The enemy returned at dawn. Louise waited up front alone as two Japanese kicked down the makeshift barricade of boards. Captain Mori and his assistant stood to one side, waiting. Mori gestured for her to step outside. She obeyed.
Mori gestured for Fujiwara and another man to go inside, giving them instructions in Japanese. When she protested that her men were hospital patients and should not be abused, Mori said, “I am looking for Lieutenant Kozlowski. I have reason to believe he escaped into the woods with several other men, but I will check the hospital myself.”
“You’d better not touch my patients,” she said. “Those boys are sick and injured.”
“Perhaps.”
“Anyway, I told you that the lieutenant died. You won’t find him inside.”
“It would be better for you if you did not lie. And if a lie is the only thing you are capable of saying, then I’d suggest keeping your mouth shut.”
“Where is your brother? Sammy is my patient, too, and I need to see to him.”
Mori ignored the question. “You claim you are in charge. Very well, then you will be responsible for the behavior of all. Let me tell you the rules. First of all, you will be given the rice paddy behind the hospital as a yard. Your men will erect a fence around it to mark its limits.”
“You can’t put them to work in the sun. They’re too sick for that.”
“If they leave the building and the yard, they will be killed. If they have unauthorized contact with the villagers, they will be killed. If they strike or touch a Japanese soldier, they will be killed.”
Mori ran through a list of offenses, several of which carried a death sentence, but other infractions would be punished in seemingly arbitrary ways. There would be morning calisthenics according to the style of the Japanese army, regardless of the weather. Those who were too ill or injured to participate would forfeit breakfast. Those who did so in a slovenly way—whatever that meant—would be staked under the direct sun for four hours. Fail to bow to any Japanese or fail to bow in the correct way? You would be whipped or struck, depending on the whim of the Japanese soldier you had insulted.
“Now I will teach you how to bow.”
“I know how to bow,” she snapped. “This is preposterous. These men are prisoners. They have rights. The Japanese have promised to obey all appropriate conventions.”
“They will have their rights. Soon enough we will march them out of the mountains. In Manila, there are camps, and they will enjoy all of their privileges as prisoners of war. Packages and letters from the Red Cross. The right to organize themselves as they see fit.”
Louise stared. She let the hostility rise to her face.
“But for now we are in the mountains, and there are bandits all around.”
“Most of them working for the Japs, of course.”
He ignored this insult. There was something professional about him, even in his cruelty.
“Until the fence is constructed, nobody will leave the building except as part of an organized labor crew.”
“And what if we say no to your demands?” she asked.
“You won’t.”
“The devil, you say.”
“You won’t for long, I suppose I should say. You might try. Look at me, Louise Harrison—yes, I know your name. Look into my eyes. I am not playing a game. I will kill those who resist until I have complete compliance. If necessary, I will let the Sakdals have their way with them first. Injured men, your sick doctor, even the nurses—everyone must comply or face the same consequences.”
“You’re a cruel, terrible man.”
“I am a soldier at war. I have a traitor to deliver and enemies to kill and capture. A population of sullen locals who must see the wisdom of cooperating with the Japanese in throwing off the American imperialists. I will do what I must.”
Louise had no doubts that he was serious and not bluffing, but she couldn’t let this happen. She pitched around desperately for some way to soften the blow.
“Now I will teach you how to bow,” Mori said. “Learning it properly will save you pain and humiliation later.”
There was plenty of humiliation now, as he showed her how to do it and then corrected her multiple times. He put his hands on her head to force it down, and she bristled at his touch. But she couldn’t fight this small battle when she had bigger concerns. She must get them resolved, or men would die.
Fujiwara came out during the bowing lesson, which stopped while the two secret police had a short, sharp discussion. They hadn’t found Kozlowski, of course, because he wasn’t inside. Louise braced herself to be interrogated again, but Mori sent Fujiwara off on some errand or other. The adjutant dragged himself off.
“Your man is sick,” she said.
“Yes, many of us are sick. This cursed climate doesn’t suit Japanese people any more than it does the Americans.”
“I don’t think it’s malaria, luckily, but he’s picked up something. He should be seen to. Probably all of you should be treated.”
“You will, of course, use all available medicines to treat Japanese first, Americans second. If there is anything left, the Pinoys can be treated.”
“No.”
“Yes, you will. Japanese first, Americans—”
“No, I won’t treat Japanese at all. You want to see your men treated, you’ll take them back to your army and ask your own doctors. I won’t do it, and neither will the other nurses.”
“You’ll do what I tell you, woman, or I will kill your patients one by one.”
“And then I will kill yours. The first injection I give will be a lethal one.”
Mori struck her across the face with an open palm. Her head rocked back, and her hand went to her stinging cheek, but she didn’t cry out. She slowly lowered her hand and stared at him, though tears stung her eyes. Angrily, she willed them down. She would not cry.
“I can hit harder,” Mori said. His hand went to his sword hilt. “Or if you refuse to use your hands for the purpose for which they were designed, I could take them off for you.”
Fujiwara returned. He stood rigidly, staring. His hand was on his pistol. Louise looked at him, then back to Mori. She steadied her voice.
“I will help your men. There will be conditions.”
“No conditions.”
“Then there will be no help.”
“I said no conditions!”
Louise didn’t answer this. Instead she stayed still and rigid, waiting to be hit again. Her heart hammered away, her knees buckled, and her head floated as if she were about to swoon. She was more frightened than she could remember in her life. But she had to do this; she had to be strong.
A dog barked somewhere in the village—it sounded like Stumpy. Mori turned and seemed to notice the staring Japanese and Sakdals for the first time. They’d gathered around to watch the confrontation between the Japanese officer and the American nurse. He snarled at them, and they scurried off.
Only Fujiwara remained. He fixed her with a look that was even more terrifying than Mori’s, because it was cold, impassive, without his officer’s passion and fury. It was the look of a man who would commit atrocities when ordered to do so.
“Nothing unreasonable,” Louise said. She couldn’t keep the quaver from her voice and didn’t continue until it felt under control. “Only requests of the most humane sort. If you do that, I’ll help your men. You’ll see that I can be compliant.”
He said nothing, and that encouraged her to press on.
“You must return the two injured Filipinos to the hospital.”
“They are inside already,” he said.
“I mean they must be treated like the other prisoners. They can’t be abused because they’re Pinoys and you think they mean nothing. I know why you’re doing it, I know what you’re thinking, and I’m saying if you want my cooperation, you won’t hurt them. The Sakdals answer to you, and if you tell them not to kill, not to harm them in any way, they’ll obey. If they don’t obey, then you have no control ov
er them at all.”
“And that’s your demand?”
“They won’t touch my Filipina nurse. Won’t bother her in any way. And they won’t abuse the villagers, either. They are innocent, and they had no more choice to house the Americans than they have in helping the Japanese now.”
That wasn’t true, of course. The Filipinos had been all too willing to help the Americans, whereas they held special fear of the Japanese. Dump as many leaflets as you’d like on Luzon—the people would never believe the invaders had come to liberate them.
“Very well. You have your conditions. I expect you to obey me in every way if I give you these things.”
“I’m not finished. My men won’t be digging a trench around the property or be putting up a fence. They are too sick and injured.”
“They are prisoners of war. They must be confined until we leave the mountains.”
“I’ll see that it’s done.”
“You? A woman? A nurse?”
“Yes, me. I’ll explain to them. You say they can’t leave the building or the rice paddy behind. I will tell them. Any man found venturing away will be unprotected, will face severe punishment.” Louise took a chance. “Only the nurses will be allowed to leave the property, and my men will know that. You’ll see, they’ll obey. And I’ll see that they do their proper bowing when they must, that they show you proper deference, that they don’t resist in any way your reasonable requests.”
Mori spoke to his adjutant, who responded, then bowed, then spoke and bowed again. Mori grunted and turned back to Louise. Again she took this as acceptance, or as close to it as she would get.
“Finally—”
His eyes widened in disbelief. “There’s more?”
“One final thing, assuming you allow us other reasonable accommodations—sufficient food, the ability to bathe, safety from reprisals for inadvertently misunderstanding your culture.”
“Well?” he demanded. “What is it?”
Louise took a breath. “I need to see your brother.”
“Ha! No. That is too much.”
“He’s injured, and I must be allowed to treat him.”
“Impossible. You will not see him again.” Mori said this with an air of finality. “Now, will you comply, or will I have you killed and deal with another in your place?”
She hesitated. He had given her almost everything she’d asked for, including the part she’d slipped in about allowing the nurses to leave the hospital. As much as she wanted to help Sammy Mori, he was out of her hands, and she couldn’t sacrifice the rest of them for his sake.
Be patient. You’ll have your chance.
Louise bowed as she’d been taught. “Yes, I will comply.”
The Japanese that Louise treated in the hospital suffered the same tropical ailments as the Americans. She gave out quinine and deworming pills, passed them insecticide powder to help prevent scrub typhus caused by biting chiggers, and gave strict instructions for proper foot care; many suffered the so-called creeping cruds from spending too much time in wet socks and boots.
The Japanese didn’t want to be near the American patients, and the Americans didn’t want to be near the Japanese, so she treated the enemy soldiers in a small corner of the hospital with blankets for walls. Neither Maria Elena nor Frankie would help at first, both terrified for their own reasons, but she insisted.
The only real injury was a thigh wound, inexpertly bandaged by a Japanese medic. It was recent—must have happened during the Japanese march into the mountains. She stripped off the dirty bandage, cleaned the wound, and rewrapped it. The man grumbled irritably the whole time she was working on him.
When the Japanese had left, Louise explained the new rules to the hospital patients. The Filipinos practically wept with relief to hear that they would no longer be targeted, but some of the Americans reacted badly.
“I ain’t bowing,” one man grumbled. “Let the bastards kill me, I ain’t gonna do it.”
“It’s a gesture,” Louise said. “It means nothing.”
“The hell it don’t. I never would have bowed to my own general, and I sure ain’t gonna do it to a Jap.”
“It’s like a salute to them,” another man said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I don’t care,” someone else said. “I’m not saluting, either.”
“You want us to get killed over a bow?” came another man’s opinion. “Don’t be an idiot.”
They carried on like this for several minutes. When the argument grew too heated, Louise told them to keep it down. She stood with her hands on her hips, waiting for it to burn out.
“You’ll bow,” she said. “That’s all there is to it. I got everything else I wanted. Well, almost everything,” she said, thinking of Sammy. “You fight the bowing and maybe you’ll live, but the Pinoys won’t. You’ll have them killed over a bow?”
She nodded at the two Filipinos, and finally the Americans settled down. Grudging assent across their faces.
“Miss Louise is right,” Frankie said.
She and Maria Elena had been bandaging the stumps of the Filipino without feet who’d been forced to dance for the amusement of the Sakdals.
“We’re prisoners now.” Frankie sounded surprisingly calm, and more reasonable than she had in weeks. “We have to swallow our pride and obey the enemy if we want to stay alive. That’s our responsibility now. To obey without question.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Louise said. “But let’s pick our battles. And let me fight them, okay? Until Dr. Claypool is better, I’m in charge of all of your care. I need to keep you alive—that’s the most important thing. Please, I’m begging you, don’t make my job any harder.”
That settled, she looked to Dr. Claypool. He was worse. The nurses got him up and moved him around a little bit, worried about bed sores and constipation. Louise gave him more quinine, but when she asked him for medical advice about a couple of patients, he muttered incomprehensibly and rolled over with a groan.
“Why isn’t he getting better?” Frankie asked after they’d put him back down to rest. “The quinine should be working by now.”
“He’s older than these boys, and he was already run-down from all the work getting us into the mountains—that can’t have helped. Give it time,” Louise added with more confidence than she felt. “I’m sure he’ll recover.”
The Japanese wasted no time in enforcing their bowing rule. They arrived that afternoon and forced everyone to line up in the hot sun, even Dr. Claypool, who could barely hold up his head, and the various amputees. Captain Mori stood by, watching sternly, while Fujiwara showed the prisoners the proper way to bow. It came from the waist, with the head held just so, eyes in the correct position. When someone didn’t do it properly, he was slapped across the face.
Mori kept his hand on his sword hilt, as if daring someone to respond to the provocation. Two other Japanese stood nearby with bayonets fixed to their rifles. Louise held her breath every time Mori punished one of her men, but though there were dark looks and mutters, no one was foolish enough to test him.
As the instruction went on and on to the point where it became obvious that it was more about establishing dominance than bowing technique, villagers were digging a trench around the hospital. Others built a guard station on stilts like a small, open nipa hut. Every villager seemed to be working, from children of four or five to the very old, even if they could barely drag a plank or carry a bundle of cogon grass.
The prisoners and guards alike were wilting in the heat by the time Mori called a halt to the bowing lessons. Nobody had been allowed to leave, no matter how ill. Some had soiled themselves, others were shaking violently. Dr. Claypool was barely conscious, held up by two other men.
Night was a blessed relief from the heat, but the nurses’ work had only just begun.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Louise didn’t leave the hospital grounds for three days. Already, after only a couple of weeks in Cascadas, they were running out of
many basic medical supplies. She had no adhesive left for dressings, very little morphine, and the quinine was going down at a rapid rate, thanks in part to the demands of the Japanese. More urgently, they’d run out of vegetables and beans and were down to rice and salt—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Captain Mori was nowhere to be seen, and there was nobody to translate her needs.
When Louise finally left the hospital, she did so alone. She didn’t trust Frankie to behave, and she wasn’t convinced the Sakdals would leave Maria Elena alone. Bring the pretty young Filipina nurse out of the hospital and they might forget their orders and start harassing her. How firmly had Mori put it, anyway?
One of Louise’s shoes had completely worn out, damaged by all the trekking through the mountains and endless days on her feet. In place of shoes, she wore a pair of bakya like the locals, which were wooden soles tied with hemp cords to keep them in place. Her dress was hanging out back to dry, and in its place she wore a pair of men’s trousers rolled up at the cuffs. They wouldn’t have fit under any circumstances, but given how the weight was melting off her body, they hung tentlike over her bony hips and legs and would have fallen right off without the length of twine she used as a belt. In one pocket, she carried Sammy’s book of Japanese poetry.
She meant to return it if given the opportunity, but with what motive, it was hard to say. Surely if he were a free man he’d have retrieved it himself or sent someone for it. That he hadn’t meant he was a prisoner. Or worse. Louise’s fear was that Mori had held a sham trial for his brother and ordered him shot.
A pair of Japanese soldiers sat beneath the open hut the villagers had built for a guard station. It sat about thirty feet across from the hospital door in a drained rice paddy. They were negotiating with a boy holding a bunch of bananas, but sprang to their feet when they saw her. One of the men shoved the boy aside with a sweep of the arm, and the two men grabbed their rifles.
The Year of Counting Souls Page 21