Brother Fish (49 page)

‘Mate, I've been a real prick. What can I do to make it up to the blokes?'

‘Somethin' will come up – never yoh mind 'bout dat, Brother Fish,' Jimmy said calmly.

The next day the whole company was assembled and we were marched once again to the company lecture area to endure another two-hour lecture.

‘Brother Fish, you listen up good,' Jimmy said to me.

‘Don't worry, mate, I'm not going to open my big trap,' I replied, still chastened from the previous day's verbal diarrhoea.

‘Nah, it ain't dat – jus' listen up
real
good,' he suggested again.

To our surprise, Lieutenant Dinh started by saying that the cookhouse had reported that a tin plate had gone missing and although he knew we were not responsible, as we'd missed the afternoon meal, this was a typical capitalist act and against the spirit of the Lenient Policy. I wanted to ask why this was so. One tin plate missing among hundreds was hardly a misdemeanour worth mentioning, but of course, after the previous day, I wasn't going to open my mouth. He carried on about the tin plate for ages, pointing out that the smallest dishonesty was no less harmful to the proletariat than the largest possible crime. Somehow he managed to weave the goddamn tin plate into the day's lecture theme, which was ‘The Inevitable March of World History Towards Communism'.

We were allowed to sit on the ground during this long preface, followed by a much longer and extremely tedious lecture. I noted how most of the blokes around me had nodded off. At the end of the verbal marathon we returned to our compound where we were instructed to run a discussion. To my surprise, Jimmy led me over to the white American compound where the new arrivals who'd been present at the previous day's lecture lived. To ensure the discussion took place the Chinese gave us a list of written questions, and we were required to produce written responses. But upon arrival at the two white American houses most of the blokes promptly fell asleep, and one or two small groups started a desultory game of cards.

‘Hey, what about the written answers?' I asked Jimmy.

‘Dat somethin' I mention be sure to come up – well, it jus' come up, Brother Fish,' Jimmy said, grinning.

My punishment had arrived. I was required to be scribe for the next five lectures before we finally returned to our own compound. Jimmy had established yet another gesture of leadership, this time at my expense. Though I couldn't really complain – I'd had it coming to me. One of the men was allocated to stand watch so that if a political officer should approach to make sure the discussion they'd ordered was taking place, we would know well in advance. If he called out that Dinh was approaching everyone would gather around and I'd start verbalising, with the others pretending to be totally absorbed, nodding their heads and clapping and saying, ‘Yeah, man!' or ‘Ain't that the truth!' when I made a particularly salient point.

However, after I'd served my sentence and we were back in the Negro compound, my prowess as a scribe hadn't gone unnoticed, and I was called upon to do the daily listening and to answer the questions for every subsequent lecture. Jimmy explained that this made me an integral and indispensable part of the group. ‘Ogoya, Brother Fish,' was all he'd said by way of explanation when I'd accused him of dobbing me in for the ‘ears'n'pencil' job. But the truth was, in the eyes of our compound, being the ears as well as the scribe was the one thing, except, of course, for the harmonica, that made me trustworthy and accepted. I was small, talked with a funny accent and they had no reason to trust someone with white skin, but to compensate, I'd become a useful and vital part of the daily procedure.

As a result of my after-lecture discussion reports, our Chinese captors singled us out for meritorious endeavour in the cause of universal communism. Lieutenant Dinh reported that I had seen the error of my ways and it was clear, by the high standard of my reports, I had embraced the teachings of communism with enthusiasm. He also noted that he had come in on several lively discussions and it was obvious our compound was clearly seeing the light of ‘the truth' beaming from the hilltop. As a reward, under the Lenient Policy, we were granted extra food rations, which was, I suspect, the real reason why I was finally accepted in the Negro compound.

But I soon realised that yet another agenda was under way, and was probably the truly
real
reason that we started to get slightly preferential treatment. Lieutenant Dinh was obviously interested in converting the Negroes. He would stress at every session that the American Negro logically belonged on the side of the communist cause: ‘After nearly 300 years you are still the slaves of the white American imperialists. The capitalists use you as cannon fodder in this war,' he'd say, as an example of his approach, then he'd add, ‘This is what we will discuss today.' He'd continue in this vein, bringing up a specific instance of Negro oppression in the United States every session. Often it was difficult to refute his logic and I could see many of the men nodding and often afterwards there would be a real lively discussion, although Jimmy would never be a participant. Later he'd say to me, ‘It clever but I ain't fooled – only people gonna save mah people are mah people demself.'

Of course, as official scribe I'd have to take notes of the discussions and, as a result, I can still remember just about the whole communist discourse. My wife often accuses me of spouting it in my sleep, with phrases such as ‘
Wall Street warmongers
' and ‘
Profits bought with the blood of the Negro people
', or as an alternative, ‘
the blood of the proletariat
'. All this liberally interspersed with my snoring.

However, as in the cave and the farm hospital, the harmonica was to prove the key to progress in our part of the POW camp. It was also to cause the rumpus Jimmy had warned would happen with ‘da man'.

Operation Harmonica had begun slowly, with me knocking out a few tunes – mostly blues – in our room. At first there was the nodding of a few heads, coloured folk seemingly unable to remain motionless when music is about. Then, someone from another room would appear at the door and then more and more would arrive, and then a little humming, and finally, two or three days on, one of the men started singing along, followed shortly by others. Soon enough there was a bit of a concert going on in the compound after the afternoon's lecture or parade.

It didn't take too long before Jimmy had another choir going, with the inevitable result that morale among the prisoners picked up. Cleanliness and cooperation between the men in the compound began to follow, all of which was carefully orchestrated by Jimmy. Pretty soon the Negro compound had regained a sense of self-respect – the blokes were washing their clothes and cleaning their rooms, and the sick among us were being cared for within the compound so as to avoid the hospital death sentence.

One afternoon after a parade I invited Doug Waterman from the Royal Ulster Rifles to come round. ‘Mind if I bring a few mates, Jacko?' he asked.

Pretty soon we had an audience, not only from the Commonwealth forces but also some of the Americans, and this was what finally caused Corporal Steve O'Rourke – ‘da man' – to surface. With a dozen or so of his henchmen he appeared at one of the afternoon concerts and, walking up to Jimmy, who was busy conducting the choir, he demanded the singing cease and the harmonica be handed over to him.

O'Rourke wasn't a small man, but by Jimmy's standards he appeared so. Jimmy stopped the choir and waited, saying nothing.

‘What's your name, nigger?' O'Rourke asked.

Jimmy smiled. ‘What's yours, punk?' he retaliated.

‘You know mine,' O'Rourke said belligerently.

‘Yeah? White trash, ain't it?' Jimmy offered.

‘What you say, nigger? Did I hear you call me punk and white trash? Now I don't like that none,' O'Rourke said, a nasty little smile playing over his face.

‘Well, I ain't too partial to nigger, neither, punk.' Jimmy smiled back at him seemingly unafraid and then gave a casual little shrug. ‘It jus' ain't nice, man.'

O'Rourke's men gathered around him, pushing closer. ‘We're closin' you down, nigger. You want trouble? You can have it any time you want. Now, hand over that harmonica,' O'Rourke said.

Jimmy didn't reply for some moments. Instead he cocked his head slightly and looked at O'Rourke, a querulous expression on his face. Finally he asked, ‘Hey man, yoh want to join da choir? We needs us a soprano voice bad.'

Up to that moment the crowd, including the choir, had listened in dead silence. Now there was a gasp, and then a spontaneous roar of laughter. O'Rourke's face turned crimson. I don't suppose, with his hoons standing around him, too many of them saw the shiv come out of his trouser pocket. I caught the glint of the homemade blade as it sunk into Jimmy's gut. ‘Fuck!' I shouted, lunging towards O'Rourke. I was propped up on my crutches because I'd been playing the harmonica and needed both hands to do so, and as I rushed forward the crutches fell to the ground. But it was all over before I got to where the white corporal was standing. There was an audible tin-like snap and the blade dropped from O'Rourke's fingers. The look of surprise on his face lasted only a moment before Jimmy grabbed the front of his tunic and, with his free hand, did the same to one of O'Rourke's henchmen standing beside him. With a sudden vicious jerk, he brought their heads together so hard that those of us in the front row of the choir could hear the crack as their skulls collided. Both men sank to the ground at Jimmy's feet, unconscious. A thin trickle of blood started running down O'Rourke's jowl.

Jimmy turned to the hoon standing nearest to him. ‘Take dem away!' he commanded. ‘We got us some choir singin' to do, an' dis a private session wid no white trash allowed.'

Someone started to clap and then everyone did – not just our company, but Doug Waterman's mob from the Royal Ulster Rifles and the white Americans present. A cheer rose from the crowd. Nobody quite knew what had happened – all they could see was O'Rourke and one of his men lying unconscious at Jimmy's feet. Then Jimmy stooped down and picked up two broken pieces of blade, examined them cursorily and then threw them aside with a grunt. There was a sudden sigh from the crowd as they realised Jimmy had been attacked before he'd grabbed hold of the two men now lying unconscious at his feet.

I simply couldn't imagine what had happened. I'd seen the shiv enter, I was sure of it. What's more I was quite certain it had entered well above Jimmy's belt, so that it couldn't have protected him or caused the blade to snap in two. ‘Jesus, what happened?' I asked Jimmy.

‘Later,' he growled softly. ‘Now we play – “St James”.'

I returned to the choir, not stopping to pick up my crutches, and blew the opening chords of ‘St James Infirmary Blues'. We watched as four of O'Rourke's men carried their leader and his offsider away. I wondered if Jimmy had killed them, because neither of them showed any signs of coming around. With the first bars of the music the choir began to hum and the crowd had grown quiet. If the humiliation of O'Rourke meant that Jimmy was now ‘da man' then things around the POW camp were in for a big change.

Later in our room I asked Jimmy again what had happened, exclaiming at the same time, ‘Mate, I bloody saw the knife go into your gut with me own eyes!'

‘Nah, that don't happen, Brother Fish, I done pro-tek myself.' He unbuttoned his tunic and pulled out a tin plate, one of the plates our food was served on at the cookhouse. Now I knew where Lieutenant Dinh's missing ‘downfall of capitalism' plate had gone – Jimmy had lifted it when we'd been doing the washing-up after we'd missed our afternoon meal. I felt a whole heap better.

It was also typical of Jimmy not to remove the plate from his tunic in front of the crowd. By doing so he would have gained a second gratuitous laugh and cheer from the crowd. Later one of my fellow inmates in the house explained to me, ‘Jimmy – he a real cool dude, man!'

Jimmy told me his tin-plate protection was something he'd learned at Elmira Reformatory. Evidently he'd been wearing it in anticipation from the second day we'd arrived. He'd not known when O'Rourke would come for him, but was convinced that sooner or later he must.

In the way these things happen the rumour got about that the blade O'Rourke had used had snapped on Jimmy's abs, and that Jimmy hadn't even flinched when the knife entered his gut. As far as the American compound was concerned, Jimmy was ‘the man'. Shortly after the incident at choir practice the Chinese found a reason to put O'Rourke in the camp prison – the group of huts on the perimeter of the camp that the guard had pointed out to us with the caution, ‘No want go that place.' We didn't hear any more about him for some time, but it was a universal hope that he would be the recipient of some of the more painful tortures the Chinese were capable of administering while still keeping a prisoner alive. Although, in his case, keeping the bloke alive wasn't of great concern.

The tedium in the camp continued. It was by now getting pretty cold and the endless lectures were made even harder to bear by the inclement weather, the bad food and sickness everywhere. For me, the only good thing was that the time I'd lunged towards O'Rourke, leaving my crutches to fall to the ground, was the last time I ever used them. Two days later Jimmy discarded Captain Hook.