by M. J. Bosse
“Like, what now?” I asked him, gingerly fingering the microfilm.
*
All the next day I wondered what Virgil would learn from the microfilm. He had taken it to the university library where he could use the viewers. I was in a library too, the New York Public, beginning research for my term paper in Near Eastern Art. I had been out of school a year and still would be had it not been for Virgil’s encouragement. But there I was, working through all those awful trays of catalog cards just so I could tell an old fogy that I am not the only one in the world who finds Assyrian feet groovy. Afterward, I picked up hot dogs and baked beans—it’s our staple diet—and got home before Virgil did. I had almost burned up the hot dogs by the time Virgil came blasting into the apartment. He was not grinning triumphantly.
“What’s wrong with the microfilm?” I asked.
“One thing at a time.” He pointed at the hot dogs blackening in the pan. We ate, and only then would he talk about his day. Well, he knows my cooking talents, and I don’t blame him for keeping my mind on one thing at a time. After coffee was poured and he had lit up a pipe, Virgil handed me a typed piece of paper.
“That initial entry is the first thing I saw under the viewing scope,” he said.
This is what I read:
Jan 25. Severe gales. Only the trysails set. Topgallant masts were set down, Topmasts housed. The Sus sprung her bowsprit, and the gig and was washed overboard. We lost our fore and main trysail gaffs and sounding spars.
“Groovy,” I said. “But I don’t get it.”
Virgil told me to try the next entry.
Jan 30. Another American whaler today. She proved to be the Mildon of New Bedford, fourteen hundred barrels, and thirty months out.
“This sure isn’t about a Vietnam massacre, is it?” I commented.
“Go on,” Virgil said.
Feby 2. At meridian, the largest and most northerly of the Baily group bore on our lee quarter, whilst Peel Island was in sight on the lee bow. Being abreast of it, shortened sail which we were running, hoisted the jack at the fore, and fired first one gun and then another.
“Okay,” I said, handing the paper back to Virgil, “I give up.”
“It was hardly what I’d expected.”
“Can you like make head or tail of it?”
“Obviously,”—Virgil took a long, professorial puff on his pipe—“this wasn’t a twentieth-century manuscript. The paper didn’t photograph clearly; it must be quite yellowed. The handwriting was slanted, ornate, the product of a discipline no longer taught. It’s a difficult script to decipher. And the language is somewhat archaic, at least not contemporary. And then this business about masts and gaffs—obviously sailing ships. Offhand, the whaler from New Bedford would place the manuscript in the nineteenth century.”
“Why would it?”
“Ever read Moby Dick?”
“Don’t be supercilious with me, baby.”
“It was the great century of American whaling—particularly mid-century. But the first really helpful fact is this mention of the Baily Group. I’ve found that it’s an old name for the Bonin Islands in the Pacific.”
“So this sailing ship was in the Bonin Islands. So what else is new?”
He shoved the paper back to me. “For that remark I’ll keep you in suspense. Read.”
I read.
Feby 5. Transferred to flagship. Hated to leave the Van, but that is the lot of an interpreter. Gone for me is the easy life of Hong Kong and the Lew Chews. Practiced landing and repelling today. Two men succumbed to heat, but Old Matt stood in his whites on the quarter deck with the appearance of a gentleman prepared to embark upon a stroll in the shade.
“The only thing I get is Hong Kong” was my comment.
“The Lew Chews is a former name for the Ryukyu Islands.”
“Great,” I enthused mockingly.
“The important thing here is Old Matt.”
I gave Virgil a long, steady look. “Seriously, what is this all about?”
“I must see the rest of the manuscript. I ran only part of it through the viewer.”
“You’re cool, man. I couldn’t have waited.”
“I’m not that cool. No, the viewer broke down. The second viewer’s already out of order, and the third was being used. Tomorrow I’ll get a librarian to find me a researcher who’ll transcribe it and type it out.”
“Which means going into your fellowship money.”
Virgil shrugged, and I said, “I know—anything for justice. Well, no researcher is going to do that job. For your information,” I said, “I can read and I can type.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“Get me there early in the morning so we can take charge of the viewer that works.”
“Come here,” Virgil said, opening his arms, and I did.
*
Fifteen minutes after nine o’clock I was seated in front of that crazy-looking machine, the microfilm viewer. Virgil watched while I threaded the film between the two glass plates and focused, and then, giving me a kiss on the cheek, he went his own way. Slowly I began to decipher the manuscript. Within an hour I understood that the sailing ships had gone to Japan—or at least, I thought so.
Feby 23. We all anchored in False Bay. Lex and Van were already there. In late morning I looked upon Mount Fusi Gama, an extinct volcano, which was a beautiful sight as it rose snow capt and bright from the surrounding black mass of hill and mount.
That was kind of exciting, really, and then this entry was almost poetic:
Here we were anchored in a bay which no foreign nation had ever entered before. Lanterns flickered on the shore and all during the night somewhere a deep bell sounded. Stars came out and at intervals, while we stood leaning against the rail, we heard across the water the creaking cordage of a passing junk.
Of course, the next entry made me certain of Japan:
Feby 24. The Japanese came aboard, wearing rich brocades with borders of silk and gold in a pattern of peacock feathers. They carried large fans and wore lacquered helmets. They consumed plentiful liquor in the Commo’s quarters, although notwithstanding such indulgences, they are decidedly a cleanly race.
The entry ended:
They had better watch themselves, because no one can take the measure of Old Matt without a d——able ruckus.
That was an obscenity worthy of Martin’s Braless in Gaza. Well, it was fun, and I worked on with mounting interest, even though many of the entries were tiresome and the writer seemed like a prig. For example:
Truly the desecration of the Sabbath in a man-of-war is as great as in a pagan country, where it is not known.
And yet he could now and then sort of groove with the people.
Mar 3. I encouraged a pair of Japanese officials to come down into steerage where we gave them a little feed. My friend, Kit, against my express judgement, gave them fiery liquors. They swallowed poteen, brandy and gin, alternatively, a mixture that would swamp the D——vil himself. But they conducted themselves politely and I admired them despite their proclivity for such beverages.
It went on and on, mostly about formal ceremonies and meetings and all. I discovered that the writer of the manuscript spoke Dutch, a language that for some reason the Japanese knew. That was what made him an interpreter. His counterpart was a guy called Moriyama, who had learned some English from an American seaman held at Nagasaki in 1849.
1849. So Virgil had been right: mid-nineteenth century.
By noon I had laboriously copied out and typed fifteen pages and had them ready for Virgil when he returned to the microfilm room. Then I left immediately for the New York Public Library to continue research for my term paper. My, my. Was I ever becoming a scholar, perforce, notwithstanding, and on the other hand.
I was my old hip self, however, that evening at Eros. Had to be, what with Thing gliding around like a ghost. Some of the boys say that Thing is a smack sack now, and she looked it that evening, all muzzy and goofed up. I told her, I sai
d, “Thing, collapsed veins look awful,” in an attempt to discourage her from using the needle, but she just gave me those woozy gray eyes of hers and said, “Ah, you don’t get them skin popping.”
No sense in me appealing for help from the Feeler, what with him on Speed and all. They looked sort of gruesomely funny in the band room—the Feeler all agitated and Thing half asleep, like two films, one in fast and the other in slow motion, both projected on the same screen. Having spent my day in libraries, I felt superior to all of their pharmaceutical experience, and I even turned down a joint which the second guitarist offered me.
During the evening a couple of Mafia types ordered more drinks than they wanted, so they could rap with me. Each time I came around, they had something to say. They were hesitating because they weren’t sure whether I’d go for pay or for fun. Hating them, I smiled anyway; that was my job. And even though I knew what kind of characters they were, I was flattered by their interest.
Standing at the bar, waiting for an order of drinks, I thought of Ikuko and her life in the Tokyo dance hall. I wondered if she got a thrill out of the attentions of all those uptight young Americans who wanted nothing more from her than sex. I wondered if a boy recently back from combat wasn’t more difficult for a woman to handle, I mean both physically and emotionally, than some hood from the Mafia. Anyway, I was glad that Ikuko had managed to split. Carrying drinks to the Mafia table, I thought of her in her nice clean Tokyo apartment, waiting for a man of her own choice, and the idea of that made me smile at my heavyset trio.
The way they looked at me, I knew I sure looked good in the tiny costume I wear at Eros. The thing is never to judge where flattery comes from. What the hell. And maybe across those thousands of miles that separated us, Ikuko and I were pretty much the same woman.
*
Near closing time Virgil arrived, and we left together, with the Mafias studying us. I told another girl to bill them. They had spent a lot of money with no return, and I didn’t want them to have an excuse for causing trouble.
I didn’t link arms with Virgil until we were outside of Eros. He started walking fast, which he does when he’s happy. I saw him smiling and asked him why he was in such a groovy mood.
“I spent the afternoon in the library.”
“That turns you on?”
“Judith,” he said, shaking his head. And then he told me in his scholarly way what had turned him on.
Virgil’s afternoon in the library had cleared up some of the mystery of the manuscript. It was a record of Commodore Matthew Perry’s expedition to Japan, 1852–54. A group of American ships had made two trips to Japan in an effort to open that country to trade. Along his way Perry had touched at Hong Kong, Singapore, Formosa, the Bonins, and Okinawa, which is one of the Ryukyus. The first trip to Japan was a short one and unwanted by the Japanese, who allowed it only because they were not prepared to repel the well-armed Americans. The second trip ended in a commercial treaty, not especially wanted by the Japanese either. Until then only the Dutch had been welcome, and then only at the single port of Nagasaki. After Perry’s expedition, all of the European nations got into the act. Virgil claimed that only four or five books were reliable sources of information about this extremely important event. He stopped near a corner, under the light of a neon sign, and pulled a file card from his pocket. He had the look of a kid with a new toy. “This is from Pendleton’s book,” he said.
“Oh, wow, Pendleton’s book.”
But Virgil was too far gone into his project to pay any attention to my teasing. So I got serious, and in the dim neon light I read the file card, which stated that the expedition had been strictly censored by Perry’s express order. All journals, notes, and diaries kept by members of the fleet had been impounded at the end of the trip.
“But our guy didn’t hand his in, did he,” I said.
Virgil slipped on reading glasses, there on the street, and produced another file card. He squinted at it in the dim light. “This is from the Kraus preface to the Private Journal of John Glendy Sproston. Sproston was one of the officers on the expedition. Now, listen: ‘There still exists, without any doubt, a wealth of documentary evidence strangely neglected until now. By strict orders of Commodore Perry all private papers were to be considered as belonging to the Government and in August 1854 they were collected in Hong Kong and sent to the Navy Department on the U.S.S. Mississippi. Some contemporary documents might have escaped altogether the censorship and control of the authorities.’”
While Virgil read aloud to me, I was staring at a cop on the corner who had begun to eye us suspiciously. I mean, after all, here we were—white female, black male—at three o’clock in the morning, hunched over little pieces of paper under the mysterious light of a neon sign. And the black male seemed very much agitated by something. As far as that cop was concerned, we might very well be flying on horse, and with half an excuse he just might run us in. Virgil shoved a sheet of paper under my nose and pointed impatiently. This was a sheet I had typed for him that morning. “Read, read,” he demanded like a teacher speaking to a slow student.
I hadn’t paid much attention to the entry when I had copied it, but now I reread it carefully. “‘Commo’ is Perry?”
Virgil nodded.
“‘Them’ means the Japanese?”
“Correct.”
Mar 13. Commo told them if his proposals were rejected, he was prepared to make war at once; that in the event of war he would have fifty men-of-war in Japan waters and fifty more ready in California; and that if he sent word he could summon a command of one hundred warships within a fortnight.
“Belligerent cat, wasn’t he?” I said.
“And in his official report he makes no mention of this threat, which must have been overheard by our interpreter during a meeting. The fact is, Perry didn’t want the President ever to know that he had countermanded an order against making warlike statements.”
“Old Matt didn’t tell Washington that he had twisted a few arms,” I said. “So what?”
“So it’s a classic case of autonomous military diplomacy.” Virgil was leaning toward me, gesticulating and talking in such a loud, excited voice that the cop took a few tentative steps our way. “You see, General MacArthur had a historical precedent in Commodore Perry.”
I smiled nicely at the cop.
“The most insidious form of anarchy in a democracy has its source in the military,” Virgil went on. “Perry was thousands of miles from home. He imposed strict censorship so he could do as he pleased. I’ve checked every available account on this point, and no commentator ever mentions this threat of force against the Japanese. No commentator except ours.”
“You sure did your homework,” I said, relieved to see the cop turn away.
“It fascinates me—a classic example of operational manipulation. You can clearly document from it the disparity between official statement and actual event.” There are times when Virgil’s phrases sound like what you read in a textbook, and I don’t think he’s even aware of it. “You won’t find a better example of the American tendency to rationalize imperialism. And in a general sense, this Perry expedition illustrates the tendency of all military structures to mythologize violence.” Virgil had taken my arm and was walking me past the cop. I don’t think Virgil even saw him, but he turned back and studied us warily.
When we were out of his range, I said, “Maybe it is fascinating, but it seems kind of obvious to me.”
“What does?”
“Well, that a military man like Perry would threaten to use force. I mean, especially because nobody was around to control him.”
“You’re right,” Virgil said curtly. He dropped my arm and walked in silence. We walked two or three blocks that way; Virgil’s head was kind of thrust forward, as if a stiff wind were hitting him from behind, and his hands were deep in his pockets. Finally he said, “Yes, the manuscript is not that important, considered merely as an expression of militarism. We need the rest of it.”
/>
“Is there more?”
“Of course. What we have describes only a small part of the expedition. What interested Don was in another section of the manuscript. So we find the rest of it.”
“Where?”
“In the other pipes,” Virgil said, slipping his arm around my waist. “Where else?”
*
Virgil figured it this way. Through Ikuko, Don had learned of the manuscript, enough about it to pay her a considerable sum of money for sending it to him. Confirmed in his judgment of its importance, Don worried about its loss or theft. Somebody else would have rushed to a safety-deposit box, but not Don—not our Scotsman, who had taped his cuff links under the table and stuffed his Purple Heart into a shoe. His method had to be complicated and peculiar, appropriate to secret agents and undercover men. If anybody got hold of the original, a copy must be hidden away somewhere, and what better hiding place than in a pipe? And by what better medium than microfilm, the storage-and-retrieval device of spy and scholar?
Of course, had the microfilming been very expensive, Don would have used another method, but any microfilming service would do the job at ten cents a page or less. And even if the charge was slightly higher, because Don needed film no wider than the diameter of a dime, the processing was surely under fifteen cents a page. If the manuscript was a hundred pages—Virgil’s guess—or even two hundred pages, Don could pay that. He wouldn’t like spending fifteen to thirty dollars, but he had already spent far more than that to get hold of the manuscript.
Once he had the film, Don cut it into small sections that would fit into the pipe shanks. Because the film would not keep the pipe from drawing, even a smoker might use the pipe a number of times without discovering the little coil in the channel. In a pipe the film was transportable, protected, and undetectable until someone actually took the bowl and stem apart and probed inside. Virgil had discovered the film so quickly in the Poker because of his habit of running pipe cleaners frequently through the shanks.
One of the two pipes having contained film, it was logical to assume (Virgil’s words, of course) that other pipes from Don’s rack contained other sections of the microfilmed manuscript. According to Virgil, a standard rack, single-tiered, has holes for twelve pipes. He clearly remembered that Don’s rack had been full; he’d remember that, all right, because nothing about pipes escapes his attention. Consequently, ten pipes remained to be examined for film.
