The Caprices

by Sabina Murray

  “If we had our horses . . .” said Sergeant Singh.

  But Harry heard no more. This was no place for horses, or English, or Indians. This was no place, only a dirt road that wound on and on, sinking heavily into its coils, crushing all in its path. This was a road with no origin or destination, just a brief breathing space in the heart of the jungle, a halting, a nothingness, that offered a limited view and a few hundred miles of packed dirt, meter upon meter, extending endlessly north and south without ever reaching home.

  Guinea

  MIDWAY THROUGH HIS TIME as a soldier, Francino found himself lost in the heart of the jungle. His companion was an Irishman from Boston named Burns and in their protection was a Japanese prisoner, starved beyond hope, who would most likely not survive the next two days. They wandered without the warmth of natural sun. The large leaves and woven canopy of the jungle ceiling filtered the light into a thousand gradations of shade. In this strange place, nothing was inanimate. Even the trees and rocks appeared to breathe.

  The three men marched, not talking. The prisoner stumbled onward, scared and without will. Francino had let Burns decide to let the prisoner live. Francino did not like deciding the fate of other men any more than he liked contending with his own survival; his concerns were with the afterlife and how he was going to reconcile his current rifle-wielding life with God.

  Maybe he had not suffered long enough, not like Burns who had been battling it out on active duty for eighteen months. This was the first Jap that Francino had seen close up—an emaciated soldier with his clothes rotted and a white loincloth visible through the seat of his shorts.

  “If you’d seen more, you’d be dead by now,” Burns told him. “In Guinea, a Jap close up is the last thing a man sees.” Which made Burns sound wise, when he wasn’t. Burns talked like the majority of the people Francino knew. He had a loud voice and an admirable sense of purpose, which was one of the perks war had for the unsophisticated. Francino listened for the thrum of engines in the sky, the powerful cough of machinery to cut through the billion singing insects. But there was no sound not intended by nature. Here, it was the Garden of Eden—primordial, pristine, unforgiving. Here, there was nothing to eat and Francino amused himself with the thought that if anyone offered food, even a snake holding an apple, he would take it and eat it—no questions asked.

  But suffering was fine. He would be happy to get home in one piece.

  On a plane trip to Sydney, Francino had found himself dozing off on his pack. An Australian soldier lay just beyond his head, on a stretcher. The Aussie was talking to someone farther off, whose voice Francino couldn’t hear at all because the engine was too loud. Francino’s eyelids were droopy with booze and fatigue, but the nasal voice of the Aussie on the stretcher kept him half awake.

  “Yeah,” the Aussie said, “the war’s been a bit of disaster for me, you know?”

  His companion must have said something.

  “Yeah,” said the Aussie, “me Mum’s not gonna be too happy. I’m the only one left and riding a horse is gonna be a bit of a problem on account of me legs.”

  “Yeah,” said the Aussie, “both of them. I wasn’t too pleased about that.”

  “Yeah,” said the Aussie, “Dad’s not too fond of the Japs, and neither am I.”

  Francino fell asleep, with the Aussie’s voice and his brilliant gift for understatement ringing in his ears, above the deafening drone of the airplane.

  “Let’s take a rest,” said Francino. He nodded over at the prisoner, whose head was lolling onto his chest even though he was still walking. “I think we should untie his hands.”

  Burns held the rope which ran from the prisoner’s wrists. “This is the only thing that’s holding him up.”

  Francino sat with his back against the trunk of a tree. Burns was restless, looking back and forth. The Japanese soldier had passed out cross-legged, leaned against a rock. He looked like pictures Francino had seen of Peruvian mummies, who spent eternity sitting wrapped in blankets on a wind-swept desert plateau. Funny, he thought, how the dead who looked alive and the living who looked dead were similar in appearance.

  “How long do you think we’ve gone today?” asked Francino.

  “I’d guess around five miles.”

  Francino nodded to himself. What difference did it make if it was five miles in no particular direction? They had been wandering in the jungle for four days.

  Francino and the entire 163rd Infantry had been in New Guinea since January. It was 1942. He’d witnessed Horri’s startling advance across the Owen Stanley Mountains. He’d been a part of the effort that halted the Japanese in mid-September, and now he was pushing them back over the steep, punishing ridge. New Guinea was a great, sleeping alligator and the Owen Stanleys ran the length of her back. Sometimes, if you had a chance to be still and concentrate, you could feel the great beast heave beneath you in sweet, dreamless sleep.

  The patrol had gone out on a Monday, at dawn. Mist was heavy in the air and the calls of birds sounded mere inches away, when they were really coming from the jungle ceiling. There were seven men, which was a lucky number, although Francino’s lucky number was four. There were seven days in the week, seven seas. And seven deadly sins. Avarice. Lust. Gluttony. Sloth. Envy. Pride. And what else? A mosquito buzzed in his ear. Francino shook it off, rattling his gear. Burns, who was walking ahead of him, swung around. The end of Burns’s rifle was in Francino’s face.

  Francino smiled. “Anger.”

  “What?”

  “Anger. It’s the seventh deadly sin.”

  Burns spat in response. Burns must have always been tightly wound and the war had rewarded this; Burns’s superiors liked him, on the ready, alert. He was courting a mental breakdown. New Guinea was the perfect place for him. Burns was one of those men who would be made by war, whose last vestiges of childhood would be burned out of him bullet by bullet. People like Burns were grateful for such abundant, sanctioned violence. A month earlier, Francino might have felt sorry for him.

  It was late October—fall—but in New Guinea things were green. It was as if that first startling instant of spring—when the trees started popping out little-fisted leaves and the ground was spongy with thaw—had been stalled and then expanded; the brief spring second here was repeated over and over, multiplied within itself and then replicated in a riot of leaves, steam, and fungus. The trees stretched against the very dome of sky. The air was compressed until it dripped down your face. Francino pushed his glasses back up his nose and the column drew to a halt. Sergeant Cole was nervous. He drank some water and squinted around at the men, even though the sunlight wasn’t strong.

  “I need a couple of scouts,” he said.

  Burns had volunteered and somehow it had been decided that Francino would join him. Francino couldn’t figure out if Burns didn’t like his hesitant manner or the fact that he was Italian or both. Burns wasn’t too bright. At first Francino ignored him, but week after week in close quarters had worn down Francino’s indifference. Their animosity had become undeniable.

  Francino and Burns pushed through the undergrowth and circled around some kind of knoll. Francino looked to the edge of the trees. He and Burns had trampled a wide path. If there were Japanese hiding in the dense vines at the edge of the trees, Burns and he would see them, or evidence of them, from where they stood.

  “What do you think?” asked Francino.

  Burns cocked his head and looked off to the right. “I got a feeling.”

  Francino crouched deeper.

  “But I can’t hear nothing.”

  “Still . . .” Francino looked down to where the trees rimmed the vines. Cole had the other men moving carefully into the open. Francino could feel their unease. Cole, Frankel, Smith, Lescault, and Dove. The sun was beginning to burn through the mist.

  Frankel was the first to fall. At first Francino thought Frankel must have hit some wire from the way his head jerked back and his stomach swung out. Francino was still trying to figur
e out what had happened when he felt Burns’s hand hard on his arm pulling him down. Only then did Francino realize that he had stood up and was standing in clear view of whoever had felled Frankel. Then he was lying on his stomach. His rifle was ready although he wasn’t. Burns was shooting at something saying, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” The target seemed to be moving. Francino tried to clear his mind.

  A flying insect brushed his ear with her wings and Francino thought of the Angel of Death.

  A purple, fist-shaped cloud hovered above him.

  “Where are they?” yelled Burns.

  Where were who?

  There was sputtering fire below them. Someone (Lescault?) was screaming; he was hurt. But Burns and Francino were climbing. They were moving fast, like animals, on all fours. Burns moved ahead. Neither man spoke but Francino could hear each pull of Burns’s breath, although his ears were filled with silence. They moved through the vines. The brush clattered and snapped. Small animals took to the trees, rattling branches high above them. Birds screamed in alarm. Francino scrambled under the trunk of a tree. The soles of Burns’s boots were more worn on the inner edges and Francino tried to think if Burns was knock-kneed, but he could not remember. They moved upward still.

  Burns, sweat pouring off his forehead, turned to Francino and said, “They let us go. They let us go because they knew we were scouts and that the rest of the squad would be moving behind us.”

  Francino’s and Burns’s safe passage had lured the other men into the open. Francino had never considered that, despite his confusion, he had been part of a plan. He was still dazed, under the impression that the two men had encountered a pocket of chaos, all of it accidental and beyond reason.

  “We’ll wait here,” said Burns.

  “Before we circle back and join the others?”

  “The others? They’re all dead.”

  Francino pondered this. “Then what will we wait for?”

  Burns thought they should pick a direction and start walking, which was logical and dangerous for the same reason. The area had no clean battle lines; you could be at an Aussie checkpoint, continue on and find yourself face to face with the Japanese, only to fight your way through to the Dutch. They were on a checkerboard and at this point in the game, Burns wasn’t sure whose square they were sitting on. Since their platoon had just been decimated, the area appeared to be under Japanese control. It was probably a good idea to move on and to move on soon.

  “That’s not a plan and I’m not a gambling man,” Francino said to Burns.

  “Then what are you? You’re not much of a soldier.”

  Francino had responded with silence.

  “I saved your life back there.” Burns lifted his shoulders. “If it weren’t for me, you’d be on your way back from New Guinea to Little Guinea.”

  Francino laughed. “I think I owe my life to the Japanese.”

  “To the Japs?”

  “Yes,” said Francino. “For missing.”

  Burns shouldered his rifle and spat. He nodded to Francino and Francino obliged. He walked over to their prisoner and shook him. The man woke up and struggled to his feet.

  “We’re moving,” Francino said, then smiled to himself. He could have sworn that there was a flicker of recognition in the Jap’s eyes, a resentment that betrayed an ego, someone not beaten down by fear. The man scuttled to his feet. Francino cut the rope on his wrists.

  “He does anything, I’m holding you personally responsible,” said Burns.

  Francino looked at their prisoner. His eyes were watery, rimmed with yellow crust. “He’s almost dead,” said Francino.

  Francino tried to stay alert, but his mind wandered and sometimes the sound of snapping twigs seemed too normal to pull out the usual register of noises. Maybe Burns was right. Maybe he was a bad soldier. Maybe he was too aware of what he was risking to be a good soldier. He kept thinking of Corporal Shedelsky after the bullet got him right above his left ear. Shedelsky had survived, but Francino found him late one afternoon wandering around in nothing but a pair of socks. Shedelsky had an umbrella, borrowed from a startled native who was watching with a nervous smile. Francino pictured himself dancing off a ship in his socks, his umbrella dangling, his sister and mother waiting open-mouthed. Head injuries scared Francino almost more than dying.

  They’d taken the prisoner the day before. Francino’s rifle had been propped against a tree and Burns was off attending to his fourth bodily function of the last hour. Despite his iron side, Burns lacked Francino’s iron stomach. Francino was watching the progression of a column of ants along the jungle floor. He found himself naming them, starting with Cole and then Lescault. The ants were unaware of Francino. He gently placed a rock in the middle of their path, and they quickly circumvented it, with no thought to the cause of their detour. Francino leaned back from his squat into a sitting position. His socks were damp and he thought he should take them off and let his feet breathe for a while. He began to untangle his laces and had one of his boots half off when he heard Burns’s low, frightened voice.

  “Jesus,” Burns said.

  Francino looked up quickly. A Japanese soldier was standing no more than six feet from where he sat. His rifle was closer to the Japanese soldier than it was to him. Burns raised his rifle to the man’s head.

  “What are you doing?” said Francino.

  Burns ignored him.

  “What are you doing?” Francino repeated.

  “Francino, I came here to kill some Japs.”

  “He’s not armed.”

  The soldier slowly turned around. He looked to Burns, raising his hands in surrender.

  “He’s surrendering,” said Francino.

  “No, the Japs don’t surrender. He’s rigged.”

  “Rigged?”

  “He’s got a grenade or something. He’s gonna blow himself up and us too.”

  Francino had managed to take his boot off at this point, and was now standing. He took a good look at the soldier, who was very thin and looked to be in his early twenties. His clothing was torn in patches and his eyes were milky, clouded.

  “I think he’s sick,” said Francino.

  “So what?”

  “Save your bullet. If we can get him back to camp, he might be useful. He must have come from somewhere.”

  “And?”

  “He’s got to have some information.”

  Burns laughed. “You want to take him prisoner?”

  “Yeah,” Francino looked at the Jap. “Prisoner. Prisoner,” he said. He clasped his wrists a few times mimicking handcuffs.

  “Might make more sense if you did what the Japs do, just slice his head off. He’d understand that.”

  “I’m just following regulations. Either he’s surrendering, or he’s friendly. I think he’s surrendering.” Francino looked squarely at Burns. “If you want to shoot him, go ahead.”

  Suddenly, the Japanese soldier sat on the ground. He crossed his legs like a schoolchild and looked warily first at Burns, then at Francino.

  “We should get going,” said Francino.

  “I don’t like this,” Burns said. “There’s something wrong here. No Jap walks out of the jungle and surrenders. What makes you think that he’s alone?”

  Francino nodded almost imperceptibly.

  They’d been waiting for an ambush ever since. Burns was convinced and then not convinced that the Japs were following them with the intention of eating them. Cannibalism, said Burns, was commonplace in Japanese society. Ever since the start of the war, the Japs had supplemented their diet with Allied flesh. That’s why, when you killed a Jap and checked his rations, there were only rice balls, no meat. They didn’t need to carry it, you see. They liked it fresh. Francino was of the opinion that starving troops didn’t carry any rations at all.

  “Who told you about the Japs eating people?”

  Burns licked his lips. “Jimenez. He lost his best buddy.” Burns sensed protest. “Yes he did. Yes he did.”

  “All right.
What happened?”

  “It’s like what happened to us, only different. I think there were a couple of other guys. Yeah, there were four of them, got cut off, then outnumbered. The Japs didn’t kill anyone. They tied them up.”

  “Did they get the pot boiling?”

  “No,” said Burns. He looked over at the prisoner. “I swear, that fucking Nip is listening.”

  Francino shook his head questioningly.

  “He is.” Burns squinted in suspicion and the prisoner grew deeply solemn.

  “They didn’t kill anyone . . .”

  “Not one,” said Burns. “Then they took out the knife.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They cut strips off the guy’s leg while he was still alive. Something terrible, that. He was screaming and screaming. They was just carving the steaks right off the guy’s thigh.”

  “What was his name?” asked Francino.

  “I told you that. Jimenez.”

  “Not Jimenez. The guy who was getting carved into steaks.”

  “I don’t know. I think his name was Velasquez.”

  “Velasquez?”

  “Well, he’s dead, so who cares?” Burns lifted his two meaty hands to an uncaring God. He left the hands hovering in the air between him and Francino.

  “Why didn’t they kill him? Why didn’t they kill Velasquez?”

  “So he wouldn’t go bad. They kept him alive so he wouldn’t rot.”

  Francino listened to the sound of his own breath and calmed himself. Even as a story, this was horrifying. Even as a superstition, it was a terrible thing to fear.

  Francino was still trying to figure out why the prisoner had delivered himself into their custody. Burns was right. The very act of surrender was not Japanese. He also found the man’s silence suspicious. He never protested anything, or attempted any kind of communication. He never insisted in Japanese or responded in any way to their questions. His very ease in their company added to Francino’s suspicion. Why was the prisoner calm, resigned? Francino studied him as he marched ahead.

  Burns came up close behind Francino. “I’ve seen you looking at him,” he whispered. “You feel it too.”