King Rat Page 12

  Dr. Kennedy despised him, despised his oily black hair, his shaven armpits and shaven legs. At the same time, he could not blame him. Homo-sexuality was one way to survive. Men fought over Steven, shared their rations with him, gave him cigarettes—all for the temporary use of his body. And what, the doctor asked himself, what’s so disgusting about it anyway? When you think of “normal sex,” well, clinically it’s just as disgusting.

  His leathery hand absently scratched his scrotum, for the itch was bad tonight. Involuntarily he touched his sex. It was feelingless. Gristle.

  He remembered that he had not had an erection for months. Well, he thought, it’s only the low nutriment diet. Nothing to worry about. As soon as we get out and get regular food, then everything will be all right. A man of forty-three is still a man.

  Steven came back with the corpse detail. The body was put on a stretcher and taken out. Steven changed the single blanket. In a moment another stretcher was carried in and the new patient helped into bed.

  Automatically Dr. Kennedy took the man’s pulse.

  “The fever’ll break tomorrow,” he said. “Just malaria.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Steven looked up primly. “Shall I give him some quinine?”

  “Of course you give him quinine!”

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” Steven said tartly, tossing his head. “I was just asking. Only doctors are supposed to authorize drugs.”

  “Well, give him quinine and for the love of God, Steven, stop trying to pretend you’re a blasted woman.”

  “Well!” Steven’s link bracelets jingled as he bridled and turned back to the patient. “It’s quite unfair to pick on a person, Dr. Kennedy, when one’s trying to do one’s best.”

  Dr. Kennedy would have ripped into Steven, but at that moment Dr. Prudhomme walked into the ward.

  “Evening, Colonel.”

  “Oh, hello.” Dr. Kennedy turned to him thankfully, realizing it would have been stupid to tear into Steven. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes. Can I see you a moment?”

  “Certainly.”

  Prudhomme was a small serene man—pigeon-chested—his hands stained with years of chemicals. His voice was deep and gentle. “There are two appendices for tomorrow. One’s just arrived in Emergency.”

  “All right. I’ll see them before I go off.”

  “Do you want to operate?” Prudhomme glanced at the far end of the ward, where Steven was holding a bowl for a man to vomit into.

  “Yes. Give me something to do,” Kennedy said. He peered into the dark corner. In the half light of the shielded electric lamp Steven’s long slim legs were accented. So was the curve of his buttocks straining against his tight short pants.

  Feeling their scrutiny, Steven looked up. He smiled. “Good evening, Dr. Prudhomme.”

  “Hello, Steven,” Prudhomme said gently.

  Dr. Kennedy saw to his dismay that Prudhomme was still looking at Steven.

  Prudhomme turned back to Kennedy and observed his shock and loathing. “Oh, by the way, I finished the autopsy on that man who was found in the borehole. Death from suffocation,” he said agreeably.

  “If you find a man headfirst halfway down a borehole, it’s more than likely that death will be due to suffocation.”

  “True, Doctor,” Prudhomme said lightly. “I wrote on the death certificate ‘Suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.’”

  “Have they identified the body?”

  “Oh yes. This afternoon. It was an Australian. A man called Gurble.”

  Dr. Kennedy rubbed his face. “Not the way I’d commit suicide. Ghastly.”

  Prudhomme nodded and his eyes strayed back to Steven. “I quite agree. Of course, he might have been put into the borehole.”

  “Were there any marks on the body?”

  “None.”

  Dr. Kennedy tried to stop noticing the way Prudhomme looked at Steven. “Oh well, murder or suicide, it’s a horrible way. Horrible! I suppose we’ll never know which it was.”

  “They held a quiet court of inquiry this afternoon, as soon as they knew who it was. Apparently a few days ago this man was caught stealing some hut rations.”

  “Oh! I see.”

  “Either way, I’d say he deserved it, wouldn’t you?”

  “I suppose so.” Dr. Kennedy wanted to continue the conversation, for he was lonely, but he saw that Prudhomme was interested only in Steven.

  “Well,” he said, “I’d better make my rounds. Would you like to come along?”

  “Thanks, but I have to prepare the patients for operation.”

  As Dr. Kennedy left the ward, from the corner of his eye he saw Steven brush past Prudhomme and he saw Prudhomme’s furtive caress. He heard Steven’s laugh and saw him return the caress openly and intimately.

  Their obscenity overwhelmed him and he knew that he should go back into the ward and order them apart and court-martial them. But he was too tired, so he just walked to the far end of the veranda.

  The air was still, the night dark and leafless, the moon like a giant arc light hanging from the rafters of the heavens. Men still walked the path, but they were all silent. Everything was awaiting the coming of dawn.

  Kennedy looked up into the stars, trying to read from them an answer to his constant question. When, oh God, when will this nightmare end?

  But there was no answer.

  Peter Marlowe was at the officers’ latrine, enjoying the beauty of a false dawn and the beauty of a contented bowel movement. The first was frequent, the second rare.

  He always picked the back row when he came to the latrines, partly because he still hated to relieve himself in the open, partly because he hated anyone behind him, and partly because it was entertaining to watch others.

  The boreholes were twenty-five feet deep and two feet in diameter and six feet apart. Twenty rows heading down the slope, thirty to a row. Each had a wooden cover and a loose lid.

  In the center of the area was a single throne made out of wood. A conventional one-holer. This was the prerogative of colonels. Everyone else had to squat, native style, feet either side of the hole. There were no screens of any sort and the whole area was open to the sky and camp.

  Seated in lonely splendor on the throne was Colonel Samson. He was naked but for his tattered coolie hat. He always wore his hat, a quirk with him. Except when he was shaving his head or massaging it or rubbing in coconut oil or weird ointments to recover his hair. He had caught some unknown disease and all his head hair had fallen out one day—eyebrows and lashes too. The rest of him was furry as a monkey.

  Other men were dotted around the area, each as far from the next man as possible. Each with a bottle of water. Each waving at the constant swarming flies.

  Peter Marlowe told himself again that a squatting naked man relieving himself is the ugliest creature in the world—perhaps the most pathetic.

  As yet there was only the promise of day, a lightening haze, fingers of gold spreading the velvet sky. The earth was cool, for the rains had come in the night, and the breeze was cool and delicate with sea-salt and frangipani.

  Yes, Peter Marlowe thought contentedly, it’s going to be a good day.

  When he had finished, he tilted the bottle of water while he still squatted and washed away the trace of feces, deftly using the fingers of his left hand. Always the left. The right is the eating hand. The natives have no word for left hand or right hand, only dung hand and eating hand. And all men used water, for paper, any paper, was too valuable. Except the King. He had real toilet paper. He had given Peter Marlowe a piece and Peter Marlowe had shared it amongst the unit, for it made superb cigarette paper.

  Peter Marlowe stood up and retied his sarong and headed back to his hut, anticipating breakfast. It would be rice pap and weak tea as always, but today the unit also had a coconut—another present from the King.

  In the few short days he had known the King, a rare friendship had developed. The bonds were part food and part tobacco and part h
elp—the King had cured the tropical ulcers on Mac’s ankles with salvarsan, cured them in two days, that which had suppurated for two years. Peter Marlowe knew, too, that though all three of them welcomed the King’s wealth and help, their liking for him was due mainly to the man himself. When you were with him he poured out strength and confidence. You felt better and stronger yourself—for you seemed to be able to feed on the magic that surrounded him.

  “He’s a witch doctor!” Involuntarily, Peter Marlowe said it aloud.

  Most of the officers in Hut Sixteen were still asleep, or lying on their bunks waiting for breakfast, when he entered. He pulled the coconut from under his pillow and picked up the scraper and parang machete. Then he went outside and sat on a bench. A deft tap with the parang split the coconut in two perfect halves and spilled the milk into a billycan. Then he carefully began scraping one half of the coconut. Shreds of white meat fell into the milk.

  The other half coconut he scraped into a separate container. He put this coconut meat into a piece of mosquito curtain and carefully squeezed the thick-sweet sap into a cup. Today it was Mac’s turn to add the sap to his breakfast rice pap.

  Peter Marlowe thought again what a marvelous food the residue of coconut was. Rich in protein and perfectly tasteless. Yet a sliver of garlic in it, and it was all garlic. A quarter of a sardine, and the whole became sardine, and the body of it would flavor many bowls of rice.

  Suddenly he was famished for the coconut. He was so hungry that he did not hear the guards approaching. He did not feel their presence until they were already standing ominously in the doorway of the hut and all the men were on their feet.

  Yoshima, the Japanese officer, shattered the silence. “There is a radio in this hut.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Yoshima waited five minutes for someone to speak. He lit a cigarette and the sound of the match was a thunderclap.

  Dave Daven’s first reaction was, Oh my God, who’s the bastard who gave us away or made the slip? Peter Marlowe? Cox? Spence? The colonels? His second reaction was terror—terror incongruously mixed with relief—that the day had come.

  Peter Marlowe’s fear was just as choking. Who leaked? Cox? The colonels? Why, even Mac and Larkin don’t know that I know! Christ! Utram Road!

  Cox was petrified. He leaned against the bunk, looking from slant eyes to slant eyes, and only the strength of the posts kept him from falling.

  Lieutenant Colonel Sellars was in nominal charge of the hut, and his pants were slimed with fear as he entered the hut with his adjutant, Captain Forest.

  He saluted, his dewlapped face flushed and sweating.

  “Good morning, Captain Yoshima…”

  “It is not a good morning. There is a radio here. A radio is against orders of the Imperial Nipponese Army.” Yoshima was small, slight and very neat. A samurai sword hung from his thick belt. His knee boots shone like mirrors.

  “I don’t know anything about it. No. Nothing,” Sellars blustered. “You!” A palsied finger pointed at Daven. “Do you know anything about it?”

  “No, sir.”

  Sellars turned around and faced the hut. “Where’s the wireless?”

  Silence.

  “Where is the wireless?” He was almost hysterical. “Where is the wireless? I order you to hand it over instantly. You know we’re all responsible for the orders of the Imperial Army.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll have the lot of you court-martialed,” he screamed, his jowls shaking. “You’ll all get what you deserve. You! What’s your name?”

  “Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, sir.”

  “Where’s the wireless?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Then Sellars saw Grey. “Grey! You’re supposed to be Provost Marshal. If there’s a wireless here it’s your responsibility and no one else’s. You should have reported it to the authorities. I’ll have you court-martialed and it’ll show on your record…”

  “I know nothing about a wireless, sir.”

  “Then by God you should,” Sellars screamed at him, his face contorted and purple. He stormed up the hut to where the five American officers bunked. “Brough! What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing. And it’s Captain Brough, Colonel!”

  “I don’t believe you. It’s just the sort of trouble you bloody Americans’d cause. You’re nothing but an ill-disciplined rabble…”

  “I’m not taking that goddam crap from you!”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that. Say ‘Sir’ and stand to attention.”

  “I’m the senior American officer and I’m not taking insults from you or anyone else. There’s no radio in the American contingent that I know of. There’s no radio in this hut that I know of. And if there was, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. Colonel!”

  Sellars turned and panted to the center of the hut. “Then we’ll search the hut. Everyone stand by their beds! Attention! God help the man who has it. I’ll personally see he’s punished to the limit of the law, you mutinous swine …”

  “Shut up, Sellars.”

  Everyone stiffened as Colonel Smedly-Taylor entered the hut.

  “There’s a wireless here and I was trying—”

  “Shut up.”

  Smedly-Taylor’s well-used face was taut as he walked over to Yoshima, who had been watching Sellars with astonishment and contempt. “What’s the trouble, Captain?” he asked, knowing what it was.

  “There’s a radio in the hut.” Then Yoshima added with a sneer, “According to the Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war…”

  “I know the code of ethics quite well,” Smedly-Taylor said, keeping his eyes off the eight-by-eight beam. “If you believe there is a wireless here, please make a search for it. Or if you know where it is, please take it and be done with the affair. I’ve a lot to do today.”

  “Your job is to enforce the law…”

  “My job is to enforce civilized law. If you want to cite law, then obey it yourselves. Give us the food and medical supplies to which we are entitled!”

  “One day you will go too far, Colonel.”

  “One day I’ll be dead. Perhaps I’ll die of apoplexy trying to enforce ridiculous rules imposed by incompetent administrators.”

  “I’ll report your impertinence to General Shima.”

  “Please do so. Then ask him who gave the order that each man in camp should catch twenty flies a day, that they are to be collected and counted and delivered daily to your office personally by me.”

  “You senior officers are always whining about the dysenteric death rate. Flies spread dysentery—”

  “You don’t have to remind me about flies or death rate,” Smedly-Taylor said harshly. “Give us chemicals, and permission to enforce hygiene in the surrounding areas, and we’ll have the whole of Singapore Island under control.”

  “Prisoners are not entitled …”

  “Your dysenteric rate is uneconomic. Your malaria rate is high. Before you came here Singapore was malaria-free.”

  “Perhaps. But we conquered you in your thousands and we captured you in your thousands. No man of honor would allow himself to be captured. You are all animals and should be treated as such.”

  “I understand that quite a few Japanese prisoners are being taken in the Pacific.”

  “Where did you get that information?”

  “Rumors, Captain Yoshima. You know how it is. Obviously incorrect. And incorrect that the Japanese fleets are no longer on the seas, or that Japan is being bombed, or that the Americans have captured Guadalcanal, Guam and Rabaul and Okinawa, and are presently poised for an attack on the Japanese mainland—”

  “Lies!” Yoshima’s hand was on the samurai sword at his waist and he jerked it an inch out of the scabbard. “Lies! The Imperial Japanese Army is winning the war and will soon have dominated Australia and America. New Guinea is in our hands and a Japanese armada is at this very moment off Sydney.”

  “Of course.” Smedly-Taylor turned his back on Yos
hima and looked down the length of the hut. White faces stared back at him. “Everyone outside, please,” he said quietly.

  His order was silently obeyed.

  When the hut was empty, he turned back to Yoshima. “Please make your search.”

  “And if I find the radio?”

  “That is in the hands of God.”

  Suddenly Smedly-Taylor felt the weight of his fifty-four years. He shuddered under the responsibility of his burden, for though he was glad to serve, and glad to be here in a time of need, and glad to do his duty, now he had to find the traitor. When he found the traitor he would have to punish him. Such a man deserved to die, as Daven would die if the wireless was found. Pray God it is not found, he thought despairingly, it’s our only link with sanity. If there is a God in heaven, let it not be found! Please.

  But Smedly-Taylor knew that Yoshima was right about one thing. He should have had the courage to die like a soldier—on the battlefield or in escape. Alive, the cancer of memory ate him—the memory that greed, power lust, and bungling had caused the rape of the East, and countless hundred thousand useless deaths.

  But then, he thought, if I had died, what of my darling Maisie, and John—my Lancer son—and Percy—my Air Force son—and Trudy, married so young and pregnant so young and widowed so young, what of them? Never to see or touch them, or feel the warmth of home again.

  “That is in the hands of God,” he said again, but, like him, the words were old and very sad.

  Yoshima snapped orders at the four guards. They pulled the bunks from the corners of the hut and made a clearing. Then they pulled Daven’s bunk into the clearing. Yoshima went into the corner and began to peer at the rafters, at the atap thatch, and at the rough boards beneath. His search was careful, but Smedly-Taylor suddenly realized that this was only for his benefit—that the hiding place was known.

  He remembered the night months upon months ago when they had come to him. “It’s on your own heads,” he had said. “If you get caught, you get caught, and that’s the end of it. I can do nothing to help you—nothing.” He had singled out Daven and Cox and said quietly: “If the wireless is discovered—try not to implicate the others. You must try for a little while. Then you are to say that I authorized this wireless. I ordered you to do it.” Then he had dismissed them and blessed them in his own way and wished them luck.