The Year of Counting Souls

by Wallace, Michael

  “Listen up, Mori. I’m going to give you orders, and I want to make this very clear. Are you listening?”

  “Yes, sir, I am list—”

  Mori didn’t finish the word. Instead he ended the call. Then he pulled off the panel cover and disconnected the leads to the receiver. Fujiwara and the radioman were both staring at him when he finished.

  Gekokujō.

  The lesser ranks lead from below. A strategy that had always set Mori’s teeth to grinding, an excuse for incompetence and insubordination. Yet here he was, doing the same thing.

  “Sir?” Fujiwara asked.

  “I didn’t actually hear the colonel’s orders.”

  “No, sir, but I’m not sure that answer would satisfy him.”

  “You are right, Lieutenant, it would not.”

  Indeed, Mori could already imagine the colonel raging in his office, shouting at subordinates and throwing things. Heaven help the Filipino in Manila today who crossed the man’s path; he’d get his head lopped from his shoulders if he dared frown in the man’s direction.

  “So what will we do?” Fujiwara asked.

  “It’s temporary for now. If we don’t find what we’re looking for, we can always reconnect the radio and give a suitable excuse.” He glanced at his adjutant, then to the radioman. “I’m sure we all agree that a small falsehood would be justified in this case.”

  “What kind of falsehood?” the radioman asked, tone cautious.

  “We lost the radio due to a technical problem,” Mori said. “Now it’s back, a few hours later. Again, this lie is only necessary if we don’t find what we’re looking for.”

  “And if we do find what we want, sir?” Fujiwara asked.

  “Then the radio stays disconnected. We go into the mountains to find the traitor, to capture the Americans. Once that happens, it won’t matter if we disobeyed orders or not.”

  “In that case,” Fujiwara said, “we’d better get started interrogating the prisoner. That is what you intend, isn’t it, sir?”

  It was indeed, although it was not without some reluctance that Mori led his adjutant back into the hospital. He was not naturally a cruel man, after all, though he could be firm when needed. Perhaps if he was lucky, there would be no need for it.

  Two of his men carried out Yamaguchi, who had one hand on his wounded thigh and the other on his face in an attempt to cover a grimace. The incident would be humiliating for the young man. Good. It would serve as a lesson.

  One of Mori’s men had tied the injured Filipino’s wrists and ankles to the cot, but this looked unnecessary. The man was heavily bandaged and also shaking and pale. The bandages smelled of decay, and it seemed as though his wounds were infected.

  “Translate for me,” Mori told his adjutant. Then, to the Filipino, “You must know why we’re here, and what we’re looking for.”

  Fujiwara translated this into Tagalog, but the man just stared.

  Mori continued in a calm voice. “The Americans, the others who were here with you, where did they go?”

  Again there was no answer. Mori didn’t show anger or emotion, but he removed his sword from its sheath. The Filipino blinked hard, then closed his eyes tightly.

  “I know the common opinion in the army,” Mori said, “but I don’t believe it. I think the Japanese are wrong about this.”

  “What opinion is that, sir?” Fujiwara asked.

  “That’s for you to translate, not for you to answer.”

  “Oh, sorry, sir. I misunderstood.”

  Once the lieutenant had translated it into Tagalog, Mori continued. “People say the Pinoys are cowards, that they’ll only fight when the Americans are standing there shouting at them. I don’t believe this. Maybe you people don’t have training, and maybe not all of you are fighters, but plenty are brave enough. Look at you, closing your eyes while you wait for me to cut off your head. You’re not begging for mercy. And yet you weren’t brave enough to kill yourself when you had the chance. That shows you have a breaking point. Or maybe you’re just a Catholic and couldn’t kill yourself because it’s a mortal sin. We’ll find out.”

  He took the tip of his sword and caught the edge of the injured man’s bandages. Among other wounds, the man was swathed from ankle to thigh in bandages that may have once been white but were now blotched and dirty where they’d bled through. The man’s eyes flew open, and he winced when the blade cut through the dirty linen.

  “You should have taken the morphine,” Mori said. “If not enough to kill yourself, then to deaden the pain.”

  The Filipino had remained stoic, feigning indifference, though he must be terrified. Any man would be in his situation. Now, however, his eyes moved to Fujiwara even before the adjutant began to translate Mori’s words. Anxious to know what was being said, to learn his fate. His eyes widened slightly; then he looked away again.

  Once he had cut through the bandages, Mori used the tip of the sword to peel them back from the wound. The flesh on the calf and thigh had been stitched together in three different locations, two of them ragged, and the third in a straight line, as if someone had cut in with a scalpel to repair internal damage. A fine hand had stitched them up again, using sutures that looked impossibly small.

  Mori had spent time in a field hospital in China and watched Japanese surgeons at work. Speed was paramount, getting as many men back on their feet as fast as possible. A soldier without a gun in his hand was worthless. In contrast, the American doctor who’d operated on this man had worked with an eye that looked beyond function to aesthetics. And with the Filipino’s extensive burns to the upper body, it was possible that a Japanese doctor would have determined the case hopeless from the beginning.

  Unfortunately the wound on the thigh had turned gangrenous. The flesh was swollen until it made the sutures ooze, and a sickly greenish color radiated outward into uninjured tissue. It smelled like a dead animal.

  “This man needs his leg amputated,” Mori said. “You don’t have to be a doctor to see that.”

  “If we do that, how will we get him down to Santa Maria?” Fujiwara asked. “You can’t cut off a man’s leg and then force him to march out of the hills on foot, sir.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Mori paused with his sword tip just above the man’s thigh. “Tell the man he has one more chance. Tell us what we want and he won’t hurt anymore. We’ll get him morphine and medical care.”

  Of course, the two secret police had just agreed that medical care would be pointless. In any event, Mori’s small company had a medic, but no doctor.

  The Filipino didn’t respond, which forced the law officer to make good on his implied threat. He took the tip of the sword and plucked at the sutures. They broke apart like the stitches of an overinflated ball. Pus and blood ran out.

  The man’s stoicism vanished at the first touch. He bucked and threw his head back with a loud groan. His hands fought with the restraints the Japanese soldiers had fastened to his wrists and legs.

  Mori poked and prodded with his sword tip, lancing the infected wounds on the upper thigh. Soon enough the stubborn prisoner was babbling for mercy. Mori stopped and asked again for information, even while he kept the blackened, dripping tip of his sword near the wound.

  This time the prisoner talked. He didn’t have a lot of information, but he had enough.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Louise’s conversation with Dr. Claypool left her worried and feeling alone. Frankie had been on the verge of a breakdown since Manila, Clarice and Maria Elena were young and frightened, and now the doctor seemed to be cracking under the strain. She needed him to hold it together.

  But she soon had worries other than the doctor’s mental state. Within a few more days, her predictions came true, and disease swept through the camp. Three men went down with dengue, which the soldiers called breakbone fever, because it felt like someone had taken a hammer to every bone in the body. Several others suffered from malaria, and while Zwicker’s dysentery was passing, two other men suff
ered the same ailment. One of these men also had malaria, giving him a one-two punch that pushed him to the verge of death.

  And then there were the injuries. One man’s wound, which had seemed on the mend earlier, turned gangrenous. Dr. Claypool set up a debriding table. Louise attended the surgery, which saw the man’s left foot amputated, and flesh on his calf debrided, or cut away, so as to allow healing of what remained. Claypool looked exhausted at the end of the surgery. He went to lie down and rest, but Clarice soon brought word that he was down with malaria himself. Out came the quinine.

  Fortunately the nurses remained healthy, as did Lieutenant Kozlowski, who kept the camp functioning. He had cots made and helped her scrounge pots from the village so they could sterilize bandages and surgical equipment. He also brought her something unwelcome: three more injured men carried from the lowlands.

  All three were Filipinos injured in a firefight with Japanese soldiers, men who’d kept resisting after the enemy overran their positions. Some of the Americans in the hospital camp had scoffed to learn that they were expected to treat injured partisans. The Filipinos would fight only so long as Americans were around to lead them, it was claimed. The local units had dissolved in the face of enemy fire, as men abandoned fixed positions, threw down their rifles, and stripped from their uniforms in the hopes of blending into the civilian population. But others fought to the end, as evidenced by these three.

  The Filipinos were dehydrated and suffering heatstroke from their long journey into the mountains. One man was carried by the other two, and he soon died of his injuries, but the other two could be helped. Dr. Claypool roused himself from bed long enough to operate on the more serious injury but collapsed soon after.

  Frankie got in a fight with Clarice and Maria Elena during supper, and Louise told her to go outside until she cooled down. Frankie stormed off, muttering, her shoulders hunched and a glare on her face. The other three nurses were playing a quiet game of rummy by lamplight in the hospital ward, sitting on patatis, surrounded by sleeping men, when Frankie returned.

  “It’s over,” Frankie said in a loud voice that made some of the men stir. “It’s all done.”

  Louise set down her cards and stood. “Will you hush? There are men sleeping.”

  “I will not hush. I’m done hushing. Maybe if I’d spoken up earlier we wouldn’t be in this position.” Her voice was louder than ever.

  “Play without me,” Louise told the other nurses. “I’ll deal with her.”

  “You’ll deal with me,” Frankie said as Louise took the older nurse by the elbow and led her outside. “Isn’t that lovely? You’ll deal, will you? And how will you deal with me?”

  “Listen up.” Louise turned the other woman around to face her. “I am sick and tired of your nonsense. We have a job to do, and you know it. Now what’s this about?”

  Fárez was on guard duty, sitting on a stool beneath the eaves with his rifle across his lap. He rose to his feet and leaned against his crutch, watching the two women. Sammy came hobbling outside on crutches, also apparently drawn by the commotion. Frankie sniffed at the two men and put her hands on her hips.

  “We’re out of food,” she said. “No pork and beans, no powdered milk, no sugar, no canned beef or salmon, no hard biscuits, nothing. What do you think about that?”

  Louise’s stomach growled at the mention of those foods, but complaining wasn’t going to materialize the supplies they’d abandoned in Sanduga.

  “We’ll eat what is available,” Louise said.

  “Rice and salt. You call that eating? Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch. There’s not even a piece of stringy chicken. If we’re lucky, we get mungo beans and a banana.”

  “Lieutenant Kozlowski paid for some food to be brought in,” she said. “We should get a little meat next week. Some eggs, too.”

  “Listen to yourself. Next week. By then we’ll all have beriberi.” Frankie’s voice was a near shout. “You think these men will survive on rice? They’re going to die. We’re all going to die.”

  “Please keep your voice down. Men are sleeping, they need their rest.”

  “Oh, so now I’m hysterical, is that it? We’ve been lied to. Lied to! And you’re calling me hysterical?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did!”

  Frankie pushed Louise, who staggered backward, shocked. Fárez growled a warning at the older nurse.

  “And you’re the worst of them all!” Frankie was screaming now. “You’re a liar. I’ll bet you found something to eat, that’s why you don’t care, and I know what you did to get it. I’ll tell you what I think—”

  Louise slapped her across the face. Frankie fell back a pace.

  “Corporal,” Louise said to Fárez. “Please go and wake Lieutenant Kozlowski. Tell him that Miss Frankie needs to be confined for her own good and the good of our patients.”

  A malicious look passed over Frankie’s face. “Go ahead and tell him. He won’t hear you, he’s delirious. That’s right, Louise, he’s sick, too. We’re on our own now.”

  Louise left Frankie with Fárez and Sammy, instructing them to take her somewhere quiet in the village where she couldn’t disturb the patients. Frankie fought and shouted, especially when the Japanese soldier took her arm. She called him “a filthy Jap” and swore she’d tell the men he’d tried to rape her if he didn’t let go. Louise was not worried about this; the patients had soured on Miss Frankie to a man and wouldn’t believe a word she said.

  Carrying the lamp ahead of her and swatting away the cloud of insects it attracted, Louise picked her way along the dike between two rice paddies to the house Kozlowski had set up as his home and headquarters. Fear and anger warred within her.

  Frankie’s rants only mirrored the worries of everyone in the camp. They were low on food, under continual threat of discovery by the enemy, and trying to save lives with limited medical equipment. But they needed calm, they needed unity. Frankie’s outburst was the last thing they needed.

  When she saw Kozlowski, she had new concerns. He lay on a mat in the corner, still in his uniform. Shivers worked through his body.

  “Lieutenant,” she murmured as she squatted next to him. She touched him, and he shivered so hard it was almost a convulsion.

  “Go away, Frankie.”

  “It’s me, Miss Louise.”

  “Oh, I thought Frankie was coming to complain again.”

  “Has she been bothering you? No, never mind. Look, we have to get you to the hospital.”

  “Just let me die.”

  “You’re not going to die,” Louise said firmly. “You need quinine, and you need good nursing care.” She pulled on him. “Come on, there’s a cot right next to Dr. Claypool. The two of you can suffer together.”

  She got him up, helped him down the stairs, and steadied him as he wobbled along the dike. He fell to his knees in front of the hospital and this time couldn’t be lifted. Louise called for help, and two men came out to get him inside.

  Once she had some quinine in him, she felt better, but then she turned to Dr. Claypool, who she’d supposed would be sleeping. Instead he was turning deliriously.

  She fetched Clarice, who stood wringing her hands while Louise questioned her about treatment.

  “I gave him his quinine not twenty minutes ago,” Clarice said.

  “You’re sure? And he hasn’t missed any doses?”

  “No, Miss Louise.”

  Then why wasn’t he getting better? Quinine was hardly a miracle cure. A man could still suffer malaria with it, fighting the disease over an extended period of time as illness and medicine vied for control. But quinine should knock it down eventually. After that, much depended on whether the patient continued to be exposed to malarial mosquitoes.

  Sammy returned to say that he and Fárez had calmed Frankie down with alak—rice wine—given them by a villager in a bamboo flask. They put her by herself in a nipa hut. The corporal and his dog stood watch outside her door to make sure she didn�
�t leave.

  The three remaining nurses rotated their shifts throughout the night, two working and one sleeping. By morning they saw improvement in many of the men. There were two exceptions: one man who was stricken with both malaria and dysentery, and Dr. Claypool.

  Kozlowski was up and able to eat some guava and rice with a bit of what the Filipinos called calabaza, some sort of squash. It wasn’t much, but it was the best breakfast in the camp. Rice and salt for everyone else.

  After he’d eaten, the lieutenant looked over the ward. He was drawn and pale. His eyes rested on Claypool, then turned to Louise, who’d been watching him carefully as she and Clarice emptied bedpans, which were really just bowls scavenged from the village. Between the wood, which held the smell, and the dysentery, the task was more unpleasant than usual.

  “Where’s Miss Frankie?” Kozlowski asked.

  “Under house confinement.”

  “This was your idea?”

  Louise tapped out another bedpan into the bucket and stacked it with the others. “There was nobody to give me permission. She was harming morale and keeping us from our duties. I had to do it.”

  “Understood. How are you feeling?”

  “Exhausted, hungry. Worried.”

  “But not sick?”

  “Not sick,” she said.

  “Thank God for small favors,” Kozlowski said. “If you go down, we’re in trouble.”

  “Lie down and rest. We can’t lose you, either.” Louise sent Clarice out with the bedpans and the bucket and glanced around the room, searching for anyone who needed her attention. When she looked back, Kozlowski was still sitting. “I mean it, Lieutenant. You need your rest.”

  “I’ve got work to do.”

  “Not today, you don’t.”

  A smiled stretched thinly across his face, but it was followed by a violent shiver, and he obligingly stretched out on his cot, which was really a bamboo plank elevated a few inches off the floor on stubby feet. He squinted his eyes shut, and she continued about her work. Louise came back a few minutes later to check on him, and he seemed a little stronger.