by James Webb
“And Krueger and Eichelberger, still so jealous of each other that they move around a room like the opposite ends of a compass needle.” Garvey laughed at his own little joke. “Krueger will never get over Eichelberger’s telling the press he was ‘molasses in January’ during the invasion of Manila. And Eichelberger will never get over Krueger’s getting most of the media coverage.”
“MacArthur likes it like that,” I said. “As long as everyone is fighting each other, he keeps a separate line of loyalty from each one of them to himself. He even uses General Sutherland to stir the pot and make sure the others keep arguing.”
Father Garvey sneered at the mention of MacArthur’s famously arrogant chief of staff, shaking his head with irritation. “I’ve always thought MacArthur kept Sutherland around because he’s the only officer in the army who is more disagreeable and arrogant than MacArthur himself.” He hedged, remembering my loyalty to the General, an ironic grin creeping across his face. “If you will forgive my forthrightness, that is.”
“You’re half right, Father. The General likes it that they spend all their energies hating Sutherland. It makes him grander, because then only he can fully resolve their fights.”
“You’re smarter than I thought,” mused Father Garvey.
“That’s just the General’s style, Father. It’s like the spokes of a wheel, with MacArthur in the center.”
“And does he know how observant you are?”
I laughed lightly. “I don’t know what you mean, Father. I’m just little Jay the monkey boy, riding out the war.”
“Ordinarily I would feel it was my duty to encourage you to be more honest, Jay. But MacArthur is no ordinary man.”
The jeep cleared Manila. We were almost alone on the black, straight highway that led to Clark Field. “He’s sure the war is going to end soon,” I finally said.
“I would have to agree,” said Father Garvey. “I cannot truly imagine him carrying out this invasion we’re planning for November. The Japanese will quit before then. I will grant them that they’ve been impressively brave on the battlefield, but their leaders must know they’ve lost. They can’t possibly be so barbarically stupid as to order all their citizens to fight hopelessly to their collective deaths from town to town and house to house throughout the country. I mean, the imperial government does not seem to be a logical enterprise, but it wouldn’t perpetrate a form of genocide upon its own people.”
“I hope you’re right, Father. Our cable traffic shows that the Japanese are trying to convince the Soviets to help negotiate an end to the war. But General MacArthur is trying to bring the Soviets in on our side, in case we do have to invade the main islands. He estimates that a million Americans will be killed or wounded if we have to invade Japan.”
“They wouldn’t be that stupid!” Father Garvey thought about it for a few seconds. “Then again they might not think of it as being stupid. You heard MacArthur tonight, didn’t you? He called them brilliant barbarians. Highly skilled, minutely organized, deeply superstitious barbarians. And I’ve read about their religion myself, you know. It’s one of my duties as a Jesuit to understand other systems. Think about it. They worship the emperor as their God. They say he is directly descended from a union with a mystical figure they call the Sun Goddess, which took place at about the time of Christ. They would die for him, Jay!”
“And so,” I said, speaking slowly, half teasing. “At the time of Christ God came down from heaven and—took some action—with a mere mortal named Mary, and from this union came Christ the savior. And you do not dispute this, Father. But in Japan at the time of Christ came another union with a spirit called the Sun Goddess, resulting in an uninterrupted series of emperors. And you simply wish to pass off its continuing impact over two thousand years as barbarism?”
“What do you believe?” challenged Father Garvey.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’ll tell you after we get there. But it doesn’t sound like barbarism to me.”
“I’m going to take a nap,” he announced suddenly. “I’ve had a bit too much to drink, you know.” It was his usual way of dismissing me when I pushed too hard against his religious beliefs. And I will admit it was much better than fighting.
Father Garvey quickly fell into a deep sleep, and I was left with my own thoughts as the car pressed on toward Clark Field. The war would indeed end soon. We all knew it. The prospect dominated our thoughts. And what, I thought again, would I do, not tomorrow, which was as far as I had been able to plan for the past three years, but for the rest of my life? I might go quickly home, but little waited for me there, and I had grown comfortable in Asia. I liked the way it smelled, I liked the way it felt. And I had become useful to the General. Rumor had it that he would be chosen to lead the Occupation of Japan. I began hoping that he would, and that since I spoke Japanese he might bring me with him.
Or perhaps, I thought, he would leave me in Manila for as long as there were Japanese soldiers to interrogate and repatriate. Even if I went to Japan I knew I would eventually come back here. I had asked Divina Clara to marry me, and I was willing to live with her in the Philippines if I could find work after I left the army. Thinking such thoughts, I could not help laughing at myself. For years I had dreamed of escaping the army at my earliest opportunity, and now I was searching for reasons to remain.
Father Garvey dozed beside me, not quite sober enough to be hungover. He had not yet told me why he also had been sent to Clark, but I knew that once he awakened he would be refreshed, ready to dig anew into every aspect of the universe, prepared to tell me everything. In fact, he would tell me things I did not want to hear, mixing in history that I did not understand and biblical passages that I sometimes suspicioned he simply made up. He was an impressive little bulldog, part genius and part fraud. I liked him very much.
I also sympathized with his drunkenness. For Father Garvey clearly admired women, and Manila was filled with world-class beauties. And in Manila, beautiful women could be a problem for an energetic, gregarious priest still in his thirties, no matter how deep his calling. Their traditions from the Spanish had taught them that although it may have been in some form a sin for a priest to take a Filipina for a lover, it was no great shame, and in fact from the female perspective sometimes even an honor. And so daily, sometimes hourly, Father Garvey was tempted beyond his capacity to soberly endure this cruelest of fates that God had forced upon him. And the only refuge when the temptation escalated was to pray mightily, and dull his senses with large doses of strong brew.
The city was now far behind us. We drove past miles of lush, torn fields and thick stands of trees. The night air was heavy and perfumed. I tried to doze as the jeep bounced and swayed, but the odor of plumeria kept washing over me and it made me miss Divina Clara. I loved the smell. It made me think of the lilac bushes in the side yard of the only home in which my father had ever been happy. Divina Clara hated the aroma. The kalachuchi, as she called it, was used in funerals and reminded her of death.
Finally the jeep began to slow, as the driver looked for his turnoff. Next to me Father Garvey stretched and stirred, bringing me out of my memories. The sky was beginning to grey, and already I could make out the sharp peaks of the Zambales Mountains to our west. Clark Field was only a few miles further up the road.
“I feel rather refreshed,” said Father Garvey.
“You’ve been out for two hours, Father. You’re the only person I know who can sleep for so long in a jeep.”
“Yes,” he answered, twisting his neck to undo the kinks. “It’s a true blessing, isn’t it?”
It was Father Garvey’s greatest trait, that he found blessings where others merely reveled in good luck.
At Clark we were hastened by a military police escort to the main operations building next to the runway and quickly brought inside. There, in a small waiting room designed for dignitaries, Admiral Lord Mountbatten and his staff were finishing an early breakfast. An aide whisked Father Garvey out of the room
, while Mountbatten himself waved me to the breakfast table and offered me toast and coffee.
“Your ring, Lord Admiral.”
“Splendid,” grinned Mountbatten, taking it and putting it onto a finger as I hungrily downed a piece of toast. “You’ll never know how much this means to me. It was given to me on my twenty-first birthday by the Prince of Wales himself. Tell General MacArthur I am greatly in his debt.”
Mountbatten was a tall, handsome man with aquiline features and a very straight Nordic nose. I thought again how much he and General MacArthur resembled each other in their style and bearing and the meter of their speech. And it occurred to me that MacArthur had been more at home with Lord Mountbatten than I had ever seen him with his own soldiers. Douglas MacArthur was at heart a royalist, pure and simple.
“Yes, sir,” I answered as I washed the toast down with a gulp of coffee. “I will tell him you were pleased.”
Mountbatten’s face then shifted for a moment, like a rain cloud blotting out the sun. “And tell him—tell him I now understand about Singapore.”
I was grabbing a second piece of toast, and wishing there were eggs and maybe even a few pieces of bacon. “About Singapore, sir?”
“Yes,” said Mountbatten. He was sounding clandestine, as if he and I were in together on a huge secret. “He told me last night that I would never have to worry about personally liberating Singapore. I thought he was being uncharacteristically mysterious, to be frank, or even teasing me that the Americans would beat me to it. But tell him a courier arrived here last night to explain to me, and that I understand what he said about Singapore.”
“Yes, sir.” I had no idea what he meant. Mountbatten smiled somewhat defensively. “I wouldn’t want him to think I didn’t know.”
“Yes, sir.” I was finishing my third piece of toast.
Father Garvey reappeared. It was time to leave. Mountbatten walked us to the door and handed me a small cardboard box. Someone had wrapped twine around it, as if it were a ribbon.
“Sorry there aren’t medals for retrieving signet rings, Captain. But I do appreciate your having come out here in the middle of the night. And I guarantee that finer scotch will never pass through your lips again.”
“You’re very kind, Lord Admiral,” I said as Father Garvey and I headed for the door. “Please have a safe flight.”
“And thanks for the omelette,” muttered Father Garvey as the door closed behind us and we headed toward the car.
Two bottles were in the box. In the car, I gave one to the corporal who was my driver, as compensation for his own lost evening. It was still morning when we cleared the military compound and headed out onto the road back toward Manila. An ugly rainstorm blew in without warning from the distant sea, turning the road to mire and choking the traffic. The road was filled with trucks, jeeps, horse-drawn carts, wagons pulled by sinewy little men, and mud-splattered people of all ages, walking. They were mindless to the downpour, used to it. Women waved to us. Children called happily, asking for cigarettes and gum. I felt comfortable in this chaos, even at home.
“It’ll be midafternoon before we’re back,” mourned Father Garvey.
“No,” I said. “With this rain it will be night.”
I smoked a cigarette, watching the lush vistas now awash in sheets of rain. The jeep churned and bumped through the mud. Rain splashed us through the side vents and leaked through the roof. Finally I unscrewed the bottle of scotch.
“Let’s have a drink, Father.”
“And why not,” said Father Garvey.
We passed the bottle back and forth. I was already numb from lack of sleep. Mountbatten’s unjellied toast sat lightly in my stomach. The whiskey was warm and smooth. We quickly killed half of the bottle. And soon I felt a grand elation as the jeep fought through the rain and mud, as if this journey past the waving, ever-enduring people I had come to love were my very own victory parade.
“I think I want to stay here, Father.”
“Don’t be a fool, Jay. You don’t belong here.”
“And where do I belong? My dad and sister died in Arkansas. My brother died in France. And my mom’s living in California with a fucking Italian. I think his name is Bachioli or something like that.”
“You must learn to control your emotions,” said Father Garvey.
“And you know what? My mother will never accept Divina Clara. She doesn’t like Asians. I once dated a Japanese girl when I was in college. Kozuko. A beautiful, sweet girl. And you know what my mother said? She doesn’t want slanty-eyed grandkids.”
“Don’t be hard on your mother, now. Tribal passion is a natural phenomenon. Racial pride, religious belief. Even love of war.”
“So what tribe do the fucking Italians belong to, that she thinks they’re better than Filipinos?”
Father Garvey started laughing, deep in his belly, finally throwing his head back and laughing some more. His bright blue eyes began to water, he was laughing so hard. I forced a frown, stifling my own grin. He was confusing me.
“It wasn’t that funny, Father.”
He laughed some more. “This isn’t real, Jay! Look around you. It isn’t really happening, not in the same way that the rest of your life is! You’re passing through, do you understand? There’s no conscious choice in this. You’re here because MacArthur landed an army, and when he decides to leave you’ll be gone. And if you were to stay, it would never feel the same. The army will be gone, and it would be just you, here among all the people who were here before. They won’t even look at you in the same way. You won’t be a liberator then. You’ll be an interloper.”
I did not believe him. “How do you know that?”
He stopped laughing, holding my gaze for a full five seconds, and then shrugged. “Well I don’t, really,” mused Father Garvey. “But it’s what you needed to hear.”
“Father,” I said, “you’re so honest that you’re silly.”
We both laughed at each other for a long time. Father Garvey took the bottle from me and drank some more, and then I took the bottle back from him so that he would not take it all. The rain lifted and a low mist covered the ground, like wisps of smoke, and then the rain began again. And all around us the people walked and laughed and waved.
“Why did Mountbatten send for you, Father?”
“Well, now you’re intruding into matters of the highest ecclesiastical concerns,” trilled Father Garvey. “And wouldn’t I be abusing the bounds of my calling if I told you?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I answered. “My question wasn’t particularly ecclesiastical. I’m not even a Catholic.”
“Somewhere deep in your heart you are indeed,” said Father Garvey. “I once heard you say that your mother was a Murphy, and that proves it.” He laughed some more, beaming at me as if I were prey for eventual conversion. “But anyway, all right, Jay. There was an officer on the lord admiral’s staff who needed to see me. He wanted to go through confession in case the plane crashed on the way to India.”
“Was he carrying a heavy burden, Father?”
“I cannot tell you that.”
“I like confessing to you, Father, and I don’t even have to.”
“That’s not the same, but of course you do. There’s nothing more difficult than confessing to ourselves, is there?”
“So, what did he do?”
“You’re straining our friendship, Jay.”
“Oh, come on, Father. I’m drunk and I haven’t slept in two days. I won’t even remember.”
“No,” said Father Garvey. “There are limits and I am bound to silence.” Then his eyes began to twinkle mischievously, as if he had found another loophole, made another compromise with God. “But I suppose since you do not know him and did not see him, we can discuss this academically, in terms of our spiritual obligations.”
“That’s actually what I was thinking,” I lied.
“There is hope for you, then,” teased Father Garvey. “So you can ask yourself, what is it that would make a
n Englishman want to confess, even if he had to be heard by an Irish priest? You might think it had to do with all the beautiful women on this island. Or maybe I am simply single-minded in my own feelings of deprivation. But no! He has to taunt me with the—” He caught himself and would not finish.
“With what, Father?”
“Consider my dilemma and try to empathize with the human spirit,” said Father Garvey, now looking coyly out toward the edges of the war-torn city. “Think broadly, now. I’ve had many blessings, have I not? But did you know that sometimes I do weep, knowing that I will never have a child of my own, or in the end someone who truly loved me? Other than God, of course. The greatest love of all. But when I see the way some women look at me the thought of what I’m missing pains me beyond even the strength of my faith. Having a child, that is. And I’m not alone in that. A massive confusion, yes? These things reach up from places you never knew were there, and when you’re alone and in a foreign land, it happens.”
“What, Father?”
“I cannot answer that,” said Father Garvey. “Not as a priest. But as your friend, let me tell you that I myself am more human than you think. Oh, yes. And I understand personal failure far too well.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I have nothing left to explain to you!” said Father Garvey, suddenly indignant. “I do not have to make sense, Jay! I am drunk!”
Father Garvey laughed mightily at this bit of evasive cleverness, then we both retreated into silence. Without talking, we finished the bottle of scotch. The scotch finally dulled us, and we dozed. It was late when we reached Manila. I went immediately to bed, not rising until late the next morning to make up for the sleep I had lost the night before.
By the time I reached MacArthur’s headquarters to begin my morning rounds, the entire staff seemed afire with exultation. Something huge had happened, wonderful and yet terrible, forever changing not only war but the conduct of nations. In the middle of the night an American B-29 bomber had taken off from Tinian in the Mariana Islands. At 8:16 that morning the B-29 had dropped a single bomb that had wiped out most of the city of Hiroshima. One plane. One bomb. One city. Tens of thousands of people, dead. The world was reeling from the news. There was no doubt, now. The war would be over in a matter of weeks.
