The Lonely War (31 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

July 15, 1942—1900 hours

I
N
THE
tub room, Andrew washed away the camp grunge. Afterward, he sat up to his neck in cool rainwater while he waited for Tottori.

The commandant entered the room as if he couldn’t wait to clean the war stench from his skin. He stripped off his uniform and sat on the three-legged stool. Andrew climbed out of the tub and poured a dipper of water over the officer’s head. He took a bar of Yardley soap and scrubbed the hollow of Tottori’s chest. They shared a smile as Andrew washed under the socket of Tottori’s left under arm, up over the shoulder blades, into the right socket, and down the man’s torso to the crotch.

Tottori was already hard when Andrew soaped his genitals. Andrew scoured down both legs and even cleaned the crevices between the commandant’s toes. He scrubbed Tottori’s back, finishing with the scalp, pouring dippers of water over the muscular body to rinse away the soap before they lowered themselves up to their chins in delicious rainwater.

They performed the ritual without speaking, as if they needed to wash away the war before addressing one another.

Andrew playfully splashed his lover. “Hard day?”

Tottori, his eyes closed, grunted.

“How did the British react when you gave them responsibility inside the wire?”

“They pissed on themselves like excited puppies. They saw it as a sign of weakness and began making demands, so I smacked Major Taylor across the face and screamed for ten minutes. That put them in their place.”

“The camp was buzzing like Chinese New Year back home. Those dreary men were so jazzed. It’s wonderful to see a spark of life in their eyes.”

Tottori grunted again.

“They made my enemy the Provost Marshal. He said he’ll lock me up for being your whore.”

“Stay here. There’s no point in going back.”

Tempting as that sounded, it would make Andrew a deserter and a traitor. Andrew wondered if Tottori had covert motives.
Could he be jealous of Mitchell
?

As if reading Andrew’s thoughts, Tottori told him that it wouldn’t matter once Japan won the war. Andrew would simply stay in Asia where he belonged and travel to Kyoto with him. “I guarantee that you will be treated well.”

Warmth spread throughout Andrew’s body. This was another veiled message that Tottori loved him, and his gratitude grew immense.

“Suppose Japan doesn’t win?”

“Our national honor will not accept defeat.”

“I need a favor.”

“If you start making demands, I will have to smack you and scream for ten minutes to put you in your place.”

Andrew sat, silent, no longer certain if he should ask.

“Well, what is it?” Tottori chuckled.

“I have two letters that I’d like you to mail. They’re both from prisoners who need to send word home.”

“From the officer you are in love with?” Bitterness singed his voice.

Andrew went silent, refusing to discuss Mitchell.

“Mailing letters to the States is dangerous, but I can manage. Leave them on my desk.”

Andrew wrapped his arms around the man’s neck. They kissed. Tottori opened his eyes and they kissed again. His hardness pressed against Andrew’s belly.

“Let’s make love,” Andrew whispered.

“Patience. Anticipation enhances the spice.”

“Let’s stay in the tub all night. We’ll make love, have dinner, and fall asleep right here.”

They kissed again. “Out you go,” Tottori said. “We are already prunish, and I am hungry.” Tottori hauled himself out of the tub, seizing a towel.

Andrew stared at his rugged nakedness while the echoes of Tottori’s rejection mixed with Fowler’s threats rang in his ears. He felt a complete and frightening meaninglessness to the reality of his life. This murky existence of living in two disconnected worlds, both of which were driven senseless by the absurdity of war, pricked his skin like a millions tiny needles. He tried to cry out but he could not utter a sound, could not even take a breath. His anxiety passed—at least he was able to breathe again—but the fear of being utterly irrelevant lingered. With more reflection, he was comforted by the notion that he was not alone. Everyone in the camp, on both sides of the wire, was equally as insignificant. He remembered something his master had once told him—significance is buried within the insignificant, so appreciate everything. 

By the time they had dried each other and pulled on kimonos, Do-Han had set the table and green tea awaited them. Andrew’s anxieties calmed to the point where he could pour tea for Tottori while pretending to enjoy the officer’s conversation.

“If you insist on returning,” Tottori said, “you must fight this Provost Marshal like a samurai.  A samurai’s state of mind is called
Mushin
. It means: the still center. It is the ability to stay utterly calm, read your opponent, and attempt to redirect his aggression.
Mushin
is to remain unbiased, have no emotional attachments, to stay open and flexible like the willow in a strong wind. If you control your mind in this way, you will control yourself and your enemy too.”

The fragrance of ramen soup drifted through the open doorway seconds before Do-Han sailed into the room carrying two steaming bowls. Tottori fell silent as Do-Han served them, bowed, and exited. 

Andrew welcomed a break in the conversation. He felt uncomfortable talking about the prison. To change the topic, he asked, “I’m curious why you joined the army. With your education and knowledge of other countries, you could have been a diplomat or international businessman. Why the military?”

“I am samurai, like my father and his father and his, as far back as three hundred years. Samurai means: to serve. I serve my country, my people, my ancestors.”

Andrew picked up his chopsticks and spoon, lifted a bunch of noodles from the bowl, and slurped them down as Tottori explained that his family had been military leaders since feudal Japan. He talked about his father, so gallant and stirring in his uniform, and the pride his family enjoyed. Andrew used his chopsticks to pick up a bright red triangle of raw fish, beautifully arranged on a bamboo tray.

“When I joined,” Tottori continued, “we had taken Mongolia. These new territories were hailed as our path to prosperity. There was a military buildup to protect against a Russian invasion and to fight the communist uprising in China. We thought we would fight a ragtag army for six months and return home victorious. We were sure our families and townspeople would hail us as heroes. You should have seen the send-off at the docks when we boarded the transport ships. Thousands of people cheered. A brass band played the ‘
Kimigayo
’, our national anthem. We felt the eyes of the nation on us, and we let ourselves be carried way with their euphoria.”

Tottori fell silent, as if remembering the crowd’s uproar. “We were fools, of course. We didn’t know that you can’t fight a little war. Once you put your toe in the water, you sink to your ears. But it was such a magnificent feeling at the beginning. But things went sour in China, and Roosevelt created the trade embargo to strangle us into submission. By then we had a dream of creating a unified Asia, and Japan had paid dearly for that dream. We couldn’t stop after paying such an enormous price. We were sucked into a war we never wanted or intended, step by bloody step.”

Tottori ate slowly and deliberately while his mind seemed to play with images of past glory.

“We have many faults. We’re violent, arrogant, overconfident, childishly loyal, and our pride, yes, our pride is perhaps our worst fault. But when we succeed, when all East Asia is united under one rule, it will be our golden age, the start of a glorious era when Asia will command its own destiny, and Japan will be at the heart of it.”

Tottori described his early years in the China campaign, leading troops into battle, the strong resistance of the Chinese, and the ever-present fear that Russia would attack from the north. He explained how, as the war dragged on, he slowly lost heart until, by the time he came to Changi, he hated every aspect of war and his role in it. “But then,” he said, “war brought you to me. The very thing I hate most has brought me supreme joy.”

“This place you call
Mushin
,” Andrew said, “the still center, is where I go in meditation. But you say you can be in this space to fight battles?”

Tottori stared at Andrew.

A knock at the front door was followed by the familiar voice of Lance Corporal Kenji Misawa, announcing he had an urgent dispatch. Tottori ordered him to enter and the secretary bolted into the room, marched to the table, and stood at attention while Tottori read the dispatch.

From behind wire-rimmed glasses, Kenji’s eyes glanced down at Andrew.

Andrew saw his interest. He ran his tongue over his upper lip and winked, a long, slow whiplash of his eyelid.

Kenji stood as stiff as a pine tree and blushed from collar to cap. A grin appeared at the corners of his mouth.

Tottori dismissed his secretary and watched him go. “Perhaps you think it’s funny to tease my staff, but I don’t want my troops gossiping that I’m sharing my bed with a floozy.”

“Floozy?” Andrew roared with laughter.

Tottori insisted that it was not funny, but Andrew couldn’t stop laughing.

“A floozy, that’s what you’ve made me. Ha ha.”

“Can’t you see that boy is smitten? It’s offensive to lead him on.”

Andrew’s laughter faded, but his enjoyment swelled. “Now that we’ve affirmed I have a reputation for promiscuity, I’m certain that you will never fall in love with me. A man with your integrity could never truly love a tramp. I guess I’ll wander through life a ruined man, always searching for love and never finding it. How tragic. Or if Kenji is smitten, when you tire of me and find another, you’ll give me to him. Perhaps he’ll love me.”

“What about you—do you love me?”

Andrew looked down and leaned into Tottori’s body. He felt the same heat coursing through Tottori as he felt within himself. “I’m sorry. I was carried away. We shouldn’t talk of love.”

A
FTER
dinner, while Do-Han whisked away the dishes, Andrew played Jah-Jai. Tottori unsheathed his samurai sword and picked up a sharpening stone. He sat cross-legged, meticulously running the stone along the blade. It gleamed in the room’s serene lamplight. Its bluish steel was as pristine as a mountain stream. He occasionally held the sword in front of his eye to study the edge.

“This sword has been in my family for three hundred years. Our soul is fused into this steel.”

“Tonight is only the second time since we met that you have mentioned your past. I was beginning to think that you were nothing more than this instant, with no personal history at all.”

Tottori grunted. “Some men choose to dwell on the past in hopes of understanding what will unfold in their future. Not me. Like all men, I have a past that shapes my future, but I choose to focus on this moment and be surprised at what develops. For now, I regard my life as only these moments I spend with you.”

He used a white cloth to wipe away a blemish and continued to sharpen. As he worked, Andrew watched the play of light on the mirrorlike blade. When it was razor-sharp, Tottori wiped it once again with the cloth and returned it to its scabbard. He repeated the process with the shorter, companion sword. Samurai swords always come in pairs, one long blade and one short.

That was their nightly routine: Andrew came before sunset, they bathed together and ate a sumptuous meal, and Andrew played Jah-Jai while Tottori did paperwork, wrote letters, sharpened his sword, or polished his stones. Later, Tottori spent an hour kneeling in prayer before his Shinto shrine while Andrew played. They did this until they could no longer hold in their mounting desire and retired to the bedroom. Tottori had to make love each night, hours of sensual kisses and caresses.

Andrew suspected that Tottori made love to chase away his fears. The commandant harbored much fear—an insatiable fear that created an equally insatiable lust.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

December 24, 1944—1000 hours

E
ACH
day the number of POWs diminished. The prisoners conducted their morning ritual of checking their comrades who were unable to rise from their bunks. A man who could stand with help had five days to live; if he sat up but couldn’t stand, he had three days; if he couldn’t rise at all, he’d be gone by the next sunrise.

Andrew worked the burial detail, hauling the bodies onto carts for the long march out the gates, digging new graves beside the old ones, listening to the soulful words of Chaplain Moyer. He buried them all the same, captains and corporals, foot soldiers and orderlies, undistinguishable and anonymous. Mass graves were the final humiliation. Emaciated limbs became confused and tangled, fleshless faces pressed cheek to cheek, bodies huddled together as if seeking warmth, and the black dirt would absorb their souls, transforming their lost youth into fertile earth. That became the crude face of war. Not the stratagem of politics manipulated by leaders of nations or the chess game of generals played miles from the battlefields; war is the tragic and anonymous deaths of human beings whose seeds are lost forever.

The astonishment of being a survivor pressed on Andrew. Beriberi, dysentery, malaria, starvation, and suicide had swallowed a weighty toll over two and a half years. With each burial detail, Andrew’s sense of guilt deepened. Guilt was by far his most cumbrous burden. The miraculous events that had shepherded him under Tottori’s care were all that had kept him alive to bury the less fortunate. While handling the bodies, he felt utterly grateful for his good fortune and, at the same time, outraged.

The bodies had begun to whisper to him as he stacked them in the pits. Hideous, mournful, accusing rasps called to him. Even when he piled on the dirt—covering those gaping mouths, staring eyes, frozen facial expressions—the sound still filtered through, drumming in his ears.  He threw himself into the digging and soon his exhaustion numbed his mind. It was the only way to silence the dead.