The Year of Counting Souls Page 12

  And then there was his own army. If he came staggering out of the jungle with the evidence of American medical care about him, how would that go over? The Kempeitai would have him. He’d be forced to give up the location of the people who had, after all, saved his life.

  Never mind his own brother. Armed with Sammy’s letter, Yoshi might very well be searching for him right now. Come to arrest him for his treachery.

  But seeing that syringe in Miss Frankie’s hand had changed everything. He couldn’t stay here and worry that he was going to be murdered. He had to get out of here. Now, tonight, while the woman was disoriented, wondering if Sammy had discovered her plan.

  He eased himself from his cot to the floor, the broken leg outstretched and stiff in its plaster cast. None of the other men in his room were moving, but low voices came from the adjacent room, and he knew that nurses were out and about. He’d have to leave through the back door, into the rice paddies behind the hospital.

  Sammy had two choices: hop loudly or scoot across the floor on his backside until he had a way to move himself. He opted to scoot. The movement hurt his injured belly. The cot nearest the door was Jimmy Fárez’s, and Sammy had planned to steal the man’s crutch. But when he got there, he found the cot empty and the crutch gone.

  He silently cursed himself. Fárez was a restless sleeper and frequently up and about when the others weren’t, which was why his cot was close to the door. He was probably out with his dog again or trying to bum a cigarette from whomever was on guard duty. Now what?

  Sammy grabbed the door frame and got himself to his feet. Maybe out back he could find some villager’s hoe or tool and use it as a makeshift crutch. The thought of hobbling into the jungle like that brought a desperate laugh that threatened to burst out and spoil the whole escape.

  But no other alternative presented itself. He could steal one of the trucks, but how could he manage the clutch and brake with a broken leg?

  Maybe he could take a hostage and force him to drive out of the mountains to the Japanese army. Where would he get a weapon to take a hostage? What would he do if the man refused—kill him and try again with someone else? How ridiculous.

  His escape lasted all of five minutes and twenty feet. He’d reached the hallway but now stood helplessly looking at the back door, knowing he would only turn around and crawl back to his cot, hoping nobody spotted him returning. Hoping that Frankie left him alone.

  The door to the surgery opened before he could move. Out came Fárez, hobbling on his crutch. Louise was behind him, carrying Stumpy, who wasn’t moving. The dog seemed dead.

  “With any luck, he’ll sleep until morning,” she told Fárez. “Make a bed for him beneath your cot, but be sure to tie him up. He’ll wake up disoriented and—”

  The corporal spotted Sammy standing beneath the bare bulb in the corridor and came to an abrupt halt. Louise bumped into him and nearly dropped the dog.

  Fárez balanced on one leg and swung his crutch around, holding it out like a club, ready to bash Sammy over the head.

  Sammy leaned against the wall and held out a hand. “No, don’t.”

  “What are you doing out here?” Fárez demanded.

  “I couldn’t sleep. I wanted some air, that’s all.”

  The man glared, clearly disbelieving. But as he took in the cast, the way Sammy couldn’t support himself, Fárez seemed to note the ridiculous futility of an escape attempt, and the notion dropped from his face. Of course Sammy wasn’t trying to escape. That would have been ridiculous.

  Louise’s sharp expression took longer to fade. “Go on, Corporal. My arms are getting tired. Let’s get the two of you settled.”

  “What about him?” Fárez asked, gesturing with his crutch.

  “Sammy isn’t going anywhere. I’ll see what he needs when we’re done.”

  They disappeared into the room with the dog, leaving Sammy standing awkwardly in the hallway. Louise made soothing noises once she got inside, reassuring the other men that there was no excitement, to go back to sleep. Sammy waited, sure that one of the other nurses would soon come out and see him standing there, which would only complicate matters. Nobody did.

  Louise emerged a moment later and told him to wait. She went to the supply room with her key in hand and returned a few minutes later with a pair of wooden crutches. “We should leave through the back door, don’t you think?”

  Sammy followed her outside. Hope stirred in him, unfamiliar after these days of pain and worry. The rain was fading into a drizzle, and the clouds scattered from the night sky to reveal stars and a half-moon, but it was still plenty dark. Louise warned him to watch his footing, then helped as he got settled under the awning, back leaned against the wall for support.

  She rustled in the pocket of her dress. “Would you like a cookie?”

  “A cookie?”

  “A snickerdoodle, to be precise. They’re stale—the cookies came in the mail from my mother over a month ago, before all this started. But they taste okay if you haven’t had anything sweet for a while.”

  “And you’ve been saving them all this time? That’s some self-discipline.”

  “It’s the last one.”

  “I couldn’t eat your last cookie.”

  “Half a cookie, then.” She groped for his hand and pressed it in.

  Louise was right. It was stale. Not only that, but these last years in Japan and then the army had changed his tastes, and a treat had become a rice cake filled with red bean paste or sweet, chewy dangos on a stick. The half of a cookie didn’t appeal.

  But the small, kind gesture brought a lump to his throat. So much cruelty in this war. He’d stepped over dead bodies so badly mangled that he couldn’t tell if they were Japanese or Chinese, men or women. He’d seen his own troops cut down as they were ordered cruelly to charge fixed gun positions to gain some small advantage in a larger assault. Sometimes, he wished he’d been among those ordered to sacrifice themselves in the name of the emperor.

  “Are your parents alive?” Louise asked.

  The question surprised him. He hadn’t yet reached the point of thinking of his mother and father, but his thoughts had been sliding in that direction, and it was as if she’d sensed the turn of his mind.

  “Yes, last I heard. My mother is in weak health, so you never quite know. I hope she’s all right. How about yours?”

  “Alive and still working the farm,” Louise said. “My dad will do it until the day he dies. My mom is . . . tired. It’s a hard life, and she’s been ready to sell the farm for years. She encouraged me to leave. Pushed me out the door, practically, to get me off the farm. Dad wasn’t too happy when he heard my plans.”

  “Domineering sort?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Well . . .” She hesitated, seemed to turn it over. “I love my father, you’ve got to understand that. He’s a gentle man, rarely raised his voice and never hit us. Loves his kids. But, well, he has his expectations. You should have seen his face when I told him about the nursing training, my plans for the army. What did he think, that I wanted to be a farmer’s wife like my mom? But I hated disappointing him.”

  “Disappointed parents—sounds very Japanese.”

  “Are your parents like that?” she asked.

  Sammy sensed that she was starting to dig, to look for something else, and he fell silent, worried what that would be. As the rain ceased, insects hidden in niches beneath the awning started up their nighttime calls.

  “Sammy,” Louise said in a quiet voice. “Where were you going just now?”

  “Going? Oh, nowhere. I wanted a little fresh air, is all.”

  “There’s nobody else around, Sammy. No need to lie.”

  “Lie? About what? Are you saying I was trying to escape?” He affected a laugh. “I’m crippled, I’m miles from the Japanese army. They’d shoot me as a deserter anyway if I somehow managed to reach them. Nah, I was going out for a breath of fresh air, I told you.”

  “Are you going to make me report it t
o Lieutenant Kozlowski?”

  “Report that I was trying to escape with a broken leg? Like I said, that would be crazy.”

  “I know what I saw, and I know Kozlowski will believe me. Go on, Sammy. Give me a reason, something that doesn’t sound like you finding your buddies and ratting us out.”

  The only answer was the buzz of insects, now rising to a crescendo.

  “I’m going to die here,” Sammy said at last. “You know that, don’t you? I won’t survive this war.”

  “Don’t be morbid. You have as good a chance as anyone.”

  “I doubt I’ll survive this camp, but if I do, I’m probably dead anyway. And you know something, it might be for the best. I have no country, I have no people.”

  “Sammy, what are you talking about?”

  He didn’t answer, couldn’t. Not for a long moment, and then he wanted to tell Louise everything. It wouldn’t change the past, and it couldn’t alter his future, but telling her would be like removing a stone from the pit of his stomach.

  “Let me tell you about Nanking,” he said at last.

  Chapter Twelve

  We Japanese have been born in a country of no mean blessings, and thanks to the august power and influence of His Majesty the emperor our land has never once, to this day, experienced invasion and occupation by a foreign power. The other peoples of the Far East look with envy upon Japan; they trust and honor the Japanese; deep in their hearts they are hoping that, with the help of the Japanese people, they may themselves achieve national independence and happiness.

  “Read This Alone: And the War Can Be Won”—pamphlet given to soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army as they were sent into war

  December 13, 1937, Nanking, China

  Four years earlier, Sachihiro Mori had stood with a company of troops on the outskirts of Nanking. His heart was pounding and his mouth dry. The towering stone walls of the city loomed above them and in another era must have seemed as immovable as a mountain range. But they had crumbled under the relentless artillery bombardment of the last few days. Smoke trailed into the sky inside the city, and word had it that departing Chinese forces had lit half of Nanking on fire as they departed.

  Sammy’s troops had come under heavy fire last night as the Chinese opened a breach in the Japanese lines to flee the city. Many Chinese had not made it. The bodies of drowned soldiers and civilians clogged the Yangtze. Their war was at an end.

  The Chinese army had supposedly abandoned Nanking to its fate, but the Japanese artillery kept pounding through the night and into the morning. Even now, small-arms fire sounded from both inside and outside the city walls, although Sammy’s sector was quiet. Men were chanting eagerly around him, and the shouts of officers rose above the din, warning soldiers to check their ammunition, to make sure their bayonets were fixed.

  Outside the walls, telephone wires dangled from drunk poles, and the abandoned buildings looked like mouths filled with rotten teeth, with their gaping windows and gutted storefronts. A dead horse stank nearby, squirming with maggots. The badly burned body of a Chinese woman dangled from the window of a charred car overturned on the side of the street.

  “Get ready, men!” an officer cried.

  The soldiers around Sammy started shouting “Tenno heika banzai!”—long live the emperor!—as well as other chants and slogans to the emperor and the homeland. Sammy mouthed the chants, but his throat was dry, and no sound came out. A feeling of doom had been spreading for days, and now it felt like he’d swallowed a live grenade that was about to explode.

  The Japanese were ordered to advance into the city. It was disciplined, in formation, but there was a restless energy all around Sammy. These men had been fighting since Shanghai, had suffered casualties, deaths, forced marches on empty stomachs. They were angry, frustrated, and triumphant in turn—this was all somehow palpable at once, and dangerous.

  There was no opposition as they entered Nanking.

  Debris littered the road inside the gate: discarded uniforms, abandoned guns and knives, overturned carts and military field pieces. A sniper took a shot at them—the first resistance—while they were dragging away a burned truck blocking the road, and for the next twenty minutes they shot at the surrounding buildings while women and children tried to escape under fire.

  Sammy and five others were sent to clear out another building. Inside they found a man frantically trying to strip out of a policeman’s uniform. Someone bayoneted him.

  They found an old couple in one of the upstairs apartments. Sammy feebly protested while his fellow soldiers bashed the old man over the head with rifle butts. The woman wouldn’t stop screaming, so they threw her out the window.

  Back in the street, Sammy went to Lieutenant Soto and told him what had happened. The men were out of control, and they needed to be brought back in line before it got worse.

  Soto scowled at the complaint. “And what do you expect me to do about it, Mori? The buildings must be cleared of hostile elements.”

  Rifle fire punctuated his words, and Sammy and the lieutenant looked across the street as several crying, begging Chinese men were led out of another building, shoved against a wall, and shot. A boy of about twelve ran screaming from a building, and a soldier casually lifted his rifle and fired. Not only did he miss, but he’d also fired in the direction of another group of soldiers, who were coming out of a building on the opposite side of the street, and they took umbrage. The shooter’s fellows came to his defense, and the two sides stood screaming at each other while the boy escaped, dodging overturned cars and abandoned field pieces.

  Sammy dragged his gaze away from the spectacle. “‘Hostile elements.’ What does that mean?” he asked Soto. “We’re going to kill every male in the city? Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Of course not. But we must first establish order, wouldn’t you agree? And until order is established . . .” Another shrug.

  Order? Men were wandering off on their own with every block they progressed into the city. Their officers either followed as one of the pack or stood around helplessly like Soto. Heaven help them if there were actual organized Chinese troops in the city, the way discipline was collapsing minute by minute.

  That night Sammy found himself bedding in an abandoned house with four other soldiers, who all seemed alarmed by or even terrified of the destruction going on around them. None were from his unit, but such niceties as regimental organization seemed to have broken down throughout much of the occupied city. Through the window came the sound of individual rifle shots. Again and again and again. This was punctuated by shouts, laughter, shrieks, and screams.

  The next day was worse. Three times soldiers burst into the home where Sammy and his fellow nonparticipants were bivouacked, wild-eyed men with violence on their minds. Someone from his group set out to rejoin his troops but returned a few hours later. He was white faced and refused to say what he’d seen.

  On the third day, twenty or thirty soldiers marching past in formation convinced Sammy that the anarchy had ended. He ventured into the city to look for his regiment. The electricity was out across Nanking, with fires burning everywhere. Bodies lay in the street, often maimed. So many dead men, but perhaps the Chinese males weren’t getting the worst of it. Twice, bands of sloppy-looking soldiers grabbed Sammy, grinning, urging him to join their search for “prostitutes,” which seemed to be any woman or girl foolish enough to be caught by the Japanese.

  Pay the prostitutes? Of course not. The Japanese had already paid with blood and sacrifice. The filthy Chinese whores would be lucky if they were left with their lives.

  Sammy escaped this group and others wanting him to join in looting and random destruction. He was encouraged when he found his regiment, or part of it, anyway, and even more relieved when Soto had them marching off to the so-called safety zone, where the international community huddled in terror, waiting for the situation to stabilize.

  This must be when it stops, Sammy thought. Three days of anarchy, but it
would come to an end now. The foreigners were watching, and that would shame the Japanese into behaving better.

  What a deluded fool he was in those days.

  “Please stop,” Louise said. Her stomach had been twisting in knots, and now she felt sick.

  “I haven’t been sharing details,” Sammy said. “Only showing you the outlines. A bare sketch. The violence went on for weeks. The army was a mob, a horde, no better than the barbarian tribes that used to cross the Great Wall from Mongolia. In late December, our generals declared an end to the violence. They declared an amnesty for former Chinese soldiers who confessed. Hundreds did. They were promptly executed. And the killings and rapes and robbery went on and on. Another month, longer.”

  “Why tell me these things, to make me hate you, hate the Japanese? Why, Sammy?”

  “So you’ll understand.”

  “Understand what?” she pleaded. “I know about the Rape of Nanking. The whole world does.”

  “Yes, and part of the reason you know is because of me.”

  His voice had been distant while he told his story, as if he were floating in the darkness above his body, telling a story about someone else, but now it took an intense edge.

  “I began to write what I saw in a small notebook. I wrote it in English, kept it hidden, ready to destroy it at a moment’s notice. The foreigners were huddled, terrified, in the safety zone. They saw plenty of atrocities—our men didn’t respect the zone and would drag out Chinese who tried to hide in it—but nothing compared to what I witnessed. Later I made a contact with a man from the German embassy, and—”

  “A German!” Louise said with a bitter laugh. “May as well have thrown your notebook on the fire as give it to a Nazi. As if they care about such things as rape and murder. Do you know what they’re doing in Poland? In Russia?”