456
PARTISAN REVIEW
different from a wired-up combat rig, a flight-suit underneath it, and GI
brogans. I couldn't last long in Tokyo, either in daylight or at night, in
what I had on. If the fire came -
whCl1
the fire came - I would go out
with the forty-five and get what I needed.
I
broke open my emergency kit and spread the stuff on the seat,
wondering what situations might come up where I'd use it: use this
thing and then that thing. There was a little knife that I could use for
little doings, like cutting string or scaling fish. There was a packet of fish–
hooks and some twine. There was a silk map of part of Japan, like a
handkerchief printed with a topo layout of Japan up to the strait be–
tween Honshu and Hokkaido, and another piece of silk that had an
American flag on it, and writing in five or six different languages; the
Intelligence Officers told us that Japanese was one of them. I couldn't
read them, but all the crews had had to memorize what they said:
I
am
an. American aviator .
My
aircraft is destroyed. I am an enemy oj the Japanese.
Please take me to the nearest American allthorities. The gOllemment oj my
country will pay you.
Like
I
say, I couldn't read any of this stuff, but
I
looked at all that writing, in Annamese, Burmese, Thai (it said), French,
and Japanese, and I struck a blank wall on whether I should keep it. I
looked by the match-light, before the match went out, and tried to
make a decision. But it was funny, anyway, and I think I laughed, right
there in the cab, and real loud, too.
It was quiet there.
I
sat on the floor of the cab with my things on
the seat: gun, bullets, fishhooks, map, blood-chit with all the languages,
and leaned back against the metal of the wall. Nothing, nobody, could
be more out of luck.
Except that there could be. Both times, it was myself, and [ knew
that when I got down into the pipe - when the sun came up had to get
down into it - I would be even worse off, and if the fire didn't come
down on Tokyo it was only a question of time before somebody would
find me, if I didn't drown in the flood of Tokyo shit, and no matter
how hard I fought or however many
I
might be able to kill, I would
lose.
I
would have my balls cut off, I would have my head cut off, and
that would be it.
But not yet.
I
took out the C-rations and wound the key around
the can. It was not so bad: a kind of cold hash, and I ate it all, and
stretched out on the seat, when I'd put my stuff back the way it was.
There was really nothing to worry about.
I
had the next day planned,
and the Colonel's B-29s would come, or they wouldn't. That was not
up to me.
There was a long dream in which a buffalo, something I had never
seen except in pictures, ran across in front of me, and for some reason I
couldn't move my eyes or my head, but had to stare front and center
(
,
I
I
