And I said to her, strangely thinking of that, “I remember now, how he said you were with child.”
“I heard him tell you.”
“Is it true?”
“No.”
“He said you were pregnant not by him but by another, even before you came here.”
“It’s not true.”
“Are you lying to me, K? You don’t have to lie to me.”
“I’m not lying,” she said. But she rose, turning away, her arms tight about her.
“Let me see your body, then,” I asked, trying to figure if she were, and trying to believe how it could be mine.
“There’s nothing in me. There can’t be. If there is, then God forgive me for what I’ll do.”
“Let me see you.”
K stood still for a moment, then went over to the lone slatted window. The light from outside was gray and soft; an afternoon rain was falling gently, and in its cast she looked even younger than she was. Like a girl waiting to go play outside. And I thought she was about to leave through it, that she might really try to climb out, though of course there was nowhere to go. But instead she turned and gazed at me for what seemed a very long time. Her expression was not sad or fearful or confused. She untied the string of her baggy trousers and let them fall down at her feet. Her rough cotton blouse hung loosely over her belly, the patch below that showing darkly through the gauzy material. Her calves and ankles were thin, but her feet especially so, the tops of them shockingly bony, reedy and translucent. Though I was weak I sat up, not from desire but because I wanted her to stop. Though I could not say so. She loosened the waist knot of the blouse so that it came open and fell, and then she was wholly naked before the window, coolly burnished, smooth. Her middle seemed no fuller than the rest, which was underfed and thin but still of amazing riches to me. I thought she was the most beautiful statue of herself. I put out my hand and she came to me, not looking at me anymore, and I kissed the tepid skin of her, at her belly and below, and I could taste her, her sharp-sweetness and unwashedness and her living body underneath. My eyes and cheeks felt shattered but I pressed against her anyway, more than I could bear. I was nearly crying from the pain. She did not hold me but she did not push me away. I never meant for this but I could no longer balk, or control myself, and then something inside her collapsed, snapped clean, giving way like some storm-sieged roof, and then I descended upon her, and I searched her, every lighted and darkened corner, and every room.
And yet afterward — I don’t know how long, for time seemed to bend upon itself inside the small ward — we were simply sitting on either end of the cot, not speaking, not meeting each other’s eyes. I could only glance over at her and see how she was bent over her knees and cradling her face in the crook of her arm. Not weeping or moaning, but figured in certain quiet. Almost hiding there, though I was sure — even as young and earnest and fearful as I was — it was not just from me; it was from that place and time, the whole picture and small detail, from the homely, dim structure about us, the squalor of the heavy air, from the ennui and restiveness of the entire encampment, the surreally distant war, and then of course from who I was as well. For in my own way I comprised it, my yearning and wishing and my wanton hope, the sum of which, at end, amounted to a complete and utter fraudulence. For that is, finally, what she would escape if she could, not the ever-imminent misery and horror but the gentle boy-face of it, the smoothness and equability, the picture of someone heroic enough to act only upon his own trembling desire.
One could say, I suppose, that I was a very young man. Which of course I was. But I bring this up not to excuse myself or to try to mitigate my actions or to confess. Rather, I mean it to stand simply as a fact. I was young and callow, but that youthfulness was also inescapably pure. It was wholehearted, and so native to me. Completely mine. And that was the terribleness of it. For I must have wanted her unto death, and I could not bear anyone else having her, and I allowed events to occur because of that feeling, even if it meant I would lose her forever.
I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke to the sound of footfalls outside on the landing. It was Captain Ono, I knew, by the dull ring of his keys. K was no longer with me in the ward room. The captain told the sentries they were relieved of their posts for one hour. One of them barked a response and then they marched away. The captain unlocked the infirmary door and stepped inside. I could hear him going to the examination room, where his desk was, and I tried to get up quickly but I lost balance and had to pause a moment. Then I heard him say, “You are looking quite wonderful this afternoon.”
There was no answer, but he said anyway, “See now, how I’ve brought you something. Some mochi, the last of a box I received last month. They’re hardly perfect, but one can still eat them. Go ahead, they’re for no one else.”
I would have gone right over to them and confronted him but the sound of his voice, the way he was speaking to her almost decorously, froze me. To hear him was to realize how I must have sounded when I was with her, though his tone was elegant, still circumspect, only the least bit attenuated. He knew I was there in the ward, of course, but there was no care of that, as though he truly did own my life, or more, that I wasn’t really living anymore, that I’d never set foot again outside the sick house. I went to the door, which led to a tiny hall, and I could see them there, her sitting on the exam table and him before her on the chair, his back to me.
“I wish for you to eat them,” he said, holding them out. “They come from a venerable sweet shop in my hometown, which is famous throughout the province. My mother sent them to me, and it is amazing that they actually arrived. These last two are quite delicious. You can see one is rolled in green tea, the other in black sesame seeds. If you are bashful we can share. Take one, and I’ll have the other. Come now, or you’ll force me to choose for you.”
The captain tried to make a show of picking one, but she didn’t move or say anything. He held up the box to her again and she could hardly shake her head. He rose then with gravity and I was sure he was going to strike her, but he suddenly embraced her instead, roundly and warmly, clutching her as if he feared he might never see her again. And without realizing it, I found myself in the center of the exam room, mere steps from them. I could have reached and touched his shoulder, the blunt back of his head. I was unarmed and weakened but I could have struck him. And yet on sighting him, on seeing him holding her so, I felt a certain sadness for him, the humane sorrow one has when one witnesses the briefest moment of another’s abandon and self-loss, which is a levity, and a phantom death, and enviable enough.
K was now staring hard at me, her arms stiffly around his back. She was quiet, not trying to hide my presence from him — for he well knew I was there in the room with them and was completely unconcerned, as if I were still his loyal assistant — but directing me, motioning with her eyes that I go to the cabinet of surgical tools and instruments. The wide, rotting planks of the floorboards groaned under my movement, and the captain only said, stepping back from K and hardly glancing at me, “There you are, Lieutenant. I expect when you’re recovered you’ll resume your duties. You’ll remain here a few days. Now leave.”