Daydreams like this were a common diversion among the prisoners, which brings me back to something Jim had fixated on nearly as obsessively as bicycles. At least a dozen times or more, he talked about ways the prisoners would alleviate the torture of hunger by exchanging recipes the way kids swap baseball cards. They’d hand them around from person to person, salivating while trading them off, as if they were real food. But just as Jim’s escape bike was imaginary, the recipes were simply pieces of paper, at best with some flakes of color left on a few of them. Yet both of these objects of desire, the wheels and the inky ingredients, provided nourishment if not for the body, then for the imagination, which is what allowed my man to leave that jungle alive.
His stories made it easier for me to get a handle on some of Jim’s quirks, the phobias that didn’t necessarily bother me, but that I could acknowledge more affectionately once I understood where they were coming from. Spaghetti Bolognese sent Jim into a panic. Because I knew that, of course I never prepared that dish at home, but Jim would literally tremble if someone at a nearby table ordered it when we ate out. Since recipes were their escape valve, what kept their minds off the horrors of the jungle, sometimes they became the source of fights. There were rules to how they could be swapped. One of the rules was that they couldn’t swap duplicate recipes—when energy flags, so does imagination, and so individuality was paramount for stimulating a person’s ability to pretend. Uniqueness activates the competitive urge, the risk-taking, and even the desire to play, all of which are synonymous with life. But the game, when played by dehydrated, starving men, could become a sort of hallucination, and the prisoners would get into scrapes, bite and maim each other like a cageful of famished dogs fighting over a piece of meat. Jim told me about an incident that grew out of one of the star recipes, the most disputed: spaghetti Bolognese. Despite hailing from several different culinary cultures, apparently this particular blend of pasta, meat, and tomatoes was a favorite, and they fought like animals over it. Finally, one of the spaghetti recipe brawls ended in two deaths. Hallucinating from starvation, one of the prisoners attacked the spent bodies of his companions, whose meat was as red as the pasta that started the fracas in the first place.
Another time in Central Park, Jim told me why he was so afraid of saunas. Whenever one of the prisoners committed a brutal act, the lucid ones took it upon themselves to end the life of whoever had gone berserk. That way the Japanese could never mistake the prisoner for an animal or objectify him as a thing and torture him. It was better to end their comrade’s life quickly and not be forced to cope with the dying man’s screaming, the agony of an inevitable death spread out over days. The sweatboxes were the worst of all, because death took its sweet time in them. Because these were located right beside the barracks, the prisoners who had to work sixteen- or eighteen-hour shifts couldn’t get any sleep thanks to the shrieking and laments at night. The sweatboxes were a form of solitary confinement, and the instant a person was in one, he began to sweat. The materials they were made of and the fact that they were hermetically sealed to keep the heat in meant that the victims would dehydrate within minutes and slowly begin to roast, as in an oven. Even many years later, Jim still couldn’t enter a sauna. He couldn’t fathom how anyone could derive pleasure from spending time in one of them; the torture boxes had filled with meaning all the spaces meant for sweating.
THE BRITISH ARTIST Jack Bridger Chalker drew portraits of his comrades while he was a prisoner in Burma. Jim had told me about him, but it was never clear whether they’d known each other personally. I had never asked if Chalker had painted Jim’s portrait; somehow it seemed inappropriate given the collective suffering that had taken place there. But when the portraits were published some years later and I could see their faces for the first time, distinguish their true features, their gestures and wrinkles and folds, the distinctive characteristics that represented suffering on an individual scale instead of the collective, I didn’t ask Jim if he was there but looked for him all the same, thumbing quickly through the book several times.
One sketch was of a standing man tied to two bamboo rods that seemed thicker than they usually do in contrast to the prisoner, who was skin and bones. A pail with what looked like a metal handle hung around the man’s neck, and looking at this image, one had to question whether the guards had placed the pail that way so the victim, weakened by illness, could vomit all the more easily, or if instead the pail was of itself an instrument of torture due to its contents, which we couldn’t see.
Another one of the drawings showed an ulcerous foot corroded to the bones and with pus encasing the tendons. Tropical ulcers, I heard or read, were caused by bacteria in the dirt, microorganisms that ate through flesh like acid. A scratch was enough for these invisible termites to rush in.
Another illustration that stunned me was one in which several prisoners, mouths wide open, were gathered inside a canvas tent. It looked as though they were treating one another’s canker sores, and from the black oval of one of their mouths issued the screams of all the rest. That drawing too still sparks a memory of synesthesia between sight and hearing, a drawing in pencil and watercolor that penetrates my ears like an agony or lamentation.
My mind inevitably returns to the Geneva Convention whenever I think about these images, and the articles on the treatment of prisoners of war. Jim gave me a copy of it. The contrast between what Jim lived through and the articles of the convention makes me feel as powerless as when I face up to my own experiences before comparable humanitarian agreements. Going through these articles is more than just reading a checklist of what wasn’t respected; it also outlines what was nullified by the process of objectifying prisoners, stripping them of any trace of their humanity. Let me quote from a few of these articles here, chosen at random. You’ll see that between parentheses I offer examples of noncompliance according to Jim’s experiences. May I remind you that this is but one example of how such treaties have been violated? Consider it one more piece of the puzzle that shapes my revenge once it’s put together. In the end everyone will see it as plainly as a photograph.
ARTICLE 2
“Prisoners of war . . . shall at all times be humanely treated and protected, particularly against acts of violence, from insults and from public curiosity.” (Jim wasn’t treated like a human being or even a sentient animal, but like a bacterium under the microscope of a curious biologist prodding it in order to observe mutations, mutilations, and death. He told me how every once in a while a guard would pass by and tell a prisoner to kneel down and open his mouth. The guard would spit in it. If the prisoner swallowed the sputum without contorting his face in disgust, the guard would continue on his way; otherwise he would slit his throat.)
ARTICLE 9
“Prisoners captured in districts which are unhealthy or whose climate is deleterious to persons coming from temperate climates shall be removed as soon as possible to a more favorable climate.” (Hundreds of prisoners died as a consequence of diseases either directly or indirectly derived from the jungle climate. Their transferal was never considered, since they had been sent precisely to that place to work.)
“Belligerents shall as far as possible avoid bringing together in the same camp prisoners of different races or nationalities.” (The Japanese mixed the prisoners on purpose, forcing them to attack each other like fighting dogs.)
ARTICLE 11
“The food ration of prisoners of war shall be equivalent in quantity and quality to that of the depot troops. . . . All collective disciplinary measures affecting food are prohibited.” (The prisoners had to kill and eat rats, lizards, and worms in order to survive. All they were given to eat was one fist-sized ball of rice per day.)
“Sufficient drinking water shall be supplied to them. The use of tobacco shall be authorized. Prisoners may be employed in the kitchen.” (The prisoners had to break the stems of certain plants to drink their sap. When they were given water their captors would throw pails of it at their faces to watch how th
e prisoners licked one another to fight the thirst.)
ARTICLE 30
“The duration of the daily work of prisoners of war, including the time of the journey to and from work, shall not be excessive and shall in no case exceed that permitted for civil workers of the locality employed on the same work. Each prisoner shall be allowed a rest of twenty-four consecutive hours each week, preferably on Sunday.” (It was a forced labor camp; there was no time of rest, let alone twenty-four hours’ worth.)
WHETHER JIM WAS OR WASN’T in Jack Bridger Chalker’s drawings is irrelevant now, but they proved something he’d said to me over and over again: “When the time came, death passed me by.” The idea gave him an aura of divine protection that people noticed. Jim truly lived as if death had missed its date with him. We’d been spending time in a natural reserve close to the Canadian border when I received a call that they’d seen the small Cessna Jim and a friend were flying in crash on the far side of the lake. We sped along following the trail of metal debris and charred shell, and I was ordered to remain in the jeep so as not to break down at the crash site. But there was Jim, trying to stitch up a spooked buffalo whose neck had gotten caught in a barbed-wire fence. The same thing happened every time misfortune came sniffing around. Either the whole lot got off scot-free or the bad luck touched someone else, and Jim would say, “Don’t worry. Like I said, Death forgot my hour.” Jim was seventeen years older than me, but he was still active and I never cared much for that image he conjured of the Grim Reaper as some absentminded creature. As it turns out, Death had not forgotten about him entirely. Or maybe I should say that Death, who certainly hadn’t forgotten about me, held off just long enough for us to get to know each other so that by taking him it could kill me once again, just like that, once more, time and time again.
Whatever the case may be, back then all I wanted was to believe everything he said, to trust that he would live forever. Maybe that’s the origin of a recurring dream I still have. I’m in a room with a big window. I have a book in my hand, but instead of reading it, I’m amusing myself by watching a bird in a cage. It hops from one branch to another, in that nervous way caged birds have. I observe it calmly for a few minutes. Then suddenly something happens. The bird has fallen to the bottom of the cage, where it’s trembling and convulsing. So I grab the cage and run outside to look from door to door for help—a veterinarian, someone, anyone. Each person sends me on to someone else, and I keep searching, getting more and more desperate, dashing here and there, and I can see the bird is suffering. Finally someone promises me that there’s a person who can help at the house on the other side of the street, but as I cross the street, a car hits me. I fall to the ground and watch as the cage is propelled into the air and the door pops open and the bird flies out safe and sound, spreading its wings at the same exact moment my heart stops beating. Jim used to say that he’s the soul that leaves the body at death. Only in his case he keeps returning to the same body in time to link the last heartbeat to the new one, which becomes the first in the chain of a new existence. If only it had been that way, the eternal pulse of a free bird.
Now, how could my dreams be of any consequence to you? As I already said, I’m writing this in the faith that someone else might read it without judging me. Who knows what those specialists in forensic psychiatry will make of my dreams? Am I innocent or guilty? It’s the luck of the draw when the evaluating psychiatrist won’t admit that today we still can’t categorize a psyche. But I know my case won’t be given to any psychiatrist, something I’m actually grateful to you for. Don’t think I’ve forgotten my fate is now in your hands—that only days remain, maybe hours, before you find me here in this cabin, this refuge where I write, undoubtedly sentenced to death, but still surrounded by life, water, beasts, vegetation.
* * *
I’ve had to look for so many things. Yoro was certainly the most precious of them all, but I’d already begun a journey of my own when I met Jim, to find other people like me who didn’t feel comfortable with the ongoing notions of sexual categories. Labels made me feel as though I were being stuffed into a corset cut to fit another person, or wearing a rubber suit that made moving a hassle and required a huge amount of effort to remove. I felt good stripped bare—I mean, as a non-category—but my neutral status was never enough for people, because as you well know, affixed to the bottle of formaldehyde containing a specimen of each species of creature, there has to be a label. The problem is that labels inevitably convey an air of reassurance simply for being accepted as such and printed out in ink. Sometimes I think this is the only thing that organizes our social lives, some small group of people that bands together and is willing to pay for the letters naming their collective on jerseys and baseball caps. So there’s no individuality, no space for being an outsider, since it costs too much to be a representative of one’s own self. Being truly marginalized is when you don’t even have a minority group to belong to. The world is composed of large minorities, but for a very long time I was radically on my own.
I remember the first vacation I took with my foster family. We went to London and spent a day in the Natural History Museum. We signed up for a guided tour of the museum’s Darwin Centre, which admitted small groups of five people. Our group was made up of my American parents and sister, another visitor, and me, and we followed closely behind our guide, who was a biologist dressed in a white lab coat, to see some of the species that would later be absorbed into the wider collection. She led us to a rectangular station and closed the door. The smell of formaldehyde, of dissected death, permeated everything. It left a deep impression on me. I observed the shelves of thousands of tiny jars that the biologist said contained the simplest organisms she wanted to show us. Bacteria, invisible life-forms from the most minute to the largest, up to lichens or micro-insects. The successive rooms, always rectangular and particularly narrow, were arranged along a lengthy aisle separated by doors. And the smell intensified with each new space; as we moved along, the size of the jars increased because they were filled with larger and larger specimens. When we finally entered the room reserved for simians and I took one look at those nearly human faces preserved in fluid, the range of expressions on those faces, those hands like children’s hands, I was hit with a sharp stitch of anxiety, the first panic attack of my life. My new family, the guide, the other visitor—none of them seemed to belong to the same species as me. I felt closer to any one of the animals trapped in their glass jars than to the ones observing them. That’s when feverish thoughts took me over, the dread of identifying myself as a stranger in that group of humans. What if the biologist put me in one of those jars for the next group of tourists? The terror was so great that I shouted to be allowed to leave. Once I was outside, and while they tried to calm me with a glass of water, I couldn’t help thinking that the incident had given me a bird’s-eye view of my own despair: of the hundreds of thousands of specimens in the museum’s collection, including the people I was there with, I identified with not a single one of them. The feeling of being a rarity in my species, a one-off, has accompanied me ever since, even now, when it’s no longer my problem. What made it difficult was that my singularity made me invisible; I felt as though the only dignified thing about me was my absence.
These ideas about the presence of absence bring to mind my encounter with T, the first of a series of people I met who are as uncategorizable as me, and someone I never saw again. She must have been around twenty years old, and I met her on the second trip I took to Hiroshima after being adopted and carted off to the United States. Oddly enough, T declared herself asexual, and though asexuality is now considered a category, it remains a tenuous one. People have a hard time understanding absence. They’re better at gauging what is excessive—overabundance, extravagant desire, a wild orgy. Hunger is assumed to be a lack of food, but few people get what it really is: a lack of something that is unreferenced, a hole that is full of hole. It’s the same as asexuality, which people consider a lack of sexual desire,
but not a thing in itself.
T wasn’t injured by Little Boy, but by a different bomb: the rain. The thick black liquid that came down after the explosion. Everyone was drenched in it, and T, like the others, didn’t think to protect herself. Nobody could imagine that the oily fluid, which some went so far as to drink, carried a bomb in each drop, like an assault rifle that shot invisible pellets of ulcers and cancer, and that would sprout one day strong as potatoes. What a spectacular ability it had to recycle itself. It went on like that for years; people were fine until suddenly they weren’t. So the bomb wasn’t entirely sincere: you could no longer distinguish the living from the dead by characteristics like appearance or movement. For the first six months following the explosion, T was as visibly healthy as she was silently dead. In the end she survived, though she traces the origin of her asexuality to that terrain of apathy, that field of indifference between what is moving and what is static, what stands erect and sprouting on one side and what is limp and weak on the other. T said she lost her sexual appetite after the explosion. She was asexual in the most literal sense of the word. She felt close to other creatures that exist in nature like her, and whenever she would pronounce words like jellyfish, starfish, or salamander, something filled her mouth that I would say is akin to desire. So you see? Same as everyone else, maybe I’m incapable of seeing presence in no-desire.
* * *
Jim could never have imagined that after his experiences in the Burmese Death Railway and the Oryoku Maru, he’d be called to occupy the country responsible for torturing him. He would have preferred to go home, but there was nobody special waiting for him there, and in a way military life gave him a sense of belonging to a bigger picture where his presence was required. The truth is, he knew full well how dispensable he was, just the same as any other soldier, but he allowed himself to be persuaded by his commanders’ spiel about the importance of individuals and found some relief in that—they’d won the war, after all, and there was no reason not to believe he’d had a hand in that himself. Might be true after all.
The Story of H Page 6
