Nagata paced in front of the hundred guards, half the camp garrison. He waved his arms, shouting, “Ichi, ni, san, shi!” Buttocks and pubic hair flashed with every jumping jack. The guards couldn’t get into unison. Nagata halted the exercise and made them start over, together, only to encounter the same poor result.
The half-Filipino Santana joined Remy on the steps.
“You gonna finish that?” He indicated Tal’s partially eaten breakfast.
“Yeah. Shut up.”
Santana chuckled at the Japanese. “Man, they look as bad as we do.”
The guards appeared tiny and listless in the morning sun, except for thick Nagata. Along with their joggling private parts on display, every one showed the stripes of ribs.
Tal said, “I reckon Toshiwara figured his men could use some shaping up.”
“They could use blowin’ up.”
Tal scooped a forkful of boiled greens into his mouth. He thought of his short time outside the wire two weeks ago. He could still join the guerrillas. They ate better than this.
“The Yanks are comin’ for us,” Santana said, “right?”
“You saw that air raid last night. They’re coming.”
“You think they’ll get here in time?”
“In time for what?”
The boy pointed at the guards now trying push-ups, with Nagata kicking at them.
“I dunno. But what do you think they’re exercising for?”
The question was unnerving. Before Tal could devise an answer, Father Corrigan strode around the corner.
“Good morning, Talbot.” To Santana, the priest said, “Mabuhay”
“Father.”
The priest said to Tal, “Your father needs to speak with you. He’s in the garage.”
“What’s he doing in there?”
Father Corrigan held out an arm inviting Tal off the step and on his way. “He’ll tell you.”
Tal scraped up the last of his breakfast and handed the empty plate to Santana. He made his way through the warren of barracks, thinking over what Santana had hinted at. Was Toshiwara actually trying to turn the guards, most of them skinny, lame, and old, into fighters? To fight who? The Americans? No, the camp guards, even the ones who’d seen combat before, would never again make frontline soldiers.
To fight us, he wondered?
Tal entered the garage door, determined to ask Remy his opinion. He found his father shirtless, crafting a casket out of green bamboo.
Remy spoke without interrupting his work. “Mac’s dead.”
Tal approached into the cool of the garage.
“When?”
“Last night sometime.”
“Where’s he now?”
“Still in bed. I only told Lucas. The others in our room are keeping it quiet ‘til I get this done. Lucas asked Nagata if I could have some lumber. Bastard said no, of course.”
The casket Remy made was ingenious, bamboo poles tied with ropes like a raft, notched and fitted into the shape of a six-sided coffin. Remy fashioned it with no tool but a bolo.
Tal said, “I’m real sorry.”
“I know.”
Tal sat on a bale of straw to watch his father finish. Remy’s muscles flexed, stringy without body fat, the skeleton beneath knobby and easy to see.
Tal said, “I’ll help you haul him up to the graveyard later on.”
“That’ll be good. We’ll get a few fellas. Maybe find some piano music for the loudspeaker. Say so long. I guess Corrigan’ll want to talk. Maybe we’ll get them two prostitutes to say something. Balance it out.”
Remy laughed at some recollection of Mac. He chopped at more bamboo rods. With a craftsman’s hands he roped them to form the casket’s lid. He carved two short pieces into a cross and affixed it to the lid.
Remy smiled. “You know, I took his meal ticket this morning so I could go through the chow line twice. I lied and said I was taking the plate back to him. I didn’t want to run out of steam while I was doing this. But I got to tell you ...” Remy folded to the dirt floor, mopping his brow, “... two times nothin’ is still nothin’. I’m beat.”
Remy looked over the green burial box he’d built for Mac. Tal rose from his hay bale. With Remy’s bolo he cut six lengths of rope, and tied handles to each of the walls of the coffin.
“Good thinkin’, boy. Come on.”
Remy hauled himself off the ground. Together they carried the casket out of the garage, through the camp. Internees on the paths and in the windows stopped when Tal and Remy passed with the coffin. Men removed their hats. The news of Mac’s death spread this way.
They entered Remy’s barracks. Outside the room, Remy said, “Set ‘er down.”
He rested an arm on Tal’s shoulder.
“Look. This ain’t pretty.”
Tal tried to envision what lay behind the sawali. Even surrounded by war, he’d not yet seen a dead man. He lived every day among the dying and figured that was enough.
“I’m all right.”
Remy squeezed Tal’s shoulder. “Good. There’s somethin’ else. Mac asked me to bring you here. Not just to cart him off.”
“What’d he want?”
“I’m gonna show you. But first things first. Here we go.”
Remy set aside the lid of the coffin. He pushed back the mat to enter the room. Tal, close behind, was struck by the dark stick figure on the lower bunk. Mac lay sucked dry like an unwrapped mummy. His head had swollen and his hands, always large, seemed the hands of a colossus against his shrunken body. Tal’s gut quivered, a shudder of revulsion just as Remy had warned. Tal stood rooted, staring. Though he knew cancer had done this, he chalked Mac’s death up to the Japanese. Again he considered Remy’s thinning frame, his own slender wrists, and Santana’s question: You think they’ll get here in time?
Remy moved, startling Tal into motion. Gathering the corners of Mac’s bedsheet, they hefted him through the doorway. The old piano player fit well into the casket Remy had made for him. Remy crossed his friend’s arms, adding to the image of a mummy, then folded the sheet around him. Remy fit the top of the coffin in place. Mac disappeared beneath it. Tal said goodbye to the man he suspected had been the least educated in the camp and among the wisest.
Remy gestured Tal back inside the room. He let the sawali drop, then stepped close. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“I need you to move back in here with me now.”
“No. I like Eleven.”
“Son, it’s not a question of what you like. It ain’t that simple. Things are bad, and it’s my guess they’re likely to get worse. I think you believe the same.”
“Yeah. I reckon.”
“Keep your voice down. This is what Mac wanted. I agreed. Now, I’m gonna show you something. Afterward, if you decide to move back into Twelve with me, well both go talk to Lucas. You tell him you want to take Mac’s bunk, and you’re gonna stay out of trouble. Lucas’ll make it square with the Japs.”
Remy checked the hall outside the sawali. Mac rested in his green coffin alone; the building remained quiet.
“Gimme a hand here.”
Remy set his grip under the frame of the bunk bed. Tal helped him lift it to the center of the room. On the uncovered space of the bamboo floor, Remy knelt to dislodge a slat. He reached into a cavity beneath the floor, to pull up a glass bottle secured to a wooden base. The bottle had been wrapped in copper wire; alligator clips and an earpiece from a military radio hung off it. Remy pointed at a miniature electronic tube between the clips.
“This is what you brought back through the fence.”
“What is it?”
“A germanium diode.”
“No.” Tal pointed. “I mean the whole thing. What is it?”
“Turns out ol’ Mac had a hobby other than gals. He built crystal radios.”
Remy connected an alligator clip to a loop in the wire encircling the bottle. He held the earpiece to his ear, then reset the clip to a different loop.
“Come
here. Take a listen.”
Tal knelt and took the earpiece. The sound came through faintly, but clear and without static.
“This is KROJ. The Voice of Freedom”
Tal pressed the earpiece hard into his head. “Where’s that coming from?”
“California.”
Remy reached for the earpiece. Tal was slow to let loose.
Remy returned the radio to silence. He set it in the hole below the floor. The two of them replaced the bunk.
Remy sat on the edge of his mattress. Tal stood, still gaping.
“How long?”
“Two years. We started back in Santo Tomas. You know all them rumors in the camp? The Americans take New Guinea? Guadalcanal? Leyte?”
“Yeah.”
“Me and Mac started ‘em. And now its gonna be you and me.”
Tal glanced at the bare mattress where Mac had died. “I want the top bunk.”
“You got it.”
~ * ~
Chapter Ten
O
ne soldier cried when he ejaculated. He ran from the room before he’d fully pulled up his pants.
The one after him had his saku break. Carmen cleaned herself in the manganic acid. The sting raked her insides.
Another knocked away her rice ball and slapped her for eating while he was on top of her.
One more cried with his climax. He turned his back to sit on the mattress. Sullen, the soldier tugged on his pantaloons. For two weeks Carmen had been careful whom she selected. She lay behind him, propped on one elbow, and chose this one. He wore glasses with round black frames and seemed bookish, shy, raw.
She asked him why he cried.
He made no answer. Carmen gentled a hand on his arm.
“English?”
He nodded.
“Talk?” she asked.
She waited until his boots were laced. The weeping young soldiers gained better control over themselves when restored to their uniforms. She tried again.
“Why do you cry?”
He hesitated, staring at his boots. In broken phrases and accented English, he said he was frightened. His division was bivouacked seven miles south of Los Baños, around San Pablo. Carmen and Yumi had walked through that town.
She prodded him with touches and innocent queries. He was part of the 8th, the Tiger Division. Their task was to block any American invasion force out of the east from reaching Manila.
“Are they strong, your Tigers?”
He described a division heavily armored with artillery and a tank unit.
“How many men?”
Ten thousand.
“Why are you afraid? That is so many.”
They are beiki. He searched for the English. American devils.
The soldier stood. He dug thumbs into his sockets to dry his eyes. He said he could see that Songu had little comfort for herself. If he could come again, he would bring food.
“Yes,” she said. “Domo arigato”
The boy straightened his tunic, hardening his bearing before leaving her room. He could spill tears in front of a pii, nowhere else.
“Chukun aikoku,” he grunted. He would die for the emperor. He said this as if to make Carmen proud of him.
He left. Carmen washed him away, stinging again. When she was finished, she dumped the basin out the open window into the camp. She set the emptied bowl in the hall, turned it upside down. This was the signal for Benito, the new mop boy in the shuho and a guerrilla with Terry’s Hunters, to come to her room.
~ * ~
In the late day, Carmen ran with Yumi across long shadows. They chased butterflies in the yard, rested in the shade of the animal husbandry building. Kenji observed from nearby.
The girls wore their green and red robes, unconcerned with being naked beneath. Carmen relished the grass under her toes and buttocks. They held hands, as they often did when together. They spoke in their four tongues, Carmen choosing Tagalog instead of English when she did not want Kenji to understand. They also tried to communicate with inflection and pantomime. Carmen told Yumi about the Tuck boy, unsure if the girl understood. They taught each other numbers; Carmen counted to ten in Korean. They traded words. The one Carmen tried most to remember was han, Korean for “grudge.”
Kenji left the girls outside for an hour, the longest they’d been together since Christmas. When four American fighter planes coursed low over the camp, he approached and said, “Inside.” Yumi got to her feet quickly. She spoke sharply in Japanese. Kenji registered nothing at her rebuke. Yumi stomped to the rear door of the building, leaving Kenji and Carmen behind.
He reached down to help Carmen off the ground.
“I can do nothing with her,” he said. “She’s a pet of Toshiwara.”
Carmen did not let go of Kenji’s hand. “Kenji-sama. Come inside. Have sex with me.”
The tall Japanese drew back his head in surprise.
She said, “It’s been weeks since the last time.”
“I haven’t had money. Our pay has been slow. And ... I thought you might be angry with me.”
“Over the walk? That wasn’t your fault. Besides, you stayed with us. I’m not mad. This one is free. If Mama says something I’ll spit in her eye.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t want to, forget it.”
“I want to. I have tried to be kind. Like today. Outside for an hour.”
“Yes. So come, Kenji-sama.”
She let him follow her closely up the steps, knowing her robe only partially covered her bottom. On the third-floor landing, Mama turned Songu’s wooden tag over to mark that she was available. Carmen leaned past the Filipina woman to snatch the tag from its hook. She took it with her down the hall, towing Kenji by the hand. She dared Mama with a look. The old makipili glared daggers.
Carmen let Kenji enter first, then lowered the curtain behind him. She shrugged off her robe to stand in its red folds. Kenji removed his cap, then undressed meticulously. Most soldiers did no more than drop their pants, but Kenji, almost tenderly with himself, unclasped his many snaps and buckles to bare his entire body He stood naked with her in front of the tatami. Carmen was struck by how underfed Kenji had become. His belly had sunk behind his ribcage, his hip bones protruded like a woman’s. She ran a hand up the indentations of his ribs.
Kenji had no condom with him. From a drawer, she handed him a newly cleaned one. She lay on the mattress, watching him try to tug the saku over his erect penis. The saku had no lubricant after washing. Carmen took it from him, spat into it, and spat into her palm to rub saliva over his erection. Kenji stretched the sheath into place. The low sun pouring through her window turned his yellow skin to gold.
Kenji knelt between her spread knees. She spat once more into her hand to moisten her vagina. This was pleasurable for Kenji; his coated penis bobbed once. She said, “Now.”
Kenji lay forward. She braced for his weight and found him light and little burden. She reached down to guide him inside. He gasped, nestling his head beside her ear. Carmen wrapped him in her arms and let him hear her breathe. She watched the rectangle of sunlight on her wall, wondering if she might see it move as the sun set.
Because the sex was free and at Carmen’s invitation, Kenji conducted himself as if it were significant. He propped himself on his hands to look down on her searchingly. He thrust as if to please her, but ended by rounding his lips in climax. He smiled, then rolled next to her to lie on his back. The shadow of a bird flew through the square of light on the wall. Carmen lowered her knees.
Surely Mama sat in the foyer fuming that Songu had taken down her wooden tag. Carmen would only have a little more time before the old makipili banged on the doorframe. Carmen lay on her back, to speak without facing Kenji. Her breasts, never large, drained by hunger, flattened to shallow dollops.
“I want you to speak with Yumi.”
In her periphery, Kenji turned his eyes to her. “I do speak with her for you.”
“I have a different reason, Ken
ji-sama. She lies with Toshiwara. I want to know what he tells her.”
A lull separated them. Kenji gazed a long time at the side of her head.
“Why?”
“Because I’ve begun to work for the guerrillas.”
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 13