The Caprices

by Sabina Murray

And she had conferred with her brother.

  Totoy said, “It is American. Golly Bear. He is very big and is rescued by very small people. Like you. Very big. Like us. Very small. It is Clara’s name for you. Golly Bear.”

  In his first few weeks at O’Donnell, Jim had daydreamed about the house near San Fernando. He wondered what it would have been like if he’d stayed there. He imagined himself growing strong, becoming a one-man army, a slaying machine who hid by day in the rafters, and by night picked off Jap after Jap. And Clara was a part of this dream, her soft hands and straight teeth. But after a couple of months, Jim only thought of food. The men were dying all around him. Beriberi. Malaria. Dark moods that made men sit down and never stand up again. He had seen a Japanese officer, the one they called the Frisco Nip because he had lived in California, decapitating Ned Thomas. Ned’s body had been on the ground draining into the earth through his neck. Ned would not get up and walk, as Jim had, but Jim wished he would. He tried to raise Ned with the power of thought, thinking that if faith could move mountains, hatred must do more. But Ned didn’t listen, just lay there. Jim imagined Ned’s headless body going after the Japs, demanding the return of his head. He imagined all the dead men coming back from the burial fields, all those GIs and the million Filipinos, rattling on the gates of the camp, demanding compensation for their lives.

  Jim’s army of the dead coming to save him, take him away, had kept him alive. Now Jim found his dreams of salvation unsophisticated, even funny. He had been eighteen years old when Bataan fell. His idea of revenge was fed by comic books and movies. Jim had survived like a man, but had suffered like a child, bewildered and vulnerable. He had stopped counting the deaths of his friends when the number hit twenty. He had buried many more than that. He was lucky to be young, lucky that his brain could not fully comprehend the camp.

  After O’Donnell, there was the ship to Japan. This was in late 1944, although Jim didn’t know what year it was at the time. In the hold of the ship, ankle deep in water and excrement, Jim had made the journey to Japan. The light made its way into the hold only where rust had done its work. There was no place to lie down, no room to sit comfortably. The iron tub in the center of the room was used for water in the morning, as a urinal through the rest of the day. People died standing up, unable to rest even in death. Jim had no fear of boats in later years, but could not go to the movies. The darkness, the people packed so close, and the single shaft of light, took the breath out of him. Made him sweat and shake.

  In Japan, Jim had worked in a steel mill in Honshu. The winter was cold and he had slept wrapped in a paper blanket. The men huddled together at night, sleeping like mice. The work details were long and many soldiers died with picks in their hands. The guards were armed with sticks. Jim thought there was something biblical about this labor. He remembered the Jews in Egypt, but thought he had it worse. The Jap supervisor was Sergeant Matsuo. Matsuo was tall and spoke in polite tones, but Jim never learned more than a few Japanese words. Matsuo oversaw the deaths of more than fifty men that Jim knew, but more somehow survived. And when word came that Japan had finally lost, these men rose up. Jim wondered what Matsuo’s final thoughts had been when he was overcome by his crew of skeletons, half naked, toothless, and gray with dust from working so long inside the earth. They had pulled Matsuo from his quarters.

  Jim had not been a part of the mob. He’d watched with others from a close distance, but all he could see was a tangle of emaciated limbs. Above the groaning labor of the men, Jim heard the creak of metal. When the prisoners stepped back, Jim saw Matsuo impaled on a six-foot drill that had been used in the mine. The drill stuck through his chest. Two men arranged Matsuo on his knees, so that his legs formed a tripod with the point of the drill, which was protruding through his back. In this way, Matsuo could stay upright. The soldiers placed him at the entrance of the mine, to keep watch, to guard that which he’d valued over all their lives. Sometimes Jim would dream of Matsuo propped on his drill watching over him, keeping sentinel on his life.

  After the war, Jim got a job at a garage in Newburyport, just over the causeway from Plum Island. The first time he saw Peggy, he was pumping gas. She pulled up, with her boyfriend, in a brand-new, banana-yellow Buick convertible. Her boyfriend stepped out, needing to use the bathroom. He’d been drinking. Jim could smell that. The boyfriend had glossy black hair streaked with gray, but was probably only twenty-five. He had a slight limp. Peggy got out too. She stood a safe distance away and lit a cigarette.

  “Your boyfriend’s got a nice car,” said Jim.

  “The car’s mine,” said Peggy.

  Jim wiped his hands on a rag. “Then why aren’t you driving?”

  Peggy laughed. She looked at Jim appraisingly. Jim started to get nervous.

  “What time do you get off?” she asked.

  The boyfriend had tipped Jim a whole dollar. He seemed like a decent guy. Jim spent the next hour trying to get his hands clean. When the convertible pulled up again, Peggy was driving. Jim hopped in. He took her for ice cream at the stand down the road. It was summer and gulls were wheeling overhead. Jim and Peggy were the oldest people seated at the counter. Kids in bare feet, their hair bleached with salt and sun, made up the other customers. Jim bought Peggy’s cone for her.

  He said, “I’ve got a dollar burning a hole in my pocket.”

  Peggy didn’t talk much. Jim wasn’t sure why he was there. He remembered that the girls in high school had liked him, but it didn’t give him a whole lot of confidence.

  “Was your boyfriend in the war?” he asked.

  “Normandy,” said Peggy.

  “Is he a hero?” asked Jim.

  Peggy was silent for a minute. She looked over at Jim, then away. “Twenty-four hours a day,” she said. And that made Jim laugh.

  Peggy was a hero because she married Jim, who had no money, whose only talent was fixing things. Her family set him up in his own garage. Peggy was educated, beautiful, and tough. She had smoked herself to death and never asked for pity. She’d married Jim because he was the biggest man she’d ever seen. She’d married Jim because of the reach of his hands and because of his huge feet with the gnarled toes that spread out like the roots of a tree. And he always let her drive.

  This house on the island was Peggy’s, had been in her family for a hundred years. She had supervised the replacement of shingles, barking out orders while Jim balanced at the top of a ladder. And Jim had built them a bed—longer by six inches than most—in the cramped bedroom, since Peggy didn’t think it would fit through the door. Jim liked the island. He liked his garage, but the whole business of the camps was hard to forget. Jim had to consciously put all the deaths, the hunger, and the fear into the past each morning. This was a difficult task. Sometimes he felt he was living his whole life at once, in one moment, regardless of what was done with and what was left to do. Peggy didn’t understand but was kind enough to act as if she did. She went to all Jim’s reunions. She danced with his buddies, whose wives were dead, and then she died and no one danced anymore. They were in their eighties. They were all heroes because they didn’t die and some were heroes because they did.

  Peggy was dead six months when Clara had called Jim up. How Clara had found him, he was not sure. Must have been some veterans’ organization. The connection was poor. Clara’s voice sounded distant and blunted. Clara was unconcerned by the reach of years. She said, “I am so happy you are alive.”

  And Jim had said, “Me too.”

  Totoy was in San Francisco living in a hotel on Mission Street. He had come to the States for his veterans’ benefits, which were not enough, and now Clara was worried. She was living in an apartment in Parañaque, on the outskirts of Manila, with her kids and grandkids. Totoy sent her money every now and then, but her cousin (who lived in Daly City and was Totoy’s gambling partner) had written to her. Totoy’s tuberculosis was getting worse. They were scared he was going to die and that, because he was in the States and didn’t have enough money,
they wouldn’t be able to send his body back to the Philippines. He would be cremated.

  “He will be like an old cigarette,” said Clara. “What will God say to that?”

  “I didn’t know he was in the U.S.” Jim had not seen Totoy since the day he’d been left at Camp O’Donnell. He’d thought of finding him after the war but hadn’t known his last name or the exact location of the house where Totoy had taken him. Also, Jim had not wanted to find out that he was dead. “I’ll go see him,” Jim said.

  Jim flew to San Francisco and stayed in the Best Western in Japantown. He arranged to meet Totoy at a restaurant in Chinatown. Jim was momentarily concerned as he looked down at the sea of black-haired men that he and Totoy would miss each other, but Jim, even though he was eighty, was still over six feet tall. His hair was a vigorous gray and stood a good inch and a half high on his head. Everyone was noticing him. Totoy would too.

  Jim sat on the booth side of a small table with his great hands folded on the tabletop and waited. It was noisy and Jim was left alone with his thoughts, because no one was speaking English. He saw a pair of old men standing in the doorway and realized, as he did every now and then, that he was old like them. Then one man smiled. Totoy had cow eyes, like his sister Clara, and a broad shovel-shaped nose, and those were much the same as they’d been sixty years ago. Jim stood up. He recognized the work of years, but also what had been left behind. There was a nervous twinge in his stomach and he forced himself to nod and smile, as if he were at ease. Totoy was gray-faced. His hair was thin on his head and he’d made an effort to comb it over the bare spots. There was still black in with the gray. He was wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt that was tight across his stomach. The muscles on his forearms were pronounced but his upper arms were thin, like Popeye arms. Totoy was very weak and leaned heavily on his cousin, who was similarly dressed; the two men wore identical black, thin-soled loafers.

  “My sister called you,” said Totoy, smiling.

  “Yes,” said Jim, his hands forced into his pockets.

  “This man,” said Totoy to his cousin, “he buries my brother and now he buries me. But I, I brought him back from the dead.”

  And Jim remembered that Totoy was his dear friend.

  Jim stepped around from the table. He didn’t know if Filipino men hugged each other and he sure as hell knew that his guys didn’t, but he wanted to hug Totoy. He wanted to bring him back from the dead and take him on a cruise, like he used to go on with Peggy, where you drank cocktails and watched kicking showgirls at night. He wanted to get Totoy a new shirt and a set of golf clubs, to bring him back to the island where they would sit on the porch and drink whisky. Because he was unsure of himself, he nodded a few times and sat down.

  The menu was in Chinese but Totoy and his cousin had it figured out. They ordered neon-colored drinks with rice-flour balls floating in them. They ordered two kinds of noodles, one crispy, the other soft. They ordered little chicks that came served on an oval plate, lacquered a glossy red with the heads still on. Totoy mumbled to his cousin over the food in Tagalog, then looked over at Jim, his face large and happy. “I didn’t think you would come to visit me. I think maybe you forget.”

  “No,” said Jim quietly. “I didn’t forget.” There was an awkward silence.

  “Tell me again,” said the cousin, “how you two know each other.”

  Jim was sure the cousin knew all the details, but appreciated hearing it all again.

  “On Bataan, Jim found me digging my brother’s grave.”

  Jim was surprised at how plainly Totoy related the tale. There was no embellishment, yet it had already become a myth—the children sitting on the great couch, the cart ride, the water buffalo—as if at that moment all those things, and Jim and Totoy too, should have been flung into the heavens and recorded in the stars. Totoy’s voice sang on and on, unwavering, over the staccato of the Chinese diners, over the slam of plates and the grinding traffic just outside.

  “So Jim here wakes up,” says Totoy, “and he wants to know, so he asks Clara, ‘Who is Golly Bear?’” And the men broke down laughing. “Say it, Jim, because my accent is too thick.”

  “Gulliver.”

  “Golly Bear,” says Totoy.

  “Guliber,” says his cousin.

  Totoy nods in acknowledgment of his cousin’s superior pronunciation. Then all the men laugh, which sets off the coughing, which brings out the handkerchief—white flecked with brown spots. And then there were new bright red spots. New blood. How could a man that old and sick cough such a vibrant liquid? How could his juices still be so sweet?

  In the end Jim didn’t invite Totoy back to the island. He gave him a check for a thousand dollars and told him to buy a plane ticket home. Totoy had no trouble taking the money.

  He said, “I know I saved you for something.”

  Jim pulled the cousin aside. “Make sure he gets home. I told his sister I’d get him home.”

  “He either walks on the plane or he goes as baggage, but he goes in one piece,” said the cousin.

  Totoy shook Jim’s hand firmly. “They are lying. I am still strong,” he said, squeezing hard, the effort clear on his face.

  One month passed and Jim heard nothing from Totoy or Clara or the cousin. He called the Philippines at 7 P.M. After three polite grandchildren in ascending age and fluency in English, he got Clara. There were roosters crowing in the background and she was barking out orders for breakfast. She didn’t know who it was.

  “Clara, it’s Jim.”

  “Who?”

  “Jim from the States. Remember? Gulliver?”

  “Ah. Sorry. I am old and crazy.” She yelled something and the house fell quiet. Even the roosters obeyed. “Totoy is dead,” she said.

  Totoy had died in San Francisco, destitute, surrounded by friends and relatives. Clara knew about the money for the plane ticket, but it had all been blown on gambling. For two straight weeks Totoy and his cousin had hopped on board the bus tour to the Indian reservation, drinking cognac, smoking Marlboros, and generally having a good time. Clara had a letter from the cousin. Jim was mentioned in it. The cousin had written Clara that Totoy didn’t feel bad about the gambling. God wouldn’t want him anyway and what Jim really owed him was a life. So for two weeks he had lived. Don’t feel bad for Totoy. His last memory was rolling the dice and winning.

  “So what do you think of that?” said Clara.

  “I can’t blame him,” said Jim. “I wish I’d known. I probably could have come up with another grand to get the guy home.”

  “He is no good, that Totoy, even when he’s dead. There were pieces of bones in the ashes. In the airport, they saw the bones with the X-ray. They said the bones were seeds. Yes. Seeds to grow marijuana in dirt. I had to give the man at customs a thousand pesos.”

  The storm was picking up. A powdery snow blew in sideways. One by one the leaves had peeled away in the wind and now, at the base of the steps where the icicle had dripped, a flat patch of sky was frozen in the puddle. The temperature had dropped. The sun no longer broke through the veil of clouds. The once brilliant shards of light were now dulled with the promise of winter’s occupation. The radio blared the news of a Patriot touchdown, but Jim had lost track of the game and didn’t know if there was hope. A car hissed along the pavement and for one brief moment Jim saw himself reflected in the window, seated still as Lincoln and slowly turning white in the dying light. The wind shifted, blowing snow onto Jim’s shoes and pants. The wind chime hanging by the door sounded a dolorous note.

  Peggy had bought that wind chime in Rhodes ten years ago. He remembered entering the city in the late afternoon, siesta time. The heat beat down on the cobbled walks, glinting off the ramparts and washing every part of the medieval city in white light. All the wind chimes sounded together from the open storefronts and although Jim was ready to resist such calculated magic, Peggy had wanted a wind chime and bought one.

  Peggy wanted to see Rhodes because she wanted to see all Seven Won
ders of the World. The Colossus of Rhodes was one of these. The summer before, they had seen the Pyramids. But there was no colossus in Rhodes. When Peggy told him the statue was gone, had been gone since the third century B.C., Jim wanted to know why Peggy had made him leave Santorini. They’d traveled almost to Turkey on a ferry that reminded him of the death barge he’d taken to Japan in 1944, all to see where a statue had once been. Peggy found his reaction funny, but she found herself funny too.

  “If you listened, you’d know the statue was gone,” Peggy said. She stood at the port with the fierce Greek sun beating down on her. It didn’t matter that the Colossus of Rhodes had fallen down in an earthquake in 226 B.C., been left in pieces for nine hundred years, then taken to Syria as scrap metal. She could still feel it. “There’s something missing,” she said. And that was enough for her.

  The light was fading and the house across the street was now different shades of gray. Beyond the planks of the fence, the goldenrod was capped with snow. The beach plums and wild rose were lost somewhere in the snowy bank, and the tide had crept inward, floating a dinghy that now tugged at the rope. Jim could not move, only watch. Through the low hiss of snow skidding along the road, he heard a scraping noise as if someone were dragging a piece of metal—a lead pipe, maybe—up the street. He listened to the noise come closer. There was something frightening about it. Then, rounding the southern end of the street, he saw a man that he recognized. It was Matsuo, still impaled, carrying the drill up the street.

  Jim watched Matsuo’s progress as he drew nearer to the house. He remained calm. The drill tip scraped behind Matsuo, who struggled with each step. The drill seemed to throw his balance and the blunt end, still protruding from his chest, made the angle of his head unnatural, tilted to the left. A bloodstain bloomed general over Matsuo’s tunic, like an awful flower. The drill was very heavy.

  Matsuo raised his pale face to the porch and Jim noticed that Matsuo—unlike him—was still young. Jim held his breath and waited, but the apparition remained. The two men watched each other. After sixty years of searching, Matsuo had found him. Finally, Matsuo pursed his lips and inhaled with great effort.