The Wreckage

by Michael Crummey

  Acclaim for Michael Crummey’s

  T H E W R E C K A G E

  National Bestseller

  Finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize

  A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2005

  “The Wreckage is, if anything, even better than River Thieves. Stylistically complex, morally dense and rich with the blood and pulp of life, it’s a novel to be not so much read as experienced…. This moral ambiguity and the densely woven complexity of hard truths and bitter but necessary awakenings lend The Wreckage much of its power and resonance…. If there’s a better Canadian novel published this year, I’ll be amazed.”

  —Robert Wiersema, The Vancouver Sun

  “In The Wreckage, once again, Crummey offers a journey of stimulating moral inquiry, one of his fiction’s most admirable qualities…. When writing about Newfoundland, Crummey’s prose has … not only a vigorous directness but an enlivening specificity of detail.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Crummey’s gift is to write with compassion, imbuing the relationships with complexity and depth…. The Wreckage shows with profound insight that nothing’s fair in love and war.”

  —National Post

  “Crummey knows how to write, period.”

  —The Telegram (St. John’s)

  “Crummey is a superb storyteller…. His own prose is smooth and cohesive and even lyrical when he describes the landscapes he so clearly loves. The narrative style is one that moves easily from one time period to another, weaving backward and forward seamlessly and constantly keeping the reader enthralled.”

  —Winnipeg Free Press

  “What the reader will remember the most are the brilliantly written Second World War scenes. As the images that Crummey so vividly conjures up return to the mind at the end of the novel, the subtleties of the story deepen even further.”

  —Quill & Quire

  “[The Wreckage’s] beauty arises from the plainest of truths: Love is not inevitable.”

  —Toronto Star

  “The writing moves with the confidence of someone at home with his material and setting, well-versed in its details both beautiful and awful.”

  —Atlantic Books Today

  “Crummey is a master at weaving past and present, the particular and the universal. He’s equally adept at depicting adolescent courtship as he is at portraying the degrading horrors of a PoW camp…. Full of surprises to the last page, The Wreckage is a deeply moving account of the life of two people who come to represent not only Newfoundland, but Canada, during a tumultuous period of change…. Impossible to put down, it’s a novel you want to reread immediately upon finishing.”

  —Guelph Mercury

  “The Wreckage is a penetrating look at prejudice and love, the romantic variety and its more enduring counterpart.”

  — The Daily News (Truro)

  FOR HOLLY ANN

  And General Yamoshito, when American troops marched into Manila, remarked “with a broad smile,” the radio said, “that now the enemy is in our bosom.”

  RUTH BENEDICT, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword

  He was never dry.

  Every day they abandoned field guns mired in mud. The tires and axles of ammunition carts disappeared in sludge and the shells for the guns still with them were carried by hand. Half a dozen men at the front of the column slashed a trail with machetes, the rainforest so densely organic, so humid and rank, it felt as if they were forcing their way through the tissue of a living creature. Soldiers lost their footing on exposed roots, on the slick ground, and they collapsed under their packs like marionettes cut free of strings. There was only river water to drink, and everyone in the company was miserable with dengue and with dysentery, men stepping out of the column to relieve themselves in the bush. Nishino thought the reek alone would be enough to give away their position.

  Animals he would never see or know by name called and cawed in the trees. Only the birds came into view, hallucinatory flashes of colour dipping through the branches. The parrots picked up words and phrases from the soldiers and mimicked them. Hikoki hikoki sent the entire company face down into the foliage, listening for American planes.

  They’d out-marched their rice rations and the soldiers were fed a little dried fish and crackers and hard candy at midday. Nishino sat beside Ogawa as they ate, and they picked through each other’s hair and clothing for fleas and biting ants and chiggers. Then Ogawa lay his head in Nishino’s lap and slept until the officers ordered them on.

  He heard a voice calling “Yes sir!” and crouched defensively, swinging his rifle up to his waist, staring left and right.

  Ogawa tilted his head. “Are you all right, Noburo?”

  He heard the phrase repeated twice more before he realized it was a parrot calling from the forest. He let the rifle come down by his side and looked around at the other soldiers.

  “Noburo?”

  No one else had noticed. “Never mind,” he said.

  At the end of the day’s march he went to Lieutenant Kurakake, who was sitting under a fold of canvas with maps spread across his thighs. The charts glowing with a yellow bioluminescent substance smeared on the surface for light. He stood to one side at attention.

  “Yes?” the lieutenant said finally.

  He hesitated. Bowed deeply. “I heard a parrot,” he said.

  Kurakake looked up at him. “We have all heard them,” he said. “Endlessly,” he said.

  “It was an English phrase I heard, Lieutenant.”

  “English?”

  “Yes. I am certain of it.”

  “What is your name, Private?”

  “Nishino, sir. Noburo Nishino.”

  “And what did this bird say to you, Private Nishino?”

  “It said, ‘Yes sir.’ Several times.”

  The lieutenant nodded slowly. He called to a company sergeant and ordered him to double the number of soldiers on sentry duty through the night. He nodded up to Nishino, dismissing him.

  All the way back to the spot where Ogawa lay sleeping, he could feel the officer’s eyes following him.

  Shortly before dark the next evening the soldiers crested a hill, breathing in open air blowing off a long grassy ridge a hundred feet below. The officers walked through the ranks, whispering, ordering them to dig in.

  Nishino woke to the sound of the Americans talking among themselves below, their conversation carried up to him on the wind. Ogawa was still asleep, and Nishino lay quiet next to him, trying to pick words from the drift. Eased away from the boy finally to relieve himself in the trees. Covered his face as he crouched, shivering uncontrollably, his skin slick with sweat as the stink ran from him.

  Lieutenant Kurakake was standing over Ogawa when Nishino came back. “Lieutenant,” he said and bowed.

  He could smell a hint of something sweet in the air, something refined and so foreign to the place and condition he was in that he sniffed the air like a dog. Lieutenant Kurakake smiled at Nishino’s confusion, brought his hands from behind his back and passed across a small crystal bottle.

  “My wife’s perfume,” Kurakake told him. “I wanted to have something of her with me.”

  Nishino nodded, unsure what to make of the revelation, wary of the unexpected intimacy. Kurakake’s hair was greying at the temples, the bags under his eyes so dark they were almost black. He was older than any other officer in the field with them.

  “You are not married,” Kurakake said.

  Nishino shook his head.

  “There is a woman at home? Someone is waiting for you?”

  He looked briefly into Kurakake’s face, shook his head again. He returned the bottle of perfume.

  Kurakake watched him a moment. “A story for another time,” he said. He looked down at Oga
wa still motionless on the ground. The young man’s face even more childish in sleep. The officer made a dissatisfied noise in his throat. “This boy,” he said. “Chozo. He depends on you.”

  “We help one another.”

  Kurakake nodded dismissively. “What is it that is wrong with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Nishino said. Though he understood exactly what the officer meant. There was something simple about Ogawa that made him seem younger even than his age.

  The lieutenant made the same dissatisfied noise and nodded. Then turned and left them.

  Nishino dozed half an hour more, waking occasionally to shift on the ground. Catching the faintest scent of perfume every time he brought his hands near his face.

  The soldiers were given the last of the company’s food that afternoon, one can of sardines for every two men. He and Ogawa cleaned the oil from the can with their fingers. Nishino was hungrier after eating than before, and he felt the hunger sharpening an edge in him.

  Ogawa stared down at the Americans. They moved about in the open, wearing only undershirts. Sunlight glinting off the dog tags around their necks. “I wonder what they’re saying.” He shook his head in disgust. “Sssss ssss sss. That’s all it sounds like to me.”

  Nishino had removed his shoes and socks, splashing his feet with river water from the canteen and wiping them dry with his shirt. All but two of his toenails had blackened and fallen off. He said, “They’re too far off to make anything out.” Quickly added, “Even if you could speak the language.”

  Ogawa smiled. “We’ll hear them up close soon enough,” he said.

  The drone of aircraft billowed in off the ocean, and men on both sides paused to scan the horizon. Japanese bombers. A scurry of movement among the soldiers below, orders shouted. The planes dropping their payloads on the grassy ridge to soften the American defences.

  Two nights later, the Japanese began their advance through the forest toward the American positions. Soldiers fixed a criss-cross of white cloth to their backs to help those behind stay with them. Lieutenant Kurakake doused himself with his wife’s perfume. “Follow your noses,” he told his men.

  Just after nine a floater plane released flares overhead, destroyers and field guns using the light to fix on their targets. The whine of mortars made Nishino’s ears hum and then he registered them lower, a rippling thump that vibrated in his intestines. Return fire started up immediately, the ground shifting beneath him. Ogawa wandered off to the right and Nishino was yelling at him to stay close when a shell exploded behind them, throwing him into the air. He floated a moment, turning slowly as if suspended in water, before landing hard on his back. He lay motionless, trying to get his breath. Calcium flares and explosions lit up the sky, but the sound of it all was submerged in the massive ringing in his ears. There was a peculiar numbness the length of his torso, but nothing seemed seriously wrong when he finally got to his feet.

  He started down the hill shouting for Ogawa and was ambushed by an overwhelming urge to shit, the cramps like a twisted length of barbed wire being hauled through his bowels. He crawled behind the nearest tree and dropped his pants, pushing against the waves of pain, but nothing came of it. The noise of the artillery broke through the ringing in his ears and he covered them with his hands, swearing into the racket until the cramps subsided. He hauled angrily at his trousers, and started down the hill again.

  He caught sight of Ogawa on his knees, waving wildly, as if trying to flag a taxi on a busy street. When Nishino came up to him, the boy wrapped an arm around his legs.

  “Water,” Ogawa said. “Do you have water?”

  The boy’s head was bare and there was something odd about his posture that Nishino couldn’t place. He grabbed at Ogawa’s uniform, yelling “Get up,” but the boy slipped lower and turned onto his back, still clutching Nishino’s legs. And he saw clearly the right arm was torn clean from Ogawa’s body at the shoulder.

  “Water,” Ogawa called again.

  The cramps struck Nishino a second time and he shuffled away, struggling with his uniform, sure he would soil himself before he could undo the belt. He leaned a shoulder against a tree trunk as he crouched, both arms folded over the spasms in his gut, but there was no movement, no release, and he fell sideways to the ground, lying there until the pain lifted as suddenly as it had hit him. He got to his knees, pulling the trousers awkwardly to his waist. The intensity of the cramps drained him of any sense of urgency, though the gunfire and shouting and rumbling carried on. He took long, measured breaths through his nostrils, tucked his shirtfront into his pants. Reached behind to do the same at the back and felt the wetness soaking the material. When he looked at his hand in the light of the flares it seemed to have been blackened with oil. He brought it to his face to smell the cold iron smell. He touched his back gingerly through his shirt but there was only the peculiar numbness and the wet of his own blood.

  “I’m bleeding,” he said. “Chozo. I’m bleeding.”

  But by the time Nishino turned back to him the boy was dead.

  The retreat began three days after the initial engagement. Every able-bodied soldier was engaged to carry the wounded. There were no medics and there was little in the way of medicine among them. Dozens died on their stretchers and were abandoned on the side of the path hacked through the rainforest during their approach. Nishino moved past the dead without looking down. The numbness in his back had subsided and the intermittent cramping had eased enough that he was able to walk through it, leaning heavily on a walking stick. He refused to be carried.

  Even burdened by the injured, the company made better time without the heavy guns and shells and other munitions. Nishino fell behind each day and was forced to walk hours to catch up after the others had stopped for the night. There was no food, and he sucked juice from vines and ate betel nuts and weeds to calm his stomach.

  Three days into the retreat, Lieutenant Kurakake ordered his men to throw grenades into the river. They waded in afterwards to gather up the fish killed by the concussion, their bodies floating belly up on the surface. The men ate them raw and nothing was wasted, not the eyeballs or the skin or the intestines.

  It was after dark by the time Nishino reached them. He talked aloud to himself to avoid being shot by the sentries as he approached, repeating passages of General Tojo’s Field Service Guide he had memorized while in training. “Faith is strength,” he told the trees. “He who has faith in combat is always the victor.”

  He used his walking stick to ease himself onto the ground at the outer edge of the circle of sleeping soldiers, still talking. “Do not live in shame as a prisoner,” he said. “Die and leave no ignominious crime behind you.” Only when he closed his eyes did he think of the explosions he’d heard earlier that evening. But he was too exhausted to sit up and ask for an explanation.

  In the morning he was nudged awake by Lieutenant Kurakake. He forced himself up onto his elbows and Kurakake crouched beside him.

  “I didn’t expect to find you here this morning,” the officer said.

  “I’m holding you back.”

  He shook his head. “There are at least three more days ahead of us. You won’t keep up much longer.” Kurakake looked around, pursing his lips. There was no one else awake in the camp but the soldiers on sentry duty. “Perhaps now is the time for that story,” he said.

  Nishino stared at him.

  “The woman. Is there someone you would like me to send a message to?”

  “There is no woman.”

  Kurakake stared at the forest, still dark and without definition. “There is always a woman,” he said. He reached into a pouch at his side and pressed a packet into the soldier’s hand.

  Nishino unwrapped the paper, found a fillet of raw fish.

  Kurakake got to his feet and stared down at him. He said, “Where did you learn to speak English, Private?”

  The smell of the fish was making Nishino’s hands shake. He felt as if his throat had closed over.

 
; “Where did you learn this?” Kurakake repeated.

  He swallowed several times, trying to find his voice. “In Kitsilano,” he said finally. “In Canada.”

  1940

  WISH

  1.

  HE LOVED HIS TIME ALONE in the church and fishermen’s halls before afternoon shows. Even on the hottest mornings of a summer the halls were shadowy, cool, which made them seem private and sheltered, like the gardens of the merchant houses on Circular Road in St. John’s. He’d carried the generator up from the harbour last and was sweating with the weight by the time he set it down. He stood the door open for the extra light and the breeze. Walked off two dozen paces from the Victor projector and set the movie screen down, raising the white sheet of it like a trap skiff sail. The surface catching what little sunlight came in the few windows and the open door. His shoulder brushed across the screen as he turned, the crushed-glass sparkle coming off in a powder on his shirt.

  By this time word would have reached every household on Little Fogo Island that the shows were in on the coastal boat, whole families loading into punts and trap skiffs and bully boats to make way for the hall. By mid-afternoon fifty souls would be crammed into the room, sitting on the chairs or stools or wooden crates they’d carted with them. The heat of so many bodies so close together rising to the rafters, the air’s sweetness adulterated by the smell of kelp and sweat.

  For now, though, he was alone with the machinery and the shadowy light. He threaded the celluloid from the front reel directly to the rear to revise it, letting the movie play backwards through his thumb and forefinger, checking for nicks or cuts from the last screening. He had his back to the open door, humming tunelessly to accompany the drone of the gas generator outside, and it took him a while to notice the change in the light, the slight darkening of the shadows in the hall. To look finally toward the figure in the doorway. He had no idea how long she’d been watching. The sun directly behind her made it impossible to distinguish any of the girl’s features, though her dress and the length of her hair were clearly outlined. He knew right away who it was, and though he’d arrived in the Cove hoping to lay eyes on her, he felt foolish to have been spied on.