Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

The General takes advantage of this to draw breath, and then continues, as if he were reading this from a script. “And now, when I least expect it, I encounter you, here, many leagues distant from your assigned post, out of uniform, in a disheveled condition, accompanied by a Nipponese officer, violating the sanctity of a ladies' powder room! Shaftoe, have you no sense whatsoever of military honor? Do you not respect decorum? Do you not believe that a representative of the United States military should comport himself with more dignity?”

Shaftoe's kneecaps are joggling up and down uncontrollably. His guts have become molten, and he feels strange bubbling processes going on in his rectum. His molars are chattering together like a teletype machine. He senses Goto Dengo behind him, and wonders what the poor bastard can possibly be thinking.

“Begging your pardon, General, not to change the subject or anything, but are you here all by yourself?”

The General juts his chin towards the men's room. “My aides are in there relieving themselves. They were in a great hurry to do so, and it is good that we came upon this place. But none of them considered invading the powder room,” he says severely.

“I apologize for that, sir,” Bobby Shaftoe says hastily, “and for all of those other things that you mentioned. But I still think of myself as a Marine, and Marines do not make excuses, so I will not even try.”

“That is not satisfactory! I need an explanation for where you've been.”

“I have been out in the world,” Bobby Shaftoe says, “getting butt fucked by Fortune.”

The door of the men's room opens and one of The General's aides walks out, woozy and bowlegged. The General ignores him; he is gazing right past Shaftoe now.

“Pardon my manners, sir,” Shaftoe says, turning sideways. “Sir, my friend Goto Dengo. Goto-san, say hi to General of the Army Douglas MacArthur.”

Goto Dengo has been standing there like a pillar of salt this whole time, utterly dumbfounded, but now he snaps out of it, and bows very low. MacArthur nods crisply. His aide is staring darkly at Goto Dengo and has already drawn his Colt.

“Pleasure,” The General says airily. “Pray tell, what sort of business were you two gentlemen prosecuting in the ladies'?”

Bobby Shaftoe knows how to lunge for an opening. “Uh, it is very funny you should ask that question, sir,” he says offhandedly, “but Goto-san, just now, saw the light, and converted to Christianity.”

Some Nips on top of the wall open up on them with a machine gun. The flimsy, tumbling rounds crack through the air and thump into the ground. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur stands motionless for a long time, lips pursed. His sniffles once. Then he removes his aviator glasses carefully and wipes his eyes on the immaculate sleeve of his uniform. He pulls out a neatly folded white hankie and wraps it around his hawklike nose and honks into it a few times. He folds it up carefully and puts it back in his pocket, squares his shoulders, and then walks right up to Goto Dengo and wraps him up in a big, manly bearhug. The remainder of The General's aides emerge from the shitter en bloc and view the scene with reticence and palpable tension all over their faces. Profoundly mortified, Bobby Shaftoe looks down at his feet, wiggles his toes, and caresses the linear scab running upside his head where the oar clocked him a few days ago. The machine-gun crew up on the wall are being picked off one by one by a sniper; they writhe and scream operatically. The Huks have come up from the dugout and stumbled into this little tableau; they all stand motionless with their jaws hanging down around their navels.

Finally MacArthur unhands the stiff body of Goto Dengo, steps back dramatically, and presents him to his staff. “Meet Goto-san,” he announces. “You have all heard the expression, 'the only good Nip is a dead Nip'? Well, this young fellow is a counterexample, and as we learned in mathematics, it only takes one counterexample to disprove the theorem.”

His staff observe cautious silence.

“It seems only fitting that we take this young fellow to the Church of St. Agustin, over yonder in Intramuros, to carry out the sacrament of baptism,” The General says.

One of the aides steps forward, hunched over in that he's expecting to get a slug between the shoulder blades any minute. “Sir, it is my duty to remind you that Intramuros is still controlled by the enemy.”

“Then it is high time we made our presence felt!” MacArthur says. “Shaftoe will get us there. Shaftoe and these fine Filipino gentlemen.” The General throws one arm around Goto Dengo's neck in a highly affectionate, companionable way, and begins strolling with him towards the nearest gate. “I would like you to know, young man, that when I set up my headquarters in Tokyo—which, God willing, should be within a year—I want you there bright and early the first day!”

“Yes sir!” Goto Dengo says. All things considered, it is unlikely he would say anything else.

Shaftoe draws a deep breath, tilts his head back, and stares up into a smoky heaven. “God,” he says, “usually I bow my head when I'm talking to You, but I figure this is a good time for us to have a face-to-face. You see and know all things and so I will not explain the situation to You. I would just like to submit a request for You. I know You are getting requests from lonely soldiers all over the fucking place at this time, but since this one has to do with a shitload of women and children, and General MacArthur too, maybe You can jump me to the top of the stack. You know what I want. Let's get it done.”

He borrows a small, straight twenty-round tommy gun magazine from one of his comrades and they set out for Intramuros. The gates are sure to be guarded, so Shaftoe and the Huks run up the sloping walls instead, directly beneath that wiped-out machine-gun nest. They turn the gun around into Intramuros, and plant one of the wounded Huks there to operate it.

The first time Shaftoe gazes into the town, he nearly falls off the wall. Intramuros is gone. If he didn't know where he was, he would never recognize it. Essentially all of the buildings have been leveled. Manila Cathedral and the Church of St. Agustin still stand, both with heavy damage. A few of the fine old Spanish houses still exist as hasty, freehand sketches of their former selves, missing roofs, wings, or walls. But most of the blocks are just jumbles of masonry and shattered red roof tiles with smoke and steam seething out of them. There are dead bodies all over the place, sowed all over the neighborhood like timothy seed broadcast onto freshly plowed soil. The artillery has mostly stopped—there being nothing left to destroy—but small-arms and machine-gun fire sound on almost every block.

Shaftoe is thinking he'll have to assault one of the gates. But before he can even come up with a plan, MacArthur is up there with the rest of his group, having scrambled up the rampart behind them. This is evidently the first time that The General has gotten a good look at Intramuros, because he is stunned and, for once, speechless. He stands there for a long time with his mouth open, and begins to draw fire from a few Nips hidden in the wreckage below. The turned-around machine gun silences them.

It takes them several hours to make their way up the street and into the Church of St. Agustin. A bunch of Nips have barricaded themselves inside the place along with what sounds like every hungry infant and irritable two-year-old in Manila. The church is just one side of a large compound that includes a monastery and other buildings. Many of the structures have been torn open by artillery fire. The treasures hoarded in that place by the monks over the course of the last five hundred years have tumbled out into the street. Blown all over the neighborhood like shrapnel, and commingled with the bayoneted corpses of Filipino boys, are huge oil paintings of Christ being scourged, fantastic wooden sculptures of the Romans hammering the spikes through his wrists and ankles, marbles of Mary holding the dead and mangled Christ in her lap, tapestries of the whipping post and the cat o' nine tails in action, blood coursing out of Christ's back through hundreds of parallel gouges.