Chang-Rae Lee - A Gesture Life

So when I finally came upon the doctor, when I finally saw the angular shape of his back and his wiry neck as he berated several soldiers for the dilapidated state of their quarters, it seemed I was summoning the picture of my plunging a long blade into his throat, terrorizing him not with pain so much as the fright of an instant, wholly unanticipated death. In reality I was carrying a scalpel in my holster (pinned against the pistol), and I actually reached into the leather pouch as I approached him and felt the metal handle. I could simply pull out the razor-sharp instrument and insert it a few centimeters into his skin and run it down the length of the carotid. None of the men would protest, and if one did, it would be too late. The doctor would clutch at his throat, the blood would flow forth freely, and in less than a minute he would quietly expire.

Captain Ono turned to me just as I was a few steps away. But my hand was at my head in salute and he said, with no little irritation, “What must it be now, Lieutenant?”

“I would request to speak with you, sir. It’s an important matter.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered. The enlisted men were holding themselves in, pleased as they were to witness an officer receiving the captain’s harsh treatment.

“And what would this concern, Lieutenant?”

“I was hoping to speak in private, sir. It concerns one of the volunteers.”

“You surely are being scrupulous, Lieutenant Kurohata. And is right now the most necessary time for you to tell me what’s on your mind?”

“Yes, sir,” I said sharply, nearly barking. One of the enlisted men couldn’t help himself and let out a snort at my pained rigor. The captain at once wheeled and struck him across the face with his open hand, and the man fell down, more, it seemed, from sheer surprise than the force of the blow. He quickly stood up without any help and stood at attention, as were his fellows. A wide red welt rose up over his eye and the side of his face. The doctor waited and then hit him again, and again the man fell down and then got back up to his feet, this time more tentatively. The whole action seemed somehow self-evident, being strangely mechanical. He then turned to me and in no different a voice said, “Then perhaps you and I should talk elsewhere, Lieutenant Kurohata. I require a few more moments with these men. You’ll meet me at the infirmary shortly.”

I did not of course want to go back there with him, but he had already dismissed me and immediately resumed addressing the men, criticizing them for their indolence and disorganization. Such a sight was becoming more and more common. Like most others in the camp, the doctor himself seemed caught in a state of increasing agitation, the protracted stretch of waiting and inaction and ennui causing flares of anxiety and disruption. A rash of fights had recently broken out among the men, and the feeling within the officer corps had, in fact, become distinctly chilly and distant, what with the system of command ever loosening and the threat of fighting having clearly passed us over.

I was walking quite slowly, as I was loathing the thought of the three of us together, her so near to him in my presence, and the doctor actually caught up with me before I reached the infirmary. He took me by the shoulder to stop me, the windowless back wall where K was locked in the closet just in our sight.

“Perhaps you’ll realize someday, Lieutenant, why I’ve been so hard on you,” he said flatly, no more avuncular than he ever was, or could be. “I say this not because I care what you think of me, or even for your sake. I cannot be concerned with you, as an individual. I think you well know this.”

I assented openly, for the first time feeling somehow equal to him, imminently free.

“Good,” he said, taking out a small case of etched silver. He offered a brown-wrapped cigarette to me, but I declined. He took it for himself and lighted it, smoking quickly and deeply. “You are not an incapable young officer, Lieutenant Kurohata,” he said, exhaling the spice-edged smoke. “But you are gravely misguided, most all of the time. I fear I shall believe this about you to my death. You probably don’t care. But I know you believe I take you to task because of your parentage. I’ve always known of this, yes. But that never mattered to me. It’s for the weak and lame-minded to focus on such things. Blood is only so useful, or hindering. The rest is strong thought and strong action. This is why, Lieutenant, I find myself unable to cease critiquing you. There is the germ of infirmity in you, which infects everything you touch or attempt. Besides all else, how do you think you will ever become a surgeon? A surgeon determines his course and acts. He goes to the point he has determined without any other faith, and commits to an execution. You, Lieutenant, too much depend upon generous fate and gesture. There is no internal possession, no embodiment. Thus you fail in some measure always. You perennially disappoint someone like me.

“Right now, you want to speak to me about the girl in there,” he went on, pointing up the path to the homely building. “You wish to be resolute about something about her and yet I see nothing in your face or posture that will convince me of your desires. You sound as if you would trounce me, but I look at you directly and what is solid in you but your sentimental feeling and hope? Tell me, tell me freely, in any way you wish.”

“I think you have taken questionable liberties about the camp. With the girl, and then also with Colonel Ishii.”

“What exactly?”

“You have steadily usurped command, sir. Everyone knows how the colonel remains inside all day and night, how he is hardly awake anymore.”

“And what do you know?”

“That we are again out of certain anesthetics and painkillers, which I believe you are offering to the colonel too frequently, perhaps even with the intent to incapacitate him.”

“Why should I wish to do such a thing, Lieutenant, when I have always had the commander’s ear, on all matters? What pleasure or advantage would it give me?”

“I don’t know, sir. Perhaps you want complete control,” I said, amazed at my own directness.

“Over what?” he rasped at me. “Over this meaningless outpost? These stupid, backward herds of men? You are less observant than I gave you credit for. I accepted this posting because I was assured there would be steady fighting in the region, and that I could institute a first-rate field hospital and surgery ward. I expected there would be plenty of casualties, with constant opportunities for employing new techniques and procedures. At minimum there would be the regular exercise of autopsies. Of course there’s nothing now of any interest. It’s a cesspool of nursery maladies, insect bites and rashes. This is a situation that you might appropriately command, but not I. Colonel Ishii naturally understood my frustration and formally requested long ago that I be transferred, but his request has yet to be acknowledged. Meanwhile, I cannot optimally serve our cause, and my skills are no doubt eroding. The colonel, if you are curious, has chronic, severe pain from a shrapnel wound suffered in the early years of the war, in Manchuria, and he chooses to relieve himself of it. It is never my place to regulate him, unless his doing so affects the battalion, which it has not.

“About the girl, Lieutenant, I will say this. You have obviously taken an interest in her, which is of course unavoidable. She is most comely, though I say that not to describe her sexual attraction, which in this forsaken place and to these men any girl or woman would possess, even that annoying shrew Matsui-san. But as for this girl, she has a definite presence and will and lively spirit. There’s clear breeding there, if you didn’t quite know. Unlike what you were probably taught in your special indoctrinational schooling, Lieutenant, there are indeed Chinese and Koreans of special and high character, in fact, of the same bloodlines as the most pure Japanese. There is a commonality between someone like her and me, a distinct correspondence, if one very distant. This is one of the reasons I’ve separated her — you could say as a means of acknowledging that relation, particularly with her sister having been killed. But you, Lieutenant, you can of course look narrowly upon someone like her, for private uses and pleasures, rather than the larger concerns.”