Gai-Jin (44 page)

His practiced eye told him the birth, her fourth, would be bad and that most of her trouble was caused by marrying too young, working the fields too long and carrying too much. He gave her a small bottle of opium extract. “Tell her when her time is come and the pain is bad to drink a spoonful.”

“Spoonful? How big, Honorable Wise Enlightened?”

“A normal-size spoon, Cheng-sin.”

The woman bowed.
“Domo arigato gozaimashita,”
she muttered as she left, pathetic in her thanks, both hands trying to carry the weight of her belly.

Children with fevers and colds and hookworm, sores but not nearly as bad as he had expected, no
malaria
. Teeth generally good and strong, eyes clear, no lice—all patients astonishingly clean and healthy compared with similar villagers in China. No opium addicts. After an hour he was happily in his stride. He had just finished setting a broken arm when the door opened and a well-dressed, attractive young girl came in hesitantly and bowed. Her kimono was blue patterned silk, the obi green, hair dressed with combs. Blue sunshade.

Hoag noticed Cheng-sin’s eyes narrow. She answered his questions and spoke even more persuasively though clearly quite nervous, her voice soft.

“Medicine Doctor Wise Enlightened,” Cheng-sin said, his speech punctuated with the permanent, dry cough that Hoag had diagnosed instantly as terminal consumption. “This Lady say her brother need important help, near death. She beg you to accompany her—house is nearby.”

“Tell her to have him brought here.”

“Unfortunately afraid to move him.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

After more questions and answers, which to Hoag sounded more like bargaining than anything else, Cheng-sin said, “Her house only one or two street outside. Her brother is …” he coughed as he searched for the word, “sleep like dead man, but alive with mad talk and fever.” His voice became more honeyed. “She afraid move him, Honorable Medicine Doctor Wise Enlightened. Her brother samurai, she say many important persons very happy if you help brother. I think she say truth.”

From Hong Kong newspapers Hoag was acquainted with the importance of samurai as the absolute ruling class in Japan, and that anything that would gain their confidence, and thus their cooperation, would assist British influence. He studied her. At once she dropped her eyes. Her nervousness increased. She appeared to be fifteen or sixteen and her features quite unlike the villagers, lovely skin. If her brother’s samurai so is she, he thought, intrigued. “What’s her name?”

“Uki Ichikawa. Please to hurry.”

“Her brother’s an important samurai?”

“Yes,” Cheng-sin said. “I accompany you, not be fear.”

Hoag snorted. “Afraid? Me? The pox on fear! Wait here.” He went to the surgery, opened the door quietly. Babcott was heavily involved extracting an abscessed tooth, his knee on the youth’s chest, the distraught mother wringing her hands and chattering. He decided not to disturb him.

At the gates the Sergeant of the Guard politely stopped them and asked where he was going. “I’ll send a couple of my lads with you. Better safe than sorry.”

The girl tried to dissuade them from bringing soldiers but the Sergeant was adamant. At length she agreed and, more nervously, led the way down one street, into an alley, into another and then another. The villagers they passed averted their eyes and scuttled away. Hoag carried his doctor’s bag. Over the rooftops he could still see the temple, and was reassured, and glad for the soldiers, knowing it would have been foolhardy to go without them. Cheng-sin plodded along, a tall staff in his hand.

This young lady’s not all she pretends to be, Hoag thought, not a little excited by the adventure.

Into another alley. Then she stopped at a door set in a tall fence and knocked. A grille opened, then the door. When the burly servant saw the soldiers he started to close it but the girl imperiously ordered him to desist.

The garden was small, well kept but not extravagant. At the steps to the veranda of a small shoji house, she slipped out of clog shoes and asked them to do the same. It was awkward for Hoag, as he wore high boots. At once she ordered the servant to help him and was obeyed instantly.

“You two best guard here,” Hoag said to the soldiers, embarrassed by the holes in his socks.

“Yes, sir.” One of the soldiers checked his rifle. “I’ll just look around the back. Any trouble just shout.”

The girl slid back the shoji. Ori Ryoma, the shishi of the Tokaidō attack, lay on the futons, the sheet soaking, a maidservant fanning him. Her eyes widened seeing Hoag and not Honorable Medicine Giant Healer, as she had expected, and she backed away as he came in ponderously.

Ori was unconscious, in a coma—his swords on a low rack nearby, a flower arrangement in the tokonoma. Hoag squatted on his haunches beside him. The youth’s forehead was very hot, face flushed, dangerously high fever. The cause was quickly apparent as Hoag pulled away the bandage on his shoulder and upper arm. “Christ,” he muttered, seeing the extent of the puffy, poisonous inflammation, the telltale smell and black of dead tissue—gangrene—around the bullet wound.

“When was he shot?”

“She not know exactly. Two or three weeks.”

Once more he looked at the wound. Then, oblivious of all the eyes focused on him, he went out and sat on the edge of the veranda and stared into space.

All I need now is my fine Hong Kong hospital and fine operating equipment, my wonderful Nightingale nurses, together with a barrel of luck, to save this poor youth. Fucking guns, fucking wars, fucking politicians …

For God’s sake, I’ve been trying to patch up gun mutilations all my working life, failing most of the time—six years with the East India Company in bloody Bengal, fifteen years in the Colony and Opium War years, a volunteered year in the Crimea, the bloodiest of all, with the Hong Kong Hospital Detachment. Fucking guns! Christ, what a waste!

After he had sworn his rage away he lit a cheroot, puffed, then discarded the match. At once the shocked servant rushed forward and picked up the offending object.

“Oh, sorry,” Hoag said, not having noticed the pristine cleanliness of the path and surrounds. He inhaled deeply, then dismissed everything from his mind except the youth. At length he decided, began to throw his butt away, stopped and gave it to the servant who bowed and went to bury it.

“Cheng-sin, tell her I’m sorry but if I operate or not I think her brother will die. Sorry.”

“She says, ‘If die, is karma. If no help, he dies today, tomorrow. Please to try. If he dies, karma. She ask help.’” Cheng-sin added softly: “Medicine Doctor Wise Enlightened, this youth important. Important try, heya?”

Hoag looked at the girl. Her eyes gazed back at him.

“Dozo, Hoh Geh-sama,”
she said. Please.

“Very well, Uki. Cheng-sin, tell her again I can’t promise anything but I’ll try. I will need soap, lots of hot water in bowls, lots of clean sheets, lots of sheets torn into swabs and bandages, lots of quiet and someone with a strong stomach to help me.”

At once the girl pointed at herself.
“Söji shimasu.”
I will do it.

Hoag frowned. “Tell her it will be very unpleasant, much blood, much stink, and ugly.” He saw her listen intently to the Chinese, then reply with evident pride,
“Gomen nasai, Hoh Geh-san, wakarimasen. Watashi samurai desu.”

“She say, ‘Please to excuse, I understand. I am samurai.’”

“I don’t know what that means to you, pretty young lady, and I didn’t know women could be samurai, but let’s begin.”

Hoag found out quickly that one characteristic of samurai was courage. Never once did she falter during the cleaning operation, cutting away the infected tissue, releasing the foul-smelling pus, flushing the wound, blood pulsing from a partially severed vein until he could stanch the flow and repair it, swabbing and swabbing again—the big sleeves of the maid’s kimono into which she had changed rolled up and fastened out of
the way, and the scarf with which she had tied back her hair, both soon soiled and reeking.

For an hour he worked away, humming from time to time, ears closed, nostrils closed, every sense engrossed, repeating an operation he had done a thousand times too often. Cutting, sewing, cleaning, bandaging. Then he had finished.

Without haste he stretched to ease his cramped back muscles, washed his hands and took off the now bloody sheet he had used as an apron. Ori was balanced on the edge of the veranda as a makeshift table, he standing in the garden against it: “Can’t operate on my knees easily, Uki,” he had said.

Everything he had wanted done she had done without hesitation. There had been no need to anesthetize the man, whose name, he was told, was Hiro Ichikawa; his coma was so deep. Once or twice Ori cried out, but not from pain, just some devil in his nightmare. And struggled, but without strength.

Ori sighed deeply. Anxiously Hoag felt his pulse. It was almost imperceptible, so was the breathing. “Never mind,” he muttered. “At least he has a pulse.”

“Gomen nasai, Hoh Geh-san,”
the soft voice said,
“anata kanga-emasu, hai, iyé?”

“She says, ‘Excuse me, Honorable Wise Enlightened, you think yes or no?’” Cheng-sin coughed. He had spent the time well away from the veranda, his back towards them.

Hoag shrugged, watching her, wondering about her, where the strength came from, where she lived and what would happen now. She was quite pale, her features stark but still dominated by an iron will. His eyes crinkled with a smile. “I don’t know. It’s up to God. Uki, you number one. Samurai.”

“Domo … domo arigato gozaimashita.”
Thank you. She bowed to the tatami. Her real name was Sumomo Anato, she was Hiraga’s wife-to-be, and Shorin’s sister, not Ori’s.

“She asks what should she do now?”

“For her brother, nothing at the moment. Tell the maid to put cold towels on his forehead and keep bandages soaked with clean water until the fever goes down. If the … once the fever’s gone—I hope before dawn—the youth will live. Perhaps.” And what are the odds, was usually the next question. This time it did not happen. “Well, I’ll go now. Tell her to send a guide for me early tomorrow morning …” If he’s still alive, was in his mind, but he decided not to say it.

As Cheng-sin translated he began to wash his instruments. The girl beckoned the manservant and spoke to him.
“Hai,”
the man said, and hurried away.

“Medicine Doctor Wise Enlightened, before you go Lady say sure to want bath. Yes?”

Dr. Hoag was on the point of saying no, but found himself nodding yes. And he was glad that he did.

In the gloaming Babcott sat on the Legation veranda enjoying a whisky, exhausted but pleased with his surgery. There was a good smell of the sea on the breeze that touched the garden. As his eyes strayed involuntarily to the shrubbery where the black-clothed assassin had been caught and killed three weeks ago, the temple bell began tolling and the distant deep-throated chant of the monks sounded:
“Ommm mahnee padmee hummmmm …”
He looked up as Hoag plodded up towards him. “Good God!”

Hoag wore a patterned, belted yukata, white shoe-socks on his feet and Japanese clogs. Hair and beard combed and freshly washed. Under his arm was a large straw-covered cask of saké and he was beaming. “’Evening, George!”

“You look pleased with yourself, where have you been?”

“The best part was the bath.” Hoag put the cask onto a sideboard, poured a stiff whisky. “My God, the best I’ve ever had. Can’t believe how good I feel now.”

“How was she?” Babcott asked dryly.

“No sex, old man, just scrubbed clean and dunked in damn near boiling water, pummelled and massaged and then into this garb. Meanwhile all my clothes were washed and ironed, boots cleaned and socks replaced. Marvelous. She gave me the saké and these …” He fished into his sleeve and showed Babcott two oval-shaped coins and a scroll covered with characters.

“My God, you’ve been well paid, these are gold oban—they’ll keep you in champagne for at least a week! The Sergeant told me you were on a house call.” They both laughed. “Was he a daimyo?”

“Don’t think so, he was a youth, a samurai. Don’t think I helped him much. Can you read the scroll?”

“No, but Lim can. Lim!”

“Yes, Mass’er?”

“Paper what?”

Lim took the scroll. His eyes widened and then he reread it carefully, and said to Hoag in Cantonese: “It says, ‘Medicine Doctor Wise Enlightened has performed a great service. In the name of Satsuma shishi, give him all help he needs.’” Lim pointed at the signature, his finger trembling. “Sorry, Lord, the name I can’t read.”

“Why are you frightened?” Hoag asked, also in Cantonese.

Uneasily Lim said, “Shishi are rebels, bandits hunted by the Bakufu. They’re bad people even though samurai, Lord.”

Impatiently Babcott asked, “What’s it say, Ronald?”

Hoag told him.

“Good God, a bandit? What happened?”

Thirstily Hoag poured another drink and began describing in detail the woman, the youth and wound and how he had cut away the dead tissue. “… seems the poor bugger got shot two or three weeks ago and—”

“Christ Almighty!” Babcott leapt to his feet as everything fell into place, startling Hoag who spilt his drink.

“Are you bonkers?” Hoag spluttered.

“Can you find your way back there?”

“Eh? Well, well yes, I suppose so but what—”

“Come on, hurry.” Babcott rushed out, shouting, “Sergeant of the Guard!”

They were loping down a back alley, Hoag leading, still in his yukata, but now wearing his boots, Babcott close behind, the Sergeant and ten soldiers following, all of them armed. The few pedestrians, some with lanterns, scattered out of the way. Above was a fair moon.

Hurrying faster now. A missed turning. Hoag cursed, then doubled back, got his bearings and found the half-hidden mouth to the correct alley. On again. Another alley. He stopped, pointed. Twenty yards ahead was the door.

At once the Sergeant and soldiers charged past him. Two put their backs to the wall on guard, four slammed their shoulders into the door, bursting it off its hinges and they poured through the gap, Hoag and Babcott after them. Both carried borrowed rifles easily, expert in their use, a common skill and a necessity for European civilians in Asia.