Mirror M*A*S*H: Through the Mirror, Part Five
This is by way of being a sequel to MirrorM*A*S*H.


Part one, Part two, Part three and Part four are here.





Part 5

Hawkeye stood up abruptly when Francis came into his room. “If he told you I tried to rape him, he’s lying.”

Francis closed the door behind him. He didn’t come any closer.

Hawkeye sat down again. He put his hands down beside him on the bed. “Look – I promised you. I – wouldn’t. I won’t. All I did – I swear, Francis, all I did was make a pass. And when he said no, I stopped.” And when he acted so upset, I apologised. Not that it did me any good.

Francis put his hands together. “Father Joseph says you made homosexual advances to him.”

Hawkeye stared. “He – what?”

“Did you?”

“I made a pass at him,” Hawkeye said. “I made a nice, polite pass. I – look, whatever ‘homosexual advances’ are supposed to be, I just – I just put my arm round him, I kissed him – ” Hawkeye stopped. Francis’s face hadn’t changed. “I can’t – I know he was upset, but if he told you I raped him, he’s lying.” He had spent nearly two days in this small room. Won-sik, the Korean who cleaned the rooms, delivered meals on a tray, and didn’t talk to him.

“He doesn’t say you raped him,” Francis said. He hadn’t moved from the doorway.

“He – doesn’t?” Hawkeye stopped. He felt a sudden, overwhelming relief. But Francis was still standing by the door, with a withdrawn look. “He doesn’t? Then – what’s – what am I supposed to have done wrong?”

“No one here would believe you didn’t know,” Francis said. “You made homosexual advances to a priest.” He looked grey and tired.

“Are you all right?” Hawkeye asked abruptly.

Francis was startled: his eyes seemed to widen. His voice didn’t change. “I’m fine.”

“You look exhausted.”

“We had – I haven’t had much sleep. And Father Niall phoned – so I drove down – ” Francis looked at him strangely. “If not for the – peculiar circumstances, Father Neill would have asked you to leave. No one here would believe you didn’t know,” he said again. “But Father Niall knows that he doesn’t know – that you come from somewhere else. So he asked me to come as soon as I could – to talk with you.”

Somewhere else. Father Niall knows. Hawkeye leaned his head back against the wall and looked at Francis. The room didn’t have a chair: there was no way Francis would sit down on the bed next to Hawkeye. Niall knows.

Who else knows?

What do they know?

Francis had looked at him as if he was his worst nightmare. But Joseph had looked at him with... clear disgust – disgust and astonishment, even.

“You’re tired,” Hawkeye said. He got up. Three short paces from the bed to the other wall. Hawkeye gestured to the bed. “Sit down.” He sat down himself, his back against the wall, and wrapped his hands round his knees.

After a moment, Francis crossed to the bed and sat down. He rested his elbows on his knees and folded his arms in front of him: he sat almost hunched, defensive. “I should have explained this to you before,” he said. “But I didn’t – ”

“Who else knows about me?”

Francis blinked a little. “Here in this convent?

“Here. Anywhere.”

“The scholars who asked me to go through. But they’re mostly not here, right now.” Francis said. “The Colonel of my unit. Father Niall. My confessor. The other Jesuits here know you’re a guest of the convent – someone they’ve been asked not to talk about. The hospital staff in Tokyo, of course,” Francis added as an afterthought. “But they don’t know you’re from somewhere else.”

The scars that the Colonel had left with his knife still ached, when Hawkeye had time to think about them, and he had had plenty of time to think about them in two speechless days. “Who else – besides you – knows I’m – I was – ”

Francis looked at him without saying anything.

Hawkeye swallowed and got it out “ – a torturer?”

“No one,” Francis said.

It was like being drafted had been, at first: Hawkeye could only stare. “Who else knows?” he asked again.

“No one,” Francis repeated.

Hawkeye had lifted his hands from his knees and was turning them, looking at them, before he realised what he was doing. He wrapped his hands round his knees again and looked at Francis. “You didn’t tell anyone?” he asked.

“I saw no reason to,” Francis said.

Hawkeye leaned his head back against the wall. He felt still as if a large blow had landed, making hin numb, but it fell like a relief, not like a wound. Really, no one else knows? he wanted to ask, to hear Francis say it again and again.

But Joseph had still looked at him with disgust. Not merely with rejection – or with the fear that had filled Francis’s face when he had looked at Hawkeye then – but with disgust. If not because he knew Hawkeye was a torturer, why?

“I need to explain to you,” Francis said. He sounded worried and tired. “I should have done it before. Do you – you do understand what ‘homosexual’ means, don’t you?”

Hawkeye shook his head. The relief he was feeling got into a grin and escaped all over his face. “Sexual I understand.”

Francis ducked his head, grimacing. He looked –

“I’m sorry, Francis,” Hawkeye said. He waited for Francis to look at him again. “I’m listening. Go on.”

“‘Homosexual’ means when a man makes sexual advances to another man, or men who prefer to have sex with other men,” Francis said after a pause. His voice was absolutely flat, dead of all emotion: he sounded like he was reciting something memorised. “It is considered immoral and shameful in this world. In most countries, including the United States, it is also illegal.”

Hawkeye laughed: and stopped, eyeing Francis. “Illegal? How do you make a law against that? You’d have courts prosecuting everyone.” Francis was leaning forward, looking worried. “Are you – you are serious.”

“It’s not something I want to talk about with you,” Francis said. “But I was afraid that I would have to tell you before you left here. I suppose I ought to have told you before.”

Hawkeye shook his head. “Even the bookplate made more sense,” he said. “Who – how do you make a law against that? And who would think that it’s something to be ashamed of?” He remembered, uncomfortably, the look on Joseph’s face. “And why? If it’s because he’s celibate too, all he had to do was say no.”

“I don’t think I can talk about it with you,” Francis said. “But can you – can you tell me you’ve heard and understood?”

“I heard,” Hawkeye said. “I can’t say I understand it.” He laughed, feeling giggles jerk at his throat. “But I heard. Francis, are you saying you think when two men have sex it’s, what, illegal, immoral, and shameful?”

Francis stood up so abruptly that Hawkeye blinked. “Don’t you think I have reason?” His voice rose to a shout. He stood above Hawkeye, staring down, red in the face, for a long moment before he sat down, arms folded, and bowed his head over his arms. “Hawkeye,” he said at last without looking up. “It’s not something I want to talk about with you. I knew I had to tell you before you left here. I should have told you before I went back to my unit. I just hoped,” his voice wavered out of the grey tone, “I wouldn’t have to.”

Hawkeye stared at the pile of books beside the bed. He hadn’t thought about it before, but that was one odd and oddly consistent thing about both the novels and all the short stories: he could not recall a single explicit reference to a romance or a marriage or an affair or even an attraction except where one person was male and one female. Not one. It was as if someone had taken an eraser and rubbed across the page to wipe out –

Everything except that look of disgust in Joseph’s eyes. Hawkeye put his hand up to rub across his own eyes. If Trapper were here – if Trapper existed in this world – would he have looked at Hawkeye with that same disgust? Would every man Hawkeye wanted –

I can’t live like this.

It was even a moment before Hawkeye remembered when he had heard that said before. Francis curled up on Trapper’s cot, trying to cover himself with hands that didn’t seem to be functioning. A slave who had been frustratingly ungrateful – unaccepting – of every attempt to make things easier for him. A man who had saved Hawkeye’s life.

No one had beaten Hawkeye or sold him or put him in fetters.

“Francis, I’m sorry,” Hawkeye said.

Francis’s head lifted. He looked tired and dazed. “What?”

“Heard and understood,” Hawkeye said.

“Oh.” Francis shook his head. The grey self-control had disappeared: so had the brief flare of anger, “I’m sorry, I – I know it was different – Hawkeye, does it matter to you so much? You prefer women...?”

Hawkeye thought he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. He lent his head back against the wall and tried to swallow it down. “I prefer men, women, goats, cheese, watermelons, gin, detective novels, coffee, chocolate, steaks, and men,” he got out. “Does it matter? What else did they make laws against in this world – drinking?”

“Well, as a matter of fact – ” Francis began, and Hawkeye laughed aloud, shaking with it.

“They didn’t. Oh, tell me they didn’t. There’s a law against drinking?”

“For a few years,” Francis said. “There was an amendment to the constitution..” He sounded as if he had received a shock. “Hawkeye, do you mean to say...”

“I mean I promise I won’t hit on any more men while I’m staying here,” Hawkeye said. He thought about it. “And if you can think of a way I can make it right with Joseph...? There was an amendment to the constitution against drinking? We’re talking the US Constitution?”

“Yes,” Francis said. He was plainly at the end of his tether. “I’ll talk to Father Joseph... Hawkeye. It is serious. You promise – ?”

“I promise,” Hawkeye said. He was trying to calm his voice. “Can you promise me one thing?”

“What?”

“Get some sleep before you drive back. When did you sleep last?”

“What day is it?” Francis said.

Hawkeye shrugged. “I’m not the best person to ask.”

Francis shook his head again. “We were busy... but I think I slept about forty hours ago.” He glanced at his watch. “Yes, about then.”

“Can you sleep here?”

Francis stood up quickly. Hawkeye stayed sitting down. “I don’t mean here here,” he said. “I mean here – in the infirmary, or somewhere.”

“Oh, I’m not really tired. I haven’t done anything. I mean of consequence. I just – ” The sentence was broken by a yawn. “Well, perhaps I need some coffee before I drive back.”

“Sleep,” Hawkeye said. He got to his feet, slowly, keeping an eye on Francis. “You need to sleep.”

Francis was almost out of the door. He turned round, one hand on the jamb, and looked at Hawkeye. “I’ll talk to Father Niall and Father Joseph,” he said. “It would help a lot if I could tell them you’re sincerely repentant.”

“Go get some sleep,” Hawkeye repeated. “That’ll give me time to work on it.”

Francis nodded. “Okay,” he said. As if some lifeline had been keeping him awake, and it had broken, he blinked at Hawkeye, and said in a sleep-dazed voice, “Why Joseph?”

“He’s the only one here who really talks to me, aside from you,” Hawkeye said, with the honesty of two days left alone to think about it. “I liked – I like him.”

“Oh,” Francis said. He cast an odd look at Hawkeye, and closed the door.

to part 6