Dog Tags (14 page)

The frozen earth refused spades. Bewley was marched off and returned with two picks. He and Ewald assaulted the adamant ground, alternating blows, marrying into an angry, explosive rhythm; we others watched, breathed at the same angry pace so that each stroke seemed to raise a puff of frosty mist. Bewley and Ewald set their teeth; their eyes glittered, their chests heaved, the picks rose and fell, rose and fell; they grunted and we grunted with them; stroke, grunt, puff, stroke, grunt, puff. They halted, we all halted; Collins and Mulberg stepped in. Bewley slumped. Ewald stood grim, triumphant. We—they—worked for a full hour. We admired our creation. Ewald urinated before us all and a cheer went up with the hiss, the hovering white steam. Bewley and Sunderman were marched off with the tools. “Good arch,” Trezevant said to Ewald, “great range.” We returned to the hut. Scafa had fouled himself. We sprawled. We waited.

The extra ration proved to be one cup of cracked corn for each man. The black kettle squatted neutral over the fire; into the boiling water we chuted our millet, our cracked corn; Trezevant stirred, like an alchemist. The men sat sullen, cradling cups like blind beggars. Collins and Mulberg swore steadily. Those two were brown-haired, large-nosed, might have been brothers; Mulberg was taller and heavier. I fed Scafa, Trezevant fed Cuttis, then I fed Oldridge. It was more than dysentery; it was exhaustion, despair, hunger, loss of blood, of juices. Sunderman said, “How long till real chow, I wonder,” and I had not the heart to tell him, but Trezevant did: “This is real chow. You eat it all, soldier. Remember there's children starving in China.”

“I mean, when the kitchens get set up.”

“The kitchens are all set up,” Trezevant said, hulking, calm. “Shit. I grew up on meals like this.” The men were warm; in places the floor was hot, and they shifted.

“Plenty of wood, anyway,” I said. “We'll keep a fire watch at night.”

Mulberg said, “We?”

“You,” I said. For a moment, after the grainy slush, the belly was full, but soon the hunger returned, like a boy's lust, a miser's greed. In the first camp shock had protected us; in the storm of rage, hate, guilt and fear there had been little passion to spare for hunger. And then days of dull indifference; reprieved from death by fire, we clotted slowly into death by ice, and the spirit glimmered low; even Kinsella congealed. Then we had been moved, and it was as if the simple conquest of physical space revived us; first onto the trucks, then into the sharp wind; men complained of hunger again, and I rejoiced that they were so alive. In the hour before our arrival, and for the rest of that night, I had known hunger as a cancer, an intruder, a hostile foreign body sucking my substance; I had contracted, quivered, clenched my teeth against it; I was popeyed and brittle with hunger, and visions of sugarplums danced in my head, also brisket, Yankee bean soup, charlotte russe, fried eggs and even beef testicles, which I had eaten only once and which were prodigiously listed as frivolités du chef (“The turnover in the kitchen,” my then inamorata had remarked, “must be considerable”).

All this running through my cretin's noggin, my gut pleading. In thine image. At the point of death man is obliged to fart and giggle. Retching and yakking. Well enough to warn the men against culinary fantasies, but a man brought up on Hannah's and Pinsky's notions of the necessary tended toward gustatory masturbation in the best of times. Trezevant scoffed but had not achieved a couple of hundred pounds on collard greens alone, whatever they were; I would ask him. Chitlins I knew, and hominy. And Ewald, silent vengeful Ewald, buttery Ewald: on what Scandinavian glories had he waxed fat? I guessed at eight or nine hundred calories a day, so far; and our army liked thirty-five hundred. The Chinese army? Less. Far less, and it would not be easy now to explain that Americans were different. Different. How, different?

Trezevant disinterred the cigarette, lit it, held it to Oldridge's lips. “A cigarette!” Sunderman said. Trezevant held it to Cuttis's lips, to Scafa's, took a drag himself and passed it on. I opened my mouth to decline the gift, but an obscure echo of some militant uncle checked the impulse: if Trez should think it was color? I drew in smoke, passed the cigarette: “No more for me. I quit.” “I don't smoke,” Mulberg said, and Ewald declined with a shake of the head.

There had been no distribution of clothing, but three wadded yards of cheap cotton had been flung into the hut. I had sponged Yuscavage's shoulder with hot water and bound him up, no infection; the wound would heal slowly but it would heal. There were other wounds to come, some perhaps that would not heal.

They rested, limp in the light of the puny bulb.

“Sons of bitches never brought clothes,” Collins said.

“That corn was enough excitement for one day,” I said. “Hell, we're warm.”

Collins scoffed. “Corn. And those slant bastards eating chop suey. With meat. And then fucking each other.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“That's what I heard,” Collins said. “They fuck each other.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Go to hell,” Collins said.

“Democracy,” I said. “No more officers.”

“That's it,” he said.

“Step outside?”

Trezevant laughed and I caught, or thought I caught, a gleam of approval. Trezevant was no child. Ewald might be. I looked at my little platoon, each in turn, and wondered who would live and who would die.

Next day we were marched, those who could walk, to a long wooden shed where each man was issued a pair of cotton socks and a padded blue cotton uniform; and then marched home again. A flying squad arrived shortly with an identical issue for the prostrate, though we did not dress the dysenteries. The uniforms were all the same size, 38 short, I judged, single-breasted, good needlework, nothing fancy in the cut. Chinese quartermasters seemed, like all quartermasters, grudging malcontents. As in any advanced society we were listed: name, rank, serial number, date of birth. Under guard, Kinsella visited and delivered a brief but pungent patriotic oration. He left amid silence. I wondered if our little world was improving or degenerating: we had heat now, and clothing, and what might pass for food, but in the new uniforms the men seemed more, well, uniform: more silent, passive, acquiescent, as if made brutish, almost content by the ordeal and its end. At the noonday meal they were complacent, considerate, benevolent. I too accepted: perhaps now I would not die. I thought of Carol, and of Jacob, and was too empty for tears.

“Ou-yang,” I said to the guard, and was escorted to Ou-yang. I was offered a chair and a cup of tea. I accepted a cigarette. I had decided that I would decline nothing. Mark that down. I stuck the cigarette behind my ear and was startled by the soundless echo of a Frenchman who had once taken two from me: “pour mon frère qui n'a pas de travail.” “How many doctors have you?”

“One,” Ou-yang said. “Pee-joe. Do you know that word?”

I shook my head.

“Pee-joe,” Ou-yang said. “It means
beer
in Chinese.”

“Die-foo pee-joe,” I said.

“No. Pee-joe die-foo. Name first, title second. We Chinese, you know. Backward.
Upside
down. Look here.” He opened a desk drawer, rummaged, unfolded a map. “The world.” He passed it to me, and I examined it with a bewildering sense of error and dislocation: a huge central land-mass, bracketed by oceans in turn bracketed by small strips of the good old U.S. of A.; the edges of the map ran through Grand Forks, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth. “A new perspective,” I said.

“Travel is broadening,” he said.

I returned the map. “I want permission to move freely. Let me have bandages and a simple antiseptic.”

“House calls,” Ou-yang said, and I could not help laughing. Treason. Sorry. The laughter seized me and I struggled to control it. We would all go mad and die laughing. Perhaps the Chinese would win quickly. For the first time I contemplated the war's end, and was sobered. Perhaps the Americans would drop the bomb. Perhaps we would kill everybody and occupy Asia. Homesteaders. Frontiers. Free land for all, no more unemployment.

Deliberately I calmed myself. On a shelf behind Ou-yang stood a small white porcelain bowl inlaid with a translucent pattern of rice grains. I concentrated on the bowl. I counted the grains. Sanity returned. I craned: in the bowl were three gnarled tubers, yellow-brown.

Ou-yang was pensive, and sipped tea. This was so civilized. I recalled movies, the British and German officers discussing Shakespeare. Von Waldstein with his year at Oxford. You must understand, my dear Cavendish, that the sun has set on the British empire. “Naturally,” I said, additional dialogue by B. Beer, “you have my word for my good conduct.”

“But is it not,” von Ou-yang asked politely, “every officer's duty to escape?”

“Not this time,” I said. “Where? Manchuria? Siberia?”

“Not this time,” he said. He appeared to be meditating vaster concepts. “Yes. It's a good idea. You must let me
think
about it.”

“Is there a clinic here? For your own men?”

“We have an infirmary,” he said. “Two beds, a thermometer, two medicines, one for loose
bowels
and one for constipation. We have
herbs
, for fever. We have not much of anything. Our medical people are in the lines. And the villages,” he added sourly. “All war is total war now.”

I agreed wearily. “Forget that. We have other problems, terrible problems. This is a real mess, the end of the world. There are men who need amputations. Transfusions. There'll be pneumonia. There's dysentery, there's internal bleeding, there's starvation. We need a whole hospital. Do you see? If I can't treat them, a lot of these men will die.”

“Then they will die,” Ou-yang said equably. “Many have died already.”

“It's inhuman.” I remember my fists were balled in my lap and I was no longer full of insane laughter. “Let me use your infirmary.”

“No.”

“Two hours a day. An hour.”

“No.”

No. Redress, petition. My congressman. The Red Cross. I bowed my head and emitted a sobbing growl, pure defeat, pain.

“You are not a permanent soldier,” Ou-yang said.

“Sometimes I wonder,” I said. “No. I was drafted. I think of myself as a permanent doctor. And now a permanent prisoner.”

“No. Some day you will go
home
.” He smiled. “The sooner the better.”

“Amen.” We were back in the cinema but the sentiment was acceptable.

“Return to your hut,” he said. “I will send for you.”

“What are those?” Those tubers.

He turned to see, and frowned. “Wait. I forget the name in English. Like carrots.”

“Turnips.”

“Turnips. Pickled.”

“Give them to me.”

“To you?”

Glumly I sorted phrases. Oh for a world of yes and no, I live I die I love I hate. “The day may come,” I said, “when we fight for a blade of grass. When we drink the wind and eat the dead. We can't count on a damn thing.”

“Take them,” he shrugged, and dismissed me.

10

“What does it matter who?” Benny asked, starchy, peeved at these gnats. Though Major Cornelius was no mite: tall, thin, white-blond, azure-eyed. A watercolor, slightly run, highlights of intelligence and secret depravity in the eyes. “You want to know why.”

“We want to know all we can,” Cornelius said. “And now this.” He tapped the questionnaire. “Not as straightforward as we would have liked.”

“I don't imagine anything is.” To Parsons Benny said, “May I have a cup of that coffee?”

“Sugar? Vap?”

“Both, thanks. You're spoiled rotten.”

Alex smiled, sympathetic and priestly.

Gabol asked, “How's your weight?”

“What do you care? You're a shrink.”

“Hah. You're an intern.”

Without budging, Cornelius seemed to rap for order. “One man in three collaborated,” he said.

“One man in three died,” Benny said.

“Then start there. Of what?”

“Wounds, dysentery, pneumonia, one heart attack that I know of; inanition.”

“And at the hands of the Chinese?”

“None that I know of. Sorry to disappoint. Several beatings, and sustained psychological pressure, but no physical torture and no killings. Not on my turf, anyway.”

“On your what?”

“Never mind,” Benny said.

“How many could have been saved by good medical care?”

“Two-thirds,” Benny said. “Maybe all. And good food. Or no war.”

“How did the survivors react?”

“React?” This albino. “Same way civilians do, down deep. Indifference. Relief that it was the other guy, or that there was more to go around.”

“Benny,” Gabol said reproachfully.

“Socks particularly,” Benny said. “Socks wore out fast. In winter an extra pair was useful.”

Cornelius sighed.

“Oh listen,” Benny said, “we were all half-dead. There were bunches that hung together, took care of each other. But death was a fact of life. At first, anyway. Hardly anybody died after the first six months, but we never knew. It wasn't a special occasion. No flowers, no music. Just haul him out and bury him. We had one man used to say a prayer when he heard about a death, but he was a crazy.”

“Did progressives and reactionaries respond the same way?” Alex spoke softly, genuinely curious. “To the deaths, I mean.”

“There weren't any progressives and reactionaries while we were dying. That came later.”

“Your own feelings?”

“Frustration.”

“Anger?”

“Professional.”

“Sympathy?”

Benny took refuge in coffee. Soon he said, “Yes.”

They waited. “Go on,” Cornelius said.

“I can't,” Benny said. “Any man who dies, it might have been you. So you're sorry for him. Millions of people die every day.”