Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

So as I left the cramped room and went out into the drifting mist of the morning, what struck me, what gave me pause, was the note Captain Ono had written. I would treat the girl, K, quite differently, in a manner of his private choosing, perhaps before she was even sick or afflicted. I wasn’t against the order itself, which seemed in fact a good idea, to examine the girls regularly, with an eye toward prevention (if we were truly attempting to avoid the trouble with venereal outbreaks that had debilitated whole units of the Imperial Army), but what his order rankled against, which was the very code of all our association, and community. And yet I did not think doubtfully of the doctor for long, as I convinced myself to hold a deeper faith in his judgments, which must, I knew, be informed by years of study and experience and the accrued knowledge of his line of noblemen and scholars. He had seen something in K, I wanted to believe, he had discovered a curiosity in her, a uniqueness scientific or medical or otherwise, that attracted beyond her physical beauty, which was by any standard transcendent, somehow divine.

I stepped around the side of the comfort house and peered behind it, where Mrs. Matsui’s broad tent stood. It was quiet there, too, in its sag and tilt, and beyond it (though still close, as if they were all part of one unit) were the larger corps’ tents, spread out in less than strategic groupings. Across from these, set on a rise of land, was one of the officers’ houses, and then behind that and partly in my sight the infirmary, everything in this morning remaining unto itself, and as such appearing remarkable and unremarkable at once. Such an observation is a symptom of living but it is one especially true during wartime, when simple, real things like a tent or a house (or a body) can take on a superreality, in the acknowledgment that they can be blown literally into nothingness, instantly pass from this state to the next. This the fate of my good friend Enchi, killed in Borneo. I was given over to these thoughts, somewhat negatively so, perhaps due to the grim events that had occurred in recent days, which seemed to be accepted by the men but none too easily. No matter what Corporal Endo had done, or the blanket necessity of his punishment, it was never a simple matter to conduct an execution of one of our own.

The image of which, I must say, I did not wish to let trouble me that placid morning, for in the solitary spell of my walk, amid the fog lightly huddled with a strange near-beauty over even this, a military camp, I tried to imagine how time itself could somehow stop, how the slumberers in Mrs. Matsui’s tent and in the tents beyond might remain just so, unto themselves, as it were, peaceable and unmolested. As if untouched by the practices of wartime. And if this hope was most egregiously naive and sentimental, which it no doubt was, I only wished for myself that I could bear whatever burdens might fall to me, that I might remain steadfast in my duty and uphold my responsibilities and not waver under any circumstance, and by whatever measure. For I feared, simply enough, to be marked by a failure like Corporal Endo’s, which was not one of ego or self but of an obligation public and total — and one resulting in the burdening of the entire society of his peers.

I have feared this throughout my life, from the day I was adopted by the family Kurohata to my induction into the Imperial Army to even the grand opening of Sunny Medical Supply, through the initial hours of which I was nearly paralyzed with the dread of dishonoring my fellow merchants, none of whom had yet approached me, or would for several weeks. It must be the question of genuine sponsorship that has worried me most, and the associations following, whose bonds have always held value for me, if not so much human comfort or warmth.

I would have spent the rest of that predawn taking a steady, lone walk about the perimeter had I not in the half-light nearly run into Captain Ono and the girl, K. They were coming from the direction of the yard, where the commander’s hut was, approaching at an almost marching pace, the doctor tugging her along by the hand, his thin, tall frame bent resolutely. He looked quite agitated, stiff in the face, and nearly slung her to the ground when he saw me.

“Lieutenant Kurohata!” he said sharply, eyeing the women’s tent behind me. “You should be in your quarters or at the infirmary. I’ve been searching all over for you.”

“Forgive me, sir. I woke early and thought to take a walk.”

“I don’t want to hear your explanations. They mean nothing to me.”

K was half-kneeling beside him, propped on the ground by her forearm. Her thick hair had come undone, and it fell in a shiny black cascade, totally covering her face. She hadn’t yet moved. Her clothes were disheveled, her blouse crumpled and hastily knotted in front, her baggy pants torn at the side along the seam, exposing a pale sliver of skin.

“You must have a penchant for disturbing me,” the doctor said lividly. He was speaking uncomfortably close to me, his breath sour with waking. “It so happened that the commander sent his sentry to my quarters to have this one escorted back to the infirmary. He was extremely upset. It seems she’s bleeding.”

“Bleeding, sir?”

“Menstruating,” he said. “How is this possible, Lieutenant? I entrusted you to anticipate these kinds of complications.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I’m not certain how I could have known.”

“You could have asked her, Lieutenant,” he said with some disgust. “Simply asked. You should know this wouldn’t be tolerable for the commander. He has particular requirements.”

“But what could I have done, sir? I cannot stop her menses.”

“Don’t be insolent as well as stupid!” he shouted. “You should have made certain that it was another of them who would stay the night with the commander. But as is your character, I’m afraid, you are satisfied with leaving things to tenuous chance and hope and faith in the arbitrary. If I had patience I would wonder once more about your training. And so now you see, because I couldn’t find you to escort her, and with the commander requiring a medical officer only, I had to be roused. And so you’ve made me undertake the task of an errand boy. Now you take her, for I don’t want to gaze upon her even once until you hear from me. Do you finally understand me, Lieutenant?” He marched off toward his quarters before I could reply.

The girl waited until he was completely gone before rising. She didn’t brush away the red-brown dirt from her shirt elbows and her knees, nor did she pull up the hair that was messily covering her face. The light was just now up, and I could see her dark eyes veiled through the skeins of her hair, staring out blankly across the loosely organized squalor of the camp. She was certainly not aware of me in the way she was of the doctor, with her shoulders narrowed with steel and hate. Nothing like that at all. With him gone, she was suddenly present but not present, and would hardly be a person at all were it not for her seemingly insoluble beauty, which the time in our camp had not yet worn away. I spoke to her then, asking her to follow me to the infirmary, where I had already prepared a small space for her behind a curtain in what was originally intended as a second supply area but was no longer, as we were now sorely lacking in most everything and would be until the end of the war. But she did not acknowledge me or move. She barely seemed to breathe. I spoke again, a bit more forcefully, though to no avail, despite the fact that she understood Japanese well enough, as she’d shown on several occasions.

“Young lady,” I said finally, in her own language, “why not come with me now? The captain could return, and he won’t be pleased on finding us still here. It will make things easier for us both, which is preferable to another course.”