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Killing (continued from preceding page)
“Young girl cos’ more,” mama-san said. “Boo-coo
bucks. Boo-coo bucks.”
“I’ll spring for it,” Phil said. “C’mon, I’ll pay for both of us.”
“No,” said Hank, but with less conviction. He felt as if Phil had overpowered him, and he was unable to stop what now seemed inevitable.
Phil gave mama-san some money and she left. While Hank stood, unable to run away, Mama-san came back with three girls: small, no breasts or hips.
“Jesus!” Hank said.
Phil put his arm around two of the girls. “This is free- dom, man. You know? No rules. No laws. We’re free, man. You want poetry? I’ll give you poetry. ‘Where there ain’t no ten commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst.’”
“This isn’t what that poem means,” Hank said.
Phil laughed as he guided the two young girls down the hall.
The remaining girl smiled shyly at Hank and looked down as if afraid to make eye-contact. Apparently, she was new to the massage parlor routine, someone try- ing to survive during wartime, maybe sold to mama- san by her parents. Hank was horrified by what was going on, but he gave in to it, as if to a higher power, and the event seemed to take on a force of its own, beyond his ability to stop it.
The girl gently grabbed Hank’s hand and guided him into a small room with a high wooden bed, a thin mat- tress on it. Hank noticed the stains on the sheet. He felt lost, as if he had entered a tunnel with no exit, no light at the end, his mind swirling. She coyly gestured for Hank to take off his clothes.
“No,” he said softly, “no.” He stood, frozen.
“You no do, I no make.” She rubbed fingers with her thumb, the universal symbol for money.
“Right,” Hank said. “I get it.”
He took a breath of resignation, then like an obedient child, removed his clothes and lay down. In a ges- ture of modesty, bizarre under the circumstances, he placed a sheet over his middle.
Hank tried to distance himself from the scene, as if he were watching it from above. In the background there was screechy music and noise from outside:
cars, jeeps. He heard other noises... bombs? The war wasn’t that close, was it? He took in the smells: frying fish oil... kerosene... urine... cheap perfume... tropical rain... semen... garbage.
The girl leaned over, removed the sheet from Hank’s waist, giggled nervously and looked at Hank’s penis. She examined it closely, in silence, inspecting, not touching.
The inspection took too long. Hank could feel her con- cern. Something was wrong. Finally, she pointed at his crotch and said, “No same-same, no same-same.”
Hank realized what it was.
“I’m circumcised,” he said. “You’re new at this, I know, but Americans, some Americans, not only Jews...” He stopped. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?”
The girl was obviously scared and shook her head. “No same-same,” she repeated. “No same-same.” She left the room and came back a few seconds later with mama-san, who inspected Hank’s penis like a lab technician looking at a malignant growth. Mama-san said something to the girl, who was nearly in tears.
Hank felt as if the situation had now spun into the terminally absurd. He wanted to say, “Listen, mama- san, I don’t care what her problem is, the money’s been paid and I don’t have a venereal disease, so let’s get on with it. “
But he didn’t say that, because it was no longer Hank the sailor in that room. He had been found out for what he really was, so it was now Henry Freedman in that room, Henry the nice Jewish boy whose parents, and their expectations for him, were buried deep inside.
So he spoke in a wry, self-mocking—quintessentially Jewish—manner.
“What the hell am I doing here? Here, in a Da Nang whorehouse... in a war zone... You mind telling me what I’m doing here? I’m a nice Jewish boy with a couple of college degrees. What the hell am I doing here, while two women argue about whether my cir- cumcised schmeckel is acceptable? You mind telling me what the hell I’m doing here?”
Loiederman has been a journalist, merchant seaman, and TV script- writer. He has contributed hundreds of articles and stories to the L.A. Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Penthouse, and many liter- ary magazines. One of his stories, “Before Me Today,” was included in the movie business anthology, The Way We Work. Twice nomi- nated for the Pushcart Prize, he is co-author of The Eagle Mutiny, a nonfiction account of the only mutiny on a U.S. ship in modern times.
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