Читать книгу Now Silence - Tori Warner Shepard - Страница 10

Anissa always knew what Nicasia, her next door neighbor, was wearing that day. In her black dresses, she was fixed and unchanging. Her hair was pinned in a bun—never let to stream down. She was a slight, modestly dressed mother of a fallen soldier as well as the wife of his missing-in-action father. And she was the mother of a Bataan Death March survivor, dressing exactly like the other bereft women in their aspects of mourning and she had, with them, grown sorrowfully prayerful. Their numbers were large in such a small town and they had a faceless similarity, one to the other.

Anissa, though, appreciated Nicasia’s great sparks of watchful kindness and her grace. Nicasia listened to everything she said with a sharp purpose, trying to comprehend new facts, always ready to step in to soften tragedy when it arose. Her eldest son, Franque Garcia, had been killed at the outset of the Bataan Death March, and the telegram assured her that he’d died a hero’s death. She’d been informed that Faustino was missing she had not received the black-starred telegram. That small detail opened a shaft of possibility, she dreamt that the Faustino Garcia rumored dead was another soldier with the same name. Nothing, no mail had been received from the American soldiers after their surrender to the Japanese in April of 1942. After that, dark and empty silence.

Nicasia prayed and fasted for the end of the war when her remaining son was shipped home alive. She cherished her youngest son Melicio Garcia’s life over her husband’s and more than her own. Two years before when the shattering news arrived of the surrender, LaBelle, his novia, the woman who he’d promised to marry, moved in with her to wait out the war. He was their last hope; only he could make the world reasonable and whole. LaBelle said Melo was her destiny; for his mother, Melo, gave her life purpose.

“I can’t stand this war any longer,” Anissa had shrieked the day before when Nicasia ritually appeared at her doorway, tamales in hand. She threw down the New Mexican, the only local newspaper. “Death, casualties and that damned Roosevelt again.”

Nicasia could but nod. Each day she came, hoping to hear that the War was almost over, the news to feed her beating heart. There never was a war that did not end sometime.

Every day, the war. All day, they ate and breathed the war and its blaring talk. The American public received waves of unreliable information. Overstatement was the norm. No one had the facts, and if anyone knew the truth, it was “rephrased” for the greater American morale. Roosevelt warned against exaggeration, repeating again that the war would be long and difficult but reinforcing the government’s constant censorship by holding back such facts as the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, and the penal conditions of our POWs surrendered to the Japanese.

All real news leaked out from unauthorized sources. And it was often a year late. The American Red Cross tried to keep up with the deaths of their hitos, tios, maridos, abuelos and amigos but the Japanese Red Cross refused to cooperate. When reported, the names of the war dead (culled from the town’s 900 conscripted soldiers) were proclaimed to be heroic deaths, but were in fact useless wastage from starvation and jungle disease, not war doings. Their lives were lost through wanton neglect, some of which was the result of governmental deceit. Their sacrifice brought no one closer to freedom or the coming Golden Age.

Anissa had read the last entirely credible report aloud to Nicasia stating that the Empire itself was starving and out of gas and oil so, as a last resort, the Japanese were shipping the POWs from the Philippines to work as slaves in the coalmines of the Japan’s home islands in a last ditch effort to eke out fuel for the desperate war.

Anissa continued to read aloud saying that those men who were still alive and fit for work had been crammed into the holds of the Hell Ships headed north in zigzag paths fleeing the US Naval bombers above water line, and the American submarine torpedoes below. Both the Japanese and their prisoners were targets on the same boat, starving and fleeing fire from the US. The New Mexican quoted escaped American prisoners saying the conditions on board these ships were far worse than the Bataan Death March, even more disgusting.

War was chaos; confusion and lies on all sides. But these new reports of packing the POWs, shoulder to shoulder without food and water into the holds of the Emperor’s remaining rust-buckets rang true.

And the part about being helplessly attacked by the Americans even truer.

Now, her neighbor stood quietly dressed in her worn black dress with another plate of tamales in hand. Only her neighbor Anissa seemed to be able to sort the facts out of the long paragraphs, so Nicasia arrived bearing some gift in exchange for Anissa’s close readings of the printed news.

“God damned Roosevelt!” Anissa had summarized the day before.

So the war raged on and heartbroken widows stood helpless to do anything but pray. Rocks and talismans were traded, dirt was blessed. Rumors of stronger saints and more powerful Deities spread, and women crowded shrines. Powerless, they begged for help. The more contemptible the enemy, the more extreme were the prayers and offerings.

Yet there was hope. It came from an occult national movement called The I AM Presence that Anissa subscribed to, a religious group claiming to have direct revelations about the unfolding of a promised Golden Age. Edna Ballard, the founder of the I AM Movement and herself an Ascended Master, moved her printing press and offices of the million person strong Movement to Santa Fe during the war in order to further the I AM belief in the Divine Presence of God’s consuming Violet Flame. Anissa, properly outraged by the Nazi Evil, joined the Movement in Chicago and followed Edna’s move to proselytize, vowing to practice chastity. Next to the power of God Himself, Anissa and the movement believed in Jesus Christ and their wondrous Ascended Master Saint Germain, whose promises to end Evil itself were irresistible.

Even Nicasia trusted Saint Germain to guard and keep their small town safe. It was an I AM fact that death was powerless in La Villa Real de Santa Fé de San Francisco de Assis because of Saint Germain’s protection and His Purple Sword.

But His Protection only extended to the city limits. Good things like piñon fires and roasted goat were stored for those who stayed safe inside La Villa Real de la Santa Fe. Because of Saint Germain, Anissa had repeated over and over, everyone in Santa Fe woke each morning unharmed, and she preached that under His Dominion no child in the town had yet contracted whooping cough or chicken pox.

“But what about the Japs?” Nicasia had asked timidly. There were actual Japanese in town, internees who were forcibly held in the town’s Alien Enemy Internment Camp for national security. In a hasty move immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, all Japanese were rounded up and held in internment camps, their rights removed. The 2,000 men behind the guard towers off of West Alameda Street were protected too by the same magic spell that protected the original Spanish families. It was said that none of them took sick—but two died of old age. Or remorse, which was allowable.

“They should have committed hara-kiri out of guilt for their Emperor’s sins,” Anissa agreed. She would have supplied them her shotgun, if it had been in her possession.

Even though the Santa Feans were protected from physical disaster, the 20,000 souls who lived there suffered deep anguish. One in every four households had been stricken with war losses, their sons and relatives dead, wounded and imprisoned. So their families grieved and prayed to any saint who would listen.

Anissa urged everyone to invoke the strongest power, The Great I AM Power. “Saint Germain will bring His Pillar of Violet Singing Flame to heal your sorrows.” She then pointed out that all Catholic Novenas, Masses and Good Friday Penances had been useless to end the unjust war; the war America had been dragged into through evil and lies. What had the Christian Catholic God done that could match the protection from the Violet Ray?

“Saint Germain has kept the enemy off shore,” she called out. “Not your Yahweh.” The cloud of protection over Santa Fe was all the proof anyone needed. The old Gods had failed, the new ones were alive and throbbing with power. Saint German was their hope.

“When it’s the right time, The I AM Presence will blast his Circle of White Lightening and simply end the war,” Anissa had described the power of the Violet Ray to Nicasia so many times, over and over. And she was so convincing that for Melo’s sake, Nicasia had given up meat and took to passing out I AM literature on the Plaza.

The following morning, earlier than usual, Nicasia stood by the open door holding a bowl of bread pudding, and called out again, “Señora?”

No answer, but Anissa glanced up from her ever present distress over the printed news thinking she’d heard shuffling footsteps outside her open door. She had grown accustomed to these early visits and to the delicious meals Nicasia brought when she timidly asked if the paper had any good news. Meaning of course, news of her youngest son, Melo. She rarely ever called him Melicio.

He and his brother Franque had been conscripted into the war with the other boys his age because they had joined the National Guard. The Great Depression was not quite over and in 1939 the only work was government work. So the young men and their fresh-out-of-school buddies joined the Guard to learn to shoot and ride horses for money and glory at Fort Marcy. John Wayne cast both Melo and his brother as extras in his Santa Fe Stampede when, without discussion or agreement, the National Guard became the 200^th Army Artillery and Santa Fe’s Federalized sons were shipped to Clark Field in the Philippine Islands with few supplies and little training. Faustino, Nicasia’s husband, followed them later when he signed up the days after Pearl Harbor, December, 1941.

“Anissa? Señora?” Nicasia stood straining for a reply. There was no audible response from the adobe room. Peering into the darkened room, Nicasia could easily make out Anissa lying on her daybed under the woven wool coverlets, prostrate, presumably overcome with her usual anger at the war. Anissa appeared to be emotionally stricken but then she always showed very strong feelings about things, a rare trait for a Gringa.

Nicasia passed over the doorstep quietly. Anissa rested in the front room, beyond which was the kitchen and beyond that, a bedroom and a bathroom. She tiptoed farther into the darkened house, fearing that Anissa was now depressed over devastatingly bad news which might involve her own family. Nicasia knew, in fact they all knew, that the men from Santa Fe had been setup by Washington as lures for the bullets of the Empire of the Rising Sun; they were given nothing to defend themselves with while Roosevelt lit Churchill’s cigars and gave the British everything they asked for. Even after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Surely Roosevelt had known that the enemy was gearing up for war when he casually requisitioned these boys from the Santa Fe National Guard and assigned them a new name: General Wainwright’s 200^th Army Artillery. They were sent to the Philippine Islands (named for King Phillip the Second of Spain) because of their mutual Hispanic heritages. The two distant penal colonies left over from the 16^th century spoke the same antiquated Inquisition Spanish and this made them brothers. In the beginning, it was good times for all of them.

But eight hours after Pearl Harbor, boys and men of Santa Fe were bombed, strafed and eventually abandoned to the enemy. April 9, 1942. They were handed over to the Japanese four months after the sneak attacks on Pearl Harbor and Clark Field, needing the food, medication, and shelter due them as human beings. Trusting that the Empire would adhere to the Third Geneva Convention regarding prisoners of war, they were surrendered by their officers in a blundering effort to save lives by asking for humanitarian aid.

The Japanese were staggered by the Americans’ ignoble surrender. Their orders were to kill the enemy, not to take them in and bed them down. They had no food to share. Where were they to find enough extra food for 55,000 non-Japanese speaking guests in a war they had waged for their own badly needed rice and oil? The Allies may have been starving but the Japanese were stretched thin. It was imperative that honorable prisoners fall on their swords and kill themselves. But this massive defending army arrived with their hands out for food.

MacArthur walked backwards on his beach toward an awaiting landing craft, talking to the movie cameras. “I shall return,” he intoned during his close-up, the words slipping like honey out of his lying mouth. This was how he abandoned his men to a brutal enemy, affecting every home in Santa Fe.

MacArthur was given the Medal of Honor and became the toast of Australia. Lamb chops and lager.

For the morale of America, he asked that information regarding the Death March and the prison conditions be blacked out. Only positive news should be broadcast. But in time, stories from one source or another leaked out, causing the town to seethe, suffer and despair.

Nicasia carefully picked her way over the balls of crumpled newspaper lying on the floor. Anissa had undoubtedly read the headline saying how Roosevelt’s dark angel, MacArthur, had personally given the order to have all Japanese ships sunk. How he had approved killing the remaining American Prisoners of War being shipped from the Philippines, the islands he had abandoned.

“Puedo?” Nicasia asked again after she had crossed the threshold and placed her plate on the coffee table next to her neighbor. Anglos were difficult. You had to ask permission even to bring them tamales; otherwise they called it barging in. But Nicasia actually loved this strange woman from Chicago who rented her Tia’s house and paid every month on the first day, even if it was a Sunday. She respected the blonde lady who had twice climbed the Eiffel Tower and could read stories in French, and she was honored to clean for her occasionally, because she learned such interesting things. She did not need the money; the $10,000 death benefit she’d received for Franque sat untouched in the bank. And she had been offered her husband’s $10,000 when they said he was missing in action. To accept it would equal an admission.

“Entra,” Anissa said, coming alive. “I was reading the goddamned newspaper again and it made me positively sick to my stomach. I had to stop reading and now I can barely move, it made me so ill.” Anissa was about to repeat Roosevelt’s last orders.

Nicasia rarely argued with her intriguing neighbor. The woman had been to the university, she knew important people. It was worthwhile listening to such an intelligent and rich woman. “Go on,” she said, agreeing to be sick herself.

Anissa read the editorial aloud, “Eschuche.” Then she paused because the article was padded with backtracking and speculation. The truth was hidden in the patriotic rant.

She put the paper down. “It says, basically, that our flyboys are now bombing and sinking the Japanese ships carrying our POWs to Nagasaki. Our Navy is murdering our own American prisoners of war.”

“No!” Nicasia’s hope for Melicio foundered; her eldest, Franque, had been bayoneted by the Japanese right at the start of the Death March. A year later, she had heard that her husband Faustino had been tortured to death or that he’d gone missing but she knew nothing more and hope seesawed in and out of her shallow sleep. She feared each day that she might receive the telegram, or his dog tags.

As for who was winning and when it would all be over, Anissa had brought her slowly around to seeing the hidden truth—that all Allied propaganda was lies and confusion. No one was winning yet.

Anissa had said, “No one ever knows a goddamned thing.” That was the only truth anyone could believe. Censorship itself was propaganda, everything about the War was managed and controlled.

“It’s not the Gooks this time, you see?” Anissa explained.

“Uncle Sam?” Bile rose in Nicasia’s throat. She was about to vomit.

“For once, the Japs must have marked their POW ships, not with a red cross, but with words in their own language.” Anissa shook her head in outrage, and continued without taking a breath. “You think our idiot men ever made the smallest effort to learn a few characters, to translate the most urgent signs?”

“What should the writing say?”

“It had to say, Prisoners on Board. Do not Bomb.” Anissa shrugged in total disgust and turned to her neighbor. “The whole mess is here in today’s editorial.” There were tears in her eyes.

“It’s called ‘friendly fire,’ meaning that we murder our own.”

Nicasia wept as well. She was too weak to respond.

“It’s like abortion—worse even than slaughtering babies,” Anissa reasoned and the older woman nodded. “Maybe it’s just the same. Friendly fire is like how you feel about abortion. Just a fancy word for getting people out of the way.”

“Pray with me,” Anissa said. “Ask Saint Germain to grab those Army-Air Corps pilots out of the sky and protect both Melo and his compadre, Arsenio Lujan.” The two women knelt on the floor, heads down, weeping.

After a while and in a clear singsong voice, Anissa began the invocation:

In the name of God, the Beloved I AM Presence, and in the Name of the Beloved Ascended Jesus Christ, I AM the Strength, the Courage, the Power to move forward steadily through all experiences, whatever they may be, by the glorious Presence with I AM. I AM the Commanding Presence, the Exhaustless Energy, the Divine Wisdom, causing every desire to be fulfilled. Serene, I fold my wings and abide in the Perfect Action of the Divine Law and Justice of my Being, commanding all things within my radiance to appear in Perfect Divine Order.

At the end, there was pause for begging and pleading. Both women silently formed their supplications. Nicasia implored, weeping, beseeching for the life of her remaining son, and in exchange for his life, she renewed her vow to abstain from sex and meat. Anissa, accustomed to chastity, asked for a peace larger than simple peace from war. She prayed for the death of Evil Meat-eaters, Drunks, Idiots, Mussolini, Hirohito, Roosevelt, Hitler and Russell L. Barclay. (Why not?)

“You must trust, Querida,” Anissa said, putting her arms around the stooped shoulders of the older woman, “that all you asked for will be done by the Violet Power of Saint Germain and by God Victoriously Accomplished.”

“It will be done,” Nicasia said. “God Victoriously Accomplished.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

Late that night when the moon had set, Anissa received the phone call from the West Palm Beach Police precinct. Unable to stifle her excitement, she lay in a thrilled swoon of abundant reward on the hand-hewn daybed that served as her living room couch. Russell was gone! She felt that she’d been granted wings. Her wavering faith had been fortified and she thanked her God Victoriously Accomplished and the Seventh Ray fifty, if not one hundred times, over and over.

All she had done was to pray to the Resplendent Essence and as a personal favor, a sure sign, It had swiftly removed Russell from her arena. The thorn in her side had been excised just-like-that!

Now she could count on spiritual peace and the transfer of some war bonds and his half of the lumber camp. They were hers to dispose of as she wished. She would hand them over to Edna and Guy Ballard and The I-Am Presence for the furtherance of the Power of Truth.

She knew Russell had signed away his Florida love nest; the whore was welcome to it.

Her heart beat wildly. Russell’s death was part of an irrefutable mounting sign that the Surrender would come soon. Now America was getting ready to accept the Ascended Masters and their God-gifts of Light, Life and Love. And her ordained mission was to spread the glorious word on the Plaza to mankind and thus make it manifest. One by one, handing out brochures with the pictures of a ten-foot tall Saint. When the Glory came, it would come through the agency of Saint Germain, the same Saint who had orchestrated Russell’s sudden death—the unmistakable sign of His Benevolence.

But this sign that she had just received, which she interpreted as the message of certainty that the war was at an end made her momentarily wistful. She’d have to pack up to return to Chicago. Changes would flow, like having to leave Nicasia before her son returned. She’d miss welcoming him back.

At the end of the war, she would go to her home with the dock on Lake Michigan but it would not be a homecoming. There would be no triumph to it, no welcome.

The I AM Presence in Santa Fe too would begin to decamp. Waiting out the war in Santa Fe had suited all of them well. She’d miss the place. Would anyone here miss her? For centuries now bands of immigrants had come and gone, leaving only a small imprint on the isolated town. Between the wars, fervent German ladies arrived with the intention of imposing serious culture on the place but they too returned home like the retreating tide. Texans as well. They came and went, came and went, leaving empty handed. But the town endured. Unchanged. Poor. Recalcitrant and still speaking their antique Spanish, a town more Mexican than American.