Genoa

by Paul Metcalf

  “Concha, I guess, didn’t know what to expect . . . she was only thinking of her patients. This was a general hospital, and among other things she had women in labor, and some who had just delivered. The Japs explained, through a Chinese doctor. that they were going to take over the hospital for billets . . .

  “They started evacuating the patients at sword point. One of the privates threw a baby up and caught it through the belly on his bayonet; Concha didn’t move, but when the C.O. laughed, she lost her head and struck him. It wasn’t a ladylike slap, but, well, you know Concha—she just rifled one off the floor and planted it on him, and he went down for the count. It was beautiful . . . but we all knew she would suffer for it. At his command, they grabbed her, yanked her back and forth among them, until we couldn’t always keep sight of her. When the crowd thinned out she was naked, her skin in ribbons, her long hair hanging down—and several handfuls trailed from many hands. Her knuckles were bleeding, her eyes flashed, her head was up and she was mad clear through. I was proud of her. She had given a good account, too, being outnumbered—had blacked several eyes, and quite a few men had lumps appearing on their jaws.

  “The Chinese doctor groaned aloud when he heard the C.O. say that he would rape her first, and then the others could have her. He explained that she was in for a bad time, she was such a small woman . . .

  “We were invited to watch, with our hands tied behind our backs. They threw her to the ground and when they twisted her legs behind her shoulders, and her hips came out of joint or broke, Rico yelled curses and tore at his bonds until his wrists were bleeding. The officer, of course, couldn’t get into her and he seemed to be in a hurry. He gave a command and a soldier jammed his rifle barrel into her three or four times until he broke through . . . She blacked out at the first jab . . .

  “He raped her then . . . some of us declined the invitation to look and closed our eyes and turned our heads—but they went around our circle and cut off a few pairs of eyelids.”

  (MOBY-DICK: “That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun . . .”

  Carl . . . from notes made during and after his captivity, and secreted in his duffle, until finally, in a backhanded gesture—placing them where I and no one else would discover them—he let them fall into my hands.

  Early in the war, he had tried to enlist in the Air Force, but, for some reason, had been turned down. Cabling Rico—the only survivor of the Spanish brothers—in Havana, he arranged to meet him in England: he assumed the pose of some sort of civilian technician, and managed to hitchhike on military craft, in a matter of only a few hours, from Indianapolis to London. Together, Carl and Rico enlisted in the RAF.

  For months we heard nothing—until a card came from Concha: she was trying to trace Rico through Carl, and Carl through me. I didn’t know until years after, when I read Carl’s notes, that, with my reply, she had headed for London, and, with her medical training—she had specialized in surgery—had been taken into the British Army, and given an assignment in China.

  There were others who made notes—the Chinese doctor, Concha’s adjutant, was one—and these I found with Carl’s:

  “I once asked Concha where she had gained her knowledge and technique in gunshot wounds (she was too young for the first war) and she told me that she had had ample experience during the various revolutions in Cuba. (In one of these, her father and twin brothers were army officers, and she fought with the students against them—as I believe she fought against her father in Spain. When her father and Rico’s twin were killed, she may have suffered more than any of us realize . . .

  “Her surgery was remarkable, I’ve never seen anyone, even a man, more deft and sure. Her reactions were quick, her decisions rapid and accurate, her reflexes amazing. The Japs have ruined her hands, they now shake badly.

  “Our captors could never be still for long; they chose projects and then suddenly dropped them for no apparent reason. When they attacked Carl, though, they stayed with the idea until it is a miracle he wasn’t killed. They fought over him, dragged him around by his hair (his hands were bound together over his head) and all the time the whip never ceased lashing his back. His mouth was bleeding; blood came from his nose in spurts and bubbles. His knees were raw from being dragged back and forth over the sand and gravel; when one tired of the whip, another took over. They broke his teeth and ribs, and when he evacuated, they dragged him about in it. His pleading was pitiful, it was what might have been expected from a woman, in extreme pain and fear . . .

  “When finally they tired of him, only Rico and I would touch him—the others turned away. We tried to clean him as best we could, but we had nothing to work with. Rico got some putrid water from a ditch, and we threw it over his buttocks. He was in a great deal of pain for some time—broken teeth and ribs, abrasions on his legs, his back practically flayed. And all the time he tried to explain himself, weeping and pleading incoherently. I don’t know what I pitied more, his condition of mind or body. He finally fell into an exhausted sleep. I think Rico was disgusted with him, but he has a big heart and like me was more charitable, because we felt pity at having had to watch—and we were forced to watch. Neither of us, after all, knew how we would react in his position. The Japs are past masters at reducing human beings . . .”

  (Melville—1850—admits the East on board:

  “With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.”

  “For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn . . .

  “. . . while the subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last . . . He has such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days, still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations . . .”

  Carl:

  “There was one tree in the yard and in it they hung by the wrists the women who were about to deliver; they tied strips of sheets between their legs, and left them hanging until they died. Those whose kids they had murdered just wandered around crying while their breasts swelled with milk, until some of them burst.

  “They gave us nothing to drink and we were fed only salt pork, fish heads, and rice.”

  (Columbus—who had set out in search of Cipango—sends a message back to the Sovereigns:

  “. . . the greatest necessity we feel here at the present time is for wines and it is what we desire most to have . . . It is necessary that each time a caravel comes here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even more than that, lambs and little ewe lambs, more females than males, and some little yearling calves, male and female . . .”

  Carl:

  “Thirst became an agony, until one man went berserk and grabbed a Chinese woman and started sucking her breast. She screamed and fought at first, until she realized that the pressure in her breasts was being relieved, and in a moment each of us had a woman, or half of one . . .

  “The Japs laughed and capered around . . . they weren’t missing a trick. Mike, I wielded a whip on some of our own men, to save myself. I went down on my knees to those little brown bastards and did as they told me. I must have taken down a hundred of them . . .”

  (Columbus:

  “Thus, as I have already said, I saw no cannibals, nor did I hear of any, except in a certain island called Charis, which is the second from Española, on the side towards India, where dwell a people who are considered by the neighboring islanders as most ferocious: and these feed upon human flesh.”

  (and elsewhere:

  “The boys that they take they castrate; as we cause castration; because they become fatter
for eating; and the mature men also, when they take them they kill them and they eat them: and they eat the intestines fresh and the extreme members of the body . . .”

  Carl:

  “Believe me, Mike, it was the warm milk—the horror of those days and nights, and the affection I had for him. He had been through so much, and when they shot the aphrodisiac into him and we heard what they intended, the Chinese doctor groaned again.

  “Night fell, and Rico had thrown his beaten body off Concha’s a hundred times, and each time they threw him on her he promised her he wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t appear to be afraid, even when some of the boys shouted at him to take her, that he couldn’t fight that drug. He shook like the ague, and kept his jaws clamped tight; his eyes burned, and he was so close to breaking that we all wondered how he held out. The Japs finally tired of that game and went inside for chow, and Rick stumbled off by himself . . .

  “It was dark, and when I found him he was lying on his back, his arms rigid at his sides, the bloody nail-less fingers clenched. I ran my hands over his sweat-slick body . . .

  “I had to hold his hips with both arms, he pitched so violently . . . I could feel my mouth tearing and my jaws breaking . . .”

  (Ishmael, in MOBY-DICK—embedded with a cannibal:

  “I looked at the grand and glorious fellow . . .”

  “Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn to him.”

  “For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us . . .”

  (Melville, elsewhere:

  “The Anglo-Saxons—lacking grace

  To win the love of any race;

  Hated by myriads dispossessed

  . . . —the Indians East and West.”

  (and

  “Asia shall stop her at the least,

  That old inertness of the East.”

  Carl:

  “Did you ever see a man die, Mike? The Japs made me beat Curley—one of our own boys—to death, and I guess that’s when I really lost my mind: I can’t help it, it was a wonderful sensation . . . they had kicked in his face first, until we couldn’t understand a word he said, but he pleaded and whimpered, and his wild, pain-racked eyes stared at me . . .

  “Among the prisoners was a missionary family, who had a little girl about ten years old, fat, blue-eyed and blonde. The Japs thought it would hurt the parents more if they tortured the child, so they decided to rape her. They used a sword point to make her big enough . . . Dozens of them took her . . . she lay in a pool of blood, cried all the time, and never lost consciousness. We were all driven crazy—I doubt if any one had ever said an unkind word to her in her life, she just didn’t know what it was all about.

  “After chow the Japs came back and decided to have more game with her. Rico didn’t have a square inch of skin on him that hadn’t been torn or burned, and he couldn’t get on his feet, but he crawled over to her, spoke to her quietly, and put his hands—burned and bleeding—on her neck. He put his head down on his arms . . . and in seconds, she was dead. The Chinese doctor felt her pulse, and then gently released Rico’s hands . . .

  “The Japs never could stand being frustrated, they almost killed Rico for that gesture . . . I don’t know how he survived it. Blood trickled down his chin where he bit through his lip, and when they left him, he shook uncontrollably . . .”

  TWO

  When he was finally rescued—the town was relieved near the end of the war—Carl didn’t return directly to Indianapolis. Wealthy with back pay, he went first to the Mayo Clinic, for plastic surgery and other repairs; then he rejoined Rico and Concha, and two or three others from the RAF—there was an ex-prizefighter, whose only name, so far as I could find out, was Meat-Nose. They collected others—a singer named Joey was one—and formed a dance band. One or two got jobs as test pilots, on the side, and together they rented a ramshackle old house on the coast of California, which they all shared.

  Leaving Minnesota, Carl came first to Indianapolis, staying only overnight—his manner as affable, his personality and presence as broad, hazarded, and infrangible as it had ever been. When I asked him once, only vaguely, about the war, he leaned back in his chair—I thought he would fall, or the chair would break; he laughed heartily, his great head rocking as I had seen it so often before—and changed the subject.

  But he left his notes for me—though I didn’t find them until later. I don’t know how he did it—I was with him when he unpacked his duffle—saw him take out the dirty clothes, the spare airplane parts, pieces of sheet music, photographs of friends and bartenders; trinkets and lucky charms, Indian relics and archeological fragments; a thumbed and tattered collection of pre-war comic books—the circulating library of the pow camp; and, at the bottom of the sack, down among the last of the comics, a book that he must have picked up in England, published by John Lehman of London: Melville, H.: THE CONFIDENCE-MAN.

  Again, for a long time, we heard nothing. Then a letter came from Meat-Nose . . . he had heard that I was Carl’s brother, and a doctor, and he was asking my help. He’d had a talk with Carl that he tape-recorded, without Carl knowing it, and he transcribed some of Carl’s words and sent them to me:

  “I don’t expect you to understand, it’s a feeling that can’t be described. Joey is different . . . even after I’m through with him, the sensation of pleasure goes on and on and builds up until I’m drunk with it . . . nothing seems real, I’m above everything human, I see nothing but red streamers of blood widening out . . . For hours afterward I can see the kid’s eyes wide with pain, his face twisted, and I can hear that voice everyone admires so beating in my ears, in my blood . . . after I’m home in bed, I can relive the whole thing . . .

  “I know he’s insane. I wish I could stop. I never felt this way with anyone before. There have been others who were afraid of me, but none like Joe. When he’s panicked to the edge of madness, I think my veins will bust . . .

  “When his voice is gone, and he can’t manage to get on his knees without pulling himself up, I look at him, and I’m sad because he doesn’t die. I tell him I hate him, I swear at him, and he tries to get to his knees and starts kissing my feet and looks at me with those wild eyes . . . Even after I’ve thrown down the whip I like to sink my fingers into his flesh and twist it. He begs me to stop, prays to me, swears he wants to make me happy—then he says that if the only way I can love him is to hurt him, then hurt him more.

  “What in hell keeps him alive? How does anyone survive . . . ? I thought sometimes that I’d reached the end with him, and I’ve even considered taking him away like he begs me to . . . let his hair grow, dress him like a woman, take him where everyone will think he’s my wife. I was about to make up my mind to do it, when he refused to let me cut him up so he’d look like a woman. Why in hell he wants to hang on to such a sorry mess of stuff as he has, I don’t know, but the little bastard clings to it as though it were made of gold . . .”

  THREE

  The cigar gone, burned down beyond rekindling—the stump splayed in the ashtray—I close the books, and get to my feet. The suburbs, the city itself seem hushed . . . standing alone at the desk, I enjoy for a moment possession of myself, and of the attic, the form and structure of the house, and beyond, the city, the plains.

  My joints are stiff, and I recall the bottle of ale, drunk earlier in the evening, downstairs in the old kitchen, when I was in a nineteenth-century mood—a little painful now . . .

  The creak of the planks seems louder, as I move toward the stairs. Descending the dark stairwell, I tread softly.

  The house is quiet, the lights out. Pausing a moment in the hallway, I can hear Linda’s breathing. Then I pass down the second flight, and out the front door . . .

  The air is chilled, but the wind is quiet . . . the blackberry winter, the catbird storm, subsiding as we push past midnight, into the early hours . . .


  Returning to the kitchen, I think of eating—cold meatloaf, a piece of rye bread, another bottle of ale. There is an urge to turn on the television, hunt for some late show, a bit of fiction that will haul me into the screen, the eye of the thing. Hesitating between the two—refrigerator and TV—I am drawn both ways. Then I pass beyond them, move quietly to the stairs and climb again, both flights, moving swiftly through the dark, through the familiarity of many years in the old house. I climb once more to the attic.

  FOUR

  A card came from Carl, postmarked St. Louis. He said that he had left the coast for good, was in St. Louis, but gave no address.

  Later I discovered that his departure, and the break-up of the band, was coincidental with the death, under mysterious circumstances, of the singer named Joey. Joey was a good sailor, had managed boats all his life—but he took a small catboat out when the storm warnings were up, headed the thing into the rain and wind . . . and, according to the Coast Guard, deliberately capsized her, turning downwind, and then coming about, so that she jibed. His body—what was left of it—was never found . . .

  Why Carl came to St. Louis, in particular, I didn’t know . . . although I found out later. I also found that he was not alone: he had brought Concha with him . . .

  There followed a succession of weird illnesses, disconnected physical manifestations, and, as with the epilepsy, he took the trouble to report to me: random cards, postmarked St. Louis, giving the strict details, and no address.

  He reported the appearance of a succession of shapes and markings in odd areas of his body—stars, crosses, and various abstractions, like microscopic cell life . . . One after another, or in groups, they appeared, and vanished . . .

  (MOBY-DICK: “. . . the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among the many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over obliquely crossed and recrossed with numberless straight marks in thick array.”