by P. F. Kluge
“I know that man. I really know him. I know he’d never forget me. Never . . .”
“I’m sorry.”
“He mentioned me on Corregidor. That was like a signal. ‘I’m back. I’m coming. I don’t care about the cost to either of us, Connie.’ “
“Hold it! Did you say Connie?”
“Yes. I wasn’t a General then. I was . . . Connie.”
“Connie as in ‘just improving my English’?”
“That’s me!” Contreras whooped.
“Connie, who could never get laid on Mount Arayat?”
“Never! The only place—”
“Quick, Connie, how fast do autumn colors move south?”
“Twenty miles, Mr. Griffin. Twenty miles. You’ve got me!” For a moment, it was like a reunion, old buddies, comrades in arms, Livingstone and Stanley. Then Contreras drained his glass and winced, as if he’d been reminded of some bad news. “Now what am I going to do with you?”
“Why do anything?” Cadillac Bill asked. “We’re just fine on our own, thanks.”
“It’s this way,” Contreras said. “Major Herrera represents me in Manila. As you know, I rarely go there. I build my base here, in the army, in the mountains. I let Manila be Manila. Herrera is my ambassador to that place. He looks after my interests. When my name comes up in a speech on Corregidor, I hear about it from him. When a certain journalist starts investigating my past, I hear about it, too. When I learn that a book associated with a certain movie can be counted upon to embarrass me and that my enemies are pressing for its completion, I hear about it from him. He advises me to avoid Harry Roberts Harding. I do so. It hurts, but I do so. He advises me that Clifford Lerner’s visit to the Philippines should be ended. I agree. And he also advises me that if a certain book writer gets within five miles of a town named San Leandro, I should act. Act? Why be obscure? I should have you killed.”
“Why?”
“Because you would find what Colonel Harding wanted you to find. What killed him, I think. Knowledge that kills.”
“Now, whoa, whoa, slow down, hold up,” Cadillac Bill protested, motioning with his hands as though he was reining in a team of runaway horses. “This conversation is getting way out of hand. Now, General, just give a listen. I’m not as dumb as I look. That’s good news. But I got better. George Griffin here ain’t quite as bright as he looks. The fact is, General, what he knows couldn’t blow the lid off a dixie cup. He got some war stories is all, old harmless shit. Harding was spinning his yarn real slow and he croaked before he got to whatever the hell happened at San Leandro. Get it? Before.”
“If that is so—”
“It is so, it is, it is! We don’t know diddly, General, and that’s all right with me! We can walk out of here this minute and no harm done.”
“Interesting,” Contreras mused. “True?”
“Yes,” Griffin acknowledged. “Colonel Harding had gotten past what he called the first Battle of San Leandro. The first. But there was a second battle. Something awful that happened in that place. It terrified him.”
“Ah. And if I let you leave, right now, I suppose you would be prepared to promise me that you would never go back to San Leandro? Never seek Juan Olmos? Never wonder about Yamashita’s treasure?”
“Sure thing,” Cadillac Bill responded. “Me you put in a car, Griffin you put on a plane, and you got a deal.”
“No,” Griffin said. “No promise.”
“What, are you crazy?” Cadillac Bill shouted. “You got a death wish? You want to fly home freight?”
“No promise.”
Contreras smiled at him. “I like that. If you had promised I’d have known you were lying. And that would make me angry.”
“I want to know how it ended,” Griffin said.
“You want to hear it, then?” Contreras asked. “Even though—”
“Yes,” Griffin answered. “I want to hear it. I made a promise to a man.”
“Not me!” Cadillac Bill cried. He put his hands over his ears, like a pair of earmuffs. He looked like a hear-no-evil monkey. “I don’t hear nothin’ now. My ears are tighter than a crab’s ass, which is watertight.”
“Shut up, Cadillac,” Griffin said.
“Say what? I can’t hear you.”
“I want to hear it,” Griffin repeated. “And you know something else, Connie? I think you want to tell it.”
“I do,” Contreras nodded. He poured himself a tumbler full of scotch and glanced around the nightclub. A single spotlight hit the stage, a single candle burned at their table. It felt like a confessional. “I do indeed.”
“I was young. I was ambitious. I was smart. Not as smart as I thought I was. Not as smart as I was going to be. But smart. I was good-looking. I was charming. Does it sound like boasting? Actually, I’m apologizing. You’ll see.”
He drained another scotch, opened the second bottle, refilled his glass. Abruptly, he stood up, drink in hand, and started pacing. He looked as though he’d been called upon to deliver a toast. Master of ceremonies in a room full of ghosts.
“It was hard knowing Colonel Harding was here, searching for me. He would have found his way to me, eventually. Sure as shooting.”
He laughed at the phrase and repeated it, savoring the sound. He cast a malicious glance at Cadillac Bill, made a gun out of his fist and his finger, pointed it and pulled the trigger.
“Sure as shooting.” Then the joke passed and his mood recaptured him. “Yes, he’d find me. And when he found me—that was going to be hard. A problem. An embarrassment. Or worse. I dreaded that reunion. And I wanted it with all my heart. I was waiting for him to come. He kept me waiting . . .”
“Because he was telling the story his way,” Griffin suggested. “In order.”
“That was part of it,” Connie agreed. “But only part. He wanted me to come to him. He wanted the past to touch him. He invited it. He’d come so far already. Now he wanted me to come a little way myself. And I couldn’t do that. So I sit here thinking about him. Picturing. Remembering. About when we were young and owned the world.”
“Go ahead,” Griffin urged him softly.
“In May of 1944, three weeks after what you call the first Battle of San Leandro, I accompanied my . . . friend to Baguio. For a reunion. We arrived in the morning. My friend was nervous. He saw the old man Wingfield right away, cutting branches in his rose garden, a cane in one hand and a pair of clippers in the other, and a couple of Filipino boys weeding and turning soil. A perfect colonial scene, no? Not just a return. A restoration. He looked across the grass at us, squinting, not seeing, his face all wrinkled. ‘Who is it?’ he called out, as though a loud voice could make up for his poor eyes. ‘It’s me, Uncle Harrison,’ my friend called out. ‘You? Harry?’ ‘Me,’ my friend repeated, and he ran to the old man and held him in his arms, and held him. ‘Welcome home,’ Harding said. And the old man answered, ‘Welcome home to you, my boy.’ After a moment, Harding remembered I was there. I stepped forward smartly to be introduced. Did I say introduced? To be presented. Harding made much of me. It mattered to him that Uncle Harrison accept me. And he did. That he did. ‘Any friend of Harry’s is a friend of mine.’ Hah! How are you doing, Cadillac Bill?”
Cadillac Bill had dropped his hands from his ears. He listened disconsolately, every syllable a death sentence.
“No treasure. No killing. Not much of a story so far. Not the sort of story you want to get your ass shot off for, is it, buckaroo?”
“No story’s worth that,” Cadillac Bill replied, sending a look George Griffin’s way. “No story.”
“It gets better, cowboy,” Contreras said. “All right. Harrison Wingfield. A big, broken, slow-moving, sad kind of man. You know who reminds me of him? That English actor who came to Imelda’s festival. The Englishman with the Russian name.”
“Ustinov? Peter Ustinov?”
“Yes. Older, sicker, but the same kind of man. Fat. Delicate. Angry. Cunning. Lonely. Wingfield looked around his garden. `Th
ey tore everything out,’ he said. ‘They dug latrines. They parked trucks. But I’ll have it back the way it was. You should see the house. They burned books in the fireplace. They shat on the carpets and carved their initials on the wall. But they’re gone now. And I’m back.’ He had returned just one week before, and he was camping out on a cot in the kitchen. The rest of the house was as the Japanese had left it although, frankly, it seemed to me that some of the damage might have come from local people.
“He led us out to the front porch, once grand, but the front steps had vanished and some floorboards were torn up and the pickets on the railing around the porch were loose, like knocked-in teeth. Still, he made a point of going out on the porch and sitting on a chair. Then he looked at Harding. ‘See,’ he said. ‘I told them I’d be back. You heard me.’ And Harding answered, ‘Yes, sir, I remember.’ “
Contreras sat, poured, drank, smoked a cigarette, resting on a chair like a boxer between rounds. Then he resumed.
“For two days, we helped patch and carpenter and repair. It was easy for me to see that the old man thought of Harding as his prince. I also could see that this made Harding uncomfortable. I think I enjoyed myself with the old man more than Harding did. He fascinated me. His brains. His power. And something else. His passion. His feeling for everything he owned, everything—it seemed to me—that he wanted to pass on to Harding. Harding was the young prince; I was the prince’s friend. He accepted that and he cultivated me: I was a bright, game boy, and he liked bright, game boys. The old man knew what Harding had been up to. He knew about our adventures. And because he was a smart man, he found the—what?—the fly in the ointment, the cloud on the horizon, the . . . Wake up Cadillac Bill! . . . The pubic hair between his teeth.”
“Huh?”
“Getting warm now,” Contreras promised. “The old man pressed me about the Olmos brothers and the Huks. How many times had Harding visited them? A half dozen I said. Is it true that he’d obtained weapons for them, USAFFE weapons landed on the coast and diverted from their rightful owners? Yes. Accompanied the Huks on missions? Yes. Actually participated in combat? Combat against the Philippine Constabulary as well as the Japanese? Yes. And had he been the witness to the destruction of public records? Yes. And the burning of public property, ranches, haciendas, and such? Yes, again. He knew everything, it seemed. Well, almost everything. He didn’t know about Harding’s woman, but apart from that—”
“His what?” Griffin exclaimed. There was no concealing his surprise.
“Shit!” Cadillac Bill exploded. “What’d I tell you, General? This man’s no threat to anybody. You could tell him somebody stole a rope, he wouldn’t spot the cow at the end of it!”
“I was the one who couldn’t get laid on Mount Arayat. My friend fared better. Don’t be upset that he didn’t tell you. I know why.”
He drained the middle third out of the second bottle of scotch. This time, instead of gulping the drink, he studied it, shook it, so that the ice cubes clinked together.
“Isn’t it strange?” Contreras asked. “Harding died just yesterday. His woman has been dead for thirty-five years. Think about it! That’s half a lifetime. And yet, they were a couple once.”
“Tell me about her,” Griffin said. It felt as though he was prying.
“Not so fast,” Contreras said. “I have a question. Did Harding ever mention any other woman?”
“No.”
“In his later life?”
“None he mentioned.”
“I keep telling you,” Cadillac Bill interrupted. “George ain’t fought his way out of the jungles yet. The way he goes at a story, it’s like watching somebody trying to drain Lake Erie with an eyedropper.”
“Shut up,” Griffin said, turning back to Contreras. “There was no one he mentioned.”
“That was Harding. One woman. And then a lifetime of regret.”
“Who was she?”
“Her name was Loretta and she worked with Felipe Olmos. Teaching, propagandizing and—what I remember—struggling with some hopeless mimeograph machine that Harding helped her repair.”
“Do you remember what she looked like?”
“George! You old fox! Aren’t you something, once you get the scent. The colonel shoots his gun off thirty-five years ago and, wow, you’re off like a shot.”
“She looked like a million other Filipinas,” Contreras said. “Dark skin, brown eyes, long hair.” The way he talked, it was as though he was filling out a form, not remembering a person.
“That’s all?” Griffin asked. “Nothing else?”
“There was,” Contreras said. “I hardly ever saw it. She dismissed me at a glance. She saw an opportunist. Which I was. But she had a smile that was . . .”
Contreras paused, groping, seeing that smile, struggling to describe it. He shrugged and gave up, but it was all right. Griffin knew the smile, just as Harding had. The smile from the Baguio postcard, the wise and waiting smile. For once in his life, he’d caught up with it, for a while. Then the distance had opened up again, and it stretched out forever.
“And you told Harrison Wingfield about her,” Griffin said.
“Is that a question?”
“It’s a statement.”
“A statement? You live dangerously, Mr. Griffin.”
“And you were improving your English.”
“All the time, my friend, all the time. Yes, I told him. I wanted to impress him. He was a powerful man. I wanted him to mark me as a comer. I wanted to tell him something he didn’t know.”
“And he blew up?”
“He was smarter than that. He gave us a good supper and he sent us on our way back to Kiangen. And it was there, three months later, Harrison Wingfield made his move. In the last day of the war. The last day of that war, anyway. . . . Excuse me.”
He walked away. From a room where the door was marked CABALLEROS, they heard the sound of vomiting and flushing water.
“Talk about spilling your guts,” Cadillac Bill said. “We’re in for it now. You think you got a great story, Mr. Griffin. I think you do. I think you got the greatest story never told. And you, sure as shit, won’t never tell it.”
“He didn’t mention a woman,” Griffin reflected. “Not out here. Maybe there was someone in the States, after the war.”
“Griffin! The more you know, the worse off you are, ain’t you figured that out yet? ‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth will make you dead.’ Lincoln.”
“I wonder what became of her . . .”
“Hey, I don’t wonder a bit. Screw her, I say. I say screw him. He’s dead.”
“Screw him? He’s dead?” Contreras had overheard. “We can do better than that, Cadillac Bill. Screw the living. Then make them dead. Your slogan, no? ‘Make love and war.’ “
“How did you know that?”
“Your fame precedes you. Subic Bay will mourn you. Angeles City will be inconsolable.”
“Sure they will. I can see it now. A moment of silence before they start the fish fights.”
“Why so glum, chum?” Contreras baited him. “We’re getting to the good part.”
“ ‘Where were you when the war ended?’ The old question. For me, for Harding, for Juan Olmos, for some others, the answer is: we were fighting for our lives. We were scratching a hundred yards a day on mountain trails, crawling through rock falls and mud slides. What we thought about was whether we would be the last to die, the war’s last victim. Others were conspiring. Making lists, they were, and checking them twice.
“It was Harding’s idea that Juan Olmos and a handful of the other Huks go with us to Kiangen. It was the same sort of impulse that had led him to take me to meet Uncle Harrison in Baguio. He wanted them to be represented among all the other units, the army, the USAFFE groups, the brass, the glory hounds and trophy hunters who gathered for the kill. Ah, but the killing went very slowly. Cut off from sea and air support, without hope of relief, Yamashita and his men fought on and on. A whole empire reduced to a
rainy mountain kingdom, ten miles by thirty. We went out in the mornings to test the bars of the cage that held them in, that held us out, and the animal inside—thinner and wilder each day—flung himself against the cage. And we returned to our camp, wondering how long it would go on, until one night they told us that the war was over. Harrison Wingfield told us. Uncle Harrison was waiting for us on the last day of the war.”
Contreras was up out of his chair, making his way back to the stage where he’d performed a few hours ago. This was the late show, the after-hours special, invitation only.
“You’ve done great things, son. And you’ve made some foolish mistakes. Alliances and attachments that won’t hold up. I understand. After all there was a war on.”
Contreras was a brilliant mimic, taking the low, stentorian schoolroom voice, which Griffin knew was exactly how Harrison Wingfield must have sounded. He even looked a little like him, his hands hooked into his belt, his stomach puffed out. “But the war’s over now. This is a new phase. You have a new role to play. Rebuilding, reorganizing, reconstructing. This has to do with law and order, with respect for property, with the restoration of government to its proper function.”
Now Contreras walked to the other side of the stage, almost into the shadows. Now he was lanky and awkward as Harding must have been. When he spoke his voice was halting, reverent, and stubborn.
“What was the war about, Uncle Harrison? Putting rich people back in touch with their fortunes? Putting the cop back on the beat? Business as usual?”
And Harrison Wingfield again, raising his hand; he’d heard it all before.
“Business as usual, son. That’s exactly right.”
“Hearing you talk, it sounds like I fought a war without knowing what it was about.”
“Happens all the time. Happens to millions. It’s simple. Wars are fought to save the world. Not to change it. That’s a revolution. And believe me, son, there won’t be any revolution here. It’s been tried before. It’s not in the cards.”
