The crutches creaked, wood against wood, and for the ten millionth time Daven thought about his leg. It did not bother him too much nowadays, though the stump hurt like hell. The doctors had told him that soon he would have to have it restumped again. He had had this done twice already, once a real operation below the knee in ’42, when he had been blown up by a land mine. Once above the knee, without anesthetics. The memory edged his teeth and he swore he would never go through that again. But this next time, the last time, would not be too bad. They had anesthetics here in Changi. It would be the last time because there was not much left to stump.
“Oh hello, Peter,” he said as he almost stumbled over him on the steps. “Didn’t see you.”
“Hello, Dave.”
“Nice night, isn’t it?” Dave carefully swung himself down the steps. “Bladder’s playing up again.”
Peter Marlowe smiled. If Daven said that, it meant that the news was good. If he said, “It’s me for a leak,” that meant nothing was happening in the world. If he said, “My guts’re killing me tonight,” that meant a bad setback somewhere in the world. If he said, “Hold my crutch a moment,” that meant a great victory.
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 fertilizer 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 karat 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 color 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 usally 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.