“Will you fight?”
“If we have to, of course.”
Carmen envisioned Kenji firing a rifle. She believed it would knock him on the seat of his pants.
Yumi cast a question at Kenji. He replied, shaking his head. Yumi tightened her arms around Carmen before letting go.
“She asks if you can go home now. I told her you cannot. The war isn’t done, Carmen. Do not leave. If the makipilis report you missing to the Kempeitai, nothing will change for your family. They’ll be held accountable. You know this. Stay here, safe. And keep this wild one here, too. Wait.”
“For what?”
“For me to come back.”
Kenji slid one shoulder through the drape.
“I will come back.” He said this like a hero, and was gone.
Carmen switched off the lamp. She lay down. Now Yumi could not rest. The girl put her elbows on the windowsill and chattered. Carmen understood nothing, couldn’t tell Japanese from Korean, but supposed Yumi spoke curses.
The boy would come to her today. To look rested when he did, Carmen fell asleep.
~ * ~
“Songu! Songu!”
Carmen drew a deep breath, blinking herself awake. She opened her eyes into Yumi’s bare legs; the girl slept curled beneath the window.
Papa stood at the edge of the tatami, wiggling Carmen’s toes.
“Stop it,” she said. “What.”
“The guards.”
“They’re gone, I know.” Carmen sat up. Yumi did not flinch.
“Wake the chosenjin.”
Yumi snorted at Papa’s voice, an instant distaste at the old man.
“Someone comes,” Papa said.
“Who?”
“Two of the internees. They’re not supposed to be outside the camp.”
“Who?” Carmen repeated.
“A young man and an older one.”
Carmen sat up, alarmed. Yumi did the same. She looked ready to pounce on Papa. Carmen spread an arm across the girl to keep her in check.
“Where are they?”
“Coming over the grass. Songu, please.”
“Please what?”
“I’ve done my best to keep you comfortable. Away from harm. My wife. She ... I’m afraid for the end of the war.”
The makipili wrung his hands.
“I’ll do for you what you’ve done for me, old man. No less.”
Papa nodded, thinking Carmen had given him an assurance.
From the stairwell at the end of the hall, voices were raised. Mama spoke harshly with two Americans. Yumi jumped to her feet. She put her hand over her heart, beaming at Carmen. Before Papa could resist, Yumi flew past him, sweeping aside the curtain.
Papa nodded again, this time as though a servant to his mistress. He ducked under the drape. Carmen stood. The boy would see her as he always had, on her feet.
Papa pulled back the curtain. The boy hesitated. Papa said, “Go ahead.”
The Tuck boy entered. Papa dropped the curtain and walked off.
The first thing Carmen noticed was not something about the boy, but that no obstacles stood between them. She ran her eyes along the floor; it lay open and flat, subject to mere steps. She took one.
He lifted a hand, stopping her.
“I’m . . . my name is Talbot. Tal. My father calls me Talbot but I... I like Tal.”
“Hello, Tal Tuck.”
“You know my last name. That other girl, out in the hall.”
“Yumi.”
“Yeah. She’s a wildcat. She knew it, too.”
Carmen pointed behind her out the open window. “I watch. I listen.”
“I know.”
“Yes, you do, boy.” She called him by her heart’s name. She let it stand. “I’m Carmen.”
Amazing, she thought. To have accepted for months that this boy would die in the camp and she would die in the shuho, that they would never be close, never speak or be moments from touching. Here they stood.
She stepped forward again. He’d lived long enough in her head and in distance. She raised a hand to lay it on him, make him real and here and alone with her.
But they were not alone. With Tal Tuck finally before her, a thousand Japanese reared between them, standing, kneeling. Remarkably, through the crowd, she could see this boy. A path opened. She did not know how long it would remain. She feared it could close, and she would lose sight of the Tuck boy.
He did not reach back.
“You should go,” he said.
“What?”
“The guards have taken off. You’re Filipina. You ought to leave. Go home.”
Carmen did not lower her arm. “I can’t. They’ll hurt my family.”
“That’s cruddy.” He put out his hand. She took it.
“I guess you’re stuck here, then. With me.”
She focused on their joined hands, separate colors, mingled lives. With a light tug he pulled her to his chest. She released his hand to embrace him.
Carmen laid her head to his chest. She probed along his shoulders where the beating had healed, ran fingers down his spine, the furrows of his ribs. Tal Tuck seemed to be the boy she’d hoped he would be, steady and strong. He was more handsome and thin than she could have known.
He pulled out of her arms. He patted swollen pockets.
“I brought you some rice.”
Carmen found a bowl. He filled it with grains. She laughed to see him burrow into his clothes for every last bit.
When he was done, he stepped onto the tatami. She wanted him off it. He stood in the center of the thousand. She bit her lip that he might sense them, too. Tal Tuck paused, silent, then moved to the window. He set his hands on the sill, leaned into the open air. She joined him.
“You got a good view,” he said. “You can see pretty much everything from up here.”
Carmen laid an open hand on his cheek. She pulled him down to her lips. In the window, she kissed him once, lightly.
She said, “Take Yumi and me into the camp.”
~ * ~
Chapter Fourteen
T
HE GIRL said, “I’m Carmen.”
She held out her hand. Remy shook it. He made himself banish the image of Nagata behind her, to give her a chance.
She was pretty in the Filipina blend of Asian and Latin, almond eyes on coffee skin. Tal, dark as his mother, stood beside her. They looked good together, like two young trees that might bend in a storm and not break. Remy wished that for them. They linked hands and headed down the stairs.
Yumi, the tiny Korean girl, enclosed Remy’s hand in hers. She’d dressed in the same outfit as Carmen, baggy T-shirt and soldier’s khakis. With Yumi in tow, Remy followed Tal and Carmen. The makipili woman shouted obscenities after them.
Leaving the building, they traced the wire back to the main gate. Remy didn’t look through the fence. He had enough on his plate at the moment than to deal with the shock or bigotry of others. He’d never seen his son with a girl, hadn’t even thought about it. In their three years of imprisonment, Tal had grown in so many other ways, in courage, spirit, even size, that the notion of women hadn’t crossed Remy’s mind. In the past year, especially, the boy hadn’t wanted much to do with Remy, getting himself tossed into No. 11 just to move away. Now they were roommates again and conspirators. His boy walked in the sunshine with a girl on his arm. Remy was proud that Tal could overlook what she was, whatever that turned out to be. He prepared to stare down anyone in the camp who might give the boy a cross word or a sideways glance. Remy would have to find a place to lock away his own discomfort.
The guards at the gate took no notice. Little Yumi barked at them in Japanese, making Remy nervous. The soldiers seemed nettled.
“Can you tell her not to do that?” Remy asked Carmen.
The Filipina cast a disarming grin over her shoulder. “No.”
Inside the wire, the excited mood continued. Everywhere, internees wandered in ecstatic stupors, wrapping their arms around any
adult or child in reach. Committee members explored the Japanese barracks for papers. Lucas set up shop in Toshiwara’s office. Young Donnelly and some of his yahoos poked their heads out of one of the guards’ pillboxes. A team of women happily chased three squealing sows through the mud of the commandant’s private livestock pen.
Tal squired Carmen around the camp, with Remy and Yumi in their wake. They ambled past the kitchen to the infirmary and the Protestant chapel, to the cemetery and Macs grave. They walked south through the rows of barracks, in and out of Vatican City, over to No. 11, then to No. 12, where he lived now with Remy. The two never relinquished hands, nor did Yumi let go of Remy. They passed many internees who offered smiles. Some ladies, especially among the missionaries, gave Carmen and Yumi pecks and whispers of “Dear child.” Others, mostly men, leered. A few muttered tasteless comments. Tal bristled. The Filipinas grip firmed around the boy’s hand. She strolled unburdened and dignified as any young woman. Remy sped Yumi along to walk in front of the two. Along the way he told more than a few acid-faced men to keep walking and look elsewhere.
The four crossed the field to sit under the shade of the dao tree. No one else joined them on the cool patch of grass. The rest of the camp seemed incapable of being still; the thought of liberation, of Camp Freedom, drove them in every direction inside the fence like pinballs. Four hours after the departure of the Japanese, local Filipinos entered the camp to visit separated friends or sell food. They came through the gates past the handfuls of soldiers who seemed unsure of their own duties. The vendors gave them fruit and the soldiers stood aside. The loudspeaker announced that Toshiwara’s guards had left behind a radio receiver which they attempted to break before vacating. This radio was under repair. As soon as it worked, the Internee Committee would broadcast the Voice of Freedom to the whole camp.
Carmen and Tal sat cross-legged, touching knees. Yumi lounged on the grass with ankles crossed, finally letting go of Remy. For a firebrand, she seemed patient and pleased with everything. The little Koreans experience was likely just as horrific as Carmen’s. That would surely make a shady morning on the grass extra pleasant.
The four sat smiling but with little conversation. Remy stuck a weed between his teeth. He could not calculate the chasm that loomed between his son and the girl. Their worlds could scarcely be more different. Holding hands seemed a fragile bridge. They’d both been victims of the Japanese, but they’d need more. Shared words, open hearts, time. Remy considered walking away, letting them get to it. Yumi couldn’t understand anything in English, she’d be fine to leave behind with them. But he didn’t trust his son’s temper in the event of some interlopers, drunk on their new liberty, putting their asses on their shoulders and saying the wrong thing. Tal hadn’t given him a high sign yet to take off.
“Carmen?”
“Yes, sir?”
He waved this away. “You can call me Remy. He does.”
The girl addressed Tal. “Why do you call your father by his first name?”
Remy added, “He used to call me Dad, when he was a kid.”
Remy guessed this was a bad move, referring to his son as a kid in front of the girl. Before he could cover it up, Tal spoke.
“Mom died when I was young. In Australia. Then we moved to Manila. And Remy wasn’t Dad anymore.”
Remy pulled the weed from his teeth to toss it into their small circle. That stung, and he questioned that it should have been said out loud like that. But his son rushed to be known by this girl. That meant opening every vault that held secrets and scars. Decades had passed since Remy had his own young love. He’d forgotten the hurry it was in.
“Sorry, boy.”
“I know.”
“Just so you know. It took me a while to get over your mother’s passing. Before I could fix it with you, the Japs rounded us up.”
Remy reached across to pat Tal’s knee.
Tal said, “You’re still Remy.”
“That’s fine. Long as you’re okay with being ‘boy.’”
The girl beamed. Remy returned to the question he’d meant to ask.
“Carmen, where’re you from in the Philippines?”
“Manila.”
“I love that town.”
“I was kidnapped.”
She said this simply, not to shock but to share the way Tal had.
Tal reached for her hand. The girl took it. She addressed herself to Remy, as if she needed words to tell him, but not the boy. Tal seemed to know already.
She laid it all out. Her brutalizing, her rape, the Kempeitai.
She spoke about Hua, the Chinese girls fight with despondency, her quiet and inevitable suicide. Carmen told Yumi’s story, too, how the child was tricked into believing she was bound for factory work in Japan, her rape, the betrayal by her own father, her year in the Round Pearl in Manila. How they were called by the Japanese “comfort women” and “pii.”
“There are tens of thousands like us,” Carmen said. “I’m sure of it. The Japanese would not treat their own women this way.”
Remy sat stunned. The extent of the Japanese cruelty, the organized fashion of it, made it even more atrocious. The gambler in him watched for deadness in Carmen’s eyes, in her tone, to gauge the pain’s depth. He felt terrible for her but he had to protect his son. Was she a girl too hurt to ever recover, ever love? Listening, Remy grew as saddened by her as he was impressed. Carmen had indeed been through hell. Here she sat describing it.
The mood of the camp settled while they talked. An early lunch was announced, serving up the first of the Japanese foodstuffs left behind. This chilled the last bits of looting, once the internees were made aware that all would benefit.
Remy clapped. “I got an idea.” He pointed at Yumi. “She speaks Japanese, right? And Carmen speaks Tagalog.”
Tal answered. “Yeah.”
“Let’s walk into town. Buy these gals some clothes of their own. Let ‘em get out of these Jap togs.”
“That’s nuts.”
“A little. You done nuttier, I recall. We get in a tight spot with soldiers, Yumi here’ll talk our way out of it. Carmen can handle the locals. Carmen, you up for it?”
The girl sat up sharply, tickled. “Yes.”
“Okay. I’m gonna reckon little Perils of Pauline here is up for anything.” He stood. “I’ll be gone less than an hour. Talbot, keep your head on your shoulders. Stay here, get to know each other better.”
“Where you going?”
“We got to have spendin’ money, boy.”
Remy left the shade. Lazlo was easy to find. The chubby bandit sat in his cubicle alone, grumbling at the devaluation of his stores now that the Japanese had gone and left their supplies behind. Remy had little trouble talking him into a game of poker to distract his blues. Remy agreed to borrow a hundred Philippine pesos as his stake, at 20 percent interest, the first time in months he’d played for money. Lazlo summoned a few others in the building. Remy tripled his stake. He tossed Lazlo 102 pesos, explaining that ought to be enough for the forty minutes he’d had Lazlo’s cash.
Under the dao tree, his son and the girls had been joined by young Donnelly and the Irishman, Bascom. Remy arrived to hear Donnelly describe the menu for lunch.
“Pork and beans, pork and greens, pork and I don’t give a damn.”
“We’re headin’ into the village,” Remy told him. “There’s safety in numbers. Feel like a stroll?”
“Tuck, old boy. I have waited three years to put one foot in front of the other as far as I please. We will gladly come along. But lunch first.”
All joined Remy on his feet. Tal reached down to help Carmen stand. Bascom did the same for Yumi. The tiny Korean girl twinkled, flirtatious, and did not let Bascom go.
The six of them ate in No. 11. The boys recognized Carmen, the girl in the window. The presence of Tal and Donnelly kept everyone’s manners in check. When Yumi flashed her smile and Carmen conducted herself with winning grace, a few admiring glances sprang up among the b
oys. Remy endured a few friendly jibes, but that was all the troublemakers came up with. They got in line for their first meal without the Japanese, a full plate of mango beans and hulled rice covered with gravy, beside a white slice of pork rump glistening with fat.
At the table, Remy chewed through the first mouthful. He almost wept to see so much on his plate. His felt the food drop into his stomach. All the boys and the two girls stuffed themselves.
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 16