A baby started crying, then laughing, then it was talking to her in a gruff man’s voice. No, it was one of the Kempeitai, the Japanese Gestapo, motioning at her to do something or not do something, she didn’t know which. Then she must have fallen, because she was looking up from the floor, from under one of the hammocks where she must have rolled. She saw a rat coming toward her and thought she had better get up. When she finally stood up, it was night, and the same doctor was slumped over his work as when she had first come on her shift. She thought he was dead, but he wasn’t, he was just writing, she didn’t know what. No, when she looked closer, he was dead after all. She saw the rat again, and she picked up a broom to shoo him away, and he ran halfheartedly into the adjoining room, but when she followed him there she stopped and did not enter.
The room was filled with dead. That was what the Kempeitai had been saying: “No more individual burial.” The prisoners were too weak to dig or lift or carry anymore anyway, so, by default, this was where their dead had gone. On tables, neatly laid out; on the floor, flung pell-mell—and everywhere in between were rats. The rats bothered Kay, more than the mounds of dead flesh, more than the piles of lost companions heaped negligently in front of her. She resented that the rats were no longer hungry, gorging themselves on a never-ending feast; they would kill themselves, they would burst their wicked stomachs with this orgy, but it would never end, there would always be more and more dead to feed them with.
Kay backed out of the room, bumping into one of the slung stretchers, disturbing a rat that plopped down heavily to the floor. She looked at the patient; his fingers had been gnawed. She looked from stretcher to stretcher, and here, there, another one, another tail slinking under a sheet, a whiskered nose poking out from under a withered arm. The rats were not content with the dead, but had started in on the living, on the half-living who were too weak to fend them off anymore, patients staring with glazed eyes at the vermin who were eating them alive.
They’re not dead yet, Kay thought, something rising within her, a mixture of horror and shock and invigorating madness.
“Not dead yet,” she said aloud.
She shook another stretcher, and an obese rat fell out, catching himself with his tiny back nails, scrabbling back onto the side of the hammock. She shook it again and again until he fell, shook himself all over in disgust, and ambled a few feet away.
“Not yet,” she said again, moving to another stretcher where a child was crying, trying to shake off the mice that were biting his fingers.
“Not yet!” she screamed, no longer herself, no longer a nurse but a madwoman, darting from patient to patient, shaking them, striking them, hitting them with her broom, with her open palms.
“Not dead yet . . . not yet!”
Now someone was trying to stop her, but they were too weak; she had a strength and an energy born of madness itself, and she was an unholy terror, an impotent angel of death wielding an old palm broom instead of a flaming sword. The mice and rats were underfoot now; she stepped on their fleshy tails, and they chirped discontentedly, moving off slowly toward the Room of the Dead and easier pickings. She passed by the doctor’s desk, a sharpened pencil still poised in his left hand, and saw a monster of a rat, swollen beyond measure, calmly eating the man’s fourth finger. He was down to the wedding ring. Quick as lightning, she snatched up the pencil and brought it down right through the middle of the gigantic, bloated thing. It squealed and thrashed and twisted, lashing out and biting her, but she didn’t let go. She held the pencil down, its point sunk deep into the teak wood of the table, blood spattering everywhere, and she was laughing and saying to the doctor, “There, Jim, I got him for you—there, Jim, now that’s something,” and when she woke up, hours later, the pencil was still clenched in her hand.
IT SEEMED TO be afternoon—the afternoon of which day Kay was unsure. Her watch seemed to point to three; unless it was morning, and then maybe it was nine; or maybe it was another time entirely, it was too hard to tell. It wasn’t reveille because she hadn’t heard the music over the loudspeaker. She wondered if anyone thought she was dead. If anyone was still alive to think she was dead. She thought of sitting up, but it seemed so much bother. She was back in her bunk now, no longer in the hospital. How she had gotten there, across the flooded depression, back up the stairs, she didn’t know, she could not remember. It didn’t matter anyway. Would it be worth crawling (she would have to crawl, there was no other way) down for the quarter-cup of rice soup that tasted like nothing? For the one ounce of grisly meat she might receive? And what would that meat be? The day before the Japanese had ordered the inmates to kill the last of the carabaos, starving, sickly things themselves. Without weapons, the prisoners had had to tie up the animals and beat their heads until they were dead. Kay remembered an elderly professor hitting the dumb beast over and over again with a rock and crying, asking it, asking God, to forgive him. But in a day or two, the last of the carabao meat would be gone too, and then there would be nothing left. Yes, she had better get up. Better force herself to get up. Or she would die, right there, in her bunk. She thought about it for a minute—or maybe for an hour—and in the end she decided she would get up. In a minute. In just a minute . . .
KAY WAS CUTTING out Christmas decorations, paper angels holding hands. She had made strips and strips of them and was stapling them all together to make one gigantic bunting to decorate the hospital doorways. She was thinking about what she would get Aaron for their first Christmas together—her mind ran naughtily along the lines of lingerie, of one particularly wicked, gorgeous kimono that covered nearly nothing that she had seen for sale in the marketplace. No, she couldn’t do that, not for a Christian holiday. She’d get him something sensible instead, like gloves. And a tie. And the lingerie, last of all, wrapped up in printed rice paper and a red silk ribbon; she could already see his face when he opened it. She folded another piece of paper accordion-style, back and forth and back again, making the creases sharp and firm with the side of her short thumbnail. She didn’t even need to pencil in the outline anymore, but started cutting out the head, the wings, the tip of the angel’s dress where it swung out stylishly on both sides. She thought of Aaron again. He was out on the runway at Clark Field or up in the sky by now. They had come to Luzon only a few days before; he to inspect the aircraft, she to continue her work in the hospital ward. And sleep with Aaron. That was why she had come. That was why she had been born; she was hot just thinking of him, she couldn’t keep her mind on her work. She was newly wed and in love, and everything reminded her of Aaron—the smell of the sea, the heady scent of flowers, the wind coming through the open windows and playing at her hair under her nurse’s cap, blowing the blank sheets off the table, making the long lines of embracing figures fly out and undulate in the Pacific breeze, holding hands, holding on to each other.
Kay had gotten used to the planes by now, hearing them roar overhead. Today Aaron would be out on a test run of a plane that had been acting up. He liked his work. It was a game he played until he came back at night and was undressing her before she could get dinner on the table. Her face went red thinking of him last night, eating his supper buck naked at the table. The murmur of the engines overhead merged with the never-ending calls of insects and birds and other mating things and she was a part of it all, she was full and bursting with it. She thought she was pregnant, but it was too soon to tell. Her body throbbed at the very idea, madly desiring it, desiring Aaron. She would sleep with him until she had given him a dozen sons. She would go fat and flaccid from the pregnancies, she didn’t care, as long as it brought him back to her for more, always for more. In a few weeks she’d know for sure, and when she told him about the baby his joy at having her would be complete and he would make love to her but not roughly—delicately, cautiously, unable to restrain himself completely, but with a tenderness even greater than the tenderness he showed her now, a new kind of passion, a reverence, an awe. Three weeks till Christmas. She’d know by then. Yes, she�
�d tell him for Christmas.
Her best friend, Sandy, walked into the ward, still holding a tray of hypodermic syringes she had been sharpening. (With repeated use, the tips got blunt and the boys complained.) Her red lips stood out in contrast against her pale, freckled face, but her mouth wasn’t smiling as usual; it was puckered up into a small, red knot.
“What’s up, Sand? You look like you’re going to cry,” Kay laughed, still glowing inside from her secret. Sandy was Kay’s partner in crime, helping her keep the fact of her marriage to Aaron from their head nurse. Kay would have to leave the army when she was eventually found out (no married nurses in this man’s army), but they figured that, between the two of them, they’d be able to keep their secret for quite some time. When Kay still got no answer to her question, she came down to earth for one second to connect with the mere mortals who still inhabited her paradise. “Sandy? What is it?”
The red lips quivered for a second, the white teeth biting the lower lip hard, the red paint coming off on them. “It’s Pearl Harbor, Kay. They bombed it.”
Kay was still smiling. Nothing could tarnish the perfection of her life, of her future, of this shining Monday morning just over the International Date Line. Sandy’s words bounced harmlessly off the oblivion of her happiness.
“What are you talking about?” she asked, almost irritably. “Who bombed what?” It couldn’t be anything really, just an accidental explosion perhaps, someone smoking too near the fuel tanks again, some fools playing around with unstable explosives, trying to dispose of them quickly in the harbor and blowing themselves up in their hurry. It was nothing, it must be.
Kay watched as a single tear ran down the side of Sandy’s pug nose, getting stuck in the little dimple next to her right nostril. “The Japanese, Kay. They bombed Pearl Harbor. They’re saying thousands are dead, Kay, battleships, planes, they’re all gone.”
One minute Kay was a queen, sitting amid her paper cutout court; then the wind picked up outside and blew the angels across the room, robbing her of her subjects.
“We’re under attack. I mean, they might come here next, Kay, we’re supposed to get our gas masks on and . . .”
Kay didn’t hear any more. She wanted Aaron. She needed Aaron. If the Japanese had done this thing, if the unthinkable had finally happened, she needed to see Aaron. She needed to see him running toward the hospital from the tarmac outside, needed to feel his strong arms around her waist once more, needed him to tell her it was going to be all right, that they could win this thing. She needed, at least, one last kiss, needed to say good-bye to him before he flew off into the blue to save the world for their unborn child. But he didn’t come. Sirens were going off and people were running and he didn’t come. She wore her gas mask designed for a full-grown man; its sides would not fit against her temples no matter how hard she tugged on the straps. She wore it in the heat and the sweat and uncertainty; the nurses were supposed to stay at their posts, to head for the shelters, to not do anything until further orders. The whole time she stood by the window, breathing in air smelling of old rubber and mold, looking for Aaron, aching for Aaron, and still Aaron didn’t come.
Then she heard the planes.
She had been listening for them without knowing she was listening for them, but as soon as she heard that discordant noise, different from the American engines she had grown accustomed to, she knew what it was. Before she could see the low-flying silhouettes against the afternoon sky, see them in stark formation over the field, she knew what it was. It was death.
The maintenance building next to the hospital went first. The explosion shook her, surprised her, it was so loud, so close, she could feel the heat on her face. She ran to the other side of her empty ward and looked up. The Japanese planes were pulling up, turning, coming back to strike again. “The planes, good God, the planes,” someone was shouting, but they didn’t mean the Vals and Zeros closing in on them. The American P-40s were neatly parked in rows on the airfield, not a single one out of place, looking like dominoes waiting to fall. They hadn’t been allowed to take off, they weren’t cleared, war hadn’t been declared yet, and now it was too late, they were going up in flames. The Japanese dropped their bombs like sheets of falling rain, hitting the meticulously aligned targets, destroying one after another after another with an accuracy that was almost effortless. In what seemed like seconds, they were all on fire, their pilots never making it onto the runway but standing halfway there, dumbstruck, unable to move.
There were casualties on the ground, and the girls waited until the last plane had passed overhead and started to circle back before they ran out, kneeling on the burning asphalt in their bare knees, calling out for stretchers, dragging men off the field themselves. The Japanese came back three minutes later, but they had been so efficient there was little left to demolish. They dropped their payloads and then flew off again for Formosa, leaving nothing but smoke and flame in their wake.
“Have you seen Aaron?” Kay was asking, asking everyone—the injured she was treating, fellow nurses, his drinking buddies, the men in his command, men who had never heard of him. She saw the wreckage of a twisted B-17 burning in front of her. That was what he had said at breakfast, wasn’t it, that he would be test-flying one of those? She couldn’t remember, she hadn’t been paying attention. No, it couldn’t have been his, he couldn’t be dead. Her belly ached, and she was sure she was going to throw up, but then she caught sight of him—thank God, thank you, God—he must not have gone up after all. She saw him rushing around the burning airfield, yelling orders, hoisting men onto litters. He didn’t see her through the smoke, and she couldn’t get to him across the field, but she was crying—crying and crying for sheer joy amid all that death and wreckage that still didn’t touch her, that still wasn’t real because he was alive. He was alive, and as long as he stayed alive she knew she could face anything—anything at all.
KAY ROLLED ON her side and fell off her bunk. Then slowly, inch by inch, she started crawling toward the dormitory door, toward the staircase, toward the courtyard with its irresistible aroma of rotten food.
IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE and they were evacuating, pulling out, leaving everything behind. They seemed to be losing. How could we be losing? We are the greatest army, the greatest nation on earth, and yet we’re running. The nurses packed up their injured, their supplies, everyone was on trucks, in ambulances, they were headed toward Bataan, wherever that was, from there to some island, some stronghold, someplace underground, she had heard, a place where they’d be safe. They’d have to go through the jungle first. The women had pulled the mosquito netting from the beds, covering the injured, stuffing the extra nets into sacks, into truck cabins, into pockets. They would need it where they were going. Kay had seen Aaron that morning, but just for a second. She hardly recognized him anymore, his hair long and disheveled, dark circles under his eyes from sleepless nights spent strategizing with fellow officers, with command, trying to find a way out, trying to save the men. And now not just men but women too, the nurses caught in the crossfire. And not just any women. He had to try to find a way to save Kay.
She was making it worse, she knew she was, just the fact of her. He had too much to contend with already without his heart walking around outside his body, imagining—he couldn’t think of it, he never thought of anything else—the Japanese taking his wife from him, raping her, then casting her aside, a bayonet run through her belly. But he had his orders, his duty, they were his first priority . . . almost his first priority. He struggled not to look at her now as she boarded her truck. This was too much to ask of any officer, of any man—to put the lives of his men above that of the woman he loved. To march his men toward uncertainty and death was bad enough without having his wife hanging on to his arm all the while. So Aaron had tried to shore up his heart, to push Kay aside, to become distant and aloof, but he had failed, failed miserably to protect himself, failed to turn off his soul. The one or two times they had managed to steal away together he wou
ld make love to her desperately, exhaustedly, and fall asleep holding on to her, his arms and legs wrapped around her for dear life, until her arm fell asleep under his weight and still she lay there unmoving, embracing him, enfolding him as if she could protect him, as if she would never let him go.
But they were moving out. During the day the trucks rattled down the crazy trail, jolting them, bouncing them along the way. They had to get to Bataan, to Corregidor, before it was too late. It was slow going. They crossed paths with other units, with other soldiers; got bogged down, held up by villagers, by refugees, by missionaries coming down from the hills to ask what all the fuss was about. The roads were washed out, impassable with mud or stranded carabaos or children begging to stand on running boards, to hang on to the backs of jeeps, anything—Take us with you, GIs. When they found U.S. wounded they would stop and set up tents and operate, and the Japanese would spot the red crosses from above and zero in on them as if they weren’t off-limits, as if the Geneva convention didn’t forbid it. Japanese planes would hone in and strafe them, and the injured they had just put back together again would be blasted apart, and the nurses would stand outside and scream at the sky, shaking their fists and cursing. Then there came the day when the guerrillas who had fought alongside the Americans knew the game was up and went back to their villages, to their own wives and children, to die with them instead of with the white soldiers. No one tried to stop them from going. And then Aaron had told the officers to rip off their insignia, to take everything off that marked them out as special targets for snipers. The second lieutenant nurses were to do the same; his wife was to do the same.
They were bombed in the jungle, and Kay knew by now to keep her mouth open—the concussion would be too much for her ears if she didn’t. They patched men up, and the Japanese tore them apart, and it all seemed one long nightmare; even in her dreams Kay was smearing the men’s blood on their foreheads in the shape of an M just as she did in real life. They had run out of tags, and this was the only way to keep track of who had had morphine and who had not.
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