Cryptonomicon

Chapter 96 R.I.P.

The clamor of the Marines' rifles echoes through the cemetery, the sharp reports pinging from tombstone to tombstone like pachinko balls. Goto Dengo bends down and thrusts his hand into a pile of loose dirt. It feels good. He scoops up a handful of the stuff, it trickles out from between his fingers and trails down the legs of his crisp new United States Army uniform, getting caught in the trouser cuffs. He steps to the sharp brink of the grave and pours the earth from his hand onto the General Issue coffin containing Bobby Shaftoe. He crosses himself, staring at the coffin lid stained with dirt, and then, with some effort, lifts his head up again, towards the sunlit world of things that live. Other than a few blades of grass and some mosquitoes, the first living thing that he sees is a pair of feet in sandals made from old jeep tires, supporting a white man wrapped in a shapeless brown garment of rough fabric with a large hood on the top. Staring out from the shade of that hood is the supernaturally weird-looking (in that he has a red beard and grey hair) head of Enoch Root—a character who keeps bumping into Goto Dengo as he goes around Manila trying to carry out his duties. Goto Dengo is seized and paralyzed by his wild stare.

They stroll together across the burgeoning cemetery.

“You have something you would like to tell me?” Enoch says.

Goto Dengo turns his head to look into Root's eyes. “I was told that the confessional was a place of perfect secrets.”

“It is,” Enoch says.

“Then, how did you know?”

“Know what?”

“I think your Church brothers told you something that you should not know.”

“Put this idea out of your mind. The secrecy of the confessional has not been violated. I did not talk to the priest who took your first confession, and if I did, he would tell me nothing.”

“Then how do you know?” Goto Dengo asks.

“I have several ways of knowing things. One thing I know is that you are a digger. A man who engineers big holes in the ground. Your friend and mine, Father Ferdinand, told me that.”

“Yes.”

“The Nipponese went to much trouble to bring you here. They would not have done this unless they wanted you to dig an important hole.”

“There are many reasons they might have done this.”

“Yes,” Enoch Root says, “but only a few that make sense.”

They stroll silently for a while. Root's feet kick the hem of his robe out with each step. “I know other things,” he continues. “South of here, a man brought diamonds to a priest. This man said he had attacked a traveler on the road, and taken from him a small fortune in diamonds. The victim died of his injuries. The murderer gave the diamonds to the Church as penance.”

“Was the victim Filipino or Chinese?” asks Goto Dengo.

Enoch Root stares at him coolly. “A Chinese man knows of this?”

More strolling. Root will gladly walk from one end of Luzon to the other if that's how long it takes for the words to come out of Goto Dengo.

“I have information from Europe too,” Root says. “I know that the Germans have been hiding treasure. It is widely known that General Yamashita is burying more war gold in the northern mountains even as we speak.”

“What do you want from me?” Goto Dengo asks. There's no preliminary moistening of the eyeballs, the tears leap out of him and run down his face. “I came to the Church because of some words.”

“Words?”

“This is Jesus Christ who taketh away the sins of the world,” Goto Dengo says. “Enoch Root, no one knows the sins of the world better than me. I have swum in those sins, drowned in them, burned in them, dug in them. I was like a man swimming down a long cave filled with black cold water. Looking up, I saw a light above me, and swam towards it. I only wanted to find the surface, to breathe air again. Still immersed in the sins of the world, at least I could breathe. This is what I am now.”

Root nods and waits.

“I had to confess. The things that I saw—the things I did—were so terrible. I had to purify myself. That is what I did, in my first confession.” Goto Dengo heaves a deep, shuddering sigh. “It was a very, very long confession. But it is finished. Jesus has taken away my sins, or so the priest said.”

“Good. I'm glad it helped you.”

“Now, you want me to speak of these things again?”

“There are others,” says Enoch Root. He stops in his tracks, and turns, and nods. Silhouetted on the top of a rise, on the other side of several thousand white tombstones, are two men in civilian clothes. They look Western, but that is all Goto Dengo can tell from here.

“Who are they?”

“Men who have been to hell and come back, as you did. Men who know about the gold.”

“What do they want?”

“To dig up the gold.”

Nausea wraps around Goto Dengo like a wet bedsheet. “They would have to tunnel down through a thousand fresh corpses. It is a grave.”

“The whole world is a grave,” says Enoch Root. “Graves can be moved, corpses reinterred. Decently.”

“And then? If they got the gold?”

“The world is bleeding. It needs medicine and bandages. These cost money.”

“But before this war, all of this gold was out here, in the sunlight. In the world. Yet look what happened.” Goto Dengo shudders. “Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By school children doing their lessons, improving their minds. Tell those men that if they want wealth, they should come to Nippon with me after the war. We will start businesses and build buildings.”

“Spoken like a true Nipponese,” Enoch says bitterly. “You never change.”

“Please make me understand what you are saying.”

“What of the man who cannot get out of bed and work, because he has no legs? What of the widow who has no husband to work, no children to support her? What of children who cannot improve their minds because they lack books and schoolhouses?”

“You can shower gold on them,” Goto Dengo says. “Soon enough, it will all be gone.”

“Yes. But some of it will be gone into books and bandages.”

Goto Dengo does not have a rejoinder for this. He is not outsmarted so much as sad and tired. “What do you want? You think I should give the gold to the Church?”

Enoch Root looks mildly taken aback, as if the idea hadn't really occurred to him before. “You could do worse, I suppose. The Church has two thousand years of experience in using its resources to help the poor. It has not always been perfect. But is has built its share of hospitals and schools.”

Goto Dengo shakes his head. “I have only been in your Church for a few weeks and already I have many doubts about it. It has been a good thing for me. But to give it so much gold—I am not sure if this is a good idea.”

“Don't look at me as if you expect me to defend the Church's imperfections,” says Enoch Root. “They have kicked me out of the priesthood.”

“Then what shall I do?”

“Perhaps give it to the Church with conditions.”

“What?”

“You can stipulate that it only be used to educate children, if you choose.”

Goto Dengo says, “Educated men created this cemetery.”

“Then choose some other condition.”

“My condition is that if that gold ever comes out of the ground, it should be used so that we do not have any more wars like this one.”

“And how should we accomplish such a thing, Goto Dengo?”

Goto Dengo sighs. “You put a big weight on my shoulders!”

“No. I did not put the weight on your shoulders. It has always been there.” Enoch Root stares mercilessly into Goto Dengo's tormented face. “Jesus takes away the sins of the world, but the world remains: a physical reality on which we are doomed to live until death takes us away from it. You have confessed, and you have been forgiven, and so the greater part of your burden has been taken away by grace. But the gold is still there, in a hole in the ground. Did you think that the gold all turned into dirt when you swallowed the bread and the wine? That is not what we mean by transubstantiation.” Enoch Root turns his back and walks away, leaving Goto Dengo alone in the bright avenues of the city of the dead.