Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

I was relieved to be outside. I came upon the enlisted mess tent, and the steward there saw me and offered to prepare me a cup of tea, as he sometimes did in the afternoons. I sat on an upended crate and waited, welcoming the small kindness. In the corner of my vision Mrs. Matsui and the others were half-carrying the still hysterical girl in a tight formation toward the comfort house, which seemed, being newly built, a lone clean island in the growing fetor of the camp. With dusk, I knew, the officers would begin their visitations — myself as well, if I chose.

I also noticed what I thought to be the slight figure of Corporal Endo, crouched at the far end of the central yard where it gave way to dense jungle. He was sitting back on his haunches, his canvas radioman’s cap pinched down over his brow to shade his eyes from the fierce late daylight. He must have seen me but he did not wave or nod or make any gesture; he appeared to be surveying the goings-on, particularly the troop of girls making their way to Mrs. Matsui’s tent behind the comfort house. Perhaps he had been waiting for them to come out from the medical hut, or perhaps he had just then crouched to rest, the timing being mere coincidence. Whatever the case he would later not say to me or anyone else. And thus what he committed next is also a mystery.

He rose from his crouch and began a medium trot toward Mrs. Matsui and the girls. The initial distance between them was not too great, perhaps sixty or seventy meters, and I was able to see the whole of the event, from start to end. The corporal was not a natural runner, lacking any real physical gifts, and he could have appeared to be awkwardly exercising, oddly stretching his legs, though hardly a soul was exerting himself any more than was necessary those days, given the shrinking rations of food and fresh water and the sapping seasonal heat. Some small part of me probably fathomed what he intended, and yet I simply watched the scene like a disinterested spectator, whose instant glint of prescience is somehow self-fulfilling.

The corporal approached and ordered them to halt. I could only partly hear them — the supply transports were being fueled and sent back to the south — though I could gather that Mrs. Matsui was objecting to what Endo seemed to want, which was an immediate private audience with one of the girls. As if to counter his rank she motioned back to the medical hut, but he pushed her aside, the girls falling away except for the one girl they were holding. She fell weakly to her knees, and it was Endo who raised her up with a stiff pull. She was not fighting him; in fact, her gait seemed to lighten, as if he were an old acquaintance and she was pleased to see him. Some men by the trucks had noticed the commotion and began calling to him, asking what was he up to, but shouting it in a hearty, knowing way. He ignored them and dragged her along quickly, until they reached his original position at the edge of the bush. When the two of them disappeared into the dense foliage and did not come back out for several minutes, the corporals and privates working near the trucks began to jog over, and it was then that I knew something irregular had occurred. I slipped beneath the netting of the mess tent and slowly made my way across the dusty red clay of the yard, past the officers’ quarters and privy, then past the narrow comfort house, its walls rough-hewn and unpainted and smelling of fresh-cut wood, to where the canopy rose up again and the shade cooled the air. My legs felt unbearably heavy, and infirm. They were gathered there, in the trodden entrance of a patrol trail, the half-dozen or so men and the couple in their midst, him sitting on the ground with her lying down beside him.

She was dead. Her throat was slashed, deeply, very near to the bone. She had probably died in less than a minute. There was much blood, naturally, but it was almost wholly pooled in a broad blot beneath her, the dry red earth turned a rich hue of brown. There was little blood on her person, hardly a spatter or speck anywhere save on her collar and on the tops of her shoulders, where the fabric had begun blotting it back up. It was as though she had gently lain down for him and calmly waited for the slashing cut. The oddity was that he was unsoiled as well, completely untouched. There was nothing even on his hands, with which he was rubbing his close-shaven head. Repeatedly I asked him what had happened but he did not seem to hear me. He merely sat there, his knees limply splayed out, his cap fallen off, an errant expression on his face, like a man who has seen his other self.

Finally someone asked me what they ought to do, and as I held rank, I told the men to take Corporal Endo under arms to the officer-in-charge. While I stood at the edge of the trail they led him off. I recall myself, now, as having remained there after Endo had been escorted away. I ordered some others to fetch a stretcher for the girl’s body, and after a few moments, I was left alone with her. In the sudden quiet of the glade I felt I should kneel down. Her eyes were open, coal-dark but still bright and glassy. She did not look fearful or sad. She was no longer in mourning. And for the first time I appreciated what she truly looked like, the simple cast of her young girl’s face.

Endo was kept that night under close watch, and after a brief interrogation by Captain Ono, he confessed to the deed. The following morning, just after dawn, under witness by the entire garrison, he was executed. Mrs. Matsui was present, and the girls, as was the dead girl’s sister, Kkutaeh, who looked upon the proceedings without the least affect. She stood somewhat aside from the others. The officer-in-charge announced that Endo had been charged not with murder, but with treasonous action against the corps. He should be considered as guilty as any saboteur who had stolen or despoiled the camp’s armament or rations. Endo looked terribly small and frail; he was so frightened he could hardly walk. They had to help him to the spot where he would kneel. By custom he was then offered a blade, but he dropped it before he could pierce his belly, retching instead. The swordsman did not hesitate and struck him cleanly, and his headless body pitched forward lightly, his delicate hands oddly outstretched, as if to break his fall.

ON ANY SATURDAY MORNING in the Village of Bedley Run, one can see everywhere the prosperity and spirit and subtle industry of its citizens. There are the running, double-parked cars in front of Sammy’s Bagel Nook, where inside the store middle-aged fathers line up along the foggy glass case of salads and schmears with chubby half — Sunday papers wadded beneath their arms, impatiently waiting for the call of their number. There are the as-if-competing pairs of lady walkers, neon-headbanded and sweat-suited, marching in their bulbous, ice-white cross-training shoes up and down the main avenue, strutting brazenly in front of the suddenly tolerant, halting weekend traffic. There are the well-dressed young families, many with prams, peering hopefully into the picture window of the Egg & Pancake House for an open table, and if there isn’t one, strolling farther down Church to the birchwood-paneled Bakery Europa, the fancy new pastry shop where they prepare the noisy coffees. And all over the village is the bracing air of insistence, this lifting breeze of accomplishment, and whether the people are happy or not in their lives, they have learned to keep steadily moving, moving all the time.

Though I shouldn’t, given the doctor’s strict orders of convalescence, I now drive through these Saturday streets for perhaps the thousandth time, slowing at the pedestrian crossing and then by my former store, which should be open for customers at this hour but is instead shadowy and shuttered. I notice that a royal-blue-and-white Town Realty sign — PRIME RETAIL & APTS FOR SALE/LEASE — has been placed in the window case, and the name of the agent on the bottom is of course Liv Crawford, whose multiple phone numbers in bold lettering, despite my resistance, I have somehow accepted into memory.