Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

“If I may ask, sir,” he said weakly, almost as a boy would who was already fearing he knew the answer. “Will you be visiting the volunteers as well?”

“Naturally,” I immediately replied, picking up the text I had been reading. “You may take your leave now, Corporal.”

I didn’t look up again, and he left my tent shortly thereafter. I was glad. In truth, I hadn’t yet thought of the question he’d posed, and for the rest of the evening and part of the night I wondered what I would do. I had answered the way I had for obvious reasons, to assure the corporal of the commonness of all our procedures, and yet the imminent arrival of these “volunteers,” as they were referred to, seemed quite removed from the ordinary. Certainly, I had heard of the longtime mobilization of such a corps, in Northern China and in the Philippines and on other islands, and like everyone else appreciated the logic of deploying young women to help maintain the morale of officers and foot soldiers in the field, though I never bothered to consider it until that night. And like everyone else, I suppose, I assumed it would be a most familiar modality, just one among the many thousand details and notices in a wartime camp. But when the day finally came I realized that I was mistaken.

* * *

THE CONVOY ARRIVED a few days after I spoke to Corporal Endo, just as he had heard reported. It had been delayed by an ambush of native insurgents and had suffered significant damage and loss of supplies. There were at least a dozen men with serious injuries, for three of whom there was nothing left to be done. Two trucks had had to be abandoned en route, and I remember the men immediately crowding around the lone one bearing the twenty-kilo sacks of rice and other foods like pickled radishes and dried fish. At the time we were still in good contact with the supply line, and there were modest but still decent rations available to us, though it was clear the supplies were growing steadily feebler with each transport. The ambush had left the truck riddled with bullet holes, and one of the sergeants ordered a few of his men to pick the truckbed clean of every last kernel of rice that had drizzled out of pocks in the burlap. They appeared as if they were searching for insects or grubs. It was a pathetic sight, particularly when the sergeant lined up the men after they finished and had them pour their scavengings into his cap, which he in turn presented to the presiding officer-in-charge.

In fact I believe the whole group of us had nearly forgotten about what else had been expected, when a lone transport drove slowly up the road. It stopped and turned before reaching us in the central yard, heading instead to the commander’s house of palm wood and bamboo and thatch, a small hut-like building situated at the far east end of the expansive clearing. I could see that the doctor, Captain Ono, had just emerged from the commander’s quarters and was standing at attention on the makeshift veranda. The driver stopped in front and jumped out and saluted the captain. Then he went around and folded down the back gate to the bed. He called into the dark hold and helped an older woman wearing a paper hat to the ground. She seemed to thank him and then turned to bark raspily inside. There was no answer and the woman shouted this time, using a most crude epithet. It was then that they climbed down from the back of the truck, one by one, shielding their eyes from the high Burmese light.

They were dressed like peasants, in baggy, crumpled white trousers and loose shirts. One might have thought they were young boys were it not for their braided hair. The older woman and the driver pulled each of the girls by the arm as she descended and stood them in a row before the steps of the veranda. Captain Ono didn’t seem to be looking at them. Instead he stood at attention, clearly waiting for the commander to call out and have him bring the arrivals — five in all — inside for inspection. That there were only five of them seems remarkable to me now, given that there were nearly two hundred men in the encampment, but at the time I had no thoughts of what was awaiting them in the coming days and nights. Like the rest of the men who were watching, I was simply struck by their mere presence, by the white shock of their oversized pants, by their dirty, unshod feet, by the narrowness of their hands and their throats. And soon enough it was the notion of what lay beneath the crumpled cotton of their poor clothes that shook me as if I had heard an air-raid siren, and which probably did the same for every other man standing at attention in that dusty clay field.

The commander must have spoken, for Captain Ono ordered the older woman to gather the others and march them up the steps. The girls looked frightened, and all but one ascended quickly to the veranda landing. The last one hesitated, though just momentarily, and the captain stepped forward and struck her in the face with the back of his hand, sending her down to one knee. He did not seem particularly enraged. Without saying anything he struck her again, then once more, and she fell back limply. She had not cried out. The older woman waited until Captain Ono stepped away before helping the girl up. Then the captain knocked on the door. The house servant opened it and he went inside, followed by the four girls and the older woman bracing on her shoulder the one who had been beaten. The house servant then closed the door and stood outside on the veranda, his hands at his sides, stock-still as we.

That night there was an unusually festive air in the camp. Groups of soldiers squatted outside their tents singing songs and trading stories in the temperate night air. There was no ration of sake in the supply shipment except a few large bottles for the officers, but the men didn’t seem to mind. They weren’t raucous or moody. Instead they beheld the drink of their anticipations. Strangely enough, Corporal Endo alone seemed in a dark mood, and he sought me out as I took my evening walk. Even then I enjoyed a regular period of daily exercise, like my morning swims later in life, to reflect on and review the day’s happenings and thereby try to make sense of them, contain them so. That evening, as I wended my way along our camp’s perimeter, subsumed in the rhythmic din of birds and insects calling out from the jungle, I couldn’t help but think of the sorry line of the girls entering the commander’s house, led by the physician, Captain Ono. They had spent the better part of the afternoon inside with Colonel Ishii, shielded from the intense heat of the day. The captain had come by the infirmary soon after their entering to inform me of my new, additional duties — that I, and not he, would be responsible for maintaining the readiness of the girls, beginning the next day. Very soon the fighting would resume (he said this with a chilling surety), and his time and skills would be better spent performing surgery and other life-saving procedures.

As I was the paramedical officer — field-trained but not formally educated — it would be more than appropriate for me to handle their care. They were quite valuable, after all, to the well-being and morale of the camp, and vigilance would be in order. He was as serious as if we had been discussing the commander’s health, though for the first time he seemed to be addressing me personally, even patting me lightly on the shoulder. His general implication, of course, was that their present good condition was likely to change with the imminent visitations by the officers and noncommissioned ranks and then the wider corps of the men, and that their continuing welfare would soon present me with difficult challenges.

Corporal Endo found me just short of the far southeast checkpoint, beyond which our squads were regularly patrolling the watch. To the left of us, one could see the faintest glimmers of light filtering through the half-cleared vegetation of the perimeter; it was the commander’s hut, some fifty meters away. There was no music or other sound, just weak electric light glowing through the slats of the hut’s bamboo shutters. Every so often the throw of light would flicker as someone moved in front of the window. The corporal and I were both drawn to it, and as I glanced over at him I could see the tiny play of illumination in his eyes.