Bird Skinner (9780802193636)

by Greenway, Alice

  A whaleboat. In the dark, they can see the darker circle of the rising sun painted on its bow, hear the whisper of strange guttural voices across the water. A searchlight like a cyclops eye flashes on and scans the shore. They keep quiet, flatten themselves against the rough coral, glad they took such care with the blind, positioning it to watch both a nearby sea eagle nest and the beach.

  The eye blinks off. They hear the sound of men splashing down into the shallows. Three, Tosca signals, holding up three fingers. His eyesight far keener than Jim’s. It’s a relief. There could have been more. Now Jim can make out the dark silhouettes of packs and guns—the shadows of the men wading in across the reef. Once on the beach, the Japs bend earthward and scurry into the shelter of the bush. They are surprisingly close.

  Jim curses himself for his carelessness, for having left so many signs. The bamboo racks of birds wedged into cones of leaves, the small shelters they’d built to keep them dry. They’d stopped birding the week before D-day and the American landing on Rendova Island. They’ve been hiding, keeping watch, sleeping in turns. But they’d left tracks. Jim wonders if the boy could get away safely in his canoe. If confronted by Japs, he could pretend to be alone and know nothing of the specimens collected on the island. Whether he could save himself by leading them to Jim.

  Too late to consider that now. Jim concentrates on the Japanese, who will stop in the bush, regroup in a circular, defensive position, and wait for dawn. Are they out looking for him, or are they just Coastwatchers like himself? Here to spy on Rendova.

  The rain comes down, loud and heavy, smacking the thick leaves and splashing in the sea. The sound is welcome cover, as is the trill of bugs, which have started up again, the screeching of night birds, the engine of the whaleboat backing out. Jim watches its dark shape retract, the pupil of the cyclops eye. And hears three metallic clicks, the Japs loading their guns.

  In the dark, every sound is loud and distinct. His whole body so finely attuned, it seems he can feel the tiniest filaments of his auditory canal straining, searching for signal. His eyes become black holes, absorbing the faintest light, the slightest movement. Keen as an animal. A wild dog. Every muscle primed. Ready. He turns to Tosca and their eyes meet for an instant in the dark. They don’t need to exchange a word or gesture. They move forward, instinctually, like pack animals accustomed to hunting together. Along the coastal trail they’ve made circling the island those past weeks trapping parrots and rails.

  They don’t have far to go but it seems to last forever. Jim’s muscles cramp from holding still after each step. He moves in slow motion like a master of Chinese martial arts. As if in a deadly game of Grandma’s footsteps. He feels the long proboscises of mosquitoes penetrating his drawn flesh, the sticky gauze of web clinging to his wet face, the light scurrying of a spider on his neck. The sweat drips down his back.

  Remembering his own first night on the island, he imagines the Japanese waiting, listening. Half-deafened by the sound of their own hearts, their blood beating loud as the surf. Trigger-happy maybe, though Japs usually aren’t. He sees them so clearly, it’s as if he’s crouching right beside them. Both hunter and hunted, predator and prey. This sense becomes so real, he feels a sharp premonition of his own death, as if he’s stalking himself, the man he’d been his first night alone on the island. A sorrow that he’ll not discover the schools of bright fish, or baptize himself in the turquoise-blue sea, or meet the boy Tosca.

  They move closer, until he isn’t sure if he hears the men breathing or himself. He hears a man clear his throat very gently, very close. It’s a highly disciplined patrol. They make no other sound or movement. Jim’s glad the rain had washed the smell of sweat off him.

  Now Tosca touches his arm lightly, almost a brush, and he freezes and hangs back. Instinctively they fall into an encircling maneuver. The boy must have seen them and Jim sees something too, the faint glint of a gun, or is it a sword—so close he could touch it. He focuses on the dark in front of him until his eyes depict the outline of a man squatting, the faint glow of skin around his neck and wrists. He waits, holds back. Then, using the cover of a bird rustling, or is it Tosca moving in, he lunges forward with his knife.

  He can hear Tosca nearby. He can feel resistance against his knife as it cuts through skin and trachea. The Jap tries to cry out but the only sound is a wet burbling through the slit in his throat. A mangled gurgle as he dies. Pushing his knee hard into the Jap’s back, Jim feels the struggling body go rigid, then limp.

  He lets go, grabs his pistol, turns to shoot the others, but Tosca’s rifle blasts out, deafening them both, and there he is grinning in the dark.

  “Japan soldia, me killim two,” Tosca crows, with boyish exultation. He’d knocked one dead with the butt of his rifle, then shot the second.

  After Stillman goes, Jim lies on the cot fully dressed, unable to sleep. Rolling over on one shoulder, he reaches for the refilled flask on the floor and cradles it at his side. He takes a swig to dampen the pain in the stump, to try to stop himself from thinking.

  Layla Island, Wanawana Lagoon,

  Solomon Islands, July 1943

  The next morning at dawn, they return to the scene. Riffle through the men’s packs and pockets with the unabashed pleasure of children looking for flotsam and jetsam washed up on the tide, the greed of Stevenson’s pirates.

  They take anything they can use. Ammo, knives, grenades. What they’re really after is food. Jim feels humbled by how little the Japs carry, barely enough to keep them alive. He’d noticed it before on Guadalcanal, how thin and malnourished they are, how little they need to survive. Their faces are almost skeletal. He can feel the bones of the Jap he killed through the man’s shirt.

  Jim’s Jap has a small piece of soap, a ceramic flask of sake, half full, in his pack. Also, wrapped in a bit of cloth, a delicate bamboo brush and a small, flat porcelain pot with a block of dry ink. In his breast pocket, a small book wrapped neatly in leaves to keep it dry.

  Jim unwraps the book and fingers the thin, translucent paper, admiring the scratchy inked characters, black marks that run top to bottom, right to left. Indecipherable to him as hieroglyphs or prehistoric scratching but nonetheless beautiful. Like the markings of a shell. The unintelligible words of an oracle. A lucky charm. He folds the book up in its leaves, carefully wipes off the blood, and sticks it in his own pocket.

  One of the other Japs has an ornamental sword, which the boy draws out, admiring its sharpness.

  Jesus Christ, he can’t remember what they did next. At least, he’s been pretty goddamn careful not to remember.

  They drank the Japs’ sake. Jim poured large cupfuls for himself and Tosca. Maybe that emboldened him. Unless it was just another ploy, a ruse to keep the war at bay. Some desperate reasoning: if the Japs are creatures to be stalked and collected, if they’re not men, then he might still be his former self. A hunter and collector, not a killer. He can still be the boy he’d always been.

  Or was it deliberate payback—for the USS Helena going up in flames, the oil drums exploding on Rendova, all the men he’d seen die?

  He pulls himself upright, giving up on any pretense of sleep. Lights a cigarette and blows out the smoke slowly. The pain in his leg makes it hard for him to think straight. The Scotch in his veins too. He looks out at the stars.

  One of the Japs is still alive. How could Jim have let this happen? Even as they scavenge, emptying the packs, he moves, emitting a harsh cry. In his death throes, drained of blood and unable to lift himself off the ground, he reaches for a grenade in the small stash Jim has left too close, along with the Jap guns. And Jim, who’s been admiring the sword in its decorated sheath, spins round and hits him hard between the shoulder blades. The man slumps forward and whether he’s dead or not, Jim’s not taking chances this time.

  He’s so angry at the Jap for coming back to life, angry at himself for putting the boy’s
and his own life at risk, he draws the sword and hacks the Jap’s head off. And maybe that’s what spurred him. Gathering the packs and guns to take back to their camp, he picks up the Jap head by the hair.

  Japanese Bones,

  American Museum of Natural History,

  New York, August 1973

  The great Japanese bone scandal is what Mann calls it, waving his hand dismissively in the air. “It was not the prettiest part of the war.” Laina’s presented the chairman of the department with the copy of the letter he wrote some thirty years before. He lays it on his lap, lowers his reading glasses to the end of his nose, and runs a large hand through a shock of white hair.

  It’s not just Mann’s professional reputation or the half dozen books to his name that make him intimidating, but also his large stature and austere Germanic manner. Laina gives him the seat of honor in her office, a comfortable green leather armchair. While Michael, lithe and slight, sits perched on an antique wood swivel chair, his discomfort heightened by a growing sense of irritation.

  It’s not as if he’ll be able to use any of this. The Auk is hardly the appropriate outlet to expose a war crime. He suspects Laina’s using his article as cover to excuse her determination to follow each lead to its end, to shake each clue until it gives up its secrets—to feed her infatuation.

  She leans forward to serve tea from a tray Michael notices is balanced on a pile of books she hasn’t quite managed to put away. Laina prettily exempts herself from any reasonable order, he thinks, looking around at her Pacific artifacts. She gets away with it too, with her red hair, her charmingly old-fashioned tea set. The fact is she’s so far from home.

  The teacup and saucer look particularly small and dainty in Mann’s large hands. He leans back and studies them both with pale, milky eyes. He’s sizing us up, Michael thinks, deciding what to say and what to hold back. He squirms in the chair, certain he’ll be found wanting. Not Laina, who’s happy to play the part of a bright-eyed schoolgirl, or dizzy tea server, Mann’s favored student—whatever it takes to get her facts.

  “Jim wasn’t the only one,” Mann says hesitantly. “Many were guilty. Collecting bones, ears, dried hands. Stringing teeth around their necks. Extracting the gold from teeth. If you could get a skull—even better.

  “You could think of it as hunting trophies,” he continues, warming to his topic, beginning to find his voice as lecturer-philosopher. “The thing is, if you were sent to the Pacific, your friends, your girlfriend, your kids expected you to send or bring something home. They wanted proof of your strength, your cold-bloodedness. Proof you were there.

  “And if you worked behind the lines, if you were a Seabee or on a supply tanker, you could buy something. The Americans, as ever, were natural salesmen.” And artisans too, he thinks, remembering photos he’s seen of Japanese skulls mounted on jeeps. A Japanese arm bone and fingers used to point the way to U.S. headquarters. He sips his tea, blinks, looks at Laina with half-lidded eyes.

  Mann was twenty-five when he first went to New Guinea to collect for Rothschild, then on to the Solomons to join the museum’s South Sea Expedition. He only spent two years in the Pacific, not long compared with some of the other collectors. But for a man of his analytical skills, those early travels fostered a life’s worth of deductions. His evolutionary theories had started with studies of white-eyes from the Solomons. It doesn’t surprise Laina that, thirty years on, Mann can recall this letter and its related circumstances so clearly. He’s precise, intellectually exacting. She remains quiet and attentive, not wanting to interrupt.

  “The problem came to a head, so to speak,” he begins again, smiling, “when Life magazine ran a full-page photograph of a girl, from Arizona I believe, writing a letter to her sailor beau with a Japanese skull sitting on the desk before her.

  “The photo caused an uproar, because it displayed so publicly the extent of the practice. It was seized on by the Japanese military as proof of American barbarity and racism. As mentioned here,” he points to the letter, “it led to a swift attempt to crack down on these practices. Photos like those could be turned against us, making the average Japanese soldier even less likely to surrender, encouraging him to mistreat our own dead. It was not good PR.

  “Collecting body parts, mutilation of the dead, is outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.” He blinks. Putting the teacup down, he interlocks his fingers. Laina offers some pastries but he shakes his head.

  “The fact is, defilement of war dead started the moment the marines set foot in the Pacific. And it’s hard to explain the savageness of it. Partly, you could argue, it was a response to the particular brutality of the Japanese, which had been well documented. We’d all read about the slaughter and rape of women and children in Nanjing, later the point-blank executions of Americans at Wake. Another explanation might be that there were no prisoner-of-war camps on those islands. Taking prisoners was inconvenient.

  “Then, of course, there was the psychological motivation,” Mann continues. “The need to assert your power, to dehumanize the enemy. A part of any war, I suppose. Though Jim’s case was a little different.” He trails off into his own thoughts. And Laina jumps in, not wanting to miss her chance to find out what she really wants to know.

  “What did Jim send?” she asks. Michael admires her well-crafted tone of regret, as if she’s really sorry to have to ask.

  “Three heads,” Mann says quietly. “But they never reached us.”

  “Heads not skulls?” she persists with her usual specificity.

  “Heads,” he confirms. “Skinned. The irony of it was that the skins were so professionally executed, so impressive, that the navy postal workers mounted them, up in their tent or Quonset hut or whatever sort of office they had.” Above the mailbags, Jim had told him. “Expressly ordered to confiscate body parts, they evidently didn’t want these treasures to go to waste. So there they were, on display, exactly what the navy inspectors were looking for when they came to town looking for fall guys.”

  “Fall guys?” Michael pipes up. “Surely you’re not suggesting Jim was innocent?”

  “No,” Mann says a little wearily. How can he explain it? Wounded servicemen brought back skulls in their duffel bags, some still green with flesh. And who was going to stop them, when they were also coming home without their own legs or arms? On Halloween, he’d once seen some American children trick-or-treating with a lantern fashioned from a Japanese skull. It was not just soldiers who collected, but congressmen, businessmen, churchmen out on fact-finding missions. Even President Roosevelt was implicated when it came out that a senator had presented him with an arm bone carved into a letter opener.

  “Look at it this way. The situation was like this.” Mann leans forward, directing his slightly intimidating gaze solely at Michael, spelling it out for the one who doesn’t quite get it.

  “You remember the Battle of Saipan?” he asks, suddenly reanimated. Once again, Mann—the brilliant professor, the world figure in ornithology, about to reach the climax of his lecture. Saving one stunning piece of evidence for last. “The entire Japanese garrison of thirty thousand men, either killed or committed suicide?”

  Michael nods.

  “Many years after the war, when the Japanese navy returned to recover their dead, bringing Buddhist monks to exhume the bodies and release the souls, they found nearly two-thirds of the corpsman headless. If you’d wanted to court-martial someone, you’d have to court-martial the whole Pacific force.”

  He sits back, suddenly looking his age, which is about seventy-two or -three. Michael understands the point but still, he can’t help feeling indignant. Jim was even more deranged than he’d thought.

  “Jim had been collecting birds for us?” Laina asks, more measured. Or is she just showing she’s done her homework, that she’s worth talking to?

  Mann nods. “Along with others.”

  “Gilliard. Aus
tin,” she says. Not as wide-eyed as she lets on. Isn’t she appalled? Surely this will change her view of Jim. Or did her New Guinea childhood immunize her from shock.

  “Yes. He’d taken his skinning set with him,” Mann says. “His shotgun. I’m afraid I might have encouraged it.”

  Mann picks up the letter and hands it back to her. “I’d forgotten my threat about the Smithsonian,” he says, chuckling softly. “That was a good one—for a German.” Laina hadn’t considered this before, the trickiness of Mann’s position during the war.

  “I am not saying it wasn’t a racist phenomenon,” Mann says. “It most certainly was. I don’t recall that Americans treated German war dead with the same savagery.”

  He picks up a pastry, bites it in half. “But let us talk of more cheerful things. I hear you are going back to New Caledonia,” he says. “Tell me about that.”

  Michael squirms. He’ll have to sit even longer, while Laina goes through her New Caledonian itinerary, consults Mann for advice.

  He’ll wait till Mann’s finished, then he’ll ask her out, one last time.

  Layla Island, Wanawana Lagoon,

  Solomon Islands, August 1943

  What Jim tries hard not to remember is the Jap’s skin, how it was turning slightly blue. He’ll have to get it off fast, brush it with arsenic, before the head starts to smell and attract bugs. He sits cross-legged on the ground a little distance from the camp, the skinning set unrolled beside him. He cuts carefully up the back of the head, parting the hair, separating skin from bone. It’s trickier than any work he’s done before. Scalping like a goddamn Indian.

  When it’s done, Tosca, who’s been watching from a distance, crouches down beside him, wraps the awful flesh-covered skull in leaves, and takes it to a coral outcrop on the far side of the island. Places it there to dry in the sun. They bury the bodies because of the smell. They stuff the heads with feathers.