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LET THESE DEATHS BE ENOUGH317Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzWGxwSv0jb
317Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOr6TzJbSt7
317Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1kcO706YZd
Robinson could see it all, from the first shot to the last shot. The wave of laborers stormed the camp holding sticks and small pieces of glass taken from the burial site and as they charged towards the camp itself---
----They were met by a line of guards that emerged from Bronco's tent, ten or fifteen guards who had been waiting for just this to happen, all of them holding rifles, set in firing posture. Robinson could see what was going to happen a long time before it did, standing up on the hill he could see the situation developing before him and the lapse of time was so great that from this perspective everything appeared to be happening in frieze....but he knew that it was not this way for the men on the ground nor, for that matter, for the guards who were overcome, absolutely overwhelmed by events. One who watches, Robinson thought, is not one who is in the middle of the action...and then he saw Hoga, at the head of the line, desperately charging towards the guards, the guards lifted their rifles and suddenly Hoga, an insect impaled, was staggering backward, arms and legs into the air and then he fell heavily, the charging line overtaking him and moving towards the guards. Another series of shots and a Japanese fell in place. For the first time, the charging line hesitated, milling now around this second wounded.
Robinson sprang then. At the first shot, he had fallen to his belly on the hill, waiting out the sounds, then he had come to his knees in time to see the second....and now, looking at the mass of laborers swirling around in momentary indecision, there was no thought to what he did next; he came erect and began to run. Surely from this distance, it'd be only a few instants until one of the guards saw him and he became part of that deadly fire....but it did not matter. At last, he had found, he thought, something in which he could make a difference and if he were killed trying to close ground towards them on this terrain it at least would have been in the attempt to do something. He saw Hoga's body sprawled on its back on the grass, for just an instant the image of Kim, killed by the Marine colonel's pistol, superimposed itself above this vision, and then the image went away but it only impelled him to run faster.
Now, as he came near Bronco's tent, he could hear the cries of the Japanese, their desperate bellows of fear and shock at what had happened to them; he could see that at least momentarily they did not know what to do....and as he approached them the faces of the guards also assumed expression, he could see that these faces were not the implacable masks which had taken them to be but rather were overtaken by their expressions of fear and despair, a horror as they looked at the two bodies in front of them. There is hope then yet, Robinson thought, at least these men are human. From inside the tent, there was motion, then two faces looked out toward him. Bronco and the guard who'd almost killed him. While their creation death took shape in front of them, these men took shelter, Robinson didn't even have time to feel hatred, so impacted was the moment. All he wanted to do was to somehow stop this before it became a massacre. If it was a massacre, he knew who would be those to die. But even if it had been the other way, if it had been the laborers overwhelming the guards...he thought that he probably would have done the same thing. Death was the same violation, no matter upon whom it was enacted.
He ran between the guards and the Japanese. A ragged line had already been set up, a long, jagged open space between the two forces and he ran into it, circling the Japanese, raising his hand. The guards looked at him and he saw in most of those faces that they too were looking for salvation. They no more wanted to kill than to be killed, all they wanted was to be out of the situation. Only the Broncos sought death...but they stayed within their tents and waged their wars at a distance.
"Wait!" Robinson said, shouting as he had not before in the camp and the fact that he had raised his voice seemed to impress both Japanese and guards as much as anything which he was saying, "You must wait!" The lines fell further away, parted. He walked along that corridor. "To fight for yourselves is right," he said to the line of Japanese. The faces were blunt, unrecognizable in the darkness, but he spoke to them as he might have spoken to those with whom he had spent his life. "To die vainly without hope of winning is the action of stupid men. Do you not understand this?"
The Japanese murmured. The guards held their rigid position but Robinson knew that he did not have to be concerned with them. He motioned towards the two bodies. "Let these deaths be enough," he said, "let these deaths be a warning, and let them be an end. No more. We can find our way through what is right or not find it at all but these are men too and this cannot be done to them." He motioned towards the guards who regarded him with the same attention as the Japanese. "All of us are men," Robinson said, "nothing else."
It seemed for a moment as if what he had said would have no effect. The Japanese and guards, tense, might have sprung against one another simply at the sight of the bodies but then, in some subtle way, the moment changed and shifted, became something else and Robinson knew then that he had succeeded. The lines sagged back into their boundaries and then the Japanese, one by one, began to walk slowly off into the night. They didn't speak with each other, even as they merged into the darkness beyond they did not come close. Instead, they seemed, each of them, to be wrapped into a kind of private shame; a shame, Robinson thought, which he could understand himself.
After a moment, all of them were gone.
The guards stood, locked in position. Robinson let them look at him, let them know that he had, in some way, marked all of them and then he too turned to go when Bronco and the little guard with the pistol came out of the tent. They did so abruptly, the guard brandishing his pistol. He had the same expression on his face as in the morning, before the blast. Robinson stood there. Let the guard kill him, then. By delaying his death for twelve hours, other lives might have been saved. It was enough. It would be enough.
Bronco looked at the bodies and then at Robinson. With a motion so abrupt and savage that the guard trembled, he knocked the pistol out of the little man's hand and then came up to Robinson. Facing him at a separation of just inches, Robinson looked into the face of Thatcher's murderer. He saw the purpose in that dark face, in the rush of blood that caused it to compress. Thatcher's murder was just the beginning, he thought. A man like this could only derive strength from murder.
"They owe you a lot," Bronco said to Robinson. "They ought to be thankful."
Robinson stayed silent. He looked past the line of guards towards the trees. There was a forest there. A man might be able to manage sustenance for a long time in that enclosure.
"Get them out of my sight!" Bronco shouted at the guards, motioning at the corpses. "And get them buried."
Robinson started towards the corpses. Bronco said, "Not you," in a high voice.
Robinson stopped. Midway between Hoga's body and Bronco, he looked at the man. Bronco seemed to be shaking from some obscure strain. "Cover him," he said to the rear and Robinson heard the click of a belt as a rifle was leveled on him by a young, frightened guard. Bronco reached into a back pocket and took out a piece of paper, showed it to Robinson, and then began to read.
The absurdity of it at a different time probably would have registered upon Robinson; Bronco, the administrator, precise even at this moment, was informing Robinson of the text of a message authorizing him to do what he was doing. Bronco was a murderer, but he was the kind of killer who every step of the way, it seemed, had a rationale for what he was doing. That enabled him to do it so practically, so brutally, so murderously well. Bronco said, "This message is from the Korean emissary to the White House. It is in response to a telegram which they sent us. Ji-Hoon Robinson is wanted for the murder of Colonel Orville Wright, U.S.M.C. on Korean soil." Bronco looked up, his eyes bright with interest. "That means you killed an American, it sounds like to me," he said. "They asked us to retain you in custody for a pickup by the emissary's representative." He slapped the telegram, folded it, and put it away in a side pocket. "They answered this one within two hours of our own," he said. "I reckon that king of yours aims to fetch you back, as a right proper apology to these United States. He better be damn sorry, Mr. Robinson. In my book, no soul ought to be let off the hook for taking down an American."
Robinson looked at the ground and stayed silent. Silence brings its own counsel. It must have been Kazuo, he thought, the young farmer who was in the tent with us all the time last night, the one that Yoshihiro noticed today was missing. He could not feel hatred for the man. Kazuo, like all of them, had done what he had for a reason. Like Hoga, like Thatcher, he had been operating, he would have thought, for a higher principle. What terrible things higher principles make of us! Robinson thought the flesh would never betray us with its simple needs as would the mind and what it thinks of as conscience.
"Bind him," Robinson said.
Two guards came out of the line, one of them holding a coil of rope. They showed trepidation. Robinson looked at them, then again at the ground. He would offer them no resistance. Too many had suffered already. If they would take him, then so be it. Let them have him. Let them have and see if they could hold him.
Would they understand, finally, that His Majesty, the King, was insatiable?"317Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnWyEjzGhZ6
