James Halperin - The First Immortal

Ben hardly felt healthy himself. Like every other prisoner at Purgatory, he scratched constantly from lice and insect bites. He often coughed up blood; diarrhea and nausea were relentless. Many of the prisoners would be physically and emotionally scarred, some crippled, but not Ben; escape from this lost-time world seemed certain to him now. Standing six feet two inches tall, he now weighed 133—twelve pounds more than he’d weighed back in February.

Over the past several months, life had actually been improving for the allies. No longer did they endure routine interrogation, isolated incidents of torture, or solitary confinement. The guards actually gave them their Red Cross medicine. The food was better now, too, and far more plentiful. Yesterday they’d been fed twice; once more than their captors.

“The Nips know they’re losing,” Epstein had speculated to Ben a few weeks earlier. “They’re treating us better to hedge their bets.”

Ben had not responded to Carl. There’d been no complicity in any of his conversations with Colonel Yamatsuo, but he saw no purpose in revealing insights gained and subjecting himself to difficult questions about how he’d acquired them. Even to Epstein. Besides, he’d thought, there was always the possibility that Yamatsuo was feeding him bad information.

They’d already passed twenty-five months at Futtsu, and throughout the entire hell-time of the POW camp, Ben had never even allowed himself to consciously remember the dreadful voyage that brought him to this place.

This place. My God. How had mankind managed to fall down such a rat hole? What had gone wrong to create a world where people became shelf stock? They were being kept alive only because if they were disposed of, allied retribution would be more costly than the meager food or care they received. It seemed as if evolution had all been for nothing—like maybe it had started running backward.

Now Ben watched in morbid fascination as Carl Epstein closed a gruesome wound on a semiconscious British sailor with safety pins. Ben said: “This is almost enough to make one rebuke Darwin. It’s like we’re regressing—becoming more like animals.”

Epstein shook a head seemingly too large for his jockeylike body. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“No. Of course not. Evolution’s real enough, but this place—sometimes it makes me question everything.”

Finishing his grim work, Epstein turned around. His face had come suddenly alive, as if their surroundings no longer mattered. “Then in light of your acceptance of Darwin’s theory,” he teased, “how do you explain the Christian view that when an ape dies, that’s all there is for him?”

“What do you mean?”

Epstein grinned. “I can only imagine how the first human felt about arriving in heaven to receive his eternal reward and wondering what the hell happened to his parents.”

Ben laughed. “Look, I only know what the Bible says about heaven. I haven’t actually been there, and neither have you.” But he already knew what was coming next.

“I suppose those fellows who wrote the Old Testament have? Ben, every early Christian denomination once contended that the earth was the center of the universe. Many upheld that view centuries after scientists refuted it. The notion that our souls live forever evolved from the same place: our own self-centered egotism. Remember, the human brain is massively complex; capable of astounding feats of creativity and self-deception. And unfortunately, no one will ever be able to disprove the existence of an afterlife.”

Ben shook his head, offering no reply. He simply asked, “Carl, what made you decide to become an atheist?”

“Let me quote you a passage I memorized a few years ago,” Epstein said.

“Okay.”

“‘Disbelief,’” Epstein began, “‘crept over me at a very slow rate but at last was complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so, the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.’”

“Who wrote that?” Ben asked.

“It’s from Charles Darwin’s autobiography.” Epstein flashed a self-satisfied smirk.

Ben fell silent for a long moment and considered his words carefully. “Look, Carl, I agree everlasting punishment for disbelief is a detestable doctrine, but not too many people I know would call it Christianity. I don’t pretend to embrace any particular organized religion; at least not every tenet of one…”

Epstein arched bushy, Groucho-like eyebrows at Ben.

“Hold it,” Ben continued. “Just because I’m not a good churchgoer doesn’t mean I think organized religion’s bad, or somehow evil. Few Americans endorse every law we’ve ever passed, either. But most of us still support our country. Things have happened to me, Carl, recently, that convince me there’s power in the universe we can’t begin to comprehend.”

“Oh really? Like what?”

“When I was floating in the ocean after they sank us,” Ben said, “I felt myself leaving my body. I saw my grandparents’ faces. I’m sure of it. It was more than a dream.”

“Yeah,” Epstein agreed, “it was a full-fledged fucking delusion!” Yet even as his friend mocked him, Ben saw the gratitude in his eyes. After all, to a man who harbors no hope of reincarnation, life is infinitely precious.

And both men were well aware that Epstein owed his to Ben.

In spite of Ben’s stubborn refusal to “accept reality and denounce religion,” Epstein had to admit that his new aide-de-camp was scientific in his methods; the boy kept meticulous records of his cases and had learned a lot about medicine. Ben even managed to teach him a few things.

“I’ve noticed,” Ben told him over a year before, “that the more they think we’re doing to help them, the faster they recover.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in magic.”

“I don’t, but the power of suggestion’s as real as any science. Faith is a mighty force.” When there was nothing more he could do, Ben would give the sick sailors handmade salt tablets, or rainwater colored with ground clay, and over time it had become apparent, even to Epstein, that the placebos possessed a measurable remedial power.

“Sometimes,” Ben had said to him, “you just need to spend a little time, talk, and listen. Show a suffering man that you understand what he’s going through and give him some hope. It’s amazing how much that helps. Caring and hope are as contagious as any disease. I trust you won’t mind if I try to infect some of your patients.”

Epstein thought: Yes, there is a mind-body connection. Of course! That must be why so many doctors fall for mysticism.

But he’d offered nothing more than a smile and an acquiescent nod. Carl Epstein knew when to quit.

Most of them, including Ben, had begun to get mail through the Red Cross. His had been a three-page letter from Alice. Most of the events she’d described had occurred the day before she mailed it; some that very morning. From this he could infer that she must have been writing at least every other day, knowledge as valuable to him as the letter itself.

“Ted and Connie Fiske received notification from the Army yesterday,” she’d written. “They opened it with dread, but read with great relief. We now anticipate Toby’s return from Italy in about two weeks’ time, with a Purple Heart and a bit of shrapnel in his left buttock. Apparently he’s fine other than that. They expect he’ll be off crutches by the time he gets home, and within a month won’t even be limping. It will be wonderful to see him again. We are all looking forward to the reunion…”