The Lonely War

by Alan Chin

  When they came upon a shrine, Andrew’s face brightened. He took Mitchell’s hand and led him under the giant torii and into a stone-floored courtyard. Andrew loved visiting temples on winter mornings when everything slumbered under the snowy blanket of the previous night’s storm. They stitched tracks across the pristine white carpet and stood side by side before a Shinto shrine. Andrew grasped a thick rope that was attached to a bell hanging from the roof. He clanged the bell several times to wake the temple spirits. An offering box sat in front of the shrine. Andrew pulled three coins from his overcoat pocket and dropped them into the box. He took three slender sticks of incense from a covered stone box and lit them before placing them in a bowl of sand, which sat in front of a statue of some local deity. Andrew told Mitchell to make a wish and bow three times. They closed their eyes and bowed, again, and again.

  Back on the street, Mitchell asked Andrew what he had wished for.

  “Nothing. My wish is happening right now.”

  Two doors beyond the shrine stood a neighborhood sake shop. There were no customers that early in the day, but Mitchell said he wanted to sit and talk. The emptiness of the shop seemed inviting.

  They ducked through the blue and white entryway curtains and a surprised, middle-aged lady sang out, “Oideyasu!” She wore a somber, gray, long-sleeved kimono with dangling obi sashes, and her long black hair was piled on top of her head. Her zories tapped out a soothing rhythm as she hurried over to them, stopping several feet away to bow. She dropped to her knees and waited to help them remove their wet shoes.

  Andrew felt embarrassed to have a woman on her knees at his feet. Standing once again, she waved an open hand at a table by the window. Andrew took off his straw hat and overcoat. They moved to the table and slid into chairs facing each other.

  The woman shuffled over. Her round face had a thin layer of white cornstarch, and red rouge colored her lips, similar to the make-believe geishas so common in establishments frequented by US military men. Andrew, however, found it hard to believe that any servicemen wandered this far off the main boulevards.

  Mitchell ordered a beer. Andrew asked for tea.

  “Hai!” The woman nodded, mumbling something that neither man understood.

  Andrew focused on sounds coming from the street, the nervous movement of Mitchell’s fingers, and the surge of feelings rushing through him. He noticed everything all at once. It was as if they were not reuniting lovers, but gladiators who had miraculously survived the arena. Each breath seemed special; each feeling was a blessing.

  They sat in silence, not needing words, gazing at each other until the woman returned carrying a tray with a frosty glass and a steaming cup. She arranged the drinks on the table and shuffled away.

  Andrew wanted an explanation of Kate, the story of how they had first met, how she became pregnant, and why Mitchell had married her. The story hovered between them. He needed to hear it, as a priest felt compelled to hear the confession of a sinner.

  Before he could voice his question, Mitchell asked, “Say, do you know what happened to Hudson? He’s listed as missing in action, but he was still alive when we were rescued. No one knew what happened to him.”

  “I saw Hud and Clifford in Saigon about six months ago. They disappeared as the troops took the camp and made their way to Indochina. Hud captains a ferry on the Mekong, between Saigon and Sadic. Clifford makes it sound like they’re very happy, but I think they’re having a tough time making it work. They are so different from each other. They do have moments of happiness, and Hud loves him dearly.”

  “What about the others?”

  “I lost track of them.”

  They fell silent again. Mitchell sipped his beer. “Cocoa stayed in Singapore. He opened a noodle shop close to downtown. Can you imagine him cooking noodles for the locals?” They shared a soft chuckle. “And Stokes hitched the first ride he could swing for Tahiti. He and Chew-Gin are expecting their first child in February.”

  “Will he take her to the States?”

  “She won’t fit in back home. People would look down on her. No, he’s planning to stay in Papeete. Grady reenlisted. They sent him to gunnery school. Last I heard, he was assigned to a minesweeper operating out of Manila.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  Mitchell loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Andrew saw the string of prayer beads pressed to the officer’s neck, the beads he had given Mitchell their last night on the Pilgrim. A surge of warmth washed through him.

  “You know,” Mitchell said, “I never reported the court-martial incident. Your record is clean. It said you served your country honorably and went missing in action. That’s what it said because that’s what happened. You can go to the States without shame, and you have a considerable amount of back pay coming.”

  Andrew wagged his head. “I’m surprised that Ensign Fisher didn’t spill the beans.”

  “Once he realized why you did it, he was the most sorry of all of us.”

  “What about Chaplain Moyer? What happened to him?”

  “He bailed out of the service and returned to Singapore. Told me that he wanted to open a chapel somewhere in Southeast Asia where he could help the poor and spread God’s love.”

  They sipped their drinks until Mitchell asked, “How did you escape? How did you get here?”

  “I’m not sure. Once I left Changi, it became one long blur. Tottori arranged to have his assistant, Kenji, bring me here. He proved to be a resourceful guide. We spent time in Bangkok, Saigon, and Hong Kong, but the rest was all traveling, village to village, crossing mountains, rivers, and rice paddies. Each day was the same as the one before it and the one after it. I can’t remember any of the details. It’s as if I’ve no past. No past and no future. I’ve fallen out of time.”

  Andrew felt himself sweating and his hands trembled. Also, the voices in his head were becoming noticeable. He craved a hit on his pipe.

  “Where are you staying now?”

  “With Kenji’s family. His parents and two sisters live here in Kobe. That’s why we came here. I happened to see you on the street about a month ago. I decided to stay long enough to talk to you.”

  “You seem so strange. Are you okay? I mean, are you all right, mentally?”

  Andrew’s eyes widened a bit. “I go through periods where I’m not myself, when I’m taken over by something else, something… twisted. But Kenji gets me medicine for those times.” That was the first time Andrew had admitted it out loud. He looked up and gave Mitchell a somewhat mocking, fabricated smile as his hand seized his pipe, needing some right then to quell the rumbling voices. He stopped himself. “When I first met you, I told you that I knew who I was, what I was, and that I was comfortable with that. But that person died in Changi. I don’t know anything about myself. Right now I’m feeling a bit ephemeral. I’m dreaming that I’m drinking tea with the man I love, I’ve found everything I’ve been searching for, and it will all vanish in my next heartbeat.”

  Andrew knew that he felt much more than that. He felt a peculiar combination of vulnerability, betrayal, and destabilization. All these swirling emotions hummed between his temples, like blood boiling in his head. And behind the hum were the voices, calling. But he was not about to let Mitchell know all that. Hiding those feelings, he knew without understanding why, had something to do with self-preservation.

  They fell silent until Andrew congratulated Mitchell on his promotion to captain and asked how long he planned to stay in Japan.

  “A new A1Nav came over the Fox skeds last week, announcing a revised point system for discharges. If I decide to leave, I have another fourteen months, which I’ll spend here working for Naval Intelligence. If I get out, I’ll go to the ranch, but they’re guaranteeing me my own command if I stay in, and that’s sounding mighty attractive right now.”

  Andrew had a flash of understanding. If Mitchell returned to the ranch, he’d be strapped with Kate, the kids, and ranch work, day in and day out for
the rest of his life. A naval career would allow him long absences from his wife. Andrew suspected he didn’t love her. She would live on the ranch and raise their children, waiting for his brief visits.

  Andrew felt genuinely sorry for Kate. He waited a moment before saying, “That would be terribly hard on your children. Don’t you love them either?”

  “I love them dearly, but don’t you see? You and I belong together. I think I’ve known it all along.”

  Andrew studied a smudge of grease on the table while holding in the emotions that threatened to burst.

  “I became mad when you went missing.” Mitchell said. “I thought you had died and I wanted to die too. Life—I mean getting married and having kids—didn’t matter once I had lost you. It was the easiest way to go on living. But now that you’re here, we can’t let anything separate us again. You must understand. Everyone must understand. We must never be separated again.”

  It was a good speech, and Andrew knew that Mitchell meant what he said, but his mind struggled under the growing pain of how he could possibly make it work. He shivered, knowing that he had every reason to be ecstatic, energized, grateful—hadn’t he been given everything he’d been longing for? How far away were those days of loneliness and yearning now? Wasn’t that what he needed to save himself, to gain the strength to give up the opium, to become strong again while cradled in the loving care of this man? He knew he needed to say yes, but the word dissolved on his tongue like a sugar cube.

  He thought of Kate and the children, wanting desperately to dismiss them as a mistake, casualties of war. And why not, he doesn’t love them, Andrew thought. He loves me. He said so. But Andrew realized that he was fabricating a dream too insubstantial to be real. He couldn’t trust himself. His mind was weak and dizzy from starvation. This whole conversation could be his sick mind playing tricks. He must listen to his gut telling him that he could never brush aside Kate and the kids, that they would haunt him like the dead buried in Changi mud.

  “You want me to follow you from port to port while Kate sits home washing diapers and waiting for your letters? How can that work? How long before guilt erodes what we feel for each other? How can I respect a man who would do that to his wife and children?”

  Andrew scrutinized Mitchell’s face as he silently struggled with the puzzle, moving pieces around in his head, trying to force his weakened mind to think clearly.

  Three more customers walked through the entryway curtains. The woman cried out “Oideyasu,” welcoming the new group.

  “I’ll find a way. Stay with me until I find a way to make this work. There must be a way.”

  “You think I’d take you away from your children? Have them grow up fatherless because of me? You don’t know me at all.”

  Mitchell opened his mouth to object, but stopped.

  It’s an unsolvable problem, Andrew thought, the sound of one hand clapping.

  “If we can’t be together, what will you do? Will you go home, to Indochina?”

  Andrew pressed the small of his back against his chair. “I once told you that you were my home. Now I have no home and no place to return to. All I have is Changi.”

  “Why are you here, in Kobe? I mean, why come here if it wasn’t to be with me?”

  Andrew stared at his glazed teacup. “I have Commandant Tottori’s personal items that I promised to deliver to his wife. She lives in Kyoto. I was on my way there when I saw you on the street.”

  “And after that?”

  Andrew glanced at the street. He felt that twisted shadow stalking him, overtaking him, and he shook his head to keep it at bay. He wanted to explain how he was drawn from the empty void of loneliness by Mitchell’s love and had lived a wonderful dream for a few fleeting years, but now he must return to that void. He cleared his throat, but all he could say was, “There is no after that.”

  It seemed so easy to say now that the shadow had taken control; the voices calling from the earth sounded so soothing. He had no fear of what awaited. In fact, a cold calm settled inside his belly and he saw his only option with icy-clear vision. For one who has lost everything there was only one thing left. That final formality was more than a logical conclusion, it was a welcome relief.

  Andrew took a long, heavy breath. “Once I’ve given Mrs. Tottori her husband’s things, I’ll have worked out all my karma. There is nothing after that. It was only the hope that we could be together that has kept me alive this long.”

  Andrew expected to find a sadness take hold of Mitchell’s face, but there was something more complicated there, an expression revealing that he knew Andrew spoke the truth—an emptiness, the sudden loss of something nameless, yet profound.

  “I never realized it,” Andrew said, “but I’ve lived only for beauty. The kind of beauty that is beyond what is reflected in one’s eyes. First Clifford, who has an angelic, simple innocence; and you, with your clean-cut, manly elegance; and Tottori, whose strength of character made his sexiness extraordinarily beautiful. Even Master Jung-Wei, with his old, failing body, had the most exquisite spirit of any man I’ve known. For me, now, there is no Clifford, no Mitchell, no Tottori, and no Master Jung-Wei. My existence is estranged from beauty. I have nothing I care about. Tottori took his life because he would not allow himself to live with the shame of defeat. Just so, I can’t bear to live in a world devoid of the beauty I love.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “If you have any compassion for me, you won’t try to stop me. The memories of you are now unbearable. There are times when I wish I could obliterate them, to forget these last five years and return to the pure mind I had before. But I know that to erase those memories would mean to forever lose the most wonderful experience of my life. I won’t let them go, but it seems I must let go of you.”

  Mitchell looked bewildered and desperate. “This can’t be good-bye. I’m not losing you again.”

  Andrew took Mitchell’s right hand in his own. “I’m so sorry. I have no right to be this morbid with you. Having you so close and yet not being able to have you makes me crazy. Please, forget what I said. I’ll go to Kyoto and, after that, I’ll let destiny decide what happens.”

  “I’m coming with you. I’ll take a week’s leave.”

  “Stop—”

  The pain in Andrew’s head grew monstrous, the voices shouting. He brought both palms to his temples, trying to press the pain away, desperately craving the black loam in his pipe. The light coming through the windows shifted, quivering with a yellow color that pierced his retinas.

  “You have special gifts. You’ll make Kate a very happy woman, and hopefully your children will grow strong and happy as well. You’ve made your karma and you have your duty. Tottori taught me that nothing is more important than family. I have no family. I must go alone.”

  Before Mitchell could utter another word, Andrew moved around the table to cling to him. Their lips found each other and they kissed, hard, passionately. After a moment they relaxed, and Andrew smiled under the kiss. His cheek pressed against the officer’s shoulder. “Raising your children. For the first time in my life I feel envy. Envy of what she is able to give you. I love her for that, and envy her.”

  Andrew felt the cold draft sluicing over his feet and Mitchell’s warmth covering his frail body. Tears came up slowly in his eyes, the way a spring fills with water. They broke free of his eyelashes and slid down his cheeks, falling warm on the back of his hand.

  “Good-bye, without any bitterness or regrets. I love you.”

  Mitchell wrapped his arm over Andrew’s shoulder, holding him tight.

  Andrew broke away. He hurried to the doorway, slipped on his clogs, and grabbed his coat and hat. As he was about to dash through the streamers hanging over the door, Mitchell let out a sorrowful groan, begging him to come back.

  Every eye in the sake shop turned to stare.

  Andrew said, “‘I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true: the empty vessel makes the gr
eatest sound.’”

  Mitchell managed a smile. “I’ve always loved hearing you quote Shakespeare.”

  “‘And so, fare thee well: Thou never shalt hear Herald no more.’” In a blink, Andrew disappeared through the doorway. He hurried down the street, hugging his overcoat about him while clutching the pipe and lighter. He brought the stem to his mouth and sucked the life out of the charred loam in the bowl.

  Nothing in his life had changed. He still carried the same loneliness as before, the same sense of failing to find happiness. The voices retreated, but he knew they would return by sundown. There was only one way, now, to rid himself of them. Love, he understood, was an emotion that could bring joy and sorrow, and apparently it also had the power to take a precious life.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  December 30, 1946—1900 hours

  THE train from Kobe pulled into the Kyoto station at sunset. It had been a sad journey. The train had chugged from Kobe to Kyoto by way of Osaka and stopped at every small town along the way. The third-class carriage was old and shabby. The seats sagged like the belly of a swayback mule. Several windows were broken out, which allowed smoke and cinders from the coal-burning engine to pour into the freezing carriage, making Andrew’s throat raw. An old tabby cat prowled the aisle for mice, and by the size of her, Andrew assumed she found plenty.

  The passenger cars were crammed with families making their way to Kyoto for the Hatsumode—the New Year’s pilgrimage to various shrines to pray for blessings. At each stop, the train had emptied as fast as a cyclone, and people stood in groups, talking and laughing. Sometimes families were met by relatives from the town, and a partylike atmosphere would flourish on the platform. Food vendors in every station sold grilled fish that were as long as an index finger and served over bowls of rice with pickled vegetables, pure white tofu, and plenty of sweet candies. Only Andrew went hungry.