Читать книгу Fat Man and Little Boy - Mike Meginnis - Страница 17

WHAT EVIDENCE

THEY LEFT

Fat Man sits in a small Japanese home, an open suitcase on the floor before him. This is the cash case. It is still clean on the outside. It still opens from the wrong side—the broken hinges, bending at the soft lock. On the other side of the cash case are the two policemen, one short and one tall, both quite starved and deadly thin. They have shown their credentials. They showed their credentials and indicated that Fat Man and Little Boy should come with them. “He’s a child,” said Fat Man. He said this in Japanese. So they took Fat Man away from his brother. They left Little Boy alone.

Little Boy who asked Fat Man, “How do you know Japanese?”

Now the policemen are sitting on the floor on the other side of the open cash case. Its lock will only bend so far. They cannot see what’s in the case, but they know. They put it there. There are inside perhaps a hundred dollars, clumped and clotted by dried blood. Some leaves the brothers may have laid on, now reduced to twiggy skeletons, also crushed. A small, gray mound of dirt or dust. The fat man’s bloodied shirt. The father’s knife. So surely they have seen the father, collected testimony from his wife, his daughter.

They do not ask the Fat Man any questions. Only look at him and wait for him to say what he will say.

They wait.

They only wait.

“My boat is going,” he says, slowly, with some effort. The way he learns he’s learned a word is he says that word. He says, “I need to go also.”

“What did you do?” asks the tall policeman. “What are these?”

Fat Man shakes his head. He means to say he does not understand. He does not know what he understands until he answers. There is language. There is somewhere language. On the air or in him. Like a spider’s web is snared somewhere on his body, but he can only see the trailing thread: there is language.

“We found the body,” says the short one. “We found his knife.”

“What did he do?” says the tall one.

Fat Man takes a twiggy leaf bone from the case and twists it between his fingers. He says, “No.”

He says, “I need to go.”

He lays the leaf’s bone down in the cash case, now an evidence case. He looks at the knife. To see it makes his shoulder ache.

The policemen study his face. For signs of guilt? For feeling? They must want to arrest him. To put him in prison. Yet he is American. There are rumors of American soldiers who travel in rape gangs. It’s said they cut the telephone lines on one city block and move from home to home, raping wives and sisters, mothers and daughters. Some of the women they kill, but mostly they can’t be bothered. There are no trials. If these men cannot be tried, then how can Fat Man? The wife and her daughter, if they have given testimony, may well have told the truth, in which case it was self-defense. If the mother and her daughter lied, then Fat Man is still an American—a well-fed one. One who wears a suit. Though it is always the same suit. He may have connections. Perhaps he knows MacArthur. Or so they may think. Or it may be they are waiting for Fat Man to implicate himself. To break down sobbing. It is not precisely guilt he feels for what he did, though on other days it has been guilt. To what could he confess? Not the pigs. Not the babies. But neither the father: the father least of all. His palms are black. Do they think this normal? Do they see it as a sign of guilt?

It may be the language barrier protects him. They do not know how to interrogate a person with so little Japanese. Are confused by the fact that he has any in the first place. They cannot accuse who they cannot interrogate. Or they empathize, perhaps. They imagine him on the witness stand, if there is a witness stand, if in Japan they have such a thing. They imagine the prodding questions of the prosecutor if there is a prosecutor, or a judge if there is only a judge. They imagine Fat Man listening dumbly, waiting for a word he knows. His pidgin responses. Unresponsive, even inappropriate, puzzling and puzzled. He might think they didn’t care about his guilt if not for the hardness in their faces, if not for their resemblance to the dead soldiers, one short and one tall.

It may be these sickly men could not arrest him if they wanted. These do not carry guns. They have only truncheons. They are perhaps too weak to wield the truncheons. He could maybe crush them, or they may think that he could crush them, that there is no arresting him without the aid of others. He has seen so few other policemen in this city on the coast. They are watching him. He is looking back at them. He is looking at the evidence case. Perhaps they mean it as a gift. He could close the case, slide its hinges into place, and go—a memento. The sound of a knife in a suitcase, the sound of scabbed money. Some dirt. Luggage, only luggage. Only what he carries.

The tall one closes the evidence case. The hinges click into place.

Or it may be there’s no point. Even assuming the possibility of arrest, of conviction. There were these bombs. Not here, but nearby. There were these bodies. The bodies are gone. There is no good count of these bodies. There were other bodies? What’s a hog farmer’s body? What’s a stillborn baby? What are two crying women? Compared to two cities and all the bodies therein, now gone?

They cannot know he was the thing exploded. Or can they know? They cannot know.

Still there are his hands.

“Are you sorry?” asks the tall one. But Fat Man does not understand.

“I need to go,” says Fat Man. “The boat is going.” He realizes he can say “without me.” “Without me,” he says. “The boat.”

It occurs to him he can leave. The small Japanese home may be the home of the policemen. They do not seem at home here. But there are signs that someone lives here. Used dishes, an open book, a telephone in the corner, on the floor. A painting of mountains hanging on the wall. A sock, discarded. These things all could be theirs. This home is not a prison.

He stands. He leaves the small home. The policemen only watch. As he passes through the doorway, one of them—the tall or the short, he does not turn to see—reaches for his hand, and holds it. The policeman’s skin is cold. His grip is tight. Not painful, but tight. Not a threat, but tight. Not angry, but tight. What the hand seems to say is, Wait. What the hand seems to say is, We can talk.

Fat Man pulls his hand loose. He goes.

Outside the home is Little Boy, who followed them here. He’s been sitting on the ground, back propped against the home, waiting just beside the door. He might have heard it all or nothing. He says, “We need to get to the boat.”

“They have the cash case, and other things.”

“So we should go then,” says Little Boy, taking Fat Man’s hand. “Do you know Japanese now?”

“No,” says Fat Man. What he means is that he only knows a little. What he means is that it was no use. What he means is he rejects the language. He rejects this country. He rejects the evidence case and everything within, not because it’s wrong but because it’s not enough.

They go to the dock. They wait in line to board their boat. They hold hands so as not to lose each other.

When they board the boat the Japanese policemen are there to watch them from the shore. Not to stop them or to wave. No goodbyes. Their faces are illegible from the deck. Their bones show through, but not their eyes. Their uniforms are clean and pressed. As the boat departs, the tall one collapses. The short one catches him in both arms, and for a long time they seem to kneel together. When it seems they will not, cannot stand, then they do stand, together, the short one hoisting the tall one up to his feet. When each is righted, they lace their fingers.

They too hold hands.