“You mean we got our ass in a sling for stopping this?” Ringa asked.
“We’re all gonna get court-martialed for stopping the fucking Japs from getting supplies, I suppose. For stopping a bunch of animals from killin’ our guys,” Niven said disgustedly, hurtingly.
“That’s their policy.” Con said. “And three little shits like us aren’t going to change it. If they’ve gone this far should they stop it now? Why,” he asked.
“Ringa,” Con ordered. “Execute the prisoners. Everyone of the seventeen that had American valuables in their possession. Execute them. Now,” he said cold stoney-eyed. “Execute them. Cut off their hands. Lay them out in a line. Let the remaining prisoners see them and then turn them loose.” He turned to Nautaung. “Get the Chinese Elder here at once,” he ordered.
Nautaung and Ringa left. Niven started to get up.
“Where are you going, Jim?” Con asked.
“To join the firing squad. That’s where,” Niven said the young mouth twisted, the youthful blue eyes under the thick gold rimmed glasses suddenly very old. He walked away slowly with bowed head.
“Niven,” Con hollered after him. “Tell Ringa I said to execute them as quickly and painlessly as possible. Not to cut off their hands until they’re dead.”
Niven waved one arm out half-heartedly signalling that he had heard, but he did not turn around or change his pace.
Nautaung returned with the Chinese Elder. The Elder was very old and thin. He had a scraggy white goatee. His eyes were wise and old and sad. His face was heavily wrinkled; a kind, sorrowful face. He shivered as though from a malarial fever. It was cold in the night.
The Elder spoke without subservience. Nor did he speak with any partisan self-sympathy. The Elder said he worried that the bandits would make retribution upon the town when the Kachin force left. Con told him he would arm the village if that would help. The Elder said the bandits would never return if they were armed. The town was not wealthy enough for them to take risks in attacking it when it was armed. Not, he said, when the bandits could attack rich American convoys so easily. Con sent Nautaung and the Elder off to make arrangements for the transfer of sixty M-1 rifles, two light machine-guns, and ammunition for fifteen battles.
Con stood alone near the church steps. He wondered what Stilwell would have done. Stilwell loved the Chinese. If the majority of Chinese were like the Elder, Con could understand why.
Con threw another log on the fire. His eyes were fixed on the American articles on the blanket. He thought of the picture of the young G.I.’s baby. The wife. The writing on the back of the picture. The G.I. burning alive.
He thought of Stilwell again. What the hell did Stilwell have to do with this anyhow? He was gone. And even if he weren’t gone he wasn’t the kind of man that made your decisions for you. Besides, it was a personal matter now. It couldn’t be more personal.
These forces are your enemy, he told himself. As the Japanese are your enemy. They must be destroyed. That is what you are here for isn’t it? Then don’t question yourself. You can’t be two things. You cannot defend your people and supply your enemy all at once.
Suddenly Con remembered Ringa’s stony blue eyes as they had stared, unmoved, into the fire an hour before. There was a horrifying kind of strength in those eyes, he had to admit. He wondered if his own eyes looked anything like that? Ringa was obsessed by something, Con knew.
Well, you are obsessed. Your own job was no longer a job. That had ceased long ago. It too was an obsession. Yes, it was. You do not order seventeen men to death unless you are obsessed.
I don’t want to forget how to feel. That doesn’t make any difference, your eyes looking like that. That doesn’t mean you still can’t feel. Not necessarily. You still crap regular. I mean irregular. Or is the dysentery regular? Yes. Down here it’s regular. Down here everything’s ass backwards, or is it really ass backwards up there?
Certainly you are different when your eyes are like that. But they had to die. There was never any question about that. That wasn’t your law. It was theirs.
You see, it all reverts to you. I caught you. You’re questioning yourself because after ordering that they die you have felt nothing. Maybe you have felt something. Justification? Or was it revenge? But don’t kid yourself that you were thinking about how they felt when they would die. You’ve been thinking about your own goddamn guilt. Oh, you’re sneaky, Reynolds. With yourself above all you can really be sneaky.
Then for a second he wondered what Carla would say of this decision. His own father would have said, had he known, that he had given birth to a monster. His mother would never be able to comprehend how her son became involved in a situation where he would have to make such a decision.
Well, the hell with them. All of them. They would never be able to understand it. How could you explain: I executed seventeen unarmed men. I did it to save the lives of my countrymen, my troops, and the decent people of this town.
But why not imprison them?
You’re taking life. You’re taking it and sitting around not even thinking about it. Thinking only of what people are going to say about you for doing it. You get farther and farther away from the point every time you start to think. And when you do talk or think it is only of your love and your desire. That, or your hate. It is an outward consolation. What really, he asked himself, has it to do with your inner feeling. The feeling that must be right before you can ever do anything of value for anyone.
There was a burst of machine-gun fire from down by the market place. In his mind he saw the hand-tied blacksuited bandits fall convulsively to the ground; twisting, spurning the dust in dying contortions in the moonlight. Another burst. Then another. Then one long burst. Silence. And then cheering. In the distance the two villages that Niven and Ringa had set fire to flickered and sparked. Above and back of Con was the church crucifix. It cast a shadow on the ground near the fire in front of Con. He did not see it. Nautaung ambled up. Con sat down on the church steps and the old man moved to the fire to warm his hands. The machine-gun began to fire again. There was a lone, shrill, solitary scream; a pleading in any language.
“It seems, old man, that the only time we have to visit anymore is when there is an execution,” Con said. “I’ll bet funerals are the only things in the world that outdraw basketball, movies, and the Olympics.”
“Often man sees in death his own chance to live,” Nautaung said. “At once it makes them recall the joys and happiness of their lives. You cannot deny that.”
“It’s too bad we cannot recall that without a funeral.”
“Someday we will be able to do that too, Dua.”
“That will be a day. If there were to be such a day everything would be worthwhile.”
“Who are we to say who is the better off, we or those that die?” Nautaung said. “Truly, even the matter of man never dies. So do we really die? I mean the body even. Is it to die that the energy that was your body should float away upon a cloud. Or an atom of you sail away upon a river. Or the dust of you to float away to mountains. Or a speck of the energy of you to rest peacefully on the limb of some banyan tree. Is that bad? Or is that not the utmost of the freedom of you? Do not regret your decision, Dua. For truly, you do not know what you have decided.”
There was a momentary silence.
“There was only one decision for me, Nautaung. My real regret was that I had to make it.”
“As long as you know that,” Nautaung said. He bent over and folded up the blanket where the personal possessions of the Americans lay.
“When you die I think I will have you ground into the tinest pieces, old man. And put you into a pill. When the world is not right for me I will take a pill,” Con said in Kachin, smiling. He did not realize he was speaking in Kachin. “That way I would have a life of no sorrow, no trouble, no decision.”
“And because of that you would have no life. So I am glad you have my father’s dah. You could kill yourself with that. Though the dah was nev
er intended for suicide,” Nautaung said in English, grinning. “You would not enjoy the sun if it always shone. Nor the night if it were forever night. Nor a woman if she were always the same woman.”
Con was stroking his goatee. The small crow’s feet around his eyes wrinkled up and he smiled. He shoved the bush hat far back on his head.
“Anything that remains the same, that is constant. Or any one that is that way, we cannot enjoy,” Nautaung said. “They say women are wise because men do not understand them. I do not think women understand themselves. What we do not understand fully is each day different as we are each day different. So I believe a woman’s wiseness is nature’s way of assuring that there is a nature. By making women a problem. Man a solver of problems. That is the trouble with marriage often. One grows. The other stagnates. Remains the same. And the one who does not grow is like the night that is forever. Or the sun that always shines. Often they both stagnate. That is worst of all. Truly.”
“Where do you learn words like stagnate?” Con asked.
“That word I found in one of the Du Niven’s comic books. Though I have heard it before.”
“You don’t wear words like that very well.”
“I grow,” Nautaung grinned. “My words too.”
“Keep it up,” Con laughed. “Keep it up and soon you will be as complicated as a white man.”
Nautaung chuckled. The ancient Mongolian face squinted turning deep wrinkles into crevices. The wise, old, quick hawk eyes laughed too. The face danced as the firelight danced.
Niven and Ringa returned. Niven went straight for the bottle. He was pale. Ringa’s cheeks were flushed red. He glanced at Con first furtively, then boyishly.
“How did they take it?” Con asked.
“Like they were expecting it,” Ringa said.
“Like they didn’t know what it was that was happening. Or didn’t care,” Niven said.
“All but one,” Ringa said. “He was the only one that spoke any English. He broke. We had to give it to him lying down.”
“They’re all laid out,” Niven said. He was sitting on the second church step and held the bottle in one hand and his head was almost down between his legs, the other hand gently fingering the gold rimmed glasses. “I should say they’re all dressed out in formation. They’re sawing off the hands now.”
“I gave the town Elder some silver,” Ringa said. “I told him to pay the villagers for digging the graves. He didn’t want to take it. I made him.”
“Good. When are you going to show the remaining prisoners the bodies?” Con asked.
“We thought we’d wait until morning,” Niven said.
“That way they’d assume the dead ones didn’t die so quick,” Ringa said. “Besides, the village people are working the carcasses over. They’ll be a much better effect on the prisoners if we wait until morning to show them what’s left of their fellow bandits. When we turn them loose then they’ll have something to remember,” Ringa said matter-of-factly, almost scientifically. “I’m hungry.”
“I could eat too,” Con said. He hollered for Laku his new number one boy since the death of Billingsly. “Scrambled eggs, Laku. For four.”
“Not for me,” Niven said. “I think I’m going to puke anyhow. That’s my last execution.”
They ate their breakfast as the sun began to come up. By the time it was served Niven was hungry and he ate too. And as they ate they heard the whrrr of the generator as the early morning message was being received. After the meal, they had eaten seventeen eggs between the four of them, they sat around drinking red Chinese brandy that the village Elder had presented to them. A runner brought the message:
HEADQUARTERS DELHI ORDERS YOU QUIT CHINA AT ONCE ORDER THAT YOU EXTEND PERSONAL MESSAGE OF APOLOGY TO CHUNGKING AT ONCE BURN ALL DOCUMENTS REARM AND RELEASE ALL PRISONERS KAI SHEK HAS FILED PERSONAL COMPLAINT TO OUR HIGHEST AUTHORITY
COLONEL PEARSON
At first Con did not comprehend that they were going to suppress the entire incident. He read the message again. He threw the message on the ground. He put his hands to his head and pressed hard. He jumped up and began to stomp and kick at the ground. He beat on his thighs with clenched fists. His eyes were belligerent, wild, mean, glazed. He was crying. His mouth quivered and his knees shook. He kicked at the smoldering fire. The ashes and sparks flew. Ringa and Niven jumped out of the way. He stomped up the church steps then back down slamming his fists resoundingly into his hips murmuring: “Oh Jesus … Jesus … Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus … Jesus Christ what am I a part of?” Then he hollered. “What? What? What am I part of? What have I done all this killing for?”
Nautaung had not moved. His mind said: Be calm, Dua. Patience, Dua. Now above all times. Patience.
Niven had picked up the message. He was backing away. He’s going to kill someone, he thought. He got three paces back and glanced at the message, then to Con, quickly one to the other, finally managing to read it.
Ringa thought, he’s flipped. Goddamn if the boss ain’t flipped.
Con sat down on the church step. He cried. Niven handed the message to Ringa, Ringa to Nautaung. No one spoke or moved for a long time. Suddenly Con stood up:
“Take this message and send it personally, Niven.
“To Pearson for Chungking and Kai-shek,” he said slowly, grindingly, with a deep inward invocation: “FUCK YOU.
“To Pearson for Headquarters CBI: FUCK YOU.
“To Pearson for Pearson if he goes along with it: FUCK YOU.”
Niven scribbled it down but he did not move when he finished. He stared at Con with the young, gentle mouth twisted half-open, his own face an ashen white, his eyes roundly, bluely bewildered.
“Move,” Con screamed at him. “Move, move, move, goddamn you. Send those messages,” he said threateningly. Niven turned and half-ran toward the radio glancing over his shoulder as he went.
Nautaung signaled to Ringa. They walked away. Nautaung returned an hour later. “Did Niven get the messages off?” Con asked completely composed now. His eyes were bloodshot and his skin puffed under the eyes from the tears.
“Yes, Dua. Another message comes in now.”
The message was received. It ordered Con out.
A plane was flown into Lewje the next day. Con packed four of the warrants into his combat pack. He ordered Ringa to return the force to the Hills of Burma and proceed. He radioed Danny to assume overall command. At noon, on the plain half a mile from Lewje, Con boarded the L-1. “This is not good-bye,” Nautaung said to him talking through the plane window. “Somehow I know that.”
“Somehow I know that too, Nautaung.”
And the plane began to taxi.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
It was cool and clean at five thousand feet as the small plane fought to gain altitude that would take them over the Himalayan foothills and into Ledo. The pilot had said that they would stop and refuel at Ledo and fly right into the tea plantation that was Base Headquarters. The pilot had instructed Con that by the Colonel’s order he was not to leave the plane at Ledo or talk to anyone.
The pilot’s window was open and the air rushed pleasantly into Con’s face. He scratched his goatee and glanced down at his filthy green jungle pants, then wiggled his toes in the jungle boots. The boots were made of rubber and canvas and he hadn’t had them off in eight days and he could feel the warped rottenness of his skin and knew that when he took off the boots the skin would peel off in thick, dead layers. He noticed the grenade taped to his breast pocket. He opened the window next to him, took the grenade and pulled the pin and dropped it out the window, then strained around to see the black powdered explosion but it fell out of his sight.
His eyes were tired, bloodshot he knew. And his beard felt scraggly up above the goatee. He studied the green hills, and the road, and the Irriwaddy River flowing in the valley. Then he looked north and rising, climbing, like some unearthly thing he saw Nautaung’s sacred mountain. It was a magic mountain, he thought. And in his mind he believed that i
t did not move, picturing the mountain standing still and the earth revolving around it. And suddenly he felt that what he must do had been done before and that it would be done again.
Freedom and personal liberty had once been words to you, he said to himself. But you spell them differently now. And yet you really can’t spell them at all. There was no language that could paint the true color of the word freedom for freedom was a world itself; a world that towered over men and that they would always seek, but he knew now that world was above them. Freedom, as it had been parcelled out to him was a limited article. As society had contrived to make love limited. As corporations were limited by the Sherman anti-trust act. But that’s where the comparison ended.
The corporations of man are not infinite. But true freedom was so above and beyond and truly infinite that you could not begin to limit it as truly you cannot limit love. You cannot limit what you cannot conceive. Can you? No, you can’t. And then he wondered why all these men in all of history hadn’t found out that you cannot suppress what you cannot reach.
The olive fell off the tree when it was ripe. And there wasn’t a thing in all the agricultural schools in the world, in all the offices of all the leaders of the world, in all the laboratories of all the scientists of the world that could change it. When the olive was ripe it simply fell off the tree. Because there was something in the nature of it that made it fall. As there was something in the nature of freedom that man could not conceive or touch.
Stupid, foolish man, suppressing what he could not grasp. Idiot man screaming thwarted in his bear skin on a lava hill as he reaches outward again and again trying to capture in his blunt, stubby, hairy hands a piece of the cloud of freedom. I have it, the cave man says. And when he opens his hands there is nothing there. He pounds the earth with thwarted fists: I saw it but now it’s not there. And the joke was, Con said to himself, if it was there, that cloud of freedom, what would he do with it? Save it? For a rainy day perhaps? Would he share it if he had caught it? What good would it be if he had it all to himself? Was there an answer? Or was that why he didn’t have it; because still he had not learned what to do with it.
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