The image of which, I must say, I did not wish to let trouble me that placid morning, for in the solitary spell of my walk, amid the fog lightly huddled with a strange near-beauty over even this, a military camp, I tried to imagine how time itself could somehow stop, how the slumberers in Mrs. Matsui’s tent and in the tents beyond might remain just so, unto themselves, as it were, peaceable and unmolested. As if untouched by the practices of wartime. And if this hope was most egregiously naive and sentimental, which it no doubt was, I only wished for myself that I could bear whatever burdens might fall to me, that I might remain steadfast in my duty and uphold my responsibilities and not waver under any circumstance, and by whatever measure. For I feared, simply enough, to be marked by a failure like Corporal Endo’s, which was not one of ego or self but of an obligation public and total — and one resulting in the burdening of the entire society of his peers.
I have feared this throughout my life, from the day I was adopted by the family Kurohata to my induction into the Imperial Army to even the grand opening of Sunny Medical Supply, through the initial hours of which I was nearly paralyzed with the dread of dishonoring my fellow merchants, none of whom had yet approached me, or would for several weeks. It must be the question of genuine sponsorship that has worried me most, and the associations following, whose bonds have always held value for me, if not so much human comfort or warmth.
I would have spent the rest of that predawn taking a steady, lone walk about the perimeter had I not in the half-light nearly run into Captain Ono and the girl, K. They were coming from the direction of the yard, where the commander’s hut was, approaching at an almost marching pace, the doctor tugging her along by the hand, his thin, tall frame bent resolutely. He looked quite agitated, stiff in the face, and nearly slung her to the ground when he saw me.
“Lieutenant Kurohata!” he said sharply, eyeing the women’s tent behind me. “You should be in your quarters or at the infirmary. I’ve been searching all over for you.”
“Forgive me, sir. I woke early and thought to take a walk.”
“I don’t want to hear your explanations. They mean nothing to me.”
K was half-kneeling beside him, propped on the ground by her forearm. Her thick hair had come undone, and it fell in a shiny black cascade, totally covering her face. She hadn’t yet moved. Her clothes were disheveled, her blouse crumpled and hastily knotted in front, her baggy pants torn at the side along the seam, exposing a pale sliver of skin.
“You must have a penchant for disturbing me,” the doctor said lividly. He was speaking uncomfortably close to me, his breath sour with waking. “It so happened that the commander sent his sentry to my quarters to have this one escorted back to the infirmary. He was extremely upset. It seems she’s bleeding.”
“Bleeding, sir?”
“Menstruating,” he said. “How is this possible, Lieutenant? I entrusted you to anticipate these kinds of complications.”
“Forgive me, sir, but I’m not certain how I could have known.”
“You could have asked her, Lieutenant,” he said with some disgust. “Simply asked. You should know this wouldn’t be tolerable for the commander. He has particular requirements.”
“But what could I have done, sir? I cannot stop her menses.”
“Don’t be insolent as well as stupid!” he shouted. “You should have made certain that it was another of them who would stay the night with the commander. But as is your character, I’m afraid, you are satisfied with leaving things to tenuous chance and hope and faith in the arbitrary. If I had patience I would wonder once more about your training. And so now you see, because I couldn’t find you to escort her, and with the commander requiring a medical officer only, I had to be roused. And so you’ve made me undertake the task of an errand boy. Now you take her, for I don’t want to gaze upon her even once until you hear from me. Do you finally understand me, Lieutenant?” He marched off toward his quarters before I could reply.
The girl waited until he was completely gone before rising. She didn’t brush away the red-brown dirt from her shirt elbows and her knees, nor did she pull up the hair that was messily covering her face. The light was just now up, and I could see her dark eyes veiled through the skeins of her hair, staring out blankly across the loosely organized squalor of the camp. She was certainly not aware of me in the way she was of the doctor, with her shoulders narrowed with steel and hate. Nothing like that at all. With him gone, she was suddenly present but not present, and would hardly be a person at all were it not for her seemingly insoluble beauty, which the time in our camp had not yet worn away. I spoke to her then, asking her to follow me to the infirmary, where I had already prepared a small space for her behind a curtain in what was originally intended as a second supply area but was no longer, as we were now sorely lacking in most everything and would be until the end of the war. But she did not acknowledge me or move. She barely seemed to breathe. I spoke again, a bit more forcefully, though to no avail, despite the fact that she understood Japanese well enough, as she’d shown on several occasions.
“Young lady,” I said finally, in her own language, “why not come with me now? The captain could return, and he won’t be pleased on finding us still here. It will make things easier for us both, which is preferable to another course.”
Her expression turned instantly, not in mood so much as aspect, the way she gazed at me as though I had magically appeared from nothingness. She searched me with her eyes but did not speak, and as I walked to the infirmary she trailed me at a few meters, not from fear or deference but more as though trying to regard the whole of me. When we reached the building I directed her to the examination and surgery room and she went in without pause. As the doctor had generally instructed me, I was to “disinfect” her, treat her for anything she might have contracted en route to us, though of course without lab equipment and certain obvious symptoms it was impossible to tell anything with certitude.
With Captain Ono, in fact, it was more a point of “purity” than disease; he was particularly fastidious in his personal practices, as he was always groomed and shaved like any town physician, and most often took his meals alone in the officers’ mess, unless he was to dine there with the commander. I was surprised that he didn’t prepare his own meals, given his attitudes, for he was often disgusted with the general state of the camp and of the men, particularly now, when conditions were less than orderly. None of it could measure up to his private standards of cleanliness. The infirmary was of course a model of hygiene and efficiency, which I was most willing to maintain for him, despite his sometimes searing criticisms in this very room (and in front of others), which were aimed not at my specific conduct but at the legacies of my “training” and “background”—the ultimate question being of my ethos, as it were, a term (from his brief university schooling in England) that he seemed to employ often, for my edification.
In the surgery room, I had the girl sit up on the table. She watched me silently as I laid out the instruments, a swab and probe and speculum, with the uses of which, in all frankness, I had no experience whatsover. I had very briefly observed the doctor conducting such an examination, but my knowledge was relegated to the little I could remember of anatomy texts, with nothing of the practical. I hadn’t expected ever to treat a female in the course of my war service.
So I was ever more uncertain and confused. I also felt suddenly quite different. I had particular “feelings,” to be sure, though not necessarily or discreetly for her. At least not yet. Rather, these came in the manner in which one normally has a feeling, which I think is governed as much by context as by what is actually happening. And the context that early morning, before the camp had arisen and the day begun, before the resumption of everything having to do with wartime and soldiering, which is the grimmest business of living, was one I had not quite conceived, or experienced, before. There was no protocol I could pattern myself by. Of course one might point out that I had been with Madam Itsuda in Singapore, but there the situation was in fact wholly defined and contracted. K was a young woman, my same age — and in the almost civilian calm of the pre-reveille, with us set apart from all manner of order and rule, I realized I did not know how I should begin to comport myself with her, whether to be forceful or distant or kind. Finally I decided to put away the instruments and asked her if she had any sores or other outbreaks. She shook her head, and I decided not to give her a shot, which would make her terribly sick. I then handed her a vial of a simple cleansing solution, which I told her to mix with clean water and flush herself with several times in the next few days.