Four Fires (89 page)

Please, please get up!" But I'm wasting me time, they've both got their eyes closed and then one keels over. Oh Jesus, don't die on me, don't die. All three are gunna die on me, I'll be alone. I don't want to die alone. Rigby's dead, Murray's dead, Cleary's dead, I should've somehow persuaded Lieutenant Suzuki to keep me three best mates off the work party, it must be me done this to them! First Cleary and Crease not speaking the native lingo, going the wrong way, Richie Murray for stealing the food, now them three. Oh shit, what am I gunna do! is what's going through me head.

'Then Kawakami comes up and smiles, his gold tooth showing. He kicks at me mate sitting up, who keels over and lies there. The three o' my mates are just lying there now. "Smoko!" I say,

"Rest! They'll be all right, you'll see!"

'"Finish," he says, grinning, "No go."

'I sink to me knees and grab him by the ankles and kiss his boots, "Please, please, smoko, rest time!" I beg.

'He kicks me off and I'm still on me knees. He's grinning down at me. Suzuki Saburo has come to watch Kawakami, who has his rifle pointed at the head of me mate. I say each of their names, I tell them I'm sorry. Kawakami suddenly pulls back his rifle and says something to Suzuki Saburo, who drags me to my feet. Kawakami's laughing. "You shoot!" he says, pointing to me mates, then hands me the rifle. Suzuki Saburo has his rifle pointed to my chest.

'"No!" I scream. "No, no, no!" Suddenly I'm blubbing, I ain't cried yet in all the time, not for Rigby, not for Cleary, not for me mate who died sitting up, now I'm crying.

'"You shoot!" Kawakami screams at me.

'One of me mates who's still conscious opens his eyes, his voice is barely above a whisper, his lips just moving, "Please, Tommy, you do it, mate." Then he closes his eyes and he don't move no more, he's passed out.

'"Shoot!" Kawakami screams.

'Now I've got the rifle in me hands and I do it, three shots, the rifle bolt clicking back each time.

The clicks and the shots I still hear in me head every day of me life. The three shots that murdered me mates, the sound of a flock of birds rising from the jungle canopy at the first explosion . . .'

I'm crying again, but again not so he can hear, tears rolling down my cheeks and over my chin.

I'm glad he's never said the names of his mates so I don't have a picture in me head. But Tommy
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ain't crying. He just sits there and then he sighs. 'Kawakami takes his rifle and knocks me to the ground and last thing I feel is the butt in me face, me jaw breaking. He's beaten me severe so I'd die slowly, he ain't gunna waste a bullet on me, it's the Japanese way of insulting the dead. But I didn't reel the most of it, only the first, 'cause the blow to me face knocked me unconscious.

It's dark when I come to. They've pulled the four of us off the track, left us on the side of the mountain. I lie there in the jungle and Pass out several times during the night. It ain't the rainy season but it

rains early morning and I force me mouth open to let me get a drink. Daylight comes but I must have passed out again, because when I wake up there's these snuffling sounds and grunts. I manage to get up on me good elbow, it's a wild boar, he's ripped open the stomach of one of me mates and is eating his intestines. I can't shout, me jaw and cheekbone is broken. I can't do nothing. I lie on me back and with me good arm feel around me till I find a small rock, I sit up slowly. The boar ain't noticed and he has his snout buried in me mate's gut. I throw the rock and hit the bastard on the top o' the head. He looks up, there's intestines hanging from his pig mouth. When he sees me, he runs into the jungle, carrying the string of sausages with him.

'After a while I manage to get to me feet and I totter over to the body of one of me mates and somehow manage to get his loincloth off his body. I dunno how I done it, but, using it, I make a sling for me broken shoulder. I can feel me face and neck and chest is crusted with blood, and the pain in me jaw and shoulder is almost more than I can take. I'm terrible weak and I shuffle back on to the path, finding the spot where I've killed me mates, and pick up me stick.

'I don't want to die here, there's a big tree back down the hill, I've seen it on past occasions we've carted rice, it's a jungle giant, as big as the one at Sandakan. If I can make it to the tree I can die there. I don't want the pig to eat me. I want to be cradled in the buttress of that big tree.'

Tommy looks at me. 'It's not that I'm thinking them thoughts at that very moment, it's just that they're returning to me then. I've thought it all out before. Every working party that goes out carrying rice loses men and I know my time will come. I've already thought that if it does, somehow I'll manage to last until I get to that big tree and they can shoot me there. It's the last thing I'll see and I'll remember the Maloney tree as me last thought, remember these great giants are the roots of heaven. Now it's just me instinct working, telling me this stuff, because I am in too much pain to think straight. I don't know yet that I've lost me eye and think that maybe it's just closed from Kawakamis rifle butt.'

Tommy pauses. 'When I'd escaped and I was getting better in the hospital, I'd have nightmares about the pig, that pig eating me mate. I'd wake up screaming and it would be hours before I'd be calm enough to

go to sleep again. Then when I was testifying at the War Crimes Tribunal, I heard about the group left in Sandakan, there's over two hundred of them too crook to go on the second march.

One of the Japs, Lieutenant Moritake, and a guard named Hinata murdered a POW only known as Honcho. I never knew this Hinata when I was in Sandakan, but we all knew and hated Moritake, who was called "The Mad Butcher". Although he was an officer, he loved to slaughter the Japanese officers' pigs, hanging them up alive by their front legs, then butchering them slowly, keeping them alive as long as possible.

'Anyhow, Honcho has managed to steal one of these pigs which he tilled and shared with the other starving men. Like I told you, stealing food was a capital offence and Honcho doesn't stand a chance. He was taken to a large wooden cross which Moritake has ordered erected in the grounds of the Jap barracks. Moritake instructs Hinata to lift the prisoner so his feet can't touch the ground and then to press his body against the pole and hold the prisoner, who is too weak to resist. Moritake, a short-arse, stands on a small stool and drives a six-inch nail through the palm of Honcho's outstretched right hand and then through the other. Hinata tells how he stuffed a piece of rag in Honcho's mouth to stop him screaming. After that Moritake nails both his feet to
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the horizontal board Honcho's standing on. He steps off the ladder. Hammer in hand, he examines his handiwork before he climbs up again and drives a six-inch nail into the centre of Honcho's forehead/

Tommy can hear me gasp, 'Mate, you ain't heard nothing yet,' he says. 'Moritake slips on a rubber glove and, taking a butcher's knife, he cuts two pieces of flesh from the abdomen and puts them aside before he slits the torso from neck to navel. Sticking his hand with the rubber glove in the innards, he tears out the heart and the liver. Those are the only parts he wants, the remains of the corpse is left hanging on the cross.'

I can't believe me ears. 'You mean . . . ?' I don't want to say it.

Yeah, mate, towards the end it was not unusual, the official war instructions the Japs got from their general and the war cabinet in Japan was that they could eat their enemy but they must not do the same to one of their own. Anyway, when I heard that at the Tribunal, I

I want him to tell me how he escaped, so I ask, 'Was it all jungle when you were escaping?'

'Mostly, that and the rivers. Weren't for the river, I'd never have made it. I can't stay on the track it's too dangerous, so I spend the next three days in the jungle looking for the big tree. Mostly I'm delirious, lurching about, not knowing where I am, not caring neither. I'm terrible weak and I've got a bout of malaria and, of course, the dysentery is always there. I'm sitting on a log and I'm quite lucid, must have been on the third or fourth day. I can see these insects crawling everywhere, but there's nothing I can eat. I'm sitting still as death and this large snake goes by and past me toes. I reckon it's time to die and I move me foot, but the bugger don't strike, he moves off fast. It's then that I think to meself, I'm such a useless bugger I can't even get meself properly killed, might as well have a go at staying alive.

'So I get up from the log and I ain't moved three feet when I come across this little pool, it ain't more than maybe a foot across and stagnant, the water's black. I realise it's swarming with tadpoles, yiz can hardly see the water for the tadpoles. I ain't eaten much, I can't chew because of me jaw though I've found some fern tips and crushed them in me hand, pushing them in me mouth very slow and tried to swallow. It weren't enough to keep me alive much longer. So now I feast on them tadpoles, cupping them in me good hand and ramming them in me mouth, some spilling, but some go in and they slips down without me needing to chew. After that I drink some of the water. I reckon I must have had live tadpoles swimming around in me guts for hours.

'If it weren't for them tadpoles, I don't reckon I could have gone on. Not just me eating them, it was like a sign. So I stumble on and then I see a wild pig and I'm angry. It's bloody stupid I know, the pig could've killed me sooner than me it. But I hate the bugger and I lurch after it, following the sound of it crashing through the undergrowth. Suddenly the jungle parts and I'm by a river. There's a small stony beach where I can lie. I spend the night by the river and in the morning I see this canoe coming towards me. I can't shout, I can't even speak. In me head I'm callin' out "Abangl", which is the Malay word for "older brother" but nothing's coming out. I'm waving my good arm, hoping the native in the canoe will see me. He sees me and comes over. His name is Ackoi and he signals for me to get in, but I'm too weak so he gets out of the canoe and helps me. It turns out Ackoi's the headman from Tampias Village. He speaks in Malay to me as he soon realises that I understand him but I can't talk back.

'He says the villagers hate the Japs and are in contact with the local guerilla leader, who he promises will help me. I don't know if it's a con, but I don't care no more, nothing I can do. I'm dead meat anyway. Ackoi don't give me the name of the guerilla, which is good or bad, I'm not sure. Good if he's protecting his identity, bad if he's made the whole thing up and he's taking me
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back to the Japanese for the reward.

'But he's good as his word, the people of Tampias look after me. An old woman uses herbs and stuff on me eye and I learn that it's dead, that I'm blind in that eye. They can't do nothing about me jaw or cheekbone, but they make a sort of wooden splint for me broken shoulder and the top part of me arm. Every day a young girl sits beside me and feeds me tapioca and sweet potato and bananas mashed up, once or twice a turtle egg. She can't get a spoon in me mouth so she puts a little of whatever it is on the end of her forefinger and works it slowly into me mouth and laughs every time she done it. She had lovely white teeth. Them villagers were so kind to me I want to cry just thinkin' about them.

'Then after a week, when I'm a bit stronger, Ackoi himself takes me down river in his canoe to Telupid, where, after a day or two, I am transferred by another head man down river in another canoe. By now my shoulder is never going to be right again, I know that for sure. As for my face, well, it was never much anyway. I'm still in a fair bit of pain from both and, once, when we hit some rapids with the canoe jumping up and down in the water, I pass out from the pain. Tell you the truth, I don't remember much about the rest of the trip because when I'm not out of it with the pain, I'm delirious with malaria. Apparently they keep passing me from village to village, and by the time I've come to my senses, we're at a place called Muanad, about fifty miles from Sandakan.

'I reckon I must have come a bloody long way from Telupid, the last place I remember clearly, because the river is now very wide. The headman here is Kulang, chief of the Dusans, who hate the Japs with a passion.

'As soon as it's dark, Kulang takes me to a new village, deeper into the jungle, which they have built to avoid harassment from the Japs, who regularly patrol this part of the river.

'At Kulang's house I have a bath. Can you imagine, it's me first bath in over three years. I'm also given some clean clothes and a bowl of soup. They give me a shave and a haircut, which Kulang, laughing at my long beard and hair, does himself with an ancient cut-throat razor, though I must say it's sharp enough and he's skilled enough and doesn't nick me too bad. I begin to feel like a human being again. 'Tommy looks up, 'I mean that, we were reduced to animals, wild animals just trying to stay alive. Now, for the first time since I escaped, I think I might make it. I'm skin and bone and with me ulcers, which Kulang also treats, and me bunged-up eye and gawd knows what me gob looks like, though I know how it feels, which ain't good.

'I stay there a few days and then Kulang decides it's time to move again. We're going to some place called the Bongaya River. It's got to be to buggery down the river because we're in a big canoe and we're taking quite a lot of tucker with us. We set off before daylight just in case the Japs are on the prowl.

'Kulang's got me lying under banana leaves in the bottom of the canoe, but it wouldn't have been much use if a Jap river patrol had stopped him. We're going with the flow and moving along at a good pace, but it takes us three days to cross the estuary and another three to reach the Bongaya River.

'About six hours later, Kulang gets me from out the banana leaves and tells me we've got about an hour to go. After a while I look up and, there, standing on the bank, is a bloke dressed in jungle greens. He's wearing a slouch hat and he looks about nine feet tall standing like that at the edge of the river. He's an Aussie from a Special Ops unit, which has been working behind enemy lines. Kulang is waving madly and shouting to attract the soldier's attention as we come into the riverbank.