Yangtze, downstream of where the Nipponese were prosecuting the China
Incident, and he has seen refugees from places like Nanjing starve to death
in the gutters of Shanghai. He has himself killed people who were trying to
storm the riverboats it was his duty to protect. He thinks that he has never
seen, and will never see, anything as terrible as those stone faced Chinese
women holding their white babies, not even blinking as the firecrackers
explode all around them.
Until, that is, he looks into the faces of certain Marines who stare
into that crowd and see their own faces looking back at them, pudgy with
baby fat and streaked with tears. Some of them seem to think it's all a
joke. But many of the Marines who march out of their empty barracks that
morning sane and solid men, have, by the time they reach the gunboats
waiting for them at the Bund, gone mad. They don't show it. But Shaftoe can
see in their eyes that something has given way inside.
The very best men in the regiment are in a foul mood. The ones like
Shaftoe, who didn't get involved with the Chinese women, are still leaving
plenty behind: houses with maids and shoeshine boys and coolies, with women
and opium for almost nothing. They don't know where they are being shipped
off to, but it's safe to say that their twenty one dollars a month won't go
as far. They'll be in barracks and they'll have to learn to polish their own
boots again. When the gangplanks are drawn in from the stone edge of the
Bund, they are cut off from a whole world that they'll never see again, a
world where they were kings. Now they are Marines again, It's okay with
Shaftoe, who wants to be a Marine. But many of the men have become middle
aged here, and don't.
The guilty men duck belowdecks. Shaftoe remains on the deck of the
gunboat, which casts off from the Bund, headed for the cruiser Augusta,
which awaits in mid channel.
The Bund is jammed with onlookers in a riot of differently colored
clothing, so one patch of uniform drab catches his eye: a group of Nip
soldiers who've come down to bid their Yank counterparts a sarcastic
farewell. Shaftoe scans the group looking for someone tall and bulky, and
picks him out easily. Goto Dengo's waving to him.
Shaftoe takes his helmet off and waves back. Then, on impulse, just for
the hell of it, he winds up and flings the helmet directly at Goto Dengo's
head. The throw goes awry and Goto Dengo has to knock down about a dozen of
his comrades in order to catch it. All of them seem to think that it is a
high honor, as well as tremendously amusing, to be knocked down by Goto
Dengo.
Twenty seconds later, a comet sails up out of the flesh cosmos of the
Bund and bounces on the wooden deck of the gunboat a hell of a throw. Goto
Dengo is showing off his follow through. The projectile is a rock with a
white streamer wrapped around it. Shaftoe runs over and snatches it. The
streamer is one of those thousand stitch headbands (supposedly; he's taken a
few off of unconscious Nips, but he's never bothered to count the stitches)
that they tie around their heads as a good luck charm; it has a meatball in
the center and some Nip writing to either side. He unties it from around the
rock. In so doing he realizes, suddenly, that it's not a rock after all; it
is a hand grenade! But good old Goto Dengo was just joking he didn't pull
the pin. A nice souvenir for Bobby Shaftoe.
***
Shaftoe's first haiku (December 1940) was a quick and dirty adaptation
of the Marine Creed:
This is my rifle
There are many like it but
This rifle is mine.
He wrote it under the following circumstances: Shaftoe and the rest of
Fourth Marines were stationed in Shanghai so that they could guard the
International Settlement and work as muscle on the gunboats of the Yangtze
River Patrol. His platoon had just come back from the Last Patrol: a
thousand mile reconnaissance in force all the way up past what was left of
Nanjing, to Hankow, and back. Marines had been doing this ever since the
Boxer Rebellion, through civil wars and everything else. But towards the end
of 1940, what with the Nips (1) basically running all of
northeast China now, the politicians back in D.C. had finally thrown in the
towel and told the China Marines not to steam up the Yangtze any more.
Now, the Old Breed Marines like Frick claimed they could tell the
difference between organized brigands; armed mobs of starving peasants;
rogue Nationalists; Communist guerrillas; and the irregular forces in the
pay of warlords. But to Bobby Shaftoe they were all just crazy, armed slopes
who wanted a piece of the Yangtze River Patrol. The Last Patrol had been a
wild trip. But it was over and they were back in Shanghai now, the safest
place you could be in China, and about a hundred times more dangerous than
the most dangerous place you could be in America. They had climbed off the
gunboat six hours ago, gone to a bar, and not come out until just now, when
they had decided it was high time they went to a whorehouse. On their way,
they happened to pass this Nip restaurant.
Bobby Shaftoe had looked in the windows of the place before, and
watched the man with the knife, trying to figure out what the hell he was
doing. It looked a hell of a lot like he was cutting up uncooked fish and
putting the raw meat on bullets of rice and handing it over to the Nips on
the other side of the counter, who were wolfing it down.
It had to be some kind of optical illusion. The fish must have been
precooked in the back room.
This had been nagging at Shaftoe for about a year. As he and the other
horny drunk Marines went by the place, he slowed down to peer through the
window, trying to gather more evidence. He could swear that some of that
fish looked ruby red, which it wouldn't have been if it were cooked.
One of his buddies, Rhodes from Shreveport, noticed him looking. He
dared Shaftoe to go in there and sit down at that bar. Then another private,
Gowicki from Pittsburgh, double dared him!
Shaftoe sucked his teeth and considered the matter. He had already made
up his mind that he was going to do it. He was a sniper scout, and it was in
his nature to do crazy shit like this; but it was also part of his training
to scan the terrain carefully before venturing in.
The restaurant was three quarters full, and everyone in the place was a
uniformed member of the Nipponese military. At the bar where the man was
cutting up the apparently raw fish, there was a marked concentration of
officers; if you only had one grenade, that's where you'd throw it. Most of
the place was filled with long tables where enlisted men sat, drinking
noodle soup from steaming urns. Shaftoe paid particular attention to these,
because they were the ones who were going to be beating the shit out of him
in about sixty seconds. Some were there alone, with reading material. A
cluster of them, back in one corner, were paying attention to one fellow who
was apparently telling a joke or story.
The longer Shaftoe spent reconnoitering the place, the more convinced
Rhodes and Gowicki became that he was actually going to do it. They became
excited and called for the other Marines, who had gone ahead of them down
the block, headed for that whorehouse.
Shaftoe saw the others coming back his tactical reserve. "What the
fuck," he said, and went into the restaurant. Behind him, he could hear the
others shouting excitedly; they couldn't believe he was doing it. When
Shaftoe stepped over the threshold of that Nip restaurant, he passed into
the realm of legend.
All the Nips looked up at him when he came in the door. If they were
surprised, they didn't show it. The chef behind the counter began to holler
out some kind of ritual greeting, which faltered and trailed off as he got a
look at what had just come in. The fellow in the back of the room a husky,
pink cheeked Nip continued telling his joke or story or whatever it was.
Shaftoe nodded to no one in particular, then stepped to the nearest
empty chair at the bar and sat down.
Other Marines would have waited until the whole squad had assembled.
Then they would have invaded the restaurant en masse, knocked over a few
chairs, spilled some soup. But Shaftoe had seized the initiative before the
others could do any such thing and gone in by himself as a sniper scout was
supposed to do. It was not just because be was a sniper scout, though. It
was also because he was Bobby Shaftoe, and he was sincerely curious about
this place, and if he could, he wanted to spend a few calm minutes in here
and learn a few things about it before the fun started.
It helped, of course, that Shaftoe was a quiet and contemplative drunk,
not a dangerous explosive drunk. He must have reeked of beer (those Krauts
in Tsingtao cranked out a brew whose taste took him right back to Wisconsin,
and he was homesick). But he wasn't hollering or knocking things over.
The chef was busy crafting one of his little morsels and pretended to
ignore Shaftoe. The other men at the counter stared coldly at Shaftoe for a
while, then turned their attentions back to their food. Shaftoe looked at
the array of raw fish laid out on shaved ice behind the bar, then looked
around the room. The guy back in the corner was talking in short bursts,
reading from a notebook. He would speak maybe ten or twenty words, and then
his little audience would turn to one another and grin, or grimace, or
sometimes even make a patter of applause. He wasn't delivering his material
like a dirty joke. He spoke precisely and expressively.
Fuck! He was reading poetry! Shaftoe had no idea what he was saying,
but he could tell, by the sound of it, that it must be poetry. Didn't rhyme
though. But the Nips did everything queerly.
He noticed that the chef was glaring at him. He cleared his throat,
which was useless since he couldn't speak Nip. He looked at some of that
ruby red fish behind the bar, pointed to it, held up two fingers.
Everyone was startled that the American had actually placed an order.
The tension was broken, only a little. The chef went to work and produced
two morsels, which he served up on a wooden pedestal.
Shaftoe had been trained to eat insects, and to bite the heads off
chickens, so he figured he could handle this. He picked the morsels up in
his fingers, just like the Nips were doing, and ate them. They were good. He
ordered two more, of another variety. The guy in the corner kept reading
poetry. Shaftoe ate his morsels and then ordered some more. For perhaps ten
seconds, between the taste of the fish and the sound of the poetry, he
actually felt comfortable here, and forgot that he was merely instigating a
vicious racial brawl.
The third order looked different: laid over the top of the raw fish
were thin translucent sheets of some kind of moist, glistening material. It
looked sort of like butcher paper soaked in oil. Shaftoe gawked at it for a
while, trying to identify it, but it looked like no foodstuff he knew of. He
glanced left and right, hoping that one of the Nips had ordered the same
stuff, so that he could watch and learn the right way to eat it. No luck.
Hell, they were officers. Maybe one of them spoke a little English. "
'Scuse me. What's this?" Shaftoe said, peeling up one corner of the eerie
membrane.
The chef looked up at him nervously, then scanned the bar, polling the
customers. Discussion ensued. Finally, a Nip officer at the end of the bar,
a naval lieutenant, stood up and spoke to Bobby Shaftoe.
"Seaweed."
Shaftoe did not particularly like the lieutenant's tone of voice
hostile and sullen. This, combined with the look on his face, seemed to say,
You'll never understand it, you farmer, so why don't you just think of it as
seaweed.
Shaftoe folded his hands primly in his lap, regarded the seaweed for a
few moments, and then looked up at the lieutenant, who was still gazing at
him expressionlessly. "What kind of seaweed, sir?" he said.
Significant glances began flying around the restaurant, like semaphores
before a naval engagement. The poetry reading seemed to have stopped, and a
migration of enlisted men had begun from the back of the room. Meanwhile the
lieutenant translated Shaftoe's inquiry to the others, who discussed it in
some detail, as if it were a major policy initiative from Franklin Delano
Roosevelt.
The lieutenant and the chef exchanged words. Then the lieutenant looked
at Shaftoe again. "He say, you pay now." The chef held up one hand and
rubbed his fingers and thumb together.
A year of working the Yangtze River Patrol had given Bobby Shaftoe
nerves of titanium, and unlimited faith in his comrades, and so he resisted
the impulse to turn his head and look out the window. He already knew
exactly what he would see: Marines, shoulder to shoulder, ready to die for
him. He scratched the new tattoo on his forearm: a dragon. His dirty
fingernails, passing over the fresh scabs, made a rasping sound in the
utterly silent restaurant.
"You didn't answer my question," Shaftoe said, pronouncing the words
with a drunk's precision.
The lieutenant translated this into Nipponese. More discussion. But
this time it was curt and decisive. Shaftoe could tell that they were about
to bounce him. He squared his shoulders.
The Nips were good; they mounted an organized charge out the door, onto
the sidewalk, and engaged the Marines, before anyone actually laid a hand on
Shaftoe. This spoiling attack prevented the Marines from invading the
restaurant proper, which would have disturbed the officers' meal and, with
any luck, led to untold property damage. Shaftoe then felt himself being
grabbed from behind by at least three people and hoisted into the air. He
made eye contact with the lieutenant while this was happening, and shouted:
"Are you bullshitting me about the seaweed?"
As brawls went, the only remarkable part of this one was the way he was
carried out to the street before he could actually get started. Then it was
like all the other street fights he'd been in with Nip soldiers in Shanghai.
These all came down to American brawn (you didn't get picked for the Fourth
Regiment unless you were an impressive looking six footer) versus that
Nipponese chop socky.
Shaftoe wasn't a boxer. He was a wrestler. This was to his advantage.
The other Marines would put up their dukes and try to fight it out Marquis
of Queensberry style no match for chop socky. Shaftoe had no illusions about
his boxing, so he would just put his head down and charge like a bull, take
a few blows to the face on his way in, but usually get a solid hold on his
opponent and slam him into the cobblestones. Usually that shook the Nip up
enough that Shaftoe could get him in a full nelson or a hammerlock and get
him to cry uncle.
The guys who were carrying him out of the restaurant got jumped by
Marines as soon as they were in the open. Shaftoe found himself going up
against an opponent who was at least as tall as he was, which was unusual.
This one had a solid build, too. Not like a sumo wrestler. More like a
football player a lineman, with a bit of a gut. He was a strong S.O.B. and
Shaftoe knew right away that he was in for a real scrape. The guy had a
different style of wrestling from the American, which (as Shaftoe learned
the hard way) included some illegal maneuvers: partial strangulation and
powerful, short punches to major nerve centers. The gulf between Shaftoe's
mind and body, already wedged open by alcohol, was yanked open to a chasm by
these techniques. He ended up lying on the sidewalk, helpless and paralyzed,
staring up into the chubby face of his opponent. This was (he realized) the
same guy who'd been sitting in the corner of the restaurant reading poetry.
He was a good wrestler for a poet. Or maybe vice versa.
" It is not seaweed ," said the big Nip. He had a look on his face like
a naughty schoolkid getting away with something. "The English word is maybe
calabash? " Then he turned and walked back into the restaurant.
So much for legend. What none of the other Marines knows is that this
was not the last encounter between Bobby Shaftoe and Goto Dengo. The
incident left Shaftoe with any number of nagging questions about subjects as
diverse as seaweed, poetry, and chop socky. He sought out Goto Dengo after
that, which was not that hard he just paid some Chinese boys to follow the
conspicuous Nip around town and file daily reports. From this he learned
that Goto Dengo and some of his comrades gathered every morning in a certain
park to practice their chop socky. After making sure that his will was in
order and writing a last letter to his parents and siblings in Oconomowoc.
Shaftoe went to that park one morning, reintroduced himself to the surprised
Goto Dengo, and made arrangements to serve as human punching bag. They found
his self defense skills hilariously primitive but admired his resilience,
and so, for the small cost of a few broken ribs and digits, Bobby Shaftoe
got a preliminary course in the particular type of chop socky favored by
Goto Dengo, which is called judo. Over time, this even led to a few social
engagements in bars, and restaurants, where Shaftoe learned to recognize
four types of seaweed, three types of fish eggs, and several flavors of Nip
poetry. Of course he had no idea what the fuck they were saying, but he
could count syllables, which, as far as he could tell, is about all there is
to Nip poetry appreciation.
Not that this or any other knowledge of their culture is going to do
him any good now that it will soon be his job to kill them.
In return, Shaftoe taught Goto Dengo how not to throw like a girl. A
lot of the Nips are good at baseball and so it was hilarious, even to them,
to see their burly friend pushing ineffectually at a baseball. But it was
Shaftoe who taught Goto Dengo to stand sideways, to rotate his shoulders,
and to follow through. He's paid a lot of attention to the big Nip's
throwing form during the last year, and maybe that's why the image of Goto
Dengo planting his feet on the ashlars of the Bund, winding up, throwing the
streamer wrapped grenade, and following through almost daintily on one
combat booted foot stays in Shaftoe's mind all the way to Manila and beyond.
***
A couple of days into the voyage it becomes apparent that Sergeant
Frick has forgotten how to shine his boots. Every night he puts them on the
deck beside his bunk, like he's expecting a coolie to come around and shine
them up during the night. Every morning he wakes up and finds them in a
sorrier state than before. After a few days he starts to draw reprimands
from On High, starts to get a lot of potato peeling duty.
Now in and of itself this is forgivable. Frick started out his career
chasing bandolier draped desperadoes away from mail trains on the High
Chaparral, for God's sake. In '27 he got shipped off to Shanghai on very
short notice, and no doubt had to display some adaptability. Fine. And now
he's on this miserable pre Great War cruiser and it's a little hard on him.
Fine. But he does not take all of this with the dignity that is demanded of
Marines by Marines. He whines about it. He lets himself get humiliated. He
gets angry. A lot of the other old China Marines see things his way.
One day Bobby Shaftoe is up on the deck of the destroyer tossing the
old horsehide around with a couple of the other young Marines when he sees a
few of these older guys accumulating into a sort of human booger on the
afterdeck. He can tell by the looks on their faces and by their gestures
that they are bellyaching.
Shaftoe hears a couple of the ship's crew talking to each other nearby
"What the hell is wrong with those Marines?" one of them says. The other one
shakes his head sadly, like a doctor who has just seen a patient's eyeballs
roll up into their sockets. "Those poor bastards have gone Asiatic." he
says.
And then they turn and look at Shaftoe.
That evening, at mess, Bobby Shaftoe gulps his food down double time,
then stands up and approaches the table where those Old Breed Marines are
sullenly gathered. "Begging your pardon, Sergeant!" he hollers. "Request
permission to shine your boots, Sarge!"
Frick's mouth drops open, revealing a half chewed plug of boiled beef.
"Whud you say, Corporal?"
The mess has gone silent. "Respectfully request permission to shine
your boots, Sarge!"
Frick is not the quickest guy in the world even when he's sober, and
it's pretty obvious, just from looking at his pupils, that he and his
comrades have brought some opium aboard. "Wull, uh, I guess so," he says. He
looks around at his crew of gripers, who are a little confused and a little
amused. He unlaces his boots. Bobby Shaftoe takes those disgraceful things
away and returns a bit later with them resplendently shined. By this time,
Frick has gotten high and mighty. "Wull, those boots look real good,
Corporal Shaftoe," he says in a brassy voice. "Darned if you ain't as good a
shoe shiner as my coolie boy was."
At lights out, Frick and crew are short sheeted. Various other, ruder
practical jokes ensue during the nighttime. One of them gets jumped in his
bunk and beaten by unspecified attackers. The brass call a surprise
inspection the next morning and cuss them out. The "gone Asiatic" crew spend
most of the next day gathered in a cluster, watching each other's backs.
Around midday, Frick finally gets it through his head that all of this
was triggered by Shaftoe's gesture, and that Shaftoe knew, all along, what
was going to happen. So he rushes Bobby Shaftoe up on the deck and tries to
throw him over the rail.
Shaftoe's warned at the last minute by one of his compadres, and spins
around just enough to throw off Frick's attack. Frick caroms off the rail,
turns around, and tries to grab Shaftoe's nuts. Shaftoe pokes him in the
eye, which straightens him right up. They back away from each other. The
opening formalities having been finished; they put up their dukes.
Frick and Shaftoe box for a couple of rounds. A large crowd of Marines
gathers. On most of their cards, Frick is winning the fight. Frick was
always dim witted, and is now crazy to boot, but he knows his way around a
boxing ring, and he has forty pounds on Shaftoe.
Shaftoe puts up with it until Frick socks him pretty hard in the mouth
and gives him a bloody lip.
"How far are we from Manila?" Shaftoe hollers. This question, as usual,
leaves Sergeant Frick confused and bewildered, and straightens him up for a
moment.
"Two days," answers one of the ship's officers.
"Well, goddamn," Bobby Shaftoe says. "How'm I gonna kiss my girl with
this fat lip?"
Frick answers, "Just go out and find a cheaper one."
That's all he needs. Shaftoe puts his head down and charges in on
Frick, hollering like a Nip. Before Frick can get his brain in gear, Bobby
Shaftoe has him wrapped up in one of those chop socky holds that Goto Dengo
taught him in Shanghai. He works his way up Frick's body to a choke hold and
then clamps down until Sergeant Frick's lips turn the color of the inside of
an oyster shell. Then he hangs Frick over the rail, holding him upside down
by the ankles, until Frick recovers enough to shout, "Uncle!"
A disciplinary proceeding is hastily called. Shaftoe is found guilty of
being courteous (by shining Frick's boots) and defending the life of a
Marine (himself) from a crazed attacker. The crazed attacker goes straight
to the brig. Within a few hours, the noises Frick makes lets all of the
Marines know what opium withdrawal feels like.
So Sergeant Frick does not get to see their entrance into Manila Bay.
Shaftoe almost feels sorry for the poor bastard.
The island of Luzon lies to port all day long, a black hulk barely
visible through the haze, with glimpses of palm trees and beaches down
below. All of the Marines have been this way before and so they can pick out
the Cordillera Central up north, and later the Zambales Mountains, which
eventually plunge down to meet the sea near Subic Bay. Subic triggers a
barrage of salty anecdotes. The ship does not put in there, but continues to
swing southward around Bata'an, turning inland toward the entrance of Manila
Bay. The ship reeks of shoe polish, talcum powder, and after shave lotion;
the Fourth Marines may have specialized in whoring and opium abuse, but
they've always been known as the best looking Marines in the Corps.
They pass by Corregidor. An island shaped like a bead of water on a
waxed boot, it is gently rounded in the middle but steeply sloping into the
water. It has a long, bony, dry tail that trails off at one end. The Marines
know that the island is riddled with tunnels and bristling with terrible
guns, but the only sign of these fortifications is the clusters of concrete
barracks up in the hills, housing the men who serve the weapons. A tangle of
antennas rises up above Topside. Their shapes are familiar to Shaftoe,
because many of the same antennas rose above Station Alpha in Shanghai, and
he had to take them apart and load them into the truck.
There is a giant limestone cliff descending nearly into the sea, and at
the base of it is the entrance to the tunnel where all the spooks and radio
men have their hideaway. Nearby is a dock, quite busy at the moment, with
supplies being offloaded from civilian transports and stacked right there on
the beach. This detail is noticed by all of the Marines as a positive sign
of approaching war. Augusta drops anchor in the cove, and all of that tarp
wrapped radio stuff is unloaded into launches and taken to that dock, along
with all of the odd pencil necked Navy men who tended that gear in Shanghai.
The swell dies as they pass Corregidor and enter the bay. Greenish
brown algae floats in swirls and curlicues near the surface. Navy ships lay
brown ropes of smoke across the still sea. Undisturbed by wind, these unfold
into rugged shapes like translucent mountain ranges. They pass the big
military base at Cavite a sheet of land so low and flat that its boundary
with the water would be invisible except for the picket line of palm trees.
A few hangars and water towers rise from it, and low dark clusters of
barracks farther inland. Manila is dead ahead of them, still veiled in haze,
It is getting on toward evening.
Then the haze dissolves, the atmosphere suddenly becomes as limpid as a
child's eyes, and for about an hour they can see to infinity. They are
steaming into an arena of immense thunderheads with lightning cork screwing
down through them all around. Flat grey clouds like shards of broken slate
peek out between anvils. Behind them are higher clouds vaulting halfway to
the moon, glowing pink and salmon in the light of the setting sun. Behind
that, more clouds nestled within banks of humidity like Christmas ornaments
wrapped in tissue paper, expanses of blue sky, more thunderheads exchanging
bolts of lightning twenty miles long. Skies nested within skies nested
within skies.
It was cold up there in Shanghai, and it's gotten warmer every day
since. Some days it's even been hot and muggy. But around the time Manila
heaves into view, a warm breeze springs up over the deck and all of the
Marines sigh, as if they have all ejaculated in unison.
Manila's perfume
Fanned by the coconut palms
The thighs of Glory
Manila's spreading tile roofs have a mestizo shape about them, half
Spanish and half Chinese. The city has a concave seawall with a flat
promenade on the top. Strollers turn and wave to the Marines; some of them
blow kisses. A wedding party is gushing down the steps of a church and
across the boulevard to the seawall, where they are getting their pictures
taken in the flattering peach colored light of the sunset. The men are in
their fancy, gauzy Filipino shirts, or in U.S. military uniforms. The women
are in spectacular gowns and dresses. The Marines holler and whistle at them
and the women turn towards them, hitching up their skirts slightly so that
they won't trip, and wave enthusiastically. The Marines get woozy and
practically fall overboard.
As their ship is easing into its dock, a crescent shaped formation of
flying fish erupts from the water. It moves away like a dune being blown
across the desert. The fish are silver and leaf shaped. Each one strikes the
water with a metallic click, and the clicks merge into a crisp ripping
noise. The crescent glides beneath a pier, flowing around its pilings, and
disappears in the shadows underneath.
Manila, the Pearl of the Orient, early on a Sunday evening, the 7th of
December, 1941. In Hawaii, on the other side of the Date Line, it is only
just past midnight. Bobby Shaftoe and his comrades have a few hours of
freedom. The city is modern, prosperous, English speaking, and Christian, by
far the wealthiest and most advanced city in Asia, practically like being
back home in the States. For all its Catholicity, it has areas that seem to
have been designed, from the foundation stones upwards, to the
specifications of horny sailors. You get to those parts of town by turning
right once your feet are on dry land.
Bobby Shaftoe turns left, politely excuses himself past a legion of
excited prostitutes, and sets his course on the looming walls of Intramuros.
He stops only to buy a sheaf of roses from a vendor in the park, who is
doing land office business. The park and the walls above it are crowded with
strolling lovers, the men mostly in uniforms and the women in demure but
stunning dresses, twirling parasols on their shoulders.
A couple of fellows driving horse drawn taxis want to do business with
Bobby Shaftoe but he turns them down. A taxi will only get him there faster,
and he is too nervous to get there fast. He walks through a gate in the wall
and into the old Spanish city.
Intramuros is a maze of buff colored stone walls rising abruptly from
narrow streets. The first floor windows along the sidewalks are guarded by
black ironwork cages. The bars swell, swirl, and sprout finedly hammered
leaves. The second stories hang out overhead, sporting gas lights that are
just now being lit by servants with long, smoking poles. The sound of
laughter and music drifts out of the windows above, and when he passes by
the archways that open into the inner courtyards, he can smell flowers back
in the gardens.
Damned if he can tell these places apart. He remembers the street name
of Magallanes, because Glory told him once it was the same thing as
"Magellan." And he remembers the view of the cathedral from the Pascuals'
window. He wanders around a block a couple of times, certain that he is
close. Then he hears an exaltation of girlish laughter coming from a second
story window, and moves toward it like a jellyfish sucked into an intake
pipe. It all comes together. This is the place. The girls are all gossiping,
in English, about one of their instructors. He does not hear Glory's voice
but he thinks he hears her laughter.
"Glory!" he says. Then he says it louder. If they hear him, they pay
him no mind. Finally he winds up and flings the bouquet of roses like a
potato masher grenade over the wooden railing, through a narrow gap between
the mother of pearl shutters, and into the room.
Miraculous silence from within the room, and then gales of laughter.
The nacre shutters part with slow, agonizing coyness. A girl of nineteen
steps out onto the balcony. She is dressed in the uniform of a nursing
student. Iris as white as starlight shining on the North Pole. She has let
her long black hair down to brush it, and it stirs languidly in the evening
breeze. The last ruddy light of the sunset makes her face glow like a coal.
She hides behind the bouquet for a moment, buries her nose in it, inhales
deeply, peeking out at him over the blossoms with her black eyes. Then she
lowers the bouquet gradually to reveal her high cheeks, her perfect little
nose, the fantastic sculpture of her lips, and teeth, white but fetchingly
crooked, barely visible. She is smiling.
"Jesus H. Christ," Bobby Shaftoe says, "your cheekbones are like a
fucking snowplow."
She puts her finger to her lips. The gesture of anything touching
Glory's lips puts an invisible spear through Shaftoe's chest. She eyes him
for a while, establishing, in her own mind, that she has the boy's attention
and that he is not going anywhere. Then she turns her back on him. The light
grazes her buttocks, showing nothing but suggesting cleavage. She goes back
inside and the shutter glides shut behind her.
Suddenly the room full of girls becomes quiet, except for occasional
ripples of suppressed laughter. Shaftoe bites his tongue. They are screwing
it all up. Mr. or Mrs. Pascual will notice their silence and become
suspicious.
Ironwork clangs and a big gate swings open. The potter beckons him
inside. Shaftoe follows the old fellow down the black, arched tunnel of the
porte cochere. The hard soles of his shiny black shoes skid on the
cobblestones. A horse back in the stable whinnies at the smell of his
aftershave. Sleepy American music, slow dance stuff from the Armed Forces
station, spills tinnily from a radio in the porter's nook.
Flowering vines grow up the stone walls of the courtyard. It is a tidy,
quiet, enclosed world, almost like being indoors. The porter waves him in
the direction of one of the stairways that lead up to the second floor.
Glory calls it the entresuelo and says that it's really a floor between the
floors, but it looks like a full fledged, regular floor to Bobby Shaftoe. He
mounts the steps and looks up to see Mr. Pascual standing there, a tiny bald
man with glasses and a trim little mustache. He is wearing a short sleeved
shirt, American style, and khaki trousers, and slippers, and is holding a
glass of San Miguel in one hand and a cigarette in the other. "Private
Shaftoe! Welcome back," he says.
So. Glory has decided to play this one by the book. The Pascuals have
been alerted. A few hours of socializing now stand between Bobby Shaftoe and
his girl. But a Marine is never fazed by such setbacks.
"Begging your pardon, Mr. Pascual, but I am a corporal now."
Mr. Pascual puts his cigarette in his mouth and shakes Corporal
Shaftoe's hand. "Well, congratulations! I just saw your uncle Jack last
week. I don't think he had any idea you were on your way back."
"It was a surprise to everyone, sir," Bobby Shaftoe says.
Now they are on a raised walkway that runs around the courtyard. Only
livestock and servants live at ground level. Mr. Pascual leads them around
to a door that takes them into the entresuelo. The walls here are rough
stone, the ceilings are simple painted planks. They pass through a dark,
somber office where Mr. Pascual's father and grandfather used to receive the
managers of the family's haciendas and plantations. For a moment, Bobby
Shaftoe gets his hopes up. This level has a few rooms that back in the old
days were apartments for high ranking servants, bachelor uncles, and
spinster aunts. Now that the hacienda business ain't what it used to be, the
Pascuals are renting them out to female students. Perhaps Mr. Pascual is
leading him directly to Glory.
But this goes the way of all foolish, horny illusions as Shaftoe finds
himself at the foot of a vast staircase of polished nara wood. He can see
pressed tin ceiling up there, chandeliers, and the imposing superstructure
of Mrs. Pascual, contained within a mighty bodice that looks like some thing
dreamed up by naval engineers. They ascend the stairs into the antesala,
which according to Glory is strictly for casual, drop in visitors but is
fancier than any room Bobby Shaftoe has ever seen. There are big vases and
pots all over the place, supposedly old, and supposedly from Japan and
China. A fresh breeze runs through; he looks out a window and sees, neatly
framed in it, the green dome of the cathedral with its Celtic cross on top,
just as he remembered it. Mrs. Pascual holds out her band and Shaftoe clasps
it. "Mrs. Pascual," he says, "thank you for welcoming me into your home."
"Please sit down," she says, "we want to hear everything."
Shaftoe sits in a fancy chair next to the piano, adjust his trousers a
bit so that they will not cramp his erect penis, checks his shave. It
probably has a few good hours left. A wing of airplanes drones overhead.
Mrs. Pascual is giving instructions to the maid in Tagalog. Shaftoe examines
the crusted lacerations on his knuckles and wonders whether Mrs. Pascual has
the slightest idea of what she would be in for if he really told her
everything. Perhaps a little anecdote about hand to hand combat with Chinese
river pirates on the banks of the Yangtze would break the ice. Through a
door and down the hall, he can see a corner of the family chapel, all Gothic
arches, a gilded altar, and in front of it an embroidered kneeler worn
threadbare by the patellas of Mrs. Pascual.
Cigarettes are brought round, stacked in a large lacquer box like
artillery shells in a crate. They drink tea and exchange small talk for what
seems like about thirty six hours. Mrs. Pascual wants to be reassured, over
and over again, that everything is fine and that there will not be a war.
Mr. Pascual obviously believes that war is just around the corner, and
mostly broods. Business has been good lately. He and Jack Shaftoe, Bobby's
uncle, have been shipping a lot of stuff between here and Singapore. But
business will get a lot worse soon, he thinks.
Glory appears. She has changed out of her student's uniform and into a
dress. Bobby Shaftoe nearly topples backward out of the window. Mrs. Pascual
formally reintroduces them. Bobby Shaftoe kisses Glory's hand in what he
thinks is more than likely a very gallant gesture. He's glad he did, because
Glory is palming a tiny wadded up note which ends up in his hand.
Glory takes a seat and is duly issued her own teacup. Another eternity
of small talk. Mr. Pascual asks him for the eighty seventh time whether he
has touched base with Uncle Jack yet, and Shaftoe reiterates that he
literally just stepped off the boat and will certainly see Uncle Jack
tomorrow morning. He excuses himself to the bathroom, which is an old
fashioned two holer mounted above deep shafts that must descend all the way
to hell. He unwads and reads Glory's note, memorizes the instructions, tears
it up and sprinkles it down the hole.
Mrs. Pascual allows the two young lovers a full half hour of "private"
time together, meaning that the Pascuals leave the room and only come back
every five minutes or so to check up on them. There is a painfully elaborate
and lengthy good bye ceremony which ends in Shaftoe returning to the street
and Glory waving to him from her balcony.
Half an hour later, they are doing tongue judo in the back of a horse
drawn taxi galloping over the cobblestones toward the nightclubs of Malate.
The extraction of Glory from the Pascual residence was a simple matter for a
highly motivated China Marine and a squadron of saucy nursing students.
But Glory must be kissing him with her eyes open because all of a
sudden she wriggles loose and says to the taxi driver, "Stop! Please stop,
sir!"
"What is it?" Shaftoe says blurrily. He looks around and sees nothing
but a great big old stone church looming up above them. This