Dog Tags

by Stephen Becker

  “We will have surgical supplies,” Doctor Li informed me, “and antibiotics.”

  “My men are better now or dead,” I said. “What they need is good food.”

  “That too will improve,” Li said. “We plan to conform to the highest international standards. Our goal is twenty-five hundred calories per day for each man.” He nodded many times, proudly, smugly.

  An interrogator said, “The baseball season has begun.”

  Li said, “I attended the Peking Union Medical School.”

  “Northwestern,” the interrogator said. “Psychology.”

  I murmured something polite. This was scarcely credible. After dinner I would be executed, straws beneath the fingernails, the water torture. Or they would turn the conversation to book reviews and the latest vernissage and I would go mad on the spot, gangling, adrool. I groped for civilization, wit. What do you hear from Mao Tse-tung. Lin. “I had a friend in medical school,” I said, “named Lin Li-kang. From Fukien.”

  “In Mandarin, Fu-djen,” the interrogator said primly. “Lin is a common name there, like Johnson in Minnesota.”

  “It is a good name for a doctor,” Li said, “because—”

  “Because the five lin, on the same tone, are the diseases of the bladder,” I said. “He told me that.”

  Joyful cries, extravagant delight. “A scholar!” Li announced. “You must apply yourself, and improve your hours learning Chinese.”

  Almost anything would improve my hours. Li rambled on about the modern application of certain ancient simples and nostrums. Acupuncture, he said; my heart contracted, a wrench, some old joke, confusing.

  We sat on wooden chairs about a wooden table. We ate rice from bowls, with chopsticks, and in the center of the table, on a wooden platter, lay a huge baked fish in sauce. There were no portions; we all attacked the fish, nipped up flakes of flesh and dropped them, saucy, into the rice; Li spooned more sauce onto mine. There were vegetables, white vegetables Li called them, and lotus root. We had little cups too, and a man came in with earthen jugs and they poured wine into my cup, yellow wine, hot. Ou-yang rose to propose a toast in Chinese; it was to Mao so I did not participate, nothing personal you understand, and waited to be ejected; the bouncer would pad in, a wrestler, grab me by the nape and seat, and fling. They ignored me. A toast of my own, I should offer a toast, but to whom? Harry Truman? George Washington? Benedict Arnold. I knew I should not be there. Photographs. Benny Beer in the fleshpots, among the heathen. Disgrace, loss of citizenship, automobile insurance canceled. After a suitable interval, establishing moral defiance, I sipped. “No, no,” Li said. “Dry cup, dry cup.” The cups were tiny, three thimblefuls; I quaffed. The cup was filled instantly, magically. The fish diminished, vanished; no bones? Many cups were dried. Not so many by me. I explained to Li that my system was now delicate and my good health of supreme importance to some eight hundred men. Actually I had about forty patients, but you know how it is the first year. “Very wise,” he said. I belched, Aeolian, sforzando. “Good, good,” he said. “A compliment to the chef.” I smiled weakly and patted my mouth with the back of my hand. Soup was served. Delicious, intoxicating, utterly new to me. “Walnut soup,” Li said, “for extraordinary occasions.”

  “It’s very good,” I said uneasily. I was a penniless diner awaiting the bill, the crisis. What did they want of me?

  Nothing. We babbled, some in Chinese and some in English; spoke of the war, the warm spring, Mao Tse-tung’s plans for flood control, the TVA. A love feast. I was frightened. But also full. My God I was full. On a bowl of rice and a mouthful of fish. A little drunk too. Foreign guest. Big nose. Invader, rapist. What next? Honorary citizenship. Exile. My interrogator friend asked me if I knew a place called The Blue Note. I did not. Great place, he said. Hawkins, he said. Tatum. I told him that I had once met Tatum but that I was a fiddler. Heifetz, he said. Paganini. Tomorrow they would clap someone into solitary and tonight we ate and drank and chattered of Shakespeare. They did not look at all alike. One of the interrogators was my idea of Genghis Khan: squat, powerful, a mustache. Another was a beardless Confucius, skinny, ascetic. One was walleyed. Ou-yang was jovial and hostly. The war was discussed again, the inevitable victory of the Chinese. Of the Koreans, someone corrected, and they all said oh yes, yes, the Koreans. Asia for the Asiatics, someone said, and Ou-yang spoke swiftly in Chinese, a rebuke. A brief silence. More gossip. Li was lecturing on blood types, geographical distribution, many races, religions and blood types, and I was nodding, wearied by café society, when a rush of sound jerked my head erect and stopped my breath. Ou-yang smiled.

  “What’s that?” I was trembling and in pain.

  “Radio Peking,” Ou-yang said. “Does that surprise you?”

  “No,” I said. “No. That’s Haydn.”

  I stood up; they fell silent. I choked, in my excitement gasped and hummed. I knew the quartet, the movement, three-four; my pulse beat in threes, and the music soared, quavered, hovered, swooped. I sank back heavily, stupefied. I let go then, and sat weeping, and wept to the end. When it was over Ou-yang handed me a cigarette and said I had better go now. It was obvious that I was tired. As I left a waiter came in with a stack of hot towels; I paused, and watched them wash their hands and mouths, fastidiously, like so many satraps.

  I told Kinsella that a Chinese doctor had arrived and we had talked about medicine. He smoked the cigarette and told me to be careful.

  Too late. Anyway the careful man dies of bedsores. Within a couple of days eight hundred prisoners knew that Doctor Beer, that prick, had caroused with the enemy. Roast duck, whiskey, cigars. Conversations dwindled at my approach. Kinsella drew me aside. “I want the truth.” I told him the truth. He astonished me: “Oh what the hell,” he said. “Christ, I heard you had women.” I laughed hysterically for some seconds. “I’ll shut them up,” he said.

  But then ten men were rounded up for stealing food, not from each other but from a storeroom near the library, where perhaps a prog had spied and squealed, and Fennimer and his friends were among them. They were taken away for a time and it was announced that their rations would be cut, which was infuriating; they would be denied classroom and library privileges, which was merely amusing; they would receive no tobacco, which was definitely comic; or mail, which was hilarious since no one had yet seen so much as a post card. It was less hilarious two days later when a few dozen men, all progressives but one, received a letter apiece, among them Pfc. Bewley, Corporal Ewald and Lieutenant Beer. That night I was court-martialed by Kinsella, two captains and two lieutenants. Kinsella raged. He had warned me. Stand fast, Beer. Ou-yang had mousetrapped me. The men were saying I had informed on the thieves. “Don’t be a fool,” I said.

  “Don’t you be a fool,” he stormed. “Of course you didn’t. God damn, of course not. Last man in the whole god damn camp to do that. Any of you others think he did?”

  The others did not think so.

  “But you let them split you off,” he said. “Why should the men hold out if their officers betray them? Christ, man, we had little enough left. Why should they trust any of us now?”

  I had no answer. Lucky Benny, the man in the middle. Gloomily I considered Ou-yang. He would not force me. He would isolate me and tempt me with Haydn and fish. Why? Why should he want me? What could I give him beyond doctoring, and he knew I’d give him that gratis. Cosmic forces at work, galactic intrigue, my soul at stake. “What does he want?”

  “Not you,” Kinsella said. “Not one officer more or less. He wants converts, but mostly he wants to demoralize us. He wants to show the world a lot of reformed sinners. Show the slant world and Africa and all them. It stands to reason.”

  We were sitting on the dirt floor, all but Kinsella; he stood, feet apart, shoulders square, chin high, a general chewing out a whole division.

  “Okay. What do I do?”

  They debated. I could stay with the Turks, or the British. No; they too knew. I could rebel and have myself popped into t
he hole. No; they’d say it was a trick.

  “I could cut my throat,” I said.

  “You may yet. God damn you. What kind of puppy dog are you? You like everybody.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to say about a man.” The letter was in my waistband, between my shorts and my belly.

  “Anyway,” Kinsella said, “you’re confined to quarters. We’ll try to square you outside, but stay put.”

  It was from Carol. Often I could not remember her face. Joseph was well. Joseph would be a year old. “What about doctoring?”

  “Forget it.”

  “If they send for me?”

  “You have to go. But you won’t doctor.”

  “Shucks,” I said, “that’s what I signed on for.”

  “You signed on to fight for your country.”

  “I didn’t sign on. I was drafted. To doctor.”

  “To doctor your own.”

  My own. “A doctor’s like a virgin. He is or he isn’t.”

  “Sonny boy,” my major said, “you just lost your cherry.”

  I followed orders and remained in the hut. Ou-yang sent for me and I explained that he had his own doctor now, and more coming, as he had told me, and that it was not seemly of me to neglect my own patients for consultations with the, ah, adversary. He discussed humanity. Doctor Li clucked and mentioned my duty to mankind. “Yessir,” I said. Ou-yang informed me coldly that I must no longer use the library. I must understand that there were difficulties with the mail, both incoming and outgoing. I was marched back to my hut. “Ewald’s cut another record,” Kinsella said. “I suppose it was him informed.”

  “That may be my fault too,” I said, and when pressed could not explain.

  Carol loved me. I read her letter many times a day over the next two months. In the morning I took light exercise. I ate properly. I talked little. It was a time of unflagging stupor. The Chinese disliked me and the prisoners despised me. My roommates were cordial but remote. Often I lay awake at night. Often I remembered Carol’s body, but not with my own, with my mind only. Doubtless a failure of the imagination, emotion disconnected in this infinite tranquility. I meditated various young ladies, including Ho Wenchen and finally, dismally, Nan. I wondered if I would ever love anyone again. Love. I pondered the eating of rats. I pondered war and decided that men liked it. Statistically. In a large population the number of men who love to kill is sufficient to form a modern army. War was here to stay. If men would die sooner than eat rats, then surely they would die in droves, singing vigorously, for any higher reason; would die willingly, proudly. Proud to die! Unspeakable. I was too inanimate for disgust and simply contemplated the obscenity: men were proud to die. And how much prouder to kill!

  And what was I proud of? Once upon a time, making love. Once upon a time, healing. Shameful admission: I had been proud to be what I was. Schmuck! No despair? Four walls, silence, Benny the nothing. I was not angry and not sorry for myself. I was in limbo and it seemed not unnatural. Normal. A room. Food. Warmth. Doubtless I would be expelled in time, into a new and strange world.

  Ewald was now a librarian, they said, living it up in a prog hut. Trezevant and Cuttis were well; so were Mulberg and Collins. Auld lang syne. Class of 1950.

  In June I sat outside and was tanned.

  We went swimming in the Yalu. My fellow officers were a guard of honor. Solidarity. Benny is one of us. Kinsella swam, dived, spouted spray. They laughed and ducked one another. They returned to the hut much cheered. In the bay our navy patrolled. Later I sorted the dead men’s dog tags, a form of higher crossword puzzle. Many races, religions, blood types. I read Carol’s letter. Jacob was well.

  One day in the middle of July I was squatting, hunkered down like an Oriental peasant or a toad, except that with my face to the sun I was wondering how it was to be a turtle. I remember that: it would be good to be a turtle, I thought. I had seen them, brown and orange and green, lying on rocks in the sun, and it was a good life, free of malice. My eyes were shut against the hot yellow light. I was waiting for a princess to kiss me. I heard men shouting, playing a game perhaps, and I opened my eyes a slit to look at them. We were at the crest of a slope and I could see many huts, and men were piling out of the huts and congregating where they could, a mass of agitated blue beetles, and the shouting rose and fell against a wash of voices, like a crowd at a game, so I knew that the world had changed.

  I stood up. My fellow officers came to stand beside me. We looked at one another and were puzzled. And then a squad of Chinese marched toward us, along the wire, and Ou-yang was in the midst of them, striding importantly like a prince among courtiers. They came to our hut, and Kinsella stepped forward. The squad halted, and Ou-yang pushed between two of them and stood facing Kinsella. All over the camp men were buzzing and hollering. I decided we had bombed Peking.

  Ou-yang said, “Major Kinsella.”

  “Colonel,” Kinsella said.

  “I am happy to inform you, officially,” Ou-yang said, “that this week, along the thirty-eighth parallel, there was a meeting of Chinese, Koreans and Americans, at which negotiations began for a truce.”

  We were stunned. Shocked speechless and groping. His words had a meaning but we could not grasp it. The sun was intolerably bright.

  “You may join your men,” Ou-yang said.

  After a breathless moment Kinsella said, “Thank you,” whispering, “thank you,” and stepped around Ou-yang, floated, tiptoed around the squad, and flew down the hill in long, ecstatic, gliding strides, and the others flew leaping after him. I stood where I was, and Ou-yang and I locked eyes, a peculiar exchange, smoldering, outlandish, monstrous, homosexual, secret understandings. Causeless and bizarre: it smote me. Again across centuries and continents. Linked, wedded, a common ancestor: ponies, flocks, stars; the passionate doomed unity of human blood.

  I heard my name shouted. “Benny!” Kinsella called. “God damn it, come on. Come home, Benny, all is forgiven,” and he stared into the sun and laughed, and the others whooped and yodeled, and I ran to catch up, screaming and yipping, jumping and skipping, and then we were all hugging each other, all races, religions and blood types.

  We waited two years.

  14

  Defeated, Cornelius chubbied and drooped; tilted far back in a swivel chair, he revealed the angles and swells of mortality, also an incipient pot. “At least we’re on the way home. Otherwise it’s a bust.”

  “Not for us to decide,” Fontaine said briskly. “Be a year before we know anything.”

  The black lieutenant said, “You’re going to jug some of these men because of what I say. What we say.”

  “You may jug me,” Benny said. “I gather there’s been talk.”

  “I doubt that,” Parsons said. “Couple of fellows said you ought to have a medal.”

  “Good God, who was that?”

  The lanky corporal—Benny thought of him now as the cowboy—widened his eyes in mock homage.

  “Can’t tell you that,” Parsons said comfortably. “Be nice, a medal, wouldn’t it. I mean because you come from a long line of military folk.”

  Benny laughed outright. He enjoyed the laugh and went on laughing for some moments, younger every second, goofy, warm and alive, suddenly ardent. There was possibly something to be said for mankind; the species was by now a stale joke but perhaps better than no joke at all. He sat voluptuously and allowed his body, his reprieved flesh, to mediate between past and future. He sighed aloud. “Some of the starch is washing away.”

  “That’s how I feel,” the older corporal said, almost resentfully.

  “Let yourself go,” Gabol said. “Don’t fight it.”

  All these gleaming chairs and table-legs, minutely tooled portholes, sockets, speakers, switches, lamps and panels! A palace. And some day soon Benny would drive a car, clamber aboard an airplane. Practice the medicine he knew and loved. With instruments! with thermometers! with nurses! A fleeting vision, bobbling breasts, pink tones. A brief spasm shook him.
“You must have quite a file on us,” he said. “Between the army and the FBI.”

  “We have,” Parsons said. “You were exposed to a heavy dose of commie propaganda.”

  “Commie,” the black lieutenant said. “Tell me why I hate that word.”

  “We were also exposed to a heavy dose of life on the ragged edge,” the cowboy said. “What you folks need is a file on everybody who was never in prison.”

  “Who never had to just hang on,” the smallish cook said.

  “All you nice clean antiseptic fellows,” Benny said, “unreliable and unpredictable.”

  “Right on up to the President,” someone muttered.

  “That’s the real bitch, isn’t it,” Cornelius said. “You men are proud of yourselves. You, Beer, the way you fought to keep that chop, that souvenir.”

  “No. That’s not the way to put it.” Or was it? Possibly. Had he been purified? Deprivations, saint in the desert, fasts; had his soul been rendered translucent and supple, open to blood truths? “Maybe.” What language did they speak, these creatures of comfort? “Because of what he said,” and Benny gestured, “the ragged edge, real life. I hated it,” he burst out fervently, almost rapturously, “hated it, but I can’t help a … a kind of … acid gratitude. It was real, it was real, it was realer than this boat or you people or the war itself. I’m only sorry we never ate rats.”

  “Listen,” the cowboy told Cornelius, “you never lived that way.” He jammed a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and struck a wooden match with a sharp sweep of his right arm, and Benny watched the cigarette tremble, the flame shimmy, and was not surprised at the hoarse, urgent tone: “It’s not like waiting for a bullet—bang, you’re dead. It’s not even living each day thinking it may be the last, like an old man afraid to go to bed. It’s the feeling that the rest of your life—no, the rest of time, forever—is going to be like this.”