King Rat (15 page)

“True. But it is dishonest to sell the property of a man and tell him that the price was so far less than the real price.”

“Yes, but…”

“There are no buts, my son. True there are degrees of honor — but one man can have only one code. Do what you like. It’s your choice. Some things a man must decide for himself. Sometimes you have to adapt to circumstances. But for the love of God guard yourself and your conscience — no one else will — and know that a bad decision at the right time can destroy you far more surely than any bullet!”

Peter Marlowe weighed the money and pondered what he could do with it, he, Mac and Larkin. He struck a balance and the scales were heavy on one side. The money rightly belonged to Prouty and his unit. Perhaps it was the last thing they possessed in the world. Perhaps because of the stolen money, Prouty and his unit, none of whom he knew, perhaps they would die. All because of his greed. Against this was Mac. His need was now. And Larkin’s. And mine. Mine too, don’t forget me. He remembered the King saying, “No need to take a handout,” and he had been taking handouts. Many of them.

What to do, dear God, what to do? But God didn’t answer.

“Thanks. Thanks for the money,” Peter Marlowe said. He put it away. And all of him was conscious of its burn.

“Thanks nothing. You earned it. It’s yours. You worked for it. I didn’t give you anything.”

The King was jubilant and his joy smothered Peter Marlowe’s self-disgust. “C’mon,” he said. “We got to celebrate our first deal together. With my brains and your Malay, why, we’ll live a life of Riley yet!” And the King fried some eggs.

While they ate, the King told Peter Marlowe how he had sent the boys out to buy extra stocks of food when he heard that Yoshima had found the radio.

“Got to gamble in this life, Peter boy. Sure. I figured that the Japs’d make life tough for a while. But only for those who weren’t prepared to figure an angle. Look at Tex. Poor son of a bitch hadn’t any dough to buy a lousy egg. Look at you and Larkin. Wasn’t for me Mac’d still be suffering, poor bastard. Of course, I’m happy to help. Like to help my friends. A man’s got to help his friends or there’s no point in anything.”

“I suppose so,” Peter Marlowe replied. What an awful thing to say. He was hurt by the King and did not understand that the American mind is simple in some things, as simple as the English mind. An American is proud of his money-making capability, rightly so. An Englishman, such as Peter Marlowe, is proud to get killed for the flag. Rightly so.

He saw the King glance out of the window and saw the snap of the eyes. He followed the glance and saw a man coming up the path. As the man walked into the shaft of light Peter Marlowe recognized him. Colonel Samson.

When Samson saw the King, he waved amicably. “Evening, Corporal,” he said and continued his walk past the hut.

The King peeled off ninety dollars and handed it to Peter Marlowe.

“Do me a favor, Peter. Put a ten with this and give it to that guy.”

“Samson? Colonel Samson?”

“Sure. You’ll find him up near the corner of the jail.”

“Give him the money? Just like that? But what do I say to him?”

“Tell him it’s from me.”

My God, thought Peter Marlowe, appalled, is Samson on the payroll? He can’t be! I can’t do it. You’re my friend, but I can’t go up to a colonel and say here’s a hundred bucks from the King. I can’t!

The King saw through his friend. Oh Peter, he thought, you’re such a goddam child. Then he added, To hell with you! But he threw the last thought away and cursed himself. Peter was the only guy in the camp he had ever wanted for his friend, the only guy he needed. So he decided to teach him the facts of life. It’s going to be tough, Peter boy, and it may hurt you a lot, but I’m going to teach you if I have to break you. You’re going to survive and you’re going to be my partner.

“Peter,” he said, “there are times when you have to trust me. I’ll never put you behind the eightball. As long as you’re my friend, trust me. If you don’t want to be my friend, fine. But I’d like you to be my friend.”

Peter Marlowe knew that here was another moment of truth. Take the money in trust — or leave it and be gone.

A man’s life is always at a crossroads. And not his life alone, not if he’s a man. Always others in the balance.

He knew that one path risked Mac’s and Larkin’s lives, along with his own, for without the King they were as defenseless as any in the camp; without the King there was no village, for he knew that he would never risk it alone — even for the wireless. The other path would jeopardize a heritage or destroy a past. Samson was a power in the Regular Army, a man of caste, position and wealth, and Peter Marlowe was born to be an officer — as his father before him and his son after him — and such an accusation could never be forgotten. And if Samson was a hireling, then everything he had been taught to believe would have no value.

Peter Marlowe watched himself as he took the money and went into the night and walked up the path and found Colonel Samson, and heard the man whisper, “Oh hello, you’re Marlowe, aren’t you?”

He saw himself hand over the money. “The King asked me to give you this.”

He saw the mucused eyes light up as Samson greedily counted the money and tucked it away in his threadbare pants.

“Thank him,” he heard Samson whisper, “and tell him I stopped Grey for an hour. That was as long as I could hold him. That was long enough, wasn’t it?”

“It was enough. Just enough.” Then he heard himself say, “Next time keep him longer, or send word, you stupid bugger!”

“I kept him as long as I could. Tell the King I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry and it won’t happen again. I promise. Listen, Marlowe. You know how it is sometimes. It gets a bit difficult.”

“I’ll tell him you’re sorry.”

“Yes, yes, thank you, thank you, Marlowe. I envy you, Marlowe. Being so close to the King. You’re lucky.”

Peter Marlowe returned to the American hut. The King thanked him and he thanked the King again and walked out into the night.

He found a small promontory overlooking the wire and wished himself into his Spitfire soaring the sky alone, up, up, up in the sky, where all is clean and pure, where there are no lousy people — like me — where life is simple and you can talk to God and be of God, without shame.

Peter Marlowe lay on his bunk drifting in half sleep. Around him men were waking, getting up, going to relieve themselves, preparing for work parties, going and coming from the hut. Mike was already grooming his mustache, fifteen inches from tip to tip; he had sworn never to cut it until he was released. Barstairs was already standing on his head practicing Yoga, Phil Mint already picking his nose, the bridge game already started, Raylins already doing his singing exercises, Myner already doing scales on his wooden keyboard, Chaplain Grover already trying to cheer everyone up, and Thomas was already cursing the lateness of breakfast. Above Peter Marlowe, Ewart, who had the top bunk, groaned out of sleep and hung his legs over the bunk. “Mahlu on the night!”

“You were kicking like hell.” Peter Marlowe had said the same remark many times, for Ewart always slept restlessly.

“Sorry.”

Ewart always said, Sorry. He jumped down heavily. He had no place in Changi. His place was five miles away, in the civilian camp, where his wife and family were — perhaps were. No contact had ever been allowed between the camps.

“Let’s burn the bed after we’ve showered,” he said yawning. He was short and dark and fastidious.

“Good idea.”

“Never think we did it three days ago. How did you sleep?”

“Same as usual.” But Peter Marlowe knew that nothing was the same, not after accepting the money, not after Samson.

The impatient line for breakfast was already forming as they carried the iron bunk out of the hut. They lifted the top bed off and pulled out the iron posts which fitted into slots on the lower one. Then they got coconut husks and twigs from their section under the hut and built fires under the four legs.

While the legs were heating, they took burning fronds and held them under the longitudinal bars and under the springs. Soon the earth beneath the bed was black with bedbugs.

“For Christ’s sake, you two,” Phil shouted at them. “Do you have to do that before breakfast?” He was a sour, pigeon-chested man with violent red hair.

They paid no attention. Phil always shouted at them, and they always burned their bunk before breakfast.

“God, Ewart,” Peter Marlowe said. “You’d think the buggers could pick up the bunk and walk away with it.”

“Damn nearly threw me out of bed last night. Stinking things.” In a sudden flurry of rage Ewart beat the myriads of bugs.

“Easy, Ewart.”

“I can’t help it. They make my skin crawl.”

When they had completed the bed they left it to cool and cleaned the mattresses. This took half an hour. Then the mosquito nets. Another half an hour.

By this time the beds were cool enough to handle. They put the bunk together and carried it back and set it in the four tins - carefully cleaned and filled with water - and made sure the edges of the tins did not touch the iron legs.

“What’s today, Ewart?” Peter Marlowe said absently as they waited for breakfast. “Sunday.”

Peter Marlowe shuddered, remembering that other Sunday.

It was after the Japanese patrol had picked him up. He was in hospital in Bandung that Sunday. That Sunday, the Japanese had told all the prisoner of war patients to pick up their belongings and march because they were going to another hospital.

They had lined up in their hundreds in the courtyard. Only senior officers did not go. They were being sent to Formosa, so the rumor said. The General stayed too, he who was the senior officer, he who openly walked the camp communing with the Holy Ghost. The General was a neat man, square-shouldered, and his uniform was wet with the spit of the conquerors.

Peter Marlowe remembered carrying his mattress through the streets of Bandung under a heated sky, streets lined with shouting silent people, dressed multihued. Then throwing away the mattress. Too heavy. Then falling but getting up. Then the gates of the prison had opened and the gates of the prison had closed. There was enough room to lie down in the courtyard. But he and a few others were locked alone into tiny cells. There were chains on the walls and a small hole in the ground which was the toilet, and around the toilet were feces of years. Stench-straw matted the earth.

In the next cell was a maniac, a Javanese who had run amok and killed three women and two children before the Dutch had overpowered him. Now it was not the Dutch who were the jailers. They were jailed too. All the days and all the nights the maniac banged his chains and screamed.

There was a tiny hole in Peter Marlowe’s door. He lay on the straw and looked out at the feet and waited for food and listened to the prisoners cursing and dying, for there was plague.

He waited forever.

Then there was peace and clean water and there was no longer just a tiny hole for the world, but the sky was above and there was cool water sponging him, washing away the filth. He opened his eyes and saw a gentle face and it was upside down and there was another face and both were filled with peace and he thought that he was truly dead.

But it was Mac and Larkin. They had found him just before they left the prison for another camp. They had thought that he was a Javanese, like the maniac next door, who still howled and rattled his chains, for he too had been shouting in Malay and looked like the Javanese… “Come on, Peter,” Ewart said again. “Grub’s up!”

“Oh, thanks.” Peter Marlowe collected his mess cans.

“You feeling all right?”

“Yes.” After a moment he said, “It’s good to be alive, isn’t it?”

In the middle of the morning the news flared through Changi. The Japanese Commandant was going to return the camp to the standard ration of rice, to celebrate a great Japanese victory at sea. The Commandant had said that a United States task force had been totally destroyed, that the probe to the Philippines was therefore halted, that even now Japanese forces were regrouping for the invasion of Hawaii.

Rumors and counter-rumors. Opinions and counter-opinions.

“Bloody nonsense! Just put out to cover a defeat.”

“I don’t think so. They’ve never given us an increase to celebrate a defeat.”

“Listen to him! Increase! We’re only getting back something we just lost. No, old chap. You take my word for it. The bloody Japs are getting their come-uppance. You take it from me!”

“What the hell do you know that we don’t? You’ve a wireless, I suppose?”

“If I had, as sure as God made little apples, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“By the way, what about Daven?”

“Who?”

“The one who had the wireless.”

“Oh, yes, I remember. But I didn’t know him. What was he like?”

“Regular sort of bloke, I hear. Pity he got caught.”

“I’d like to find the bastard who gave him away. Bet he was an Air Force type. Or an Australian. Those bastards’d sell their souls for a halfpenny!”

“I’m Australian, you Pommy bastard.”

“Oh. Take it easy. Just a joke!”

“You’ve got a funny sense of humor, you bugger.”

“Oh, take it easy, you two. It’s too hot. Anyone lend me a smoke?”

“Here, take a puff.”

“Gee whiz, that tastes rough.”

“Papaya leaves. Cured it myself. It’s all right once you get used to it.”

“Look over there!”

“Where?”

“Going up the road. Marlowe!”

“That him? I’ll be damned! I hear he’s taken up with the King.”

“That’s why I pointed him out, you idiot. Whole camp knows about it. You been sleeping or something?”

“Don’t blame him. I would if I had half the chance. They say the King’s got money and gold rings and food to feed an army.”

“I hear he’s a homo. That Marlowe’s his new girl.”

“That’s right.”

“The hell it is. The King’s no homo, just a bloody crook.”

“I don’t think he’s a homo either. He’s certainly smart, I’ll say that for him. Miserable bastard.”

“Homo or not, I wish I was Marlowe. Did you hear he’s got a whole stack of dollars? I heard that he and Larkin were buying some eggs and a whole chicken.”

“You’re crazy. No one’s got that amount of money — except the King. They’ve got chickens of their own. Probably one died, that’s all! That’s another of your bloody stories.”

“What do you think Marlowe’s got in that billy?”

“Food. What else? You don’t need to know anything to know that it’s food.”

Peter Marlowe headed towards the hospital.

In his mess can was the breast of a chicken, and the leg and the thigh. Peter Marlowe and Larkin had bought it from Colonel Foster for sixty dollars and some tobacco and the promise of a fertile egg from the clutch that Rajah, the son of Sunset, would soon fertilize through Nonya. They had decided, with Mac’s approval, to give Nonya another chance, not to kill her as she deserved, for none of the eggs had hatched. Perhaps it wasn’t Nonya, Mac had said, perhaps the cock, which had belonged to Colonel Foster, was no damned good — and all the flurry of wings and pecking and jumping the hens was merely show.

Peter Marlowe sat with Mac while he consumed the chicken, “God, laddie, I haven’t felt so good or so full for almost as long as I can remember.”

“Fine. You look wonderful, Mac.”

Peter Marlowe told Mac where the money for the chicken had come from, and Mac said, “You were right to take the money. Like as not that Prouty laddie stole the thing or made the thing. He was wrong to try to sell a bad piece of merchandise. Remember laddie, Caveat emptor.”

“Then why is it,” Peter Marlowe asked, “why is it I feel so damned guilty? You and Larkin say it was right. Though I think Larkin was not so sure as you are —“

“It’s business, laddie. Larkin’s an accountant. He’s not a real businessman. Now, I know the ways of the world.”

“You’re just a miserable rubber planter. What the hell do you know about business? You’ve been stuck on a plantation for years!”

“I’ll ha’ you know,” Mac said, his feathers ruffled, “most of planting is being a businessman. Why, every day you have to deal with the Tamils or the Chinese — now there are a race of businessmen. Why, laddie, they invented every trick there was.”

So they talked to one another, and Peter Marlowe was pleased that Mac reacted once more to his jibes. Almost without noticing it, they lapsed into Malay.

Then Peter Marlowe said casually, “Knowest thou the thing that is of three things?” For safety he spoke about the radio in parables.

Mac glanced around to make sure they were not being overheard. “Truly. What of it?”

“Art thou sure now of its particular sickness?”

“Not sure — but almost sure. Why dost thou inquire of it?”

“Because the wind carried a whisper which spoke of medicine to cure the sickness of various kinds.”

Mac’s face lit up. “Wah-lah,” he said. “Thou hast made an old man happy. In two days I will be out of this place. Then thou wilt take me to this whisperer.”

“No. That is not possible. I must do this privately. And quickly.”

“I would not have thee in danger,” Mac said thoughtfully.

“The wind carried hope. As it is written in the Koran, without hope, man is but an animal.”

“It might be better to wait than to seek thy death.”

“I would wait, but the knowledge I seek. I must know today.”

“Why?” Mac said abruptly in English. “Why today, Peter?”

Peter Marlowe cursed himself for falling into the trap he had so carefully planned to avoid. He knew that if he told Mac about the village, Mac would go out of his head with worry. Not that Mac could stop him, but he knew he would not go if Mac and Larkin asked him not to go. What the hell do I do now?

Then he remembered the advice of the King. “Today, tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. Just interested,” he said and played his trump. He got up. The oldest trick in the book. “Well, see you tomorrow, Mac. Maybe Larkin and I’ll drop around tonight.”

“Sit down, laddie. Unless you’ve something to do.”

“I’ve nothing to do.”

Mac testily switched to Malay. “Thou speakest truly? That ‘today’ meant nothing? The spirit of my father whispered that those who are young will take risks which even the devil would pass by.”

“It is written, the scarcity of years does not necessitate lack of wisdom.”

Mac studied Peter Marlowe speculatively. Is he up to something? Something with the King? Well, he thought tiredly, Peter’s already in the radio-danger up over his head, and he did carry a third of it all the way from Java.

“I sense danger for thee,” he said at length.

“A bear can take the honey of hornets without danger. A spider can seek safely under rocks, for it knows where and how to seek.” Peter Marlowe kept his face bland. “Do not fear for me, Old One. I seek only under rocks.”

Mac nodded, satisfied. “Knowest thou my container?”

“Assuredly.”

“I believe it became sick when a raindrop squeezed through a hole in its sky and touched a thing and festered it like a fallen tree in the jungle. Tha thing is small, like a tiny snake, thin as an earthworm, short as a cockroach.” He groaned and stretched. “My back’s killing me,” he said in English. “Fix my pillow, will you, laddie?”

As Peter Marlowe bent down, Mac lifted himself and whispered in his ear, “A coupling condenser, three hundred microfarads.”

“That better?” Peter Marlowe asked as Mac settled back.

“Fine, laddie, a lot better. Now, be off with you. All that nonsense talk has tired me out.”

“You know it amuses you, you old bugger.”

“Less of the old, puki mahlu!”

“Senderis!” said Peter Marlowe, and he walked into the sun. A coupling condenser, three hundred microfarads. What the hell’s a microfarad?

He was windward of the garage and smelled the sweet gasoline-laden air, heavy with oil and grease. He squatted down beside the path on a patch of grass to enjoy the aroma. My God, he thought, the smell of petrol brings back memories. Planes and Gosport and Farnborough and eight other airfields and Spitfires and Hurricanes.

But I won’t think about them now, I’ll think about the wireless.

He changed his position and sat in the lotus seat, right foot on left thigh, left foot on right thigh, hands in his lap, knuckles touching and thumbs touching and fingers pointing to his navel. Many times he had sat thus. It helped him think, for once the initial pain had passed, there was a quietude pervading the body and the mind soared free.