He raised a shrunken, blind finger at Remy.

  “And you gon’ do it when I’m done.”

  ~ * ~

  Chapter Nine

  T

  HE U.S. Navy provided the fireworks for New Years Eve.

  At sundown a hundred planes attacked the rails and roads running west from Los Baños. The boys of No. 11 cheered on the air raid from every window. They imitated the whistles of falling bombs, punched the fellows around them in the shoulders with the thumps of explosions. After full darkness fell and fires flickered beyond the trees lining the ravine, the boys gathered in the dark mess hall to yammer about liberation. The word in the camp was that the Yanks had already landed on Mindoro and would invade Luzon next. Manila would fall soon. Tonight’s air raid had been meant to soften up the Japanese.

  After the raid, no one went to his bunk. The night was a holiday, and the excitement of the bombs did not ebb. At ten o’clock, Donnelly, the camp bootlegger, produced three jugs of home brew.

  “Mango madness,” he proclaimed. The boys stood in awe that Donnelly could have done this.

  Tal drank with the others. The moonshine had to last until midnight. He sipped whenever one of the jugs passed his way, but managed little drunkenness. A few selfish boys guzzled, one of them a lout named Peavey who on his best days Tal found difficult to tolerate. In Manila, Peavey had been a self-styled adventurer, a rich man’s son, a layabout. He’d convinced his father he’d gone to the Philippines to study tribal sociologies. The old man sent him a monthly stipend. What money Peavey did not carouse away, Remy and others took from him at poker tables. Annoying and worthless as Tal considered Peavey to be, he did have something Tal noticed and, with the prodding of the moonshine in his system, suddenly wanted. A pocket watch.

  Peavey slumped in a corner, hit hard by the mango liquor. Tal had little trouble detaching the fob and sliding the watch out of the man’s pocket. He palmed the timepiece and got in line for one more slug of moonshine. Lifting a kerosene lamp from a hook, Tal slipped out of the mess hall. He headed for the north end of the barracks.

  This was Donnelly’s room and would surely stay empty past midnight. He set the kerosene lamp on the windowsill. He lit it, breaking curfew. The other buildings in the camp remained wrapped in moonless black, with the only light coming from electric poles along the wire.

  He set the watch on the sill. He’d return it tomorrow, just hand it to Peavey and walk off.

  Five minutes remained.

  He gazed up at her dark window just forty yards away and three stories up. He did not know if she stood looking down at him. He did not need the girl to be in her window for him to be here. Remy had talked many times of faith, in God or cards, how it required no answer. Even Toshiwara had said it; loyalty to an ideal.

  By lantern light Tal kept an eye on the sweeping second hand of the pocket watch. He counted down the final moments of 1944. “Ten . . . nine ...” At zero, he whispered, “Happy New Year.”

  In the ravine outside the barbed wire, frogs croaked, a monkey screeched, insects chirped like the ticks of the watch. Somew
here in the camp, a man’s voice rose in “Auld Lang Syne.” A few scattered others picked up the tune, but not enough to drown out the life in the surrounding jungle. The girl’s building remained lightless. Tal painted her inside the frame of her dark window, scarlet and brown. He doused the lantern and sat with her in his share of the dark.

  ~ * ~

  Tal sat on the back steps of No. 12, pushing a fork into a dollop of stewed talinum greens and kamotes. A mug of ersatz coffee cooled beside him. He ate the paltry breakfast on the steps of his father’s barracks because it had a good view of what was once the camp garden, where the Japanese did jumping jacks in nothing but loincloths.