Though Peter Marlowe would hear the news in detail tomorrow and learn it along with Spence and tell other huts, he liked to hear how things were going tonight. So he sat back and watched Daven as he crutched towards the urinal, liking him, respecting him.
Daven creaked to a halt. The urinal was made out of a bent piece of corrugated iron. Daven watched his urine trickle and meander towards the low end, then cascade frothily from the rusted spout into the large drum, adding to the scum which collected on the surface of the liquid. He remembered that tomorrow was collection day. The container would be carried away and added to other containers and taken to the gardens. The liquor would be mixed with water, then the mixture would be ladled tenderly, cup by cup, onto the roots of plants cherished and guarded by the men who grew the camp's food. This fertiliser would make the greens they ate greener.
Dave hated greens. But they were food and you had to eat.
A breeze chilled the sweat on his back and brought with it the tang of the sea, three miles away, three light-years of miles away.
Daven thought about how perfectly the radio was working. He felt very pleased with himself as he remembered how he had delicately lifted a thin strip off the top of the beam and scooped beneath it a hole six inches deep. How this had all been done in secret. How it had taken him five months to build in the radio, working at night and the hour of dawn and sleeping by day. How the fit of the lid was so perfect that when dust was worked into the edges its outline could not be seen, even on close inspection. And how the needle holes also were invisible when the dust was in them.
The thought that he, Dave Daven, was the first in the camp to hear the news made him not a little proud. And unique. In spite of his leg. One day he would hear that the war was over. Not just the European war. Their war. The Pacific war. Because of him, the camp was linked with the outside, and he knew that the terror and the sweat and the heartache were worth it. Only he and Spence and Cox and Peter Marlowe and two English colonels knew where the radio actually was. That was wise, for the less in the know, the less the danger.
Of course there was danger. There were always prying eyes, eyes you could not necessarily trust. There was always the possibility of informers. Or of an involuntary leak.
When Daven got back to the doorway, Peter Marlowe had already returned to his bunk. Daven saw that Cox was still sitting on the far steps, but this was only usual, for it was a rule that the sentries did not both go at the same time. Daven's stump began to itch like hell, but not really the stump, only the foot that was not there. He clambered up into his bunk, closed his eyes and prayed. He always prayed before he slept. Then the dream would not come, the vivid picture of dear old Tom Cotton, the Aussie, who had been caught with the other radio and had marched off under guard to Utram Road Jail, his coolie hat cocked flamboyantly over one eye, raucously singing "Waltzing Matilda," and the chorus had been "Fuck the Japs." But in Daven's dream, it was he, not Tommy Cotton who went with the guards. He went with them, and he went in abject terror.
"Oh God," Daven said deep within himself, "give me the peace of Thy courage. I'm so frightened and such a coward."
The King was doing the thing he liked most in all the world. He was counting a stack of brand-new notes. Profit from a sale.
Turasan was politely holding his flashlight, the beam carefully dimmed and focused on the table. They were in the "shop" as the King called it, just outside the American hut. Now from the canvas overhang, another piece of canvas fell neatly to the ground, screening the table and the benches from ever-present eyes. It was forbidden for guards and prisoners to trade, by Japanese — and therefore camp — order.
The King wore his "outsmarted-in-a-deal" expression and counted grimly. "Okay," the King sighed finally as the notes totaled five hundred. "Ichi-bon!"
Turasan nodded. He was a small squat man with a flat moon face and a mouthful of gold teeth. His rifle leaned carelessly against the hut wall behind him. He picked up the Parker fountain pen and re-examined it carefully. The white spot was there. The nib was gold. He held the pen closer to the screened light and squinted to make sure, once more, that the 14 carat was etched into the nib.
"Ichi-bon," he grunted at length, and sucked air between his teeth. He too wore his "outsmarted-in-a-deal" expression, and he hid his pleasure. At five hundred Japanese dollars the pen was an excellent buy and he knew it would easily bring double that from the Chinese in Singapore.
"You goddam ichi-bon trader," the King said sullenly. "Next week, ichi-bon watch maybe. But no goddam wong, no trade. I got to make some wong."
"Too plenty wong," Turasan said, nodding to the stack of notes. "Watch soon maybe?"
"Maybe."
Turasan offered his cigarettes. The King accepted one and let Turasan light it for him. Then Turasan sucked in his breath a last time and smiled his golden smile. He shouldered his rifle, bowed courteously and slipped away into the night.
The King beamed as he finished his smoke. A good night's work, he thought. Fifty bucks for the pen, a hundred and fifty to the man who faked the white spot and etched the nib: three hundred profit. That the colour would fade off the nib within a week didn't bother the King at all. He knew by that time Turasan would have sold it to a Chinese.
The King climbed through the window of his hut. "Thanks, Max," he said quietly, for most of the Americans in the hut were already asleep. "Here, you can quit now." He peeled off two ten-dollar bills. "Give the other to Dino." He did not usually pay his men so much for such a short work period. But tonight he was full of largess.
"Gee, thanks." Max hurried out and told Dino to relax, giving him a ten-dollar note.
The King set the coffeepot on the hot plate. He stripped off his clothes, hung up his pants and put his shirt, underpants and socks in the dirty-laundry bag. He slipped on a clean sun-bleached loincloth and ducked under his mosquito net.
While he waited for the water to boil, he indexed the day's work. First the Ronson. He had beaten Major Barry down to five hundred and fifty, less fifty-five dollars, which was his ten percent commission, and had registered the lighter with Captain Brough as a "win in poker." It was worth at least nine hundred, easy, so that had been a good deal. The way inflation is going, he thought, it's wise to have the maximum amount of dough in merchandise.
The King had launched the treated tobacco enterprise with a sales conference. It had gone according to plan. All the Americans had volunteered as salesmen, and the King's Aussie and English contacts had bitched. But that was only normal. He had already arranged to buy twenty pounds of Java weed from Ah Lee, the Chinese who had the concession of the camp store, and he had got it at a good discount. An Aussie cookhouse had agreed to set one of their ovens aside daily for an hour, so the whole batch of tobacco could be cooked at one time under Tex's supervision. Since all the men were working on percentage, the King's only outlay was the cost of the tobacco. Tomorrow, the treated tobacco would be on sale. The way he had set it up, he would clear a hundred percent profit. Which was only fair.
Now that the tobacco project was launched, the King was ready to tackle the diamond-- The hiss of the bubbling coffeepot interrupted his contemplations. He slipped from under the mosquito net and unlocked the black box. He put three heaped spoons of coffee in the water and added a pinch of salt. As the water frothed, he took it off the stove and waited until it had subsided.
The aroma of the coffee spilled through the hut, teasing the men still awake.
"Jesus," Max said involuntarily.
"What's the matter, Max?" the King said. "Can't you sleep?"
"No. Got too much on my mind. I been thinking. We can make one helluva deal outta that tobacco."
Tex shifted uneasily, soaring with the aroma. "That smell reminds me of wildcatting."
"How come?" The King poured in cold water to settle the grounds, then put a heaped spoonful of sugar into his mug and filled it.
"Best part of drilling's in the mornings. After a long sweaty night's shift on the rig. When you set with your buddies over the first steaming pot of Java, 'bout dawn. An' the coffee's steamy hot and sweet, an' at the same time a mite bitter. An' maybe you look out through the maze of oil derricks at the sun rising over Texas." There was a long sigh. "Man, that's living."
"I've never been to Texas," the King said. "Been all over but not Texas."
"That's God's country."
"You like a cup?"
"You know it." Tex was there with his mug. The King poured himself a second cup. Then he gave Tex half a cup.
"Max?"
Max got half a cup too. He drank the coffee quickly. "I'll fix this for you in the morning," he said, taking the pot with its bed of grounds.
"Okay. Night, you guys."
The King slipped under the net once more and made sure it was tight and neat under the mattress. Then he lay back gratefully between the sheets. Across the hut he saw Max add some water to the coffee grounds and set it beside the bunk to marinate. He knew that Max would rebrew the grounds for breakfast. Personally the King never liked re-brewed coffee. It was too bitter. But the boys said it was fine. If Max wanted to rebrew it, great, he thought agreeably. The King did not approve of waste.
He closed his eyes and turned his mind to the diamond. At last he knew who had it, how to get it, and now that luck had brought Peter Marlowe to him, he knew how the vastly complicated deal could be arranged.
Once you know a man, the King told himself contentedly, know his Achilles heel, you know how to play him, how to work him into your plans. Yep, his hunch had paid off when he had first seen Peter Marlowe squatting Woglike hi the dirt, chattering Malay. You got to play hunches in this world.
Now, thinking about the talk he had had with Peter Marlowe after dusk roll call, the King felt the warmth of anticipation spread over him.
"Nothing happens in this lousy dump," the King had said innocently as they sat in the lee of the hut under a moonless sky.
"That's right," Peter Marlowe said. "Sickening. One day's just like the rest. Enough to drive you around the bend."
The King nodded. He squashed a mosquito. "I know a guy who has all the excitement he can use, and then some."
"Oh? What does he do?"
"He goes through the wire. At night."
"My God. That's asking for trouble. He must be mad!"
But the King had seen the flicker of excitement in Peter Marlowe's eyes. He waited in the silence, saying nothing.
"Why does he do it?"
"Most times, just for kicks."
"You mean excitement?"
The King nodded.
Peter Marlowe whistled softly. "I don't think I'd have that amount of nerve."
"Sometimes this guy goes to the Malay village."
Peter Marlowe looked out of the wire, seeing in his mind the village that they all knew existed on the coast, three miles away. Once he had gone to the topmost cell in the jail and had clambered up to the tiny barred window. He had looked out and seen the panorama of jungle and the village, nestling the coast. There were ships in the waters that day. Fishing ships, and enemy warships — big ones and little ones — set like islands in the glass of the sea. He had stared out, fascinated with the sea's closeness, hanging to the bars until his hands and arms were tired. After resting awhile he was going to jump up and look out again. But he did not look again. Ever. It hurt too much. He had always lived near the sea. Away from it, he felt lost. Now he was near it again. But it was beyond touch.
"Very dangerous to trust a whole village," Peter Marlowe said.
"Not if you know them."
"That's right. This man really goes to the village?"
"So he told me."
"I don't think even Suliman would risk that."
"Who?"
"Suliman. The Malay I was talking to. This afternoon."
"It seems more like a month ago," the King said.
"It does, doesn't it?"
"What the hell's a guy like Suliman doing in this dump? Why didn't he just take off when the war ended?"
"He was caught in Java. Suliman was a rubber tapper on Mac's plantation. Mac's one of my unit. Well, Mac's battalion, the Malayan Regiment, got out of Singapore and were sent to Java. When the war ended, Suliman had to stick with the battalion."
"Hell, he could've got lost. There are millions of them in Java--"
"The Javanese would have recognised him instantly, and probably turned him in."
"What about the co-prosperity sphere yak? You know, Asia for the Asiatics?"
"I'm afraid that doesn't mean much. It didn't do the Javanese much good, either. Not if they didn't obey."
"How do you mean?"
"In '42, autumn of '42, I was in a camp just outside Bandung," Peter Marlowe said. "That's up in the hills of Java, in the centre of the island. At that time there were a lot of Ambonese, Menadonese and a number of Javanese with us — men who were in the Dutch army. Well, the camp was tough on the Javanese because many of them were from Bandung, and their wives and children were living just outside the wire. For a long time they used to slip out and spend the night, then get back into the camp before dawn. The camp was lightly guarded, so it was easy. Very dangerous for Europeans though, because the Javanese'd turn you over to the Japs and that'd be your lot. One day the Japs gave out an order that anyone caught outside would be shot. Of course the Javanese thought it applied to everyone except them — they had been told that in a couple of weeks they were all to go free anyway. One morning seven of them got caught. We were paraded the next day. The whole camp. The Javanese were put up against a wall and shot. Just like that, in front of us. The seven bodies were buried — with military honours — where they fell. Then the Japs made a little garden around the graves. They planted flowers and put a tiny white rope fence around the whole area and put up a sign in Malay, Japanese and English. It said, These men died for their country."
"You're kidding!"
"No I'm not. But the funny thing about it was that the Japs posted an honour guard at the grave. After that, every Jap guard, every Jap officer who passed the 'shrine,' saluted. Everyone. And at that time POW's had to get up and bow if a Jap private came within seeing distance. If you didn't, you got the thick end of a rifle butt around your head."
"Doesn't make sense. The garden and saluting."
"It does to them. That's the Oriental mind. To them that's complete sense."
"It sure as hell isn't. Nohow!"
"That's why I don't like them," Peter Marlowe said thoughtfully. "I'm afraid of them, because you've no yardstick to judge them. They don't react the way they should. Never."
"I don't know about that. They know the value of a buck and you can trust them most times."
"You mean in business?" Peter Marlowe laughed. "Well, I don't know about that. But as far as the people themselves--Another thing I saw. In another camp in Java — they were always shifting us around there, not like in Singapore — it was also in Bandung. There was a Jap guard, one of the better ones. Didn't pick on you like most of them. Well, this man, we used to call him Sunny because he was always smiling. Sunny loved dogs. And he always had half a dozen with him as he went around the camp. His favourite was a sheepdog — a bitch. One day the bitch had a litter of puppies, the cutest dogs you ever saw, and Sunny was just about the happiest Jap in the whole world, training the puppies, laughing and playing with them. When they could walk he made leads for them out of string and he'd walk around the camp with them in tow. One day he was pulling the pups around — one of them sat on its haunches. You know how pups are, they get tired, and they just sit. So Sunny dragged it a little way, then gave it a real jerk. The pup yelped but stuck its feet in."
Peter Marlowe paused and made a cigarette. Then he continued. "Sunny took a firm grip on the string and started swinging the pup around his head on the end of the rope. He whirled it maybe a dozen times, laughing as though this was the greatest joke in the world. Then as the screaming pup gathered momentum, he gave it a final whirl and let go of the string. The pup must have gone fifty feet into the air. And when it fell on the iron-hard ground, it burst like a ripe tomato."
"Bastard!"
After a moment Peter Marlowe said, "Sunny went over to the pup. He looked down at it, then burst into tears. One of our chaps got a spade and buried the remains and, all the time, Sunny tore at himself with grief. When the grave was smoothed over, he brushed away his tears, gave the man a pack of cigarettes, cursed him for five minutes, angrily shoved the butt of the rifle in the man's groin, then bowed to the grave, bowed to the hurt man, and marched off, beaming happily, with the other pups and dogs."
The King shook his head slowly. "Maybe he was just crazy. Syphilitic."
"No, Sunny wasn't. Japs seem to act like children — but they've men's bodies and men's strength. They just look at things as a child does. Their perspective is oblique — to us — and distorted."
"I heard things were rough in Java, after the capitulation," the King said to keep him talking. It had taken him almost an hour to get Peter Marlowe started and he wanted him to feel at home.
"In some ways. Of course in Singapore there were over a hundred thousand troops, so the Japs had to be a little careful. The chain of command still existed, and a lot of units were intact. The Japs were pressing hard in the drive to Australia, and didn't care too much so long as the POW's behaved themselves and got themselves organised into camps. Same thing in Sumatra and Java for a time. Their idea was to press on and take Australia, then we were all going to be sent down there as slaves."
"You're crazy," said the King.
"Oh no. A Jap officer told me after I was picked up. But when their drive was stopped in New Guinea, they started cleaning up their lines. In Java there weren't too many of us, so they could afford to be rough. They said we were without honour — the officers — because we had allowed ourselves to be captured. So they wouldn't consider us POW's. They cut off our hair and forbade us to wear officers' insignia. Eventually they allowed us to 'become' officers again, though they never allowed us back our hair." Peter Marlowe smiled. "How did you get here?"
"The usual foul-up. I was in an airstrip building outfit. In the Philippines. We had to get out of there in a hurry. The first ship we could get was heading here, so we took it. We figured Singapore'd be safe as Fort Knox. By the time we got here, the Japs were almost through Johore. There was a last-minute panic, and all the guys got on the last convoy out. Me, I thought that was a bad gamble, so I stayed. The convoy got blown out of the sea. I used my head — and I'm alive. Most times, only suckers get killed."
"I don't think I would have had the wisdom not to go — if I had had the opportunity," Peter Marlowe said.
"You got to look after number one, Peter. No one else does."
Peter Marlowe thought about that for a long time. Snatches of conversation fled through the night. Occasionally a burst of anger. Whispers. The constant clouds of mosquitoes. From afar there was the mournful call of ship-horn to ship-horn.
The palms, etched against the dark sky, rustled. A dead frond fell away from the crest of a palm and crashed to the jungle bed.
Peter Marlowe broke the silence. "This friend of yours. He really goes to the village?"
The King looked into Peter Marlowe's eyes. "You like to come?" he asked softly. "The next time I go?"
A faint smile twisted Peter Marlowe's lips. "Yes--"
A mosquito buzzed the King's ear with sudden crescendo. He jerked up, found his flashlight and searched the inside of the net. At length the mosquito settled on the curtain. Deftly, the King crushed it. Then he double-checked to make certain that there were no holes in the net, and lay back once again.
In a moment he dismissed all things from his mind. Sleep came quickly and peacefully to the King.
Peter Marlowe still lay awake on his bunk, scratching bedbug bites. Too many memories had been triggered by what the King had said-- He remembered the ship that had brought him and Mac and Larkin from Java a year ago.
The Japanese had ordered the Commandant of Bandung, one of the camps in Java, to provide a thousand men for a work party. The men were to be sent to another camp nearby for two weeks with good food — double rations — and cigarettes. Then they would be transferred to another place. Fine working conditions.
Many of the men had offered to go because of the two weeks. Some were ordered. Mac had volunteered himself, Larkin and Peter Marlowe. "Never can tell, laddies," he had reasoned when they had cursed him. "If we can get to a wee island, well, Peter and I know the language. Ay, an' the place cannot be worse than here."
So they had decided to change the evil they knew for the evil that was to come.
The ship was a tiny tramp steamer. At the foot of the gangway there were many guards and two Japanese dressed in white with white face masks. On their backs were large containers, and in their hands were spray guns which connected with the containers. All prisoners and their possessions were spray-sterilised against carrying Javanese microbes onto the clean ship.
In the small hold aft there were rats and lice and faeces, and there was a space twenty feet by twenty feet in the centre of the hold. Around the hold, joined to the hull of the ship from the deck to the ceiling, were five tiers of deep shelves. The height between the shelves was three feet, and their depth ten feet.
A Japanese sergeant showed the men how to sit in the shelves, cross-legged. Five men in column, then five men in column beside them, then five men in column beside them. Until all the shelves were packed.
When panic protests began, the sergeant said that this was the way Japanese soldiers were transshipped, and if this was good enough for the glorious Japanese Army, it was good enough for white scum. A revolver led the first five men, gasping, into the claustrophobic darkness, and the press of the men clambering down into the hold forced the others to get out of the shoving mass into the shelves. They, in turn, were forced by others. Knee to knee, back to back, side to side. The spill-over of men — almost a hundred — stood numbly in the small twenty-foot by twenty-foot area, blessing their luck that they were not in the shelves. The hatches were still off, and the sun poured down into the hold.
The sergeant led a second column which included Mac, Larkin, and Peter Marlowe to the fore hold, and that too began to fill up.
When Mac got to the steamy bottom he gasped and fainted. Peter Marlowe and Larkin caught him, and above the din they fought and cursed their way back up the gangway to the deck. A guard tried to shove them back. Peter Marlowe shouted and begged and showed him Mac's quivering face. The guard shrugged and let them pass, nodding towards the bow.
Larkin and Peter Marlowe shoved and swore a space for Mac to lie down.
"What'll we do?" Peter Marlowe asked Larkin.
"I'll try and get a doctor."
Mac's hand caught Larkin. "Colonel." His eyes opened a fraction and he whispered quickly, "I'm all right. Had to get us out of there somehow. For Christ's sake look busy and don't be afraid if I pretend a fit."
So they had held on to Mac as he whimpered deliriously and fought and vomited the water they pressed to his lips. He kept it up until the ship cast off. Now even the decks of the ship were packed with men.
There was not enough space for all the men aboard to sit at the same time. But as there were lines to join — lines for water, lines for rice, lines for the latrines — each man could sit part of the time.
That night a squall lashed the ship for six hours. Those in the hold tried to escape the vomit and those on deck tried to escape the torrent.
The next day was calm under a sun-bleached sky. A man fell overboard. Those on deck — men and guards — watched a long time as he drowned in the wake of the ship. After that no one else fell overboard.
On the second day three men were given to the sea. Some Japanese guards fired their rifles to make the funeral more military. The service was brief — there were lines to be joined.
The voyage lasted four days and five nights. For Mac and Larkin and Peter Marlowe it was uneventful-- Peter Marlowe lay on his sodden mattress aching for sleep. But his mind raced uncontrolled, dredging up terrors of the past and fears of the future. And memories better not remembered. Not now, not alone. Memories of her.
Dawn had already nudged the sky when at last he slept. But even then his sleep was cruel.
Chapter 7
Days succeeded days, days in a monotony of days.
Then one night the King went to the camp hospital looking for Masters. He found him on the veranda of one of the huts. He was lying in a reeking bed, half conscious, his eyes staring at the atap wall.
"Hi, Masters," the King said after he made sure that no one was listening. "How you feel?"
Masters stared up, not recognising him. "Feel?"
"Sure."
A minute passed, then Masters mumbled, "I don't know." A trickle of saliva ran down his chin.
The King took out his tobacco box and filled the empty box which lay on the table beside the bed.
"Masters," the King said. "Thanks for sending me the tip."
"Tip?"
"Telling me what you'd read on the piece of newspaper. I just wanted to thank you, give you some tobacco."
Masters strained to remember. "Oh! Not right for a mate to spy on a mate. Rotten, copper's nark!" And then he died, Dr. Kennedy came over and pulled the coarse blanket neatly over Masters' head. "Friend of yours?" he asked the King, his tired eyes frost under a mattress of shaggy eyebrows.
"In a way, Colonel."
"He's lucky," the doctor said. "No more aches now."
"That's one way of looking at it, sir," the King said politely. He picked up the tobacco and put it back in his own box; Masters would not need it now. "What'd he die of?"
"Lack of spirit." The doctor stifled a yawn. His teeth were stained and dirty, and his hair lank and dirty, and his hands pink and spotless.
"You mean will to live?"
"That's one way of looking at it." The doctor glowered up at the King. "That's one thing you won't die of, isn't it?"
"Hell no. Sir."
"What makes you so invincible?" Dr. Kennedy asked, hating this huge body which exuded health and strength.
"I don't follow you. Sir."
"Why are you all right, and all the rest not?"
"I'm just lucky," the King said and started to leave. But the doctor caught his shirt.
"It can't be just luck. It can't. Maybe you're the devil sent to try us further! You're a vampire and a cheat and a thief--"
"Listen, you. I've never thieved or cheated in my life and I won't take that from anyone."
"Then just tell me how you do it? How? That's all I want to know. Don't you see? You're the answer for all of us. You're either good or evil and I want to know which you are."
"You're crazy," the King said, jerking his arm away.
"You can help us--"
"Help yourself. I'm worrying about me. You worry about you." The King noticed how Dr. Kennedy's white coat hung away from his emaciated chest. "Here," he said, giving him the remains of a pack of Kooas. "Have a cigarette. Good for the nerves. Sir." He wheeled around and strode out, shuddering. He hated hospitals. He hated the stench and the sickness and the impotence of the doctors.
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