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

Part one and Part two are here.

Part Three

He’d been wanting to see Francis so badly that when he saw him in the flesh, for an instant he thought he wasn’t there.

“Hey,” Hawkeye said. He stood up. Francis was looking round the infirmary.

“I hadn’t been in here before,” Francis said.

“It’s small, but ineffective. Joseph lets me play doctor.” Joseph Wilson was a surprisingly nice guy. He had been designated infirmarian, he told Hawkeye, because he’d once been subinfirmarian for three months in a convent back in the states, and that was more medical experience than any of the other eleven Jesuits in the convent had. Anything serious went to the American hospital. There were two beds in the infirmary, and Joseph said he didn’t think they’d ever both been occupied at the same time.

Francis was still looking round the infirmary. Anywhere but at Hawkeye. “Are you busy?”

“Not so’s you’d notice. I’ve read the encyclopedia almost up to the end of E. As far as I can tell, elephants and Estonia are the same for both of us. Also, I can tell you more than you want to know about Edison.” Hawkeye moved sideways. “Francis?”

“Edison?” Francis blinked, almost at him, and glanced away. Joseph said Francis usually visited the convent in Seoul once a week or so. To confess, he said: he didn’t say to what.

“The guy who invented electric light bulbs. Hadn’t you heard of him? The encyclopedia you gave me thought he was three columns and two pictures worth – that’s more than some Presidents got.” Hawkeye moved sideways again. “Francis?”

“Are you all right?” Francis did look at Hawkeye now.

Hawkeye stopped moving. “Fine.” Francis looked tired. He looked less well than he’d looked five days ago. “I sleep, I eat, I’ve been doing some medical work – bandaging cut fingers and dressing burns, and yesterday I got to take a speck of grit out of Brother Won-Sik’s eye. How about you?”

“Do you have time to talk?”

“Do I have time to talk?” Hawkeye grinned. “I always have time to talk. For you, I even have time to listen.”

He’d finished The Nine Tailors and read one of the Father Brown stories and half of the Kipling stories, finding them a dislocating mixture of the familiar and the strange: even the stories that seemed at first glance to be the same as those he’d read when a boy, had odd ripples of unfamiliarity running through them, and some were completely new to him. He would have liked to talk to Francis about this. He doubted that Francis wanted to talk about the books he’d leant.

Francis swallowed. “Do you want – would you like to go out to the tea house round the corner? They serve very good tea. And sugar cookies.”

“Out?” Hawkeye stared, genuinely startled.

“Yes.” Francis wasn’t looking at him again. “I didn’t want to – I’d like to ask you a rather – a rather difficult question, and I don’t want to do it – in here.”

“So long as the answer is something from A to E, I can tell you anything you want to know,” Hawkeye said.

He didn’t think Francis was listening to him: he was certain of it when Francis smiled, nodded, and turned to go. Hawkeye followed him. He hadn’t been out of the convent house since he arrived a week ago. A Caucasian on the streets of Seoul without papers would get snapped up by the patrols: but he assumed that Francis had thought of that already. At least, he hoped he had. Francis looked distracted.

The tea house looked like any other small streetside place Hawkeye had drunk tea in with Trapper, a million years ago. Hawkeye had never got used to the low stools that the Koreans seemed to find comfortable, but Francis sat down with familiarity. Tea materialised, and after a handful of waved explanation, a plate of sugary brightly-coloured cookies instead of the bowls of noodles everyone else seemed to be eating. They were the only two Caucasians in the place: Hawkeye trusted Francis had thought about how this would look to a passing patrol.

The tea was good, though. Anything would taste good after the brown liquid they served in the convent.

“I wonder if I could trade medical services for tea,” Hawkeye said.

Francis’s hands were curled round the cup, his glasses misted with the steam rising from the tea. “How are things for you?”

“Fine,” Hawkeye said.

“No, really,” Francis said. He was looking at Hawkeye now. “I know things must be very – very strange for you. You don’t have any regrets?”

The bells that woke Hawkeye every few hours. The knowledge, each time he woke, that he’d never see his dad or Trapper or Crabapple Cove again. The mind-fracturing changes between known and recorded history. (The crucifixions on every wall, even in the infirmary. Hawkeye didn’t look at them. It wasn’t real: it was just religion.) But he was sleeping better than he had slept for years. And Francis was looking at him, intent and kind. Hawkeye wanted to slide his spectacles off.

“I like it here,” Hawkeye said. “How are things for you?”

Francis’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “I wanted to talk,” he said. “Because I – there isn’t anyone else who knows – who knows what happened – to me – was real.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. He wondered. “Who does know?”

“My confessor,” Francis said. “And I had to tell – some of it – to the Order. They sent me through. I had to report back. But – ” he swallowed again. “There was a rather difficult question I wanted to ask you, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.”

Francis wasn’t looking at him again. “I need to know – why did you buy me?”

Hawkeye found himself looking away, across the room, to where two elderly men played Go. When he looked back, cautiously, Francis had put down his cup and was watching him. Hawkeye looked away again. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” Francis said. One hand was clutching at his crucifix, in an oddly familiar gesture. “I have – a reason for wanting to know.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t want to think about it. “Well, for one thing I was drunk.”

“Yes,” Francis said.

“Yes.” Hawkeye looked away again. He hadn’t been that drunk. “You called me Hawkeye,” he said. “You were obviously American, and you called me Hawkeye, and you were – you were chained up on the bed – I didn’t want to leave you there.” He looked back at Francis. “Though there were plenty of times I thought you’d have been better off.”

Francis’s grin had a bitter humour, though he lifted his hand to his mouth as if he were trying to hide it. “You thought you knew me?” He sounded relieved. “It wasn’t – you weren’t – ?”

Hawkeye picked up the cup of tea. He drank.

Francis was looking at him. “Didn’t you?”

“Tell me something,” Hawkeye said. “In one of those Father Brown stories, Flambeau – did you read them?”

“A while ago.”

“Flambeau calls the priest a silly celibate simpleton. As it turns out, he wasn’t silly or a simpleton. Was he celibate?”

Francis was still holding the cup. He looked at Hawkeye over it, his hands tense. “Yes.”

“Are you?”

Francis swallowed, and nodded. He didn’t say anything.

Hawkeye looked up at the ceiling, for a change. He had been staring so hard at this couple across the room they might have felt it. He wanted to ask Because you don’t like sex? but it had occurred to him before the first syllable got out of his mouth, that Francis could fairly say Not with you.

“I’m not going to hit on you,” Hawkeye said, meeting Francis’s eyes. “I – ” He put down his cup. “I owe you twice over. Three times.”

“I couldn’t have left you to bleed to death back there – ”

Hawkeye shrugged. “I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t. But you didn’t. You saved my life, Francis, about three times over, I figure, and I’m – I’m really not ungrateful enough to hit on you when you’re – ” He stopped. It was a silly word, and a silly state to be in, but maybe not if you’d just been pulled out of involuntary service in a brothel, and Francis wasn’t silly “ – celibate.”

Francis hadn’t moved. Very slowly and carefully, he put his own cup down. His voice held a ring of authority, though he was still speaking quietly. “I thought I had your promise?”

Hawkeye froze. It was beyond startling to hear Francis talk to him in that tone of voice: it was almost frightening, especially when it came from out of the blue like this. “Sure,” he said slowly, defensively. “I promised I would never – anyone again, and in return I get to stay here when I never have to – never have to do anyone again.”

“I didn’t mean torture,” Francis said. His hand was clutching hard at his silver crucifixion, but he didn’t seem aware of the irony. “I never thought you would want to torture anyone, once you were where you didn’t have to. I meant harm – of any kind.” His mouth was set. “I meant rape, Hawkeye.”

I didn’t rape you. But he had, though he didn’t remember much beyond the act: after that last long session in OR, when he was finally allowed to terminate the subject he’d kept alive for however many screaming hours: he knew consciously that the man he’d grabbed, the mouth he’d used, had been Francis. He raised his hand to his own mouth. He had no recollection of a face, no association with a name, not much recollection of the act itself: only sudden relief as he unloaded, and an almost as sudden sleep moments afterwards as he fell into his cot.

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said finally. “I’m sorry – ” He laughed, without humour, only because it seemed a woefully inadequate response. He shivered. Francis had more than one reason to have left Hawkeye to bleed to death. He put his hands together on the table. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need you to apologise,” Francis said. He said it without inflection, sounding grey and empty. “I need to know you’ll keep your promise.”

“Yeah,” Hawkeye said. He was feeling grey himself. “Yeah, I can see you would.”

They stared at each other. After a long moment, Hawkeye said, “I wasn’t thinking about that. But – I promised. I promise,” he restated it. “I mean it.”

Francis took his glasses off and knuckled at his eyes. “Hawkeye,” he said after a moment. His voice had lost that grey and authoritative ring. “I – ” He stopped. “Thank you. It comforts me to know that.” He slid his glasses back on and looked across the table at Hawkeye. “Is there anything further I can do for you?” he asked. It sounded like finality.

Keep talking. Don’t go away. Hawkeye lifted his hands and tapped them on the table. “Do you think you could – ” he changed his mind “ – get me some more books?”

Francis looked startled. “Yes. Yes, of course. What – what kind of books?”

“Anything – ” Hawkeye changed his mind again. “ – anything you bring would be fine.”

Francis looked back at him with a steady gaze, though his mouth was working. After a moment he said “I don’t know when I can come in to Seoul next.”

“Joseph said you came in about once a week or so to confess. He didn’t say to what.”

Francis almost laughed. “I – the usual run of s-sins...” He took his glasses off again. He was rubbing at his eyes, and almost, in a suppressed kind of way, giggling. It took him a little while to stop. Hawkeye sat still, watching him. He could not have Francis: not even if Francis hadn’t been celibate. Francis had seen too much of him to want him.

Francis put his glasses on again. “I’ll bring you some more books next time I’m here,” he said. “I don’t know when that will be. Could you do one thing for me?”

“Sure, anything.”

“Did you read the – the book by Charles Dickens?”

“Tried it. Didn’t like it much,” Hawkeye said. He had gathered it was a child’s version of Christian myth, and put it to the bottom of the stack.

“If I gave you a copy of the Bible, would you read it?”

“The Bible?” Hawkeye blinked. “I don’t do too well in non-medical Latin.” Or was the Bible supposed to be in Greek? He’d thought Latin, but he’d never actually seen a copy.

“Can you read French? There’s a very well-regarded French translation in the convent library. Or I could find you one in English, though most of them are Protestant...” Francis outright grinned, though very briefly. “Not that it would make any difference to you, but Father Neill might be annoyed with me.”

“I can read French if I have a dictionary,” Hawkeye said.

“Would you?” Francis looked at him.

“Sure, if you want me to.” After all, he had nothing but time.

“It’s not that I want to convert you,” Francis said. “I’ve never been very good at that, and I wouldn’t know where to start with you. But there is so much you don’t know. And the Bible is – a starting place.”

“Okay,” Hawkeye said. “And you’ll come back?”

Francis drew in a deep breath. He nodded.

to part four