7
Bakâ
Antonio had seen the kill, a skinny cow the Japanese had captured. They butchered it beyond their camp, by the river. It was killed rudely,
with bayonets.
Bayonets were Antonio’s fear; just seeing one blade flash in the sun would freeze him into an invisible stone boy. In the early days of Japanese occupation, before they evacuated higher
into the mountains, he had seen his first bayonet. He had been hurrying home when he happened onto a Kempetai checkpoint, a place where the Japanese, the new rulers of the Philippines,
filtered out people they thought might be against them. Most Filipinos were waved through. Chinese were often detained, tortured, even killed. If the Kempetai soldiers didn’t like a
person’s looks, or if someone forgot to bow low enough, he could be beaten, or
