“It’s true,” she insisted. “We have a doctor, but he is sick with malaria. There’s nobody else but us nurses. I’m the head nurse.”
“And so you, a woman, are in charge?” He turned and said something to his adjutant, and the two men shared a cruel, mocking laugh.
Louise bristled inside but managed to keep her face calm and her voice even. “There is nobody else, sir.”
“I don’t believe your officer died, I think he’s hiding somewhere. We’ll find him, don’t worry. Meanwhile, are there armed men inside?”
“No.”
“Good. If there are, they will pay for it. As will you.”
Mori, if that was indeed who it was, said something to his adjutant, who in turn gave instructions in Tagalog to the two Sakdals. These shouted back toward the other Filipinos.
These men had been rampaging through the village, kicking in doors and shouting. Many of the villagers had fled during the night, including the poor refugees from Sanduga, who’d been put to flight twice now for the crime of harboring Americans. But many remained, and there were cries and protests. A gunshot. An anguished woman’s scream. Louise’s stomach churned, but she kept her eyes on the Japanese officer.
Several more of the Filipino bandits came when they were called. Also, two more Japanese soldiers approached, lugging a machine gun between them, which they put down on a blanket and began to assemble. They moved slowly, faces pale and sweating, and even from a distance Louise could see that they were suffering from some ailment, most likely malaria.
Once five more Sakdals had arrived, Mori gestured at the hospital and shouted an order. His assistant translated, and the Filipinos came at her, grinning.
Louise blocked the door with her body. “No! Don’t send in your thugs—I don’t trust them. Please just go in yourself.”
“And stumble into a trap?”
“There’s no trap! I’ll go with you. You’ll see.”
Mori put a hand on his sword hilt. “I’m warning you, woman.”
Despairing, she tried one last time. “Before I let them in, tell them not to mistreat these injured men. For God’s sake, I’m begging you.”
“You have nothing to negotiate with, unless it’s the hiding place of your commanding officer. Where is he?”
“I told you—”
He shouted something, which was passed on in Tagalog. The Sakdals dragged her out of the way. Her heart sank as they burst inside, shouting and jeering. Protests, cries of pain from those inside. Louise tried to go for the door, but more men held her against the wall.
A gunshot. Shouts and overturning cots inside.
“Leave them alone!” Louise cried. She struggled but couldn’t get free.
Chapter Twenty
In the moments before the Sakdals entered the hospital, Sammy had been lying on a cot covered in a sheet, motionless, his ears turned toward the commotion outside like a radio antenna in search of a signal. Louise’s voice came through, and though he couldn’t pick out the individual words, she sounded remarkably calm. There were voices in Tagalog, which he didn’t understand, plus Japanese and English. He heard someone say they were searching the village for Americans, and a man saying in English he was going to search the hospital, but nobody had entered yet.
Those inside were silent, listening. Some men muttered curses, others prayers. Maria Elena stood to one side, gnawing her fingernails, while the other remaining nurse, Frankie, made herself as small as possible in the corner. Moments earlier, she’d been complaining loudly.
Frankie had wanted to leave with the lieutenant. Why hadn’t they let her? Except that everyone heard Frankie refuse to go. She didn’t seem to remember that part now.
Louise had changed Sammy’s bandages before going outside and told him to look both well treated and completely bedridden, whatever those things meant. Bedridden was to protect him from the Japanese soldiers, and well treated was to protect the nurses and Dr. Claypool. He meant to do it, if he could. More likely, his presence would only outrage the Japanese, who would see him as nothing but a traitor.
Isn’t this what you wanted? Isn’t this why you sent Yoshi that letter? You wanted to be found, and you wanted to suffer.
Well, yes. But that was then, and this was now. What did the suicidal man feel when he put the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger? Was there a moment of regret, a split second of dismay between when the finger depressed and oblivion came? A terrible, awful feeling that a mistake had been made?
Sammy was feeling that awful regret now. But the moment between the finger tightening on the trigger and the sweet oblivion of death was dragging on and on. Weeks, in fact. The self-doubt and worry was crippling.
He reached out for Stumpy, but the dog wasn’t there. Sammy had been caring for Stumpy since Corporal Fárez left for the bush to take up arms with the partisans, but he’d turned him out during the night. Stumpy would be safer with the other village dogs, where he’d be ignored by the occupiers.
If he were spotted inside the hospital, he’d be identified as something important to the wounded men. Their mascot, something to boost their morale. That would make the dog a target for abuse. And so Sammy had opened the window about an hour ago and pushed him out. Stumpy had stared back at him, tongue hanging out, then seemed to give a little shrug and trotted across the rice paddy toward the village. Off to attend to his doggy business.
The front door of the former church swung open. Voices in Tagalog came through the blankets that divided the wide-open space into separate rooms. A hand reached around the blanket and yanked it down from where it had been hung on a line. Several grinning Filipinos looked in.
There were about twenty patients in the room, counting the doctor, who was delirious, plus Sammy and the two nurses. Nobody moved or spoke or tried to resist as the newcomers strode in, holding rifles and looking for all the world like they’d overthrown some great military base instead of a small field hospital. There was nothing professional about them. They were nothing but Sakdals—thugs and bandits.
One of them stopped at an injured man and jabbered excitedly. The man on the mat answered. It was one of the four wounded Filipinos in the hospital. They dragged him to his feet, or what would have been his feet if he hadn’t been missing them. They’d been blown off by an artillery shell a month ago now, and he’d been recovering ever since. He cried out as they balanced him on his stumps and jeered at his pain. After tormenting the man for several seconds, they dragged him toward the front door.
“What the devil?” one of the Americans said. “Let go of him, you sons of bitches.” The man struggled to rise, but one of the Sakdals shoved him down.
The Sakdals found another Filipino moments later. This one saw what was coming. He threw back his blanket and tried to push past the men for the door. A man swung his rifle butt and caught him across the jaw. He went sprawling. The wounded Filipino was struggling to get back up when another Sakdal pointed his rifle at the man’s back and fired. The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space.
This was enough for the rest of the hospital patients. Shaking with fevers or grievously wounded, they were in no shape to resist the armed invaders, but this didn’t stop them from trying. Someone called for Claypool, but the doctor was unresponsive. Others struggled to their feet.
“No!” Sammy cried. “Don’t do it!” They hesitated. “Don’t fight them! We don’t know what’s going to happen. But don’t resist—that will get us all killed.”
The Sakdals had spotted the near revolt, and they shouted to each other as they huddled in a defensive position. Two had dragged the man without feet outside, which left four more inside. Was Sammy wrong, had he made a mistake? Maybe the injured men would have overwhelmed these four, taken their guns, and mounted a counterattack against the ones remaining outside. No, that was pure fantasy.
He heard Louise crying out, begging for mercy. A man shouted at her in English.
Several more Sakdals entered the room, and the immediate cri
sis passed as the sick and wounded settled back, resigned to their fate. The search continued. The Sakdals found the other two Filipino soldiers and hauled them outside. A Sakdal spotted Sammy and came toward him. He seemed to think he’d spotted another Filipino, but confusion spread on his face as he approached.
At that same moment, someone discovered Maria Elena. This brought the attention of all the Sakdals, and Sammy was momentarily forgotten. They pressed her against the wall while Frankie went slinking in the opposite direction rather than come to her fellow nurse’s aid. One of the Sakdals said something, and Maria Elena answered in a high, frightened voice. This brought laughter, and they groped her.
“Help me,” she said in a small voice. “Somebody.”
Once more, injured men started rising, pushed too far. This time the Sakdals had two men with rifles leveled at the prisoners. Two more were returning from dragging away the last of the injured Filipinos, and they had their guns aimed in from the far side of the room. It would be a bloodbath.
“Enough!” Sammy shouted. “Don’t touch her, you animals.”
He said this in Japanese, and the Sakdals froze at his voice, turning toward him. He grabbed his crutches and rose to his feet.
“I demand to see your commanding officer.” Again, this was in Japanese. “These men are prisoners, this woman is a nurse, and you will stop abusing them at once. Am I clear?”
None of them understood Japanese; that much was clear by their blank expressions. It didn’t matter. Neither did the specific commands. He could have been reciting the steps to make soba noodles, so long as it was in Japanese and his tone of voice commanding.
There was a moment of consultation, and then two of them went running for the door. To fetch the other Japanese, no doubt. Well, there was no sense waiting here to be discovered. No sense in feigning grievous injury.
He glanced at the injured Americans, expecting to see hatred and distrust. Now, they would be thinking. Now he sells us out. He’s been waiting all this time, and now is his chance.
But what he saw surprised him. There was distrust in some faces and worry, certainly. But no hatred. And in others he saw hope, even admiration. These men knew what he was doing, or what he was trying to do, anyway.
Sammy could only do his best. If he died, so be it. Outside, all was shouting: English, Japanese, Tagalog. He couldn’t pick out any of it.
He came out on his crutches, eyes blinking in the bright sunlight of early morning. A glorious day had dawned on the mountainside, with the clouds gone, the mist dissolving on the surrounding peaks, and everything a shimmering green. The outstretched wings of a hornbill soared overhead. Its massive beak was knobby and red, its neck plumage burnt orange. Sammy could almost picture the scene in the simple lines of a watercolor, how it would be painted for the viewer.
That was the wider view. Everything close at hand was fear and horror.
One of the injured Filipinos was already dead. He lay facedown with his head bashed in. A second sat in front of three Japanese soldiers, who were all shouting at him at once while he cried out in his own language, hands over his head. The Sakdals had the man without feet and were pushing him back and forth between them, jeering and spitting. When he fell, they slapped him and dragged him back up.
Louise was protesting all of this, but two Sakdals pinned her against the building with their forearms. She spotted Sammy and cried out for help.
“Leave them alone!” he said in Japanese. All eyes turned toward him. The mob parted.
And there he was, Sammy’s brother, standing in the middle of the commotion. Yoshiko Mori. Older, more mature than when Sammy had last seen him, three years ago. He wore a captain’s stars over red and orange stripes and carried his sword naturally, as if the guntō were a part of his body, like an arm or a leg. The samurai ancestry was evident on his face, proud and unyielding.
Yoshiko’s expression didn’t change but remained fixed in place like a mask from a Noh play as he came over. “So, I’ve found you.”
“I’m asking you to leave these men alone. They’re soldiers, they’ve surrendered, and they deserve to be treated as prisoners of war.”
“The Sakdals are working out their frustrations. They’ve been cursed, shot at, crippled by malaria and dengue.”
“Those things happen in war,” Sammy said. “One doesn’t need to become an animal.”
“And now they must have their moment. Someone will bear the brunt of it. If not the injured Filipinos, then the Americans. I’m sure you would agree that would be worse. Once they have taken a little revenge, I’ll bring them back into line.”
It sounded both monstrous and reasonable at the same time. It was the sort of argument that Sammy had heard in China four years ago. The poor Japanese soldiers had suffered, and they must not be chastened too harshly for what they were doing in Nanking.
“You came for me,” Sammy said. “Not for these men. They’ve done nothing to you.”
To this point, the brothers had been speaking in Japanese, but this was delivered in English, and Yoshiko answered in the same language.
“Father would have been proud of me,” Yoshiko said. “One should always look after one’s brother, after all.”
“You received my letter.”
“I was . . . disappointed. And angry. Furious. What you did was”—a pause as he seemed to search for the right word—“treacherous.”
Yoshiko glanced at Louise, which brought Sammy’s attention, too. But if the nurse was listening to their conversation, she didn’t show it. Instead she stared ahead, eyes glinting fiercely as she watched the Sakdals holding her against the wall.
“You know why I did it,” Sammy said. “You must.”
“You saw the whole thing through your American eyes, and you felt guilty. All of that garbage they taught you in school.” Yoshiko’s English was coming faster now. “You believed it. What a fool. What a damn fool.”
“That’s not American, Yoshi, that’s human nature. That’s Japanese! We’re Buddhist and Shinto, and there’s nothing there to justify the brutality of our armies.”
“Stop playing dumb,” Yoshiko said. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I do not,” Sammy said. “Are you trying to justify what happened in Nanking? That was the army working out its frustrations, as you put it? You know what they call it in English? The Rape of Nanking.”
Yoshiko said nothing.
“Listen to me,” Sammy said. “This is Japanese, what I’m doing. It isn’t me being an American, it’s me loving my country.”
“You’re speaking English. That’s proof enough.”
“I switched to English to protect you. So we could speak frankly in front of your men. And you answered in English—you could have switched back at any time. As Bashō said—”
“Spare me your poetry,” Yoshiko said. This was in Japanese. “Fujiwara, come here.”
A young man with a “law police” armband came over. He was sweating and none too steady in his bow to Yoshi, and Sammy wondered if it was the heat, or if he’d been hit with malaria.
“Send off the Sakdals. They’re to leave the Pinoys alone.”
“Yes, sir.”
But before Sammy could breathe a sigh of relief, his brother added, “We need those men alive to interrogate. After that, it doesn’t matter what becomes of them.” Yoshiko turned back to Sammy. “Where is the commanding officer?”
He and Louise had worked out the answer to this question earlier, and the lie came easily. “He died on the road. We left Sanduga in a hurry, and not everybody made it.”
Yoshiko glanced at Louise. “That’s what she said. Where are his papers?”
“I don’t know anything about that. He probably didn’t have any. They’ve been on the run.”
“We took prisoners in Sanduga. An American and two Pinoys. We interrogated them. According to the men, there was a commanding officer and he was well and healthy when he left Sanduga. If he died, then where are his pape
rs, his radio?”
Sammy figured his brother was bluffing about the prisoners, just as Sammy had been about the death of the lieutenant. There had been three men left behind in Sanduga, but they were to have killed themselves if the Japanese arrived. And so he shrugged.
“I don’t remember any radio. Anyway, the officer wasn’t healthy, he was dying. He barely made it five miles. They buried him by the side of the road.”
Yoshiko smiled, and he switched to English once more. “Nice try, big brother.” Back to Japanese. “His name is Lieutenant Kozlowski. He was uninjured, and he had a radio. Is he in the hospital feigning illness as he hides among the others?”
And just like that Sammy’s lie was left in tatters. He only just avoided looking at Louise.
“Very well,” Yoshiko said. “Don’t answer the question. You’ve proven yourself a liar and traitor. Fujiwara, we’ll be here a little while. Let’s see if we can find suitable quarters for Corporal Mori.”
Chapter Twenty-One
There was more violence that afternoon as the Sakdals ran through the village. They burned two houses, killed a man who fought back when they were harassing his daughter, and three of them came at dusk, drunk, trying to muscle into the hospital. Louise had remained standing at the hospital door all day, and ordered them to leave in the same tone she used when chasing Stumpy out of the garbage. To her astonished relief, they wandered off and left her alone.
When night finally came, she retreated inside, exhausted. Someone handed her water, which she gulped. She ate a little rice.
After that she felt well enough to work. She enlisted patients in nailing boards over the door to barricade it for the night. Then she organized herself and the other two remaining nurses. One was to stand by the door and listen for approaching enemies. Another was to serve patients. The third would sleep. Every three hours they would rotate responsibilities.
Dr. Claypool was still delirious, but many of the men had made slight improvements now that they’d being given quinine and other medications and been allowed to sleep and recuperate without the constant moving. Nature’s remedies of time and the body’s natural healing abilities were still the best medical care of all.
The Year of Counting Souls Page 20