“You promise enough guns and ammunition?”
Bolick replied. “Done.”
The Huks would keep those weapons after the war. This couldn’t be helped.
The guerrilla pouted his bottom lip. “The Hukbalahaps pledge support.”
This turned the tide in the meeting. The other commanders followed suit, backing Gusto until they found an opportunity to supplant him.
Bolick produced a message he’d received from his superiors at General Guerrilla Command in Parañaque. The two-page memo, addressed to Gusto, spelled out how to proceed once the resistance groups gave their consent. The guerrillas were ordered to determine and report on Japanese strength and positions around the internee camp, the number and capabilities of guerrilla forces available, road conditions, and the extent of the internees’ health. In the final paragraph, Gusto was given permission to wait for reinforcements from the Americans, or attack with the guerrilla force at hand.
The assembled commanders and fighters listened to the instructions without comment. When Gusto finished reading, one youngster, Romeo, chief of the PQOG Red Lions unit, raised his hand like the student he’d been before Japan invaded.
“What if the rescue fails?”
Bolick answered. “The Japanese’ll take revenge on the internees. That’s why we don’t fail, boys.”
“What if it succeeds?”
“Then we get everybody out.”
“Everybody?”
Bolick lacked the patience to decipher what this young commander was getting at.
“Why don’t you just say what you’re sayin’.”
“What I want to know, Sergeant, is what happens after all the internees are saved? Who’s going to protect the people left behind in the villages? If the Japanese blame the locals for collaborating, who’s going to stop them?”
“We will.”
“I don’t believe you.” With a sweeping hand, Romeo encompassed the many guerrillas around the table. “All of you, say right now you’ll come from your own territories to fight for my villages. Swear it. I want every man here to swear. And you, Sergeant. I want to hear it from you, too.”
The little Huk commander shot to his feet. “I don’t need to swear to you, Romeo. Not to nobody.”
General, from the Fil-Americans, repeated the same harsh refusal. It sounded to him like the PQOG had just insulted his fighters.
Bolick edged back his chair. Under the table, many itchy hands inched toward holsters and triggers.
Bolick stood for the first time. He lifted both large white hands, brushing the plaster ceiling.
“Tumahimik ka!” He’d asked Gusto to teach him this phrase.
The guerrilla chieftains shut up, as Bolick directed. The ones standing sat. Gusto remained on his feet. Bolick returned to his chair. He gestured for Gusto to address the question.
With no taint of pride, Gusto said, “Romeo, you have reason to trust my word. I give it to you now. After the internees are safe, we’ll stage raids on the Japanese to protect the towns. No one here is a coward. No one hates the Japanese more than the next. We all agree?”
Every guerrilla nodded. Romeo held his head high, unapologetic. Those were his people, his villages. He looked like he’d go toe-to-toe with every man in this room for them.
An unbalanced silence settled on the room, anticipating another tilt into argument. Bolick spoke, to conclude the business and get out of here with the guerrillas’ shaky compact intact.
“Last thing. We need a reliable contact inside the camp.”
Romeo answered. “PQOG is taking care of that as we speak.”
~ * ~
Chapter Twenty-four
T
HE DOCTOR pushed a finger deep into Carmen’s vagina.
“Itai desu ka?”
From outside the curtain, Kenji interpreted. “Does that hurt?”
“No.”
The old physician removed his finger, then cleaned his hand on a towel. He probed in the creases of both legs on either side of her pubis.
“Itai desu ka?”
“No.”
The doctor wore his hair longer than a regular soldier’s. His glasses were wire-rimmed. His breath carried a hint of mint and sanitation.
Because the doctor’s biweekly visits were not sexual, Carmen despised his presence. His delving made her aware of her body, its use and damage. She could not ignore him, eat a rice ball or fly in her mind away out the window, over the camp. She must lie here and listen, answer, submit. He’d come to help, he conducted himself as an innocent. This humiliated Carmen more.
The doctor collected his steel spreader from the tatami and stood. He wiped the tool on the towel before tossing the cloth to the floor. Quickly he pushed aside the curtain. Carmen lowered her legs and sat up, closing her robe before Kenji could look into the room. The doctor motioned him in.
Kenji listened to short bursts from the doctor, then translated for Carmen. “You are not diseased but you are swollen. You should rest. The doctor knows you will not be allowed to. The same goes for the Korean girl.”
The doctor made one long statement that Kenji did not relate to Carmen. The man pointed at her, she had not risen to her feet. She’d been made sore by the exam. The doctor was never gentle and in his own way also treated her like a pii.
The doctor swept out of the room carrying his small black bag. Kenji stepped into the hall after him but the doctor did not pause. Kenji looked to have swallowed something he meant to say. The doctor’s footfalls tapped down the stairs.
Carmen set her back to the wall beneath the window.
“What did the doctor say to you?”
Kenji was slow to turn from the doctor’s departure. “That I’m a coward.”
“Why would he say this?”
Kenji looked again down the hall as if the doctor had left a trail of condemnation.
“He understands that I am...fond of you. He said that you are Filipina. I should take you away from here, into the villages. He knows that can t be done for Yumi. But you would not be found.”
Carmen gestured to the edge of the mattress for Kenji to sit. When he’d arranged his long legs, she spoke.
“The Kempeitai would go for my family. You know this.”
“You have contacts in the underground. It would be a simple thing for the mop boy to get word to your parents in Manila. They could go into hiding outside the city. The Americans are on Luzon. This will only be for a few months. They’d be safe until the war is over.”
“You’re no coward, Kenji-sama.”
“Am I not?”
Carmen folded her legs under her to wait. Kenji stared out the open window.
“Do you know,” he said, “what recruits are called in the Japanese army? Issen gorin. This used to be the price of a postcard. That’s what a soldier is worth, the paper it costs to send the draft notice. We are beaten and abused in training. We’re the last stop in a long journey of cruelty. Every rank above treats us worse than animals. Then we’re sent into battle and told to die in victory. We cannot live in defeat. The emperor, you see, would be ashamed.”
Kenji pinched the bridge of his nose. Through the open window, in the far distance, another round of bombardments started. The high drone of aircraft covered Kenji’s long sigh.
“I was assigned to the Eighteenth Division in Burma. It was autumn and pleasant, even with so much jungle. I was stationed near the coast. Then the Americans moved into the hills. We were sent to chase them. I lasted as long as I could, but the Americans are very efficient fighters.”
A detonation rattled Carmen’s room. Kenji smiled ruefully, raising a finger to imply: There, see?
“My nerves shattered after a while. I began to weep, frankly, and could not move forward. My captain handed me a knife and told me to clean my honor. He told me, “Tenno heika banzai! Long live His Majesty the Emperor. I handed the knife back. Oddly, my nerve restored itself. I did not want to die for the emperor, and became rather brave about it. I a
ccepted a reduction in rank, my portion of disgrace, and was transferred to Los Baños with the rest of these broken soldiers. So it would seem the doctor saw right through me.”
Carmen waited to respond, letting Kenji order his thoughts. He didn’t want to die without purpose, for an emperor he did not worship. For Carmen, that didn’t make him a coward. She would have told him this, but he spoke first.
“I’ll do it. Tonight. I’ll take you to Anos. I’ll tell Toshiwara I took you to the doctor. You tricked me, you faked being sick and escaped. You tell the mop boy to alert your family in Manila. Make your way to the guerrillas, they’ll protect you.”
Kenji glared, suddenly fervent. Carmen envisioned an end put to this room and everything that had happened here. She saw herself clothed all day long, fed, left alone in her body without the constant invasion. Her pain would ease, her shame fade. With the guerrillas she could live in the forest, drink from the rivers. And sleep.
Carmen rose from the mattress to place herself in the window above the camp, a red beacon for the boy. Where was he? Every day she tracked him however she could in those hours when she could stand. He stationed himself where she might see him, under the great tree, strolling the fence and daring the guards. This morning she could not find him. Was he in the barracks eating breakfast? Was he watching the main gate? She needed him right now. Appear, boy!
At her back, Kenji asked, “What are you looking for?”
Carmen scanned the camp. She needed to answer Kenji. The boy was nowhere.
She closed her eyes and located him there; he had not strayed or hidden at all. But he was not safe.
“I can’t go.”
Kenji stood from the tatami. They faced each other. In minutes, Kenji would walk away, she would stay. In the foyer, with the doctor’s exam over, Mama would turn outward the Songu tag.
“Why not?”
“I have to save the camp.”
Kenji held out empty hands. “And you?” He indicated the thin mattress under his boots. “Can you stand more of this?”
Carmen laid a soft touch on his sleeve. Fooling and using Kenji had meant little to her. She regretted it now, wishing he were not kind.
“Neither of us wants to die for no reason, Kenji-sama. But what would we do if we had a reason, hmm? We do, you and me.”
She backed away.
“Go. Thank you. But go.”
~ * ~
In the afternoon, Yumi fought another soldier. The young one on top of Carmen could not perform for all the upset in the halls and on the landing. Mama and Papa rushed to calm the angry soldier outside Yumi’s curtain. The Japanese shouted threats, Yumi answered him in screeches. In Carmen’s room, her bucktoothed boy withdrew from her, throwing up his arms. He pushed back her curtain, pants around his ankles, to shout down the hall at the noisemakers. He needed to concentrate. When the boy knelt again on the tatami, he was flustered, his penis wilted. He peeled off the saku with a snap that she wondered did not hurt him. He did not speak English, or Carmen would have finished him with her hand. She let him rail. He did not strike her but snatched his ticket off the table, clearly intending a refund from Mama.
None of the soldiers that day spoke English. They were the issen gorin of Kanji’s description, poor-quality recruits, the bottom of Japans barrel. None had been in battle yet, all were likely headed to the defense of Manila. From her elbows, between her brown knees, she studied them. With their pants down she saw the marks of discipline, bruised buttocks and thighs from bamboo rods. Sometimes the bridges of their noses or cheeks were cut. Who could it surprise when these boys raped or murdered? They followed their training, to treat those beneath them without mercy. In the Japanese mind, all races were beneath them.
That evening, after she’d bathed and done her laundry, Benito arrived. Carmen had not set the basin upside down in the hall. He surprised her at sunset when he knocked on the doorframe. Carmen stood in the window wearing her blue blouse. Inside the wire, electricity had been out for a week. The internees among the barracks and along the fence walked with lanterns, like fireflies. Carmen, with her power still on, had cut off her lamp to be with them in the lowering dark.
“Yes?” she called without leaving the window. She had not seen Tal once today. It was her heart’s habit to look for him.
“May I come in?” the Filipino boy asked in Tagalog. He peeked around the drape. She motioned him into the room. His pinuti bolo was missing and he carried a mop, as Mama had ordered.
“I have nothing for you,” she said without leaving the window.
“That’s not why I came.”
Carmen turned. “What’s wrong?”
“I have something to tell you. And a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“The guerrillas are getting impatient.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know the town of Bai?”
“North of Manila, yes.”
“Three days ago a Japanese finance officer was killed by the Hukbalahaps. This morning the Japanese answered. They murdered three hundred people in the town. They burned the people in their homes and bayoneted the ones who ran out the doors.”
Carmen covered her mouth. Benito remained emotionless.
“The Americans want us to stay patient, but that’s getting harder to do. All over Luzon, the guerrillas are planning actions on their own. Around Los Baños, there are four different guerrilla groups. If we don’t all stay in line, it’s not going to be good for the people in the camp. It won’t be long before the Japanese take some revenge on the internees.”
Carmen steadied herself under visions of the charred village of Bai.
Benito continued. “We’re worried about that pit the Japanese dug. It’s big and we don’t know what it’s for. Do you?”
“I’ll try to find out. Is that what you came to ask?”
“Yes. And something else. I want to know about the Tuck boy.”
Carmen held herself in check. What could Benito want with Tal?
“Why?”
“I have to know if he’s reliable.”
Carmen froze. The guerrillas meant danger. She had to hide Tal from them just like the guerrillas had to hide from the Japanese.
She plotted a lie. Benito smiled for the first time since entering.
“It’s no secret. All right?”
Carmen nodded.
“We’re in contact with the American army. They sent us a radioman to get all the guerrillas to coordinate. The Americans want us to meet with one of the internees. You know Tuck better than any of the contacts we’ve got inside the camp. I need to know we can trust him. That he can make it out of the wire and back, and do what we need.”
This morning, Carmen told Kenji she would not leave. She’d stay in this hateful shuho, pay with her body for secrets to safeguard the Tuck boy. Could she send him now under the fence, into the jungle to meet with the guerrillas? Two men had already been shot for leaving the camp. What if Tal became the third? What if she were to blame? She’d trusted Benito with her own life. The mop boy added to this, asking that he be trusted with Tal’s, too.
“Carmen.” Benito wrung the mop handle, impatient. “The meeting’s in four days. We’ll smuggle in a message and let him know it came from you. He’ll do it then. Right?”
She approached the window. Full night had fallen. Even at a distance, she spotted Remy under the dao. By lantern light he dealt himself cards. Tal lay beside him, smoking.
~ * ~
Chapter Twenty-five
R
EMY LAID another card in the grass, not the one he needed.
In the lantern’s glow, he flipped a few more cards until the solitaire game petered out on him. “Nine in a row,” he muttered.
Next to him, the boy lit another hand-rolled cigarette from the ember of the one before it, to save matches.
“And really,” Remy snapped, “how can you chain-smoke that crap? It smells like you’re smokin’ a cats ass.”
; Tal tossed away the spent butt. He lay back with one arm under his head, bringing the new cigarette to his lips.
“What’re you so grouchy about?”
“Ahh, these damn cards.” Remy swept them off the grass. He shuffled the deck and dealt the first rows of another hand. He stopped, tossing the deck to the grass.
“Not winning?” Tal asked. “That’s not like you.”
Broken Jewel - [World War II 05] Page 24