Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

“What are you talking about? You haven’t yet been at the comfort house?”

“I have not,” she answered. For the first time she looked somewhat frightened. “Last night I was to visit the commander, and so he had to send me. But before that the captain has always ordered Matsui-san to keep me in our tent. Sometimes he has her bring me to his private quarters, when he examines me. He runs his hands over my body and examines me everywhere. But that is all. He has kept me from the comfort house.”

“You are lying to me.”

“I would not lie about such a thing. You can ask Matsui-san. I would rather be killed, like my sister, before going to the comfort house. But I am growing afraid of what the captain will do with me. It can only be horrible, I am certain. He is the only one who truly frightens me, and I think he must have a terrible plan. Forgive me for speaking like this, but you have a gentle character to your face. You seem kind and careful, and I feel I can say these things to you.”

I could not believe Captain Ono had ordered what she described, even if he thought she was “dangerous,” which I could not at all see. I wondered, too, if the commander knew of this arrangement, or whether he would find it (as I or anyone would) to be an egregious mark on the captain’s self-respect, at least in the Japanese sense of the term, which has little to do with pride or one’s rights but with the efforts a person should make to be viewed well by his comrades. Yet I was not about to question the captain in front of her, or show my own hesitance. It was all very disturbing, though in truth a large part of me had indeed begun to sense the irregularity of his requests and the broadening license he seemed to be taking in respect to the camp. The commander, as noted, was hardly evident anymore, and it was Captain Ono who was increasingly charging and addressing the corps of the men; it was his issuances that were being enacted and followed, with Colonel Ishii appearing these days only intermittently before the officers on the veranda of his hut, often pink-faced and slow of speech.

“The captain must have his reasons,” I said to her, “which I am not privy to and would not speak about if I were. I am responsible for certain medical duties and that is all. I need know nothing about this matter. Furthermore, I think you should not dwell on the present circumstance. Please let me finish. If you are not serving at the comfort house, then there are undoubtedly other duties awaiting you. Whether they will be better or worse no one but Captain Ono can say. And just as with the rest of us here, a fate of life or death awaits you; in this regard, as the commander once said to us, it is best if we all take an accepting path. This way destiny can find its right station.”

“Is that why the soldier was executed?” she asked. “Because he was resistant?”

“He was ill of mind,” I said, trying not to remember Corporal Endo’s adolescent, pockmarked face. “And obviously dangerous. You should be thankful for what was ordered for him.”

“I am only thankful for what he did. I am happy for my sister now. I don’t cry for her anymore. And I am hoping that someone like you will do the same for me. That is why I ask if you know what the captain wants. If I’m to have the same misery, then I would beg you, as a countryman, to take your gun from your holster and put me down right now.”

“I am not your countryman,” I said to her, pushing my chair back as I rose. “And I will certainly do nothing of the kind. Please stand back now.”

“But what if I were attacking you?” she said, stepping forward. “What would you do then? If I took one of those surgeon’s blades from the cabinet, and I rushed at you with it, you would have to, yes? You would have to shoot me.”

“I will not be shooting anyone,” I said to her, almost shouting, my hand hovering at my side, grazing the pistol handle. “I am a medical officer. I have never fired at another human being, much less a young woman. I hope I will never have to. You had better go now and get your things. I am ordering you to do so. I order you!”

But she stepped forward again and her hands, pale-white and small, lunged out for my throat, my eyes. I had to step aside and then strike her across the chin with the ball of my open palm, and she fell awkwardly and hit her head on the steel leg of the examination table. I was shocked with how hard I had struck her, and it was a half-minute before I could get her to regain consciousness. When she did and opened her eyes she began crying, from the smelling salts, certainly, but also, I thought, from her realization that I had not in fact shot her dead.

“I didn’t intend to strike you so forcefully,” I said to her. “I am sorry. But you gave me no other choice.”

“Why won’t you help me?” she said, raising herself out of my grasp. Her mouth was bleeding, as she had bitten her tongue on falling. “If you have any compassion you will help me. You should know I won’t let him do anything to me. I won’t. I will kill myself before that. Or I will kill him first somehow, and then myself.”

I let her words pass as she got to her feet, and I decided that I ought to escort her to Mrs. Matsui’s tent to get her things immediately and lodge her inside the makeshift quarters. I was to lock her in the surplus supply closet, which was a lightless space with a narrow door and an iron loop for an old-style brass lock, the kind typically used on a cabinet or chest but this one quite large and heavy. The idea of confining her like this seemed somewhat more reasonable to me now, for it seemed she ought not to be allowed to roam freely about the infirmary or the camp. But it was the first time I had actually spoken at length to any of them, and then in my childhood language, which stirred me in an unexpected way. As we walked to Mrs. Matsui’s tent and back I felt a certain connection to her, not in blood or culture or kind, but in that manner, I suppose, that any young man might naturally feel for a young woman. This may sound ludicrous, and even execrable under the circumstances, but I was youthful and naive enough that I possessed much more of a kind of hard focusing than any circumspection, which one may argue has remained with me for my whole life.

But I could not lock her inside the supply closet. It had no slatted window or other means of decent ventilation, and with the rays of the afternoon sun directly hitting the outer wall, I feared she might die of heatstroke or else suffocate in the cramped, lightless space. So as often as I could during the day I allowed her to stay with me in the examination room. She was weary from not sleeping the night before and lay down on the floor while I attended to my usual administrative work for Captain Ono. I knew that he could stop by at any time, but somehow I was not thinking about that chance. I was thinking only of K. She did not speak very much, nor ask any more about me, and after some time I turned to see that she had finally fallen asleep, her knees drawn up toward her chest. I stared at her for quite a long moment, taking in her figure and loosely fisted hands and the serene, pale oval of her face, when she slowly opened her eyes. She did not otherwise move. She merely met my gaze and acknowledged it, and then fell asleep again, her breathing light and even. Or perhaps, I thought, she had never really awoken.

If someone had asked me then what I felt, I would have been unable to answer. But if I can speak for that young man now, if I can tell some part of the truth for him, I would say that he felt himself drawn to her, drawn to her very presence, which must finally leave even such a thing as beauty aside. He did not yet know it, but he hoped that if he could simply be near to her, near to her voice and to her body — if never even touching her — near, he thought, to her sleeping mind, he might somehow be found.