I went out of her closet-room, whispering to her that I would return in several hours, with food for her and maybe something to drink, and thinking ahead to an entire evening in her company; but as I gently shut the door I thought I heard a murmur. I couldn’t lock it; to do so seemed at that moment too cruel. Instead I stood quietly for a moment and waited and indeed it was K, saying over and over very quietly what sounded most peculiarly like hata-hata, hata-hata. But as I listened more closely I realized that she was fitfully crying, though in quelled gasps, as if she were trying to hush herself. I was afraid to move, lest she hear me, and so I remained, my ear lightly pressed to the worn wood of the door, until she quieted and was silent again and in fact fell asleep, her breathing deep and certain.
After I left her I found myself in a state of unease and exhilaration. I could understand why she should become upset, that she was perhaps sad for the end of her maidenhood (which I thought then was the most precious ore of any woman), but hadn’t I professed my devotion to her, hadn’t I in mitigation said the words that should let her know what I was intending for us, after the war? I thought I should have also told her that I was now resolved to speak candidly with Captain Ono, that I was prepared to suggest to him my keeping a log of my duties around the camp and infirmary — which I had indeed begun compiling. At least I would not wilt and fade and disappear before him, as I had score upon score of times.
And yet I had no other, further plan; there was no good recourse from her required duties to the camp, there was no actual reprieve I was offering her. I loved her, though I cannot say how that love was or if it was true or worthy in any sense, having never in my life been sure how such a thing should be. I can say I wanted her and could not bear her being with another, and if those are veritable signs, then I should rightly hold her in memory in every way that I am able, and to the last of my days.
Captain Ono, however, was seemingly nowhere to be found; I even sought him out at the commander’s hut, rapping on the door sharply until the new sentry ran up around the side and requested that I stop, saying the colonel was “resting” for the afternoon. The captain had indeed been around, he said, with his medical kit, as he had each morning for some days, and in the afternoons the colonel required strictly undisturbed quiet, as ordered by Captain Ono.
I recalled then the multiple requisitions I had just sent by courier to Rangoon for morphine and ether, as our supply for surgery was curiously dwindling, despite our not having conducted any recent procedures. I had long suspected he was medicating the commander, though certainly not against the man’s will, as one sometimes saw them talking in the evenings on the veranda of the hut, the colonel’s demeanor familiar and jovial, if a bit too loose. The probable fact of this further emboldened me, and as I went around the camp in search of the doctor I felt more determined than ever to withstand whatever insult he might level at me, and somehow influence him to agree to my sole stewardship of “the girl” under some obscure technical or medical rationale.
So sure of myself was I, so certain of my imminent resolve, that the thought of committing an aggression seemed again suddenly quite natural to me, as if I were a man long accustomed to the necessity of such things. I remember suddenly feeling suited to the notion, perhaps even bristling with it as I strode purposefully about the camp, the image of Ono desperate and pained beneath the weight of my will. For I had been quietly considering various revenges upon him, drawing up the ways I would pay him back for his diatribes and affronts, my plans including, too, the most extreme of acts. Had someone asked, I would have denied any such thoughts, but in the core of my heart I was tending the darkest fires. I had certainly despised others before, particularly the boys in the school I attended after being adopted by the Kurohatas, boys who treated me with disdain most of the time and at worst like a stray dog. Each day I vowed to wreak vengeance upon them, see them through some terrible circumstance I’d contrived, or else await the hand of fate. But nothing ever transpired. I never attempted to mark them, and soon enough we passed on to the upper school and there were plenty of others to befriend, both cause and enmity mercifully fading from my mind. I say mercifully because it was never my nature to harbor such thoughts, which have always been near-caustic to me, but in respect to the doctor a vital, searing charge was propelling me, an ashen, bitter hate whose taste I no longer abhorred.
And though exactly how I cannot describe, mixed up with this was my feeling for K, and my sudden sense of her nearness to me. It was a connection aside from what we had just done, what I should say I believed already to be a special correspondence between us, an affinity of being. This may sound specious — one may rightly think here was a young man in the blush of his first sexual love, typically conflating sensation and devotion — but I was not thinking so much of her body or even the desirous tentacled feeling of mine. I was considering what she had suggested about our pretending to be other people, like figures in a Western novel, imagining how we could somehow exist outside of this place and time and circumstance, share instead the minute and sordid problems of such folks, the vagaries and ornate dramas of imperfect love.
So when I finally came upon the doctor, when I finally saw the angular shape of his back and his wiry neck as he berated several soldiers for the dilapidated state of their quarters, it seemed I was summoning the picture of my plunging a long blade into his throat, terrorizing him not with pain so much as the fright of an instant, wholly unanticipated death. In reality I was carrying a scalpel in my holster (pinned against the pistol), and I actually reached into the leather pouch as I approached him and felt the metal handle. I could simply pull out the razor-sharp instrument and insert it a few centimeters into his skin and run it down the length of the carotid. None of the men would protest, and if one did, it would be too late. The doctor would clutch at his throat, the blood would flow forth freely, and in less than a minute he would quietly expire.
Captain Ono turned to me just as I was a few steps away. But my hand was at my head in salute and he said, with no little irritation, “What must it be now, Lieutenant?”
“I would request to speak with you, sir. It’s an important matter.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. The enlisted men were holding themselves in, pleased as they were to witness an officer receiving the captain’s harsh treatment.
“And what would this concern, Lieutenant?”
“I was hoping to speak in private, sir. It concerns one of the volunteers.”
“You surely are being scrupulous, Lieutenant Kurohata. And is right now the most necessary time for you to tell me what’s on your mind?”
“Yes, sir,” I said sharply, nearly barking. One of the enlisted men couldn’t help himself and let out a snort at my pained rigor. The captain at once wheeled and struck him across the face with his open hand, and the man fell down, more, it seemed, from sheer surprise than the force of the blow. He quickly stood up without any help and stood at attention, as were his fellows. A wide red welt rose up over his eye and the side of his face. The doctor waited and then hit him again, and again the man fell down and then got back up to his feet, this time more tentatively. The whole action seemed somehow self-evident, being strangely mechanical. He then turned to me and in no different a voice said, “Then perhaps you and I should talk elsewhere, Lieutenant Kurohata. I require a few more moments with these men. You’ll meet me at the infirmary shortly.”