Eric van lustbader nic.., p.33
Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 01, page 33
‘Yet something about this theory stuck in my mind. I could not believe it. Psychological reorientation takes time, I knew that. Certainly it could not have been accomplished overnight. It took time and that was the one thing the Japanese did not have. No, I was convinced it had to be something else. But what?
‘It was the season of rain; there seemed no dry ground on the whole of Leyte. We made progress but not without casualties, of course. One night the unit was forced to move on. There were a number of wounded who needed taking care of. I volunteered to stay behind for a short time so that I could bandage them properly. There was a relief column due in the morning. But the situation was far too volatile and my C.O. insisted I move out with the rest of the unit. We made camp just before dawn. Many of us were too tired to fall asleep. We sat around and talked about Dracula. Three men had been killed the night before; the vampire theories were at their height.
‘At last I left them, pitched my tent and crawled inside. For a time I could hear their voices as they continued to talk, then the sounds stopped. I wasn’t sure whether I had fallen asleep or they had just broken up for the night.
‘I was in that odd state between sleeping and wakefulness. I thought I dreamed someone was there, watching-me. I tried to wake myself but couldn’t. My head felt like it was too heavy to lift up. I strained but nothing happened. It was as if my consciousness had somehow been severed from the nerve impulses which mechanized the muscles. I wanted to look behind me, you know, over my head, certain that was where the danger was coming from. I could make no move.
‘Above me a face hovered in the air, disembodied. I don’t know when my eyes had actually opened or whether they had ever really been closed. My chest felt heavy and I seemed to have trouble breathing. I felt cold. Not as if the night was chill but from inside. I shivered.
“It was a Japanese face, coal-black as if it had been coated with charcoal or lampblack. It was dull so that no light would reflect off it. His eyes seemed very large. They had an odd light to them as if, while they stared right at me, they were focused on another universe. It was eerie. I had seen something like it once in a hospital when I was in my last year of medical school. We went into the psycho wing and I saw several patients. One was a young man, not far past twenty. His hair was cropped close. He had high cheekbones and a long thin nose. He could have been a scholar. He was in a strait jacket. I watched his eyes for a long time, while beside me the resident droned his spiel like a carnival barker. This man, this … creature was far beyond the supposedly modern and humane treatment the resident was describing in such loving detail. This man had reverted. He was certainly no longer human but had returned to the animal state of his ancestors. There was no hint of what we might term “intelligence” in his eyes; at least not as modern man defines intelligence. But I saw cunning there, of a kind and in a strength which terrified me. For a moment I fantasized what it would be like having this man loose in the world. Richard Speck? Gary Gil-more? Jack the Ripper? It was beyond imagining. For this was a man who was clearly beyond morality.
‘Now you know some of what I saw in the eyes hovering above me that night on Leyte. But not all. To call this “madness” would be to seriously underestimate it, for it was far more. Ours is a world of order, ruled by laws. From science to morality there are parameters within which we all live. This man did not. He lived outside time as if residing within him, lending him all its ferocious energy, was the essence of chaos. I don’t know how to describe it better, but seeing him thus in the flesh only underscored the fact rather than the fiction of his supernatural origins. Perhaps, after all, our vampire stories had not been so far off the mark. I know, I know, this all sounds rather fanciful - pulled out to give a good Gothic kick to this story. I assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.
‘While I thought of all this, I felt his movement. He produced a matt black length of cloth and, folding it upon itself, wrapped it painfully tight across my mouth. He was quite close to me now and I saw that he was dressed all in black.
‘He hauled me out of the tent and, stooping, slung me over his shoulder.
‘He ran.
‘He ran without sound. No shadow trailed behind us; we were never in the light. He took a route out of the encampment that was neither direct nor circuitous. It was merely undetectable, as if he were following a path no one else suspected of being there, a path made just for him.
‘I didn’t struggle. I found myself wondering why I hadn’t been killed as the other victims of these silent infiltrations had been. I was amazed. Even upside down I could see well enough to know that he was a magician. No one I knew could possibly have got in and out of our encampment totally undetected as this man had. He moved without seeming motion. That must sound like a contradiction but it’s not. He ran with such fluidity that there was no up-and-down motion, merely the sensation of forward movement.
‘We were in the jungle now, travelling extremely quickly. In fact, even though the way was now more choked with foliage and underbrush, our speed actually increased. His strength and endurance were exceptional. We were totally alone in the world, or so it seemed to me. It was that time of the night when the nocturnal creatures have crawled back into their holes to sleep and the diurnal animals have not yet awakened. The jungle was quite still, just a sleepy bird calling here and there, the sounds quite isolated and seeming part of another world.
‘We travelled thus for perhaps thirty minutes. Then the man stopped abruptly and, spinning me off his shoulder, widened the cloth around my mouth so dial I was now blindfold also. He led me, stumbling, through the jungle. His fingers were at the back of my jacket so that, each time I fell, he suspended me as if I was hanging from a coat-hook. It was a terribly dehumanizing thing to do and I tried to shut my mind to it.
‘After a time I began to hear voices. I did not speak Japanese but I understood enough to get by; it was something
I did not want him to know. At length the blindfold was removed. We were in the midst of a Japanese camp. It wasn’t anything like what I had pictured. In fact, I was aghast; I thought for an instant that he had taken me to a hospital; it hardly seemed like a military camp at all. For one thing, most of the soldiers were either lying down or sitting. I saw no troops as such; no guards.
‘We were near the water, though on which side of the island I could not tell. I saw the water clearly through a gap in the vegetation. I watched for a time, totally unmolested, while the man who had brought me spoke with several of his fellows who were identically dressed. These seemed to be the only operational men in the camp. At first I tried to pay attention to what they were talking about, but they were either -speaking too fast or in some dialect I had never heard because I couldn’t understand-them.
‘Dawn had broken and there was a white line just above the horizon. I knew I must be looking east. I saw a smudge coming into view and then another simultaneously, I heard a heavy drone from the northwest, in the direction of Luzon. It was the Two Hundred and First. I looked up. The Zeros were black and bloated against the pale sky. The night’s clouds had melted away.
‘The Zeros passed low over us, headed out to sea, towards the dark smudges containing the horizon, coming closer. ‘ “You know they go to attack your ships.” ‘I started. A thin Japanese stood beside me. He was on crutches. His left trouser-leg was pinned back at the knee but he’d surely die of malnutrition before his stump would begin to bother him.
‘ “You speak English very well,” I said. ‘ “Yes.” He was still staring out at the moving targets as they closed with one another. “They will not come back. None of them. Onishi has seen to that.” I understand that he meant the new Vice-Admiral. He shook his head sadly. “They say, you know, that he helped Yamamoto plan the Pearl Harbor attack.” He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “It’s hard to believe. It seems so long ago.” His head turned. “Do you speak Japanese?. No? Pity.” He turned back. The
Zeros were nearing our ships. You could see the batteries begin to fire. Black clouds with orange bits in their centres exploded, eerily silent until, moments later, the reports found us, shook the air. “No, they won’t come back, those boys. They’re on a one-way mission.”
‘Abruptly, his words penetrated the fog which had surrounded me since I had come into the camp. “Do you mean to tell me,” I exclaimed, “that they’re on suicide missions? The plane and the pilot…?”
‘ “One big maneuverable bomb, yes.” The Japanese stood quite still. Tears seemed to be standing in the corners of his eyes but there was no change in his voice. “Vice-Admiral Onishi’s idea. It’s a desperation move. He had a time convincing the others but he managed it.” He said something in Japanese which I took to be a curse. “Not enough of us have died for this ‘noble cause’. The Emperor still sends his sons into a war which we have already lost.” Far away, on the white and black horizon, the Zeros were leaving the sky. ^_There came a sharp call from behind me. I did not need to understand the language to know that my captor wanted me. I walked away from the crippled soldier, saying, “You ought to get something to eat.”
‘He laughed shortly. “If I could, do you think I’d be here now?”
“What about a hospital?”
“Won’t take you in unless you bring your own food,” he said. His eyes were clear. I could see his ribs underneath his uniform blouse. I thought: What am I doing? He is the enemy. “We’re all dying of malnutrition. We can’t get into the hospital and our unit’s booted us out because we can’t fight any more. It’s not a soldier’s end. There’s no honour in any of this.” He stared at me and, for a moment, there seemed to be no difference between us.
‘Then my captor had hold of me and, barking harshly, he pushed me towards another part of the camp. Here, too, soldiers littered the ground. It seemed pathetic.
‘He carried with him a small black satchel which I hadn’t noticed before. It was over this that they seemed to be arguing. There were perhaps four of them. They might have been brothers. Now I regretted not asking my unexpected friend who these men were. It was clear that they weren’t regular army. To one side, I saw what was obviously a cooking fire. There was a black iron pot. By its side was a small pile of what the Japanese called famote, the diminutive Philippine potatoes that taste rather like a conventional sweet potato. There were also some withered tubers. These were obviously their rations: all the food they possessed.
‘The man who had brought me produced a series of cans he had obviously stolen from our camp. How he had spirited this food away I could not imagine, but there it was.
“They began to argue all over again - I suppose about who would get how much. My captor hustled me away, shoved me down towards a group of supine men. It was clear that he wanted me to work on them. Now I understood why I had been spared. He knew very well what I was. I began to wonder what else he knew about me.
‘I turned to the soldiers. In truth there wasn’t much I could do for them. I was without my instruments and my medicines. But they would not have been much help. My friend had been quite correct in his analysis of the situation. The Japanese were dying of malnutrition.
‘At length I got up, went over to the man who had brought me.
‘ “I’m sorry,” I said, “but there’s nothing I can do.”
‘He hit me without warning. I didn’t even see where the blow came from. One moment I was standing and talking to him, the next I was on my ass in the mud.
‘ “They need food,” I said inanely.
‘He reached down and hauled me up. There seemed to be no expression in his eyes. He hit me again, this time harder, with the edge of his hand. It felt like I had been struck by a cement mixer. I went down and stayed down.
‘It was dark when I awoke. I had a splitting headache and my right shoulder didn’t seem to work. It was odd. I could wiggle my fingers, even make a loose fist, but I couldn’t raise my arm even an inch.
‘I was in a tent, lying on something hard. Now I could tell
it wasn’t the ground. I had my jacket and fatigue shirt on but no pants. I was naked from the waist down. I tried to move but couldn’t. My entire body seemed to pulse with pain. There were flashes behind my eyes and I wondered what he had done to my nerves.
‘Shortly after, he came in. I didn’t hear him but felt some stirring of the humid air. His face loomed over me. He had removed the lampblack from his face but not the black clothing. This apparently was his uniform.
‘“What is your troop strength?” he asked.
‘I understood. Having proved useless in my healing capacity, I was now a fully-fledged prisoner of war. I knew what that meant.
‘I told him my name.
‘ “How much firepower have you?”
‘I told him my name.
‘“With which units will you rendezvous?”
‘I told him my name.
“What is the American time-table for link-up?”
‘This time I varied it. I gave him my rank and serial number.
‘ “When do the Americans plan to launch their invasion of Luzon?”
‘ “Luzon has already been invaded,” I said. “By the Japanese.”
‘Then he began to work on me. He used nothing but the ends of four fingers: his two thumbs and forefingers. No blades, no heat, no drugs, no wire, no water. None of the traditional interrogator’s tools. He had no need for anything so crude.
‘He worked on me for the whole of the night - more than ten hours. Oh, not constantly, of course; I never could have taken that. And at the end of that time there was not a mark on my body.
‘He was, truly, a magician. He worked on the nerves. Not just the major nerve centres as might be expected, but the nerve chains themselves. Just his fingers squeezing.
‘Everything else ceased to exist. He saw to that. It became, after a while, a kind of sensory deprivation situation: I felt nothing but pain. Even the two or three times I urinated, I couldn’t feel it, only smelled it for a time. Then that, too, was obliterated.
‘He used pain the way a clever woman can use pleasure. You know the way a woman leads you up the pleasure curve, slowly, lovingly, gently, until you’re throbbing for release. She’ll bring-you to the brink, hold you there for exquisite moments, then stop until the excitement subsides and she starts all over again. Finally, when you come, the sensation is better than it’s ever been before. This man used the same principle. You know terrible pain can become its own anaesthetic - just like when you fuck too much, you go numb for a while. So, too, with pain. Even your nerves have a limit, and after a while they just shut down and you feel nothing. That can be your only advantage in intensive interrogation.
‘By his very technique, this man avoided that. Again and again, he would bring me slowly up the pain curve, keep me hovering on the brink for long moments - but he never let me topple over into the numbness of the other side. He knew precisely how long I could take it and brought me down each time.
‘All the while the questions were repeated over and over. Not shouted, the tone calm and even friendly, he spoke in an intimate voice as if we were close friends meeting in a bar, talking about old times.
‘It was odd, this combination. We became, after a while, as intimate as lovers. I wanted to trust him, to tell him all my secrets, to break down the last barriers between us. The pain, too, changed over time. It became - how shall I put it? - less painful? Yes, that’s it. Less painful. I still can’t understand how it was done. Of course, I knew even then that he was working on my mind as well as on my body. But somehow that didn’t help any. I seemed powerless to stop what was happening. I felt things slipping away from, me, as if I were losing my balance on slippery ice. Then even the ice was gone and I felt myself settling down into a kind of muddy slime, sinking lower and lower. There seemed to be no bottom.
‘All this time the pain was ebbing and, as it did, I felt myself wanting to trust him more. He was my friend and I became guilty at holding out my secrets. How selfish I was I How unworthy of his friendship.
‘It was not numbness which overtook me now - I told you he would not allow that. It was another sensation. Pleasure. It crept up on me while I was concentrating on not answering his repeated questions. This was taking more and more energy and once or twice I had to bite my tongue in order to stop myself from telling him everything he wanted to know.
‘I felt, at that moment, my self slipping away from me, revealing, underneath, another person I knew not at all. It seemed to me, then, that this man knew more about me than I did and this terrified me.
‘Now I found myself wanting to tell him more than ever. Once I did, I was convinced he would hold and comfort me. The pleasure grew. I began to rejoice in the pain, to want it, for it was my link with him and I began to feel that I would be lost without it, that once it ceased I would have nothing and, therefore, be reduced to nothing. Time ceased to have any meaning. There was no past, no future, just an endless now with its bright connection. My mouth was hot with my own blood as I fought to hold back telling him everything.
‘Abruptly, it was gone. The pleasure-pain. Everything. I was lost. Alone in the tent, I began to cry, great dry racking sobs -my body had been so depleted of moisture during the night that even tears would not come. I was terrified of being alone, like a child cruelly left by its mother. I had been reduced to a kind of psychological infancy in which I now depended on my inquisitor as a baby does on its mother. I had been left alone so that it would be hammered home. I knew then that the moment he returned and started on me again, I would talk and talk and talk. Nothing would stop me.
