A Gesture Life (19 page)

Mrs. Matsui immediately gathered the rest of the girls and then with a swift slap quieted the one of them who was unwilling to leave her sister in the room. She was inconsolable. Mrs. Matsui and the other three girls had to work together to drag her out, her sister on the table remaining oddly unmoved, almost dead to her and everything else. Through the shouting and the clamor I
removed the doctor’s white coat and left it folded on the desk chair. When I shut the door I did not look back into the room.

I was relieved to be outside. I came upon the enlisted mess tent, and the steward there saw me and offered to prepare me a cup of tea, as he sometimes did in the afternoons. I sat on an upended crate and waited, welcoming the small kindness. In the corner of my vision Mrs. Matsui and the others were half-carrying the still hysterical girl in a tight formation toward the comfort house, which seemed, being newly built, a lone clean island in the growing fetor of the camp. With dusk, I knew, the officers would begin their visitations—myself as well, if I chose.

I also noticed what I thought to be the slight figure of Corporal Endo, crouched at the far end of the central yard where it gave way to dense jungle. He was sitting back on his haunches, his canvas radioman’s cap pinched down over his brow to shade his eyes from the fierce late daylight. He must have seen me but he did not wave or nod or make any gesture; he appeared to be surveying the goings-on, particularly the troop of girls making their way to Mrs. Matsui’s tent behind the comfort house. Perhaps he had been waiting for them to come out from the medical hut, or perhaps he had just then crouched to rest, the timing being mere coincidence. Whatever the case he would later not say to me or anyone else. And thus what he committed next is also a mystery.

He rose from his crouch and began a medium trot toward Mrs. Matsui and the girls. The initial distance between them was not too great, perhaps sixty or seventy meters, and I was able to see the whole of the event, from start to end. The corporal was not a natural runner, lacking any real physical gifts, and he could have appeared to be awkwardly exercising, oddly stretching his legs,
though hardly a soul was exerting himself any more than was necessary those days, given the shrinking rations of food and fresh water and the sapping seasonal heat. Some small part of me probably fathomed what he intended, and yet I simply watched the scene like a disinterested spectator, whose instant glint of prescience is somehow self-fulfilling.

The corporal approached and ordered them to halt. I could only partly hear them—the supply transports were being fueled and sent back to the south—though I could gather that Mrs. Matsui was objecting to what Endo seemed to want, which was an immediate private audience with one of the girls. As if to counter his rank she motioned back to the medical hut, but he pushed her aside, the girls falling away except for the one girl they were holding. She fell weakly to her knees, and it was Endo who raised her up with a stiff pull. She was not fighting him; in fact, her gait seemed to lighten, as if he were an old acquaintance and she was pleased to see him. Some men by the trucks had noticed the commotion and began calling to him, asking what was he up to, but shouting it in a hearty, knowing way. He ignored them and dragged her along quickly, until they reached his original position at the edge of the bush. When the two of them disappeared into the dense foliage and did not come back out for several minutes, the corporals and privates working near the trucks began to jog over, and it was then that I knew something irregular had occurred. I slipped beneath the netting of the mess tent and slowly made my way across the dusty red clay of the yard, past the officers’ quarters and privy, then past the narrow comfort house, its walls rough-hewn and unpainted and smelling of fresh-cut wood, to where the canopy rose up again and the shade cooled the air. My legs felt unbearably heavy,
and infirm. They were gathered there, in the trodden entrance of a patrol trail, the half-dozen or so men and the couple in their midst, him sitting on the ground with her lying down beside him.

She was dead. Her throat was slashed, deeply, very near to the bone. She had probably died in less than a minute. There was much blood, naturally, but it was almost wholly pooled in a broad blot beneath her, the dry red earth turned a rich hue of brown. There was little blood on her person, hardly a spatter or speck anywhere save on her collar and on the tops of her shoulders, where the fabric had begun blotting it back up. It was as though she had gently lain down for him and calmly waited for the slashing cut. The oddity was that he was unsoiled as well, completely untouched. There was nothing even on his hands, with which he was rubbing his close-shaven head. Repeatedly I asked him what had happened but he did not seem to hear me. He merely sat there, his knees limply splayed out, his cap fallen off, an errant expression on his face, like a man who has seen his other self.

Finally someone asked me what they ought to do, and as I held rank, I told the men to take Corporal Endo under arms to the officer-in-charge. While I stood at the edge of the trail they led him off. I recall myself, now, as having remained there after Endo had been escorted away. I ordered some others to fetch a stretcher for the girl’s body, and after a few moments, I was left alone with her. In the sudden quiet of the glade I felt I should kneel down. Her eyes were open, coal-dark but still bright and glassy. She did not look fearful or sad. She was no longer in mourning. And for the first time I appreciated what she truly looked like, the simple cast of her young girl’s face.

Endo was kept that night under close watch, and after a brief interrogation by Captain Ono, he confessed to the deed. The
following morning, just after dawn, under witness by the entire garrison, he was executed. Mrs. Matsui was present, and the girls, as was the dead girl’s sister, Kkutaeh, who looked upon the proceedings without the least affect. She stood somewhat aside from the others. The officer-in-charge announced that Endo had been charged not with murder, but with treasonous action against the corps. He should be considered as guilty as any saboteur who had stolen or despoiled the camp’s armament or rations. Endo looked terribly small and frail; he was so frightened he could hardly walk. They had to help him to the spot where he would kneel. By custom he was then offered a blade, but he dropped it before he could pierce his belly, retching instead. The swordsman did not hesitate and struck him cleanly, and his headless body pitched forward lightly, his delicate hands oddly outstretched, as if to break his fall.

ON ANY SATURDAY MORNING
in the Village of Bedley Run, one can see everywhere the prosperity and spirit and subtle industry of its citizens. There are the running, double-parked cars in front of Sammy’s Bagel Nook, where inside the store middle-aged fathers line up along the foggy glass case of salads and schmears with chubby half–Sunday papers wadded beneath their arms, impatiently waiting for the call of their number. There are the as-if-competing pairs of lady walkers, neon-headbanded and sweat-suited, marching in their bulbous, ice-white cross-training shoes up and down the main avenue, strutting brazenly in front of the suddenly tolerant, halting weekend traffic. There are the well-dressed young families, many with prams, peering hopefully into the picture window of the Egg & Pancake House for an open table, and if there isn’t one, strolling farther down Church to the birchwood-paneled Bakery Europa, the fancy new pastry shop where they prepare the noisy coffees. And all over the village is the bracing air of insistence, this lifting breeze of accomplishment, and
whether the people are happy or not in their lives, they have learned to keep steadily moving, moving all the time.

Though I shouldn’t, given the doctor’s strict orders of convalescence, I now drive through these Saturday streets for perhaps the thousandth time, slowing at the pedestrian crossing and then by my former store, which should be open for customers at this hour but is instead shadowy and shuttered. I notice that a royal-blue-and-white Town Realty sign—
PRIME RETAIL & APTS FOR SALE
/
LEASE
—has been placed in the window case, and the name of the agent on the bottom is of course Liv
Crawford, whose multiple phone numbers in bold lettering, despite my resistance, I have somehow accepted into memory.

The second-story apartment windows are dark as well, but curtains are up and the Hickeys’ car, a red Volvo station wagon with rusty wheelwells, is parked at the curb. In the past two weeks I’ve been home, I haven’t heard a word about the store or the Hickeys, or news about their son, and I’ve been too afraid to call the children’s ICU to find out what, if anything, might have occurred. I don’t wish to hear the nurse’s voice stiffen and lower. I don’t wish to hear her ask if I am family. During the quiet, inactive hours I’ve been stuck inside the house, I’ve been thinking again, too, of what it would mean for Patrick Hickey to survive, of the awful accident or gradual demise of another young boy or girl with the exactly right heart, and I begin to imagine—or even hope—that the necessary and terrible thing will happen, just come to pass, for it seems that if there should be a price to pay for darkly willing an innocent person’s fate, I may as well pay it, and not the beleaguered Hickeys, who must endure constant torment by such conflicting thoughts.

I didn’t even hear about the store being available from Liv Crawford, who probably thinks I would find it too disturbing in my recovering state to learn that Sunny Medical Supply has finally gone out of business. Well, I do. It’s not that I believed the shop would be there forever, or become a village institution, but I did hold out hope of the store’s being passed along in the coming years, if going by a different name, from the Hickeys to whomever and whomever else, a humble legacy that a decent man had once begun and built up and nurtured. In fact, it becomes even more troubling a notion to consider how quickly the memory of the store will fade away, once it reopens as something else, say a bookshop or a beauty salon, and how swiftly, too, the appellation of “Doc Hata” will dwindle and pass from the talk of the town, if it’s not completely gone already. I realize, probably too late, that I wish to leave something of myself, a small service to Bedley Run, and not simply a respectable headstone, but after seeing the generic, forlorn closedness of the store, I feel precipitously insubstantial behind the wheel, like an apparition who has visited too long.

But I am bolstered by Liv Crawford, whom I haven’t actually seen in some time but whose daily contact with me is most regular, in the form of a different catered box dinner delivered each afternoon by her new assistant, Julie, a cheery, bouncy young woman whose talk and dress are uncannily like Liv’s. Yesterday it was moussaka from the Aegean Shack, with flatbread and a Greek side salad, and though I’ve asked Julie to please tell Liv this catering must cease, when the doorbell rings at six o’clock I find myself swiftly ambling to the door, my senses keen for what Liv has decided on that day, whatever delectation and surprise she’s thought to order for me. In fact, I think I have never enjoyed such a range of dishes, or known they could be had in the immediate area, though even more satisfying than the cuisine has been the simple idea of Liv
taking a few moments from her busy afternoon to think of me. For a long time, particularly after Sunny left, I was certain that I would never get to enjoy the pleasantness and warmth of this kind of filiation and modest indulgence, and had resigned myself to a bachelor dotage of one-pot meals and (if careful) one-log fires and the placid chill of a zone-heated house. And I wonder if the spartan clime and space I’ve carefully arranged for myself has nearly shut me off, made me believe I ought never need to know what a sweet acceptance it can be, what good true ache can come by the door-to-door delivery of a hearty casserole in foil and a half-bottle of fruity red wine.

In this regard, I suppose, I feel as if I have been warmly taken up, in some manner adopted by Liv and then also by Renny Banerjee, who called on me two evenings ago to see if I was “getting enough rest.” He was his customary bright and lively. Of course his stated intentions could not mask the real reason he stopped in, which was to spy out whether I was possibly growing gloomy and depressed, as can often happen after a physical trauma or accident, and particularly to someone of my age. Renny did not call beforehand but rather showed up just after seven, I thought perhaps to see if I was really eating my Liv Crawford meal-on-wheels, or was in fact spooning most of it down the disposal, as might an old injured man with no more savor. I happily invited him in, and we sat at the kitchen table. Before eating I had changed into pajamas and a robe, and Renny seemed to consider my dress, patting me on the shoulder, as though he were wondering if I had never changed out of them, or had just risen from an unhealthfully long daytime nap. He had just come from work at the hospital, and I urged him to take off his suit jacket and tie and have the rest of the wine, only a third-glassful of which I was able to drink. I rose to get him a goblet but
he jumped up first and went to the cupboard, lingering for an instant over the sink, where dirty dishes and utensils from dinner (and lunch, and the dinner before) lay half-submerged in a bath of filmy water.

“Your color seems real good, Doc,” he said, patting about his own chin and cheek. “You look like you’re coming along great. Just great.”

“I feel pretty good. Though I’m not swimming or taking my walks yet.”

“But you will soon, right? I guess we’ve got maybe a few weeks of good weather left, and then it’ll all turn to crap. You’ll have to join a club or something. I think Liv belongs to a posh one in Highbridge, and I’m sure she’ll get you initiated, or whatever they do.”

“You don’t do that yourself, Renny?”

“Are you kidding me, Doc? Renny Banerjee? You know me, if there’s anything I do after work it’s straining my elbow at O’Donnell’s on Church Street.”

“Or paying visits to the area shut-ins,” I added, feeling a bit humorous, and maybe even sharp.

“Now please, that’s unfair,” he cried, smiling widely at me, loosening the knot of his tie. He took a big, washing gulp of the Beaujolais. “I come of my own accord. Really. Not even Liv put me up to anything, at least not in regard to you. Toward the end of the day I just thought, ‘I want to say hello to Doc Hata.’ So here I am.”

“I’m happy you came, Renny. Please don’t let me suggest otherwise.”

“Certainly not,” he said brightly. “Well, what’s it been, almost two weeks now? You sound fine, and you haven’t coughed since I’ve been here.”

“I do, but just a little in the mornings.”

“That’s expected. But no fever, or infections, no other complications, right?”

“I’m fine. You should be my doctor, Renny.”

“I probably should! I don’t think you’re fragile. My medical philosophy is that after troubles, one resumes the normal routine, as long as it’s not totally damaging. I tore up a knee some years ago, when I used to play squash, and for months afterward I religiously did my physical therapy, and then I even changed my diet, and soon after that I stopped smoking and drinking. I was so completely wrapped up in fixing myself, fixing my weak knee, that I began to discover all sorts of other infirmities, and potential ones. I was so health-conscious that I felt sure I was becoming utterly decrepit. This of course coincided with something of a life crisis, and also my first go-round with Liv, and I can tell you she was a monster then, not like now. Not a good combination, you’ll know. So it’s no surprise I became quite deeply depressed.”

“You?” I said, having some difficulty imagining the ebullient Renny Banerjee sitting in a darkened room, dolefully rubbing his face.

“Absolutely. I never told anybody. I don’t go to doctors, you know. But I got bad enough that I asked Johnny Barnes to put me on something.”

“He’s only a pharmacist,” I said. “He could have gotten in big trouble.”

“He’s a good man, Doc. Anyhow, after a couple weeks I stopped taking them. You know what I did? I said hell with a perfect knee and I didn’t bother anymore. The thing clicks a little but it’s okay. I can run around. And the meds were giving me another problem, of a performance nature, and there’s really nothing more depressing than that for a still youngish man. So I go back to
eating animals and smoking and drinking, back to the way it was and always should be. Back in my own skin, you’ll know. But you can see this.”

“Yes I do,” I told him, appreciative of his friendly disclosures. And I began to glance about the kitchen and family room, and in my mind’s eye back to the hall and parlor, and I put myself in Renny’s place, or Liv’s assistant Julie’s, to consider if on initial impression there were obvious indications that I was conducting myself differently since coming home. It was true that I had not been swimming or walking or doing much of anything outdoors, not even the early raking and planting or the minor restorations about the house and garden. But someone who knew me would probably wonder about the unswept walk or the dishes in the sink or the pile of held mail in a bin by the door that hasn’t been gone through yet, despite sitting there for a week. If they went upstairs, they would see several hampers of laundry to be done, my bathroom basin and tub and toilet in dire need of a scrub, and all kinds of robes and towels hung over the doors. Perhaps most other seventy-odd-year-old men of decent means would have the usual help, especially in a house as large as mine. But I’ve never required it even when I was running the store full-time, as I’ve always been active and vigilant and perched right atop the ever-threatening domestic entropy and chaos. Though now, or in the recent now, I’ve begun to understand how easily one can stand by and watch a pile of dross steadily grow, allow the fetter of one’s quotidian life to become an unwieldy accumulation, which seems somehow much more daunting to clear away once it has settled, gained a repose.

“You probably don’t see, Doc,” Renny said, pouring out the rest of the small bottle into his glass, “how critical and difficult it is for me to remain my own wretchedly constituted self. Particularly
now that I’m back with Lightning Liv. Yes, it’s true. We’re at it again. Just a few weeks now. You could say I hold you solely responsible.”

“It can be said I lighted the fire,” I murmured, going to the pantry in the hope of finding another bottle for him, which I did, a crusty-looking Italian-style wine in a basket. He gave me a thumbs-up, and a sly Renny grin for my modest joke. I said to him, “I hope you know I’m very pleased for you both.”

“I know you’re happy about the development, Doc, but what about us? We’re sort of thrilled about it all, sure, but also definitely miserable again, like we’re sharing the same low-grade fever. At least I am. To tell the truth, I’m not sleeping so well at night, and I’m not talking about when we’re together. I’m a nervous wreck, thinking about all the things Liv is talking about me doing.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Oh, it’s a mess, you’ll know.” He had pulled off his tie and was winding it around his hand, then letting it unravel. “For starters, she has me looking around for a better, bigger job. But really I don’t want a bigger job. She thinks I’ve settled, gotten too comfortable at the hospital. I say what the hell is wrong with too comfortable? I’ve got a pretty much worry-free system for myself. Next thing she brings up is how I should sell my condo and buy a real house. And what a ‘real house’ really means scares me. Liv herself is one big stressor, with a host of others ready in her pockets. She’s MIRVing, Doc, targeting me all over.”

“She has much warm feeling to offer, I think.”

“I know, I know. You’re absolutely right. You know what she said last night at my place? You won’t believe this. She’s talking about the big one. ‘Renny,’ she says, ‘I’m going to be forty-two in a few weeks. I’m past my time.’ I didn’t answer her, because you’ll know,
Doc, I was sort of scared to awful death, and then she gets up from bed and goes to the bathroom and starts to cry. She comes back with a washed face and she turns out the light and just clings to me, real tight. I didn’t get a wink of sleep.”

“She would like to get married?”

“Oh, God, no. I can’t believe that. But maybe everything just short of it. This morning she’s got that farness in her eyes, staring at me over her coffee mug, the I’m-closing-this-one-if-it-kills-me look. Doc, I feel my life passing before me.”

“If I may say something, Renny, it seems that perhaps you might want some of the same things as Liv….”

Renny didn’t answer right away, helping me instead with the screwpull, as the cork was old and crumbling. When he finally got it open he poured it out and I could see from his expression that the wine was no good anymore, if it ever had been. It was brownish and a bit cloudy. But I had nothing else in the house and Renny poured a full glass anyway, and I found him some pretzels to mask the taste.