Genoa (21 page)

          
“Her surgery was remarkable, I’ve never seen anyone, even a man, more deft and sure. Her reactions were quick, her decisions rapid and accurate, her reflexes amazing. The Japs have ruined her hands, they now shake badly.

          
“Our captors could never be still for long; they chose projects and then suddenly dropped them for no apparent reason. When they attacked Carl, though, they stayed with the idea until it is a miracle he wasn’t killed. They fought over him, dragged him around by his hair (his hands were bound together over his head) and all the time the whip never ceased lashing his back. His mouth was bleeding; blood came from his nose in spurts and bubbles. His knees were raw from being dragged back and forth over the sand and gravel; when one tired of the whip, another took over. They broke his teeth and ribs, and when he evacuated, they dragged him about in it. His pleading was pitiful, it was what might have been expected from a woman, in extreme pain and fear . . .

          
“When finally they tired of him, only Rico and I would touch him—the others turned away. We tried to clean him as best we could, but we had nothing to work with. Rico got some putrid water from a ditch, and we threw it over his buttocks. He was in a great deal of pain for some time—broken teeth and ribs, abrasions on his legs, his back practically flayed. And all the time he tried to explain himself, weeping and pleading incoherently. I don’t know what I pitied more, his condition of mind or body. He finally fell into an exhausted sleep. I think Rico was disgusted with him, but he has a big heart and like me was more charitable, because we felt pity at having had to watch—and we were forced to watch. Neither of us, after all, knew how we would react in his position. The Japs are past masters at reducing human beings . . .”

(Melville—1850—admits the East on board:

          
“With a start all glared at dark Ahab, who was surrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.”

          
“For me, I silently recalled the mysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Pequod during the dim Nantucket dawn . . .

          
“. . . while the subordinate phantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were somehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a muffled mystery to the last . . . He has such a creature as civilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their dreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide among the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles to the east of the continent—those insulated, immemorial, unalterable countries, which even in these modern days, still preserve much of the ghostly aboriginalness of earth’s primal generations . . .”

Carl:

          
“There was one tree in the yard and in it they hung by the wrists the women who were about to deliver; they tied strips of sheets between their legs, and left them hanging until they died. Those whose kids they had murdered just wandered around crying while their breasts swelled with milk, until some of them burst.

          
“They gave us nothing to drink and we were fed only salt pork, fish heads, and rice.”

(Columbus—who had set out in search of Cipango—sends a message back to the Sovereigns:

          
“. . . the greatest necessity we feel here at the present time is for wines and it is what we desire most to have . . . It is necessary that each time a caravel comes here, fresh meat shall be sent, and even more than that, lambs and little ewe lambs, more females than males, and some little yearling calves, male and female . . .”

Carl:

          
“Thirst became an agony, until one man went berserk and grabbed a Chinese woman and started sucking her breast. She screamed and fought at first, until she realized that the pressure in her breasts was being relieved, and in a moment each of us had a woman, or half of one . . .

          
“The Japs laughed and capered around . . . they weren’t missing a trick. Mike, I wielded a whip on some of our own men, to save myself. I went down on my knees to those little brown bastards and did as they told me. I must have taken down a hundred of them . . .”

(Columbus:

          
“Thus, as I have already said, I saw no cannibals, nor did I hear of any, except in a certain island called Charis, which is the second from Española, on the side towards India, where dwell a people who are considered by the neighboring islanders as most ferocious: and these feed upon human flesh.”

(and elsewhere:

          
“The boys that they take they castrate; as we cause castration; because they become fatter for eating; and the mature men also, when they take them they kill them and they eat them: and they eat the intestines fresh and the extreme members of the body . . .”

Carl:

          
“Believe me, Mike, it was the warm milk—the horror of those days and nights, and the affection I had for him. He had been through so much, and when they shot the aphrodisiac into him and we heard what they intended, the Chinese doctor groaned again.

          
“Night fell, and Rico had thrown his beaten body off Concha’s a hundred times, and each time they threw him on her he promised her he wouldn’t hurt her. She didn’t appear to be afraid, even when some of the boys shouted at him to take her, that he couldn’t fight that drug. He shook like the ague, and kept his jaws clamped tight; his eyes burned, and he was so close to breaking that we all wondered how he held out. The Japs finally tired of that game and went inside for chow, and Rick stumbled off by himself . . .

          
“It was dark, and when I found him he was lying on his back, his arms rigid at his sides, the bloody nail-less fingers clenched. I ran my hands over his sweat-slick body . . .

          
“I had to hold his hips with both arms, he pitched so violently . . . I could feel my mouth tearing and my jaws breaking . . .”

(Ishmael, in M
OBY
-D
ICK
—embedded with a cannibal:

          
“I looked at the grand and glorious fellow . . .”

          
“Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn to him.”

          
“For though I tried to move his arm—unlock his bridegroom clasp—yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly, as though naught but death should part us . . .”

(Melville, elsewhere:

                            
“The Anglo-Saxons—lacking grace

                            
To win the love of any race;

                            
Hated by myriads dispossessed

                            
. . . —the Indians East and West.”

(and

                            
“Asia shall stop her at the least,

                            
That old inertness of the East.”

Carl:

          
“Did you ever see a man die, Mike? The Japs made me beat Curley—one of our own boys—to death, and I guess that’s when I really lost my mind: I can’t help it, it was a wonderful sensation . . . they had kicked in his face first, until we couldn’t understand a word he said, but he pleaded and whimpered, and his wild, pain-racked eyes stared at me . . .

          
“Among the prisoners was a missionary family, who had a little girl about ten years old, fat, blue-eyed and blonde. The Japs thought it would hurt the parents more if they tortured the child, so they decided to rape her. They used a sword point to make her big enough . . . Dozens of them took her . . . she lay in a pool of blood, cried all the time, and never lost consciousness. We were all driven crazy—I doubt if any one had ever said an unkind word to her in her life, she just didn’t know what it was all about.

          
“After chow the Japs came back and decided to have more game with her. Rico didn’t have a square inch of skin on him that hadn’t been torn or burned, and he couldn’t get on his feet, but he crawled over to her, spoke to her quietly, and put his hands—burned and bleeding—on her neck. He put his head down on his arms . . . and in seconds, she was dead. The Chinese doctor felt her pulse, and then gently released Rico’s hands . . .

          
“The Japs never could stand being frustrated, they almost killed Rico for that gesture . . . I don’t know how he survived it. Blood trickled down his chin where he bit through his lip, and when they left him, he shook uncontrollably . . .”

TWO

When he was finally rescued—the town was relieved near the end of the war—Carl didn’t return directly to Indianapolis. Wealthy with back pay, he went first to the Mayo Clinic, for plastic surgery and other repairs; then he rejoined Rico and Concha, and two or three others from the
RAF
—there was an ex-prizefighter, whose only name, so far as I could find out, was Meat-Nose. They collected others—a singer named Joey was one—and formed a dance band. One or two got jobs as test pilots, on the side, and together they rented a ramshackle old house on the coast of California, which they all shared.

Leaving Minnesota, Carl came first to Indianapolis, staying only overnight—his manner as affable, his personality and presence as broad, hazarded, and infrangible as it had ever been. When I asked him once, only vaguely, about the war, he leaned back in his chair—I thought he would fall, or the chair would break; he laughed heartily, his great head rocking as I had seen it so often before—and changed the subject.

But he left his notes for me—though I didn’t find them until later. I don’t know how he did it—I was with him when he unpacked his duffle—saw him take out the dirty clothes, the spare airplane parts, pieces of sheet music, photographs of friends and bartenders; trinkets and lucky charms, Indian relics and archeological fragments; a thumbed and tattered collection of pre-war comic books—the circulating library of the pow camp; and, at the bottom of the sack, down among the last of the comics, a book that he must have picked up in England, published by John Lehman of London: Melville, H.: T
HE
C
ONFIDENCE
-M
AN
.

Again, for a long time, we heard nothing. Then a letter came from Meat-Nose . . . he had heard that I was Carl’s brother, and a doctor, and he was asking my help. He’d had a talk with Carl that he tape-recorded, without Carl knowing it, and he transcribed some of Carl’s words and sent them to me:

          
“I don’t expect you to understand, it’s a feeling that can’t be described. Joey is different . . . even after I’m through with him, the sensation of pleasure goes on and on and builds up until I’m drunk with it . . . nothing seems real, I’m above everything human, I see nothing but red streamers of blood widening out . . . For hours afterward I can see the kid’s eyes wide with pain, his face twisted, and I can hear that voice everyone admires so beating in my ears, in my blood . . . after I’m home in bed, I can relive the whole thing . . .

          
“I know he’s insane. I wish I could stop. I never felt this way with anyone before. There have been others who were afraid of me, but none like Joe. When he’s panicked to the edge of madness, I think my veins will bust . . .

          
“When his voice is gone, and he can’t manage to get on his knees without pulling himself up, I look at him, and I’m sad because he doesn’t die. I tell him I hate him, I swear at him, and he tries to get to his knees and starts kissing my feet and looks at me with those wild eyes . . . Even after I’ve thrown down the whip I like to sink my fingers into his flesh and twist it. He begs me to stop, prays to me, swears he wants to make me happy—then he says that if the only way I can love him is to hurt him, then hurt him more.

          
“What in hell keeps him alive? How does anyone survive . . . ? I thought sometimes that I’d reached the end with him, and I’ve even considered taking him away like he begs me to . . . let his hair grow, dress him like a woman, take him where everyone will think he’s my wife. I was about to make up my mind to do it, when he refused to let me cut him up so he’d look like a woman. Why in hell he wants to hang on to such a sorry mess of stuff as he has, I don’t know, but the little bastard clings to it as though it were made of gold . . .”

THREE

The cigar gone, burned down beyond rekindling—the stump splayed in the ashtray—I close the books, and get to my feet. The suburbs, the city itself seem hushed . . . standing alone at the desk, I enjoy for a moment possession of myself, and of the attic, the form and structure of the house, and beyond, the city, the plains.

My joints are stiff, and I recall the bottle of ale, drunk earlier in the evening, downstairs in the old kitchen, when I was in a nineteenth-century mood—a little painful now . . .

The creak of the planks seems louder, as I move toward the stairs. Descending the dark stairwell, I tread softly.