Kennedy looked up into the stars, trying to read from them an answer to his constant question. When, oh God, when will this nightmare end?
But there was no answer.
Peter Marlowe was at the officers’ latrine, enjoying the beauty of a false dawn and the beauty of a contented bowel movement. The first was frequent, the second rare.
He always picked the back row when he came to the latrines, partly because he still hated to relieve himself in the open, partly because he hated anyone behind him, and partly because it was entertaining to watch others.
The boreholes were twenty-five feet deep and two feet in diameter and six feet apart. Twenty rows heading down the slope, thirty to a row. Each had a wooden cover and a loose lid.
In the center of the area was a single throne made out of wood. A conventional one-holer. This was the prerogative of colonels. Everyone else had to squat, native style, feet either side of the hole. There were no screens of any sort and the whole area was open to the sky and camp.
Seated in lonely splendor on the throne was Colonel Samson. He was naked but for his tattered coolie hat. He always wore his hat, a quirk with him. Except when he was shaving his head or massaging it or rubbing in coconut oil or weird ointments to recover his hair. He had caught some unknown disease and all his head hair had fallen out one day — eyebrows and lashes too. The rest of him was furry as a monkey.
Other men were dotted around the area, each as far from the next man as possible. Each with a bottle of water. Each waving at the constant swarming flies.
Peter Marlowe told himself again that a squatting naked man relieving himself is the ugliest creature in the world — perhaps the most pathetic.
As yet there was only the promise of day, a lightening haze, fingers of gold spreading the velvet sky. The earth was cool, for the rains had come in the night, and the breeze was cool and delicate with sea-salt and frangipani.
Yes, Peter Marlowe thought contentedly, it’s going to be a good day.
When he had finished, he tilted the bottle of water while he still squatted and washed away the trace of feces, deftly using the fingers of his left hand. Always the left. The right is the eating hand. The natives have no word for left hand or right hand, only dung hand and eating hand. And all men used water, for paper, any paper, was too valuable. Except the King. He had real toilet paper. He had given Peter Marlowe a piece and Peter Marlowe had shared it amongst the unit, for it made superb cigarette paper.
Peter Marlowe stood up and retied his sarong and headed back to his hut, anticipating breakfast. It would be rice pap and weak tea as always, but today the unit also had a coconut — another present from the King.
In the few short days he had known the King, a rare friendship had developed. The bonds were part food and part tobacco and part help — the King had cured the tropical ulcers on Mac’s ankles with salvarsan, cured them in two days, that which had suppurated for two years. Peter Marlowe knew, too, that though all three of them welcomed the King’s wealth and help, their liking for him was due mainly to the man himself. When you were with him he poured out strength and confidence. You felt better and stronger yourself — for you seemed to be able to feed on the magic that surrounded him.
“He’s a witch doctor!” Involuntarily, Peter Marlowe said it aloud.
Most of the officers in Hut Sixteen were still asleep, or lying on their bunks waiting for breakfast, when he entered. He pulled the coconut from under his pillow and picked up the scraper and parang machete. Then he went outside and sat on a bench. A deft tap with the parang split the coconut in two perfect halves and spilled the milk into a billycan. Then he carefully began scraping one half of the coconut. Shreds of white meat fell into the milk.
The other half coconut he scraped into a separate container. He put this coconut meat into a piece of mosquito curtain and carefully squeezed the thick-sweet sap into a cup. Today it was Mac’s turn to add the sap to his breakfast rice pap.
Peter Marlowe thought again what a marvelous food the residue of coconut was. Rich in protein and perfectly tasteless. Yet a sliver of garlic in it, and it was all garlic. A quarter of a sardine, and the whole became sardine, and the body of it would flavor many bowls of rice.
Suddenly he was famished for the coconut. He was so hungry that he did not hear the guards approaching. He did not feel their presence until they were already standing ominously in the doorway of the hut and all the men were on their feet.
Yoshima, the Japanese officer, shattered the silence. “There is a radio in this hut.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Yoshima waited five minutes for someone to speak. He lit a cigarette and the sound of the match was a thunderclap.
Dave Daven’s first reaction was, Oh my God, who’s the bastard who gave us away or made the slip? Peter Marlowe? Cox? Spence? The colonels? His second reaction was terror — terror incongruously mixed with relief — that the day had come.
Peter Marlowe’s fear was just as choking. Who leaked? Cox? The colonels? Why, even Mac and Larkin don’t know that I know! Christ! Utram Road!
Cox was petrified. He leaned against the bunk, looking from slant eyes to slant eyes, and only the strength of the posts kept him from falling.
Lieutenant Colonel Sellars was in nominal charge of the hut, and his pants were slimed with fear as he entered the hut with his adjutant, Captain Forest.
He saluted, his dewlapped face flushed and sweating.
“Good morning, Captain Yoshima…”
“It is not a good morning. There is a radio here. A radio is against orders of the Imperial Nipponese Army.” Yoshima was small, slight and very neat. A samurai sword hung from his thick belt. His knee boots shone like mirrors.
“I don’t know anything about it. No. Nothing,” Sellars blustered. “You!” A palsied finger pointed at Daven. “Do you know anything about it?”
“No, sir.”
Sellars turned around and faced the hut. “Where’s the wireless?”
Silence.
“Where is the wireless?” He was almost hysterical. “Where is the wireless? I order you to hand it over instantly. You know we’re all responsible for the orders of the Imperial Army.”
Silence.
“I’ll have the lot of you court-martialed,” he screamed, his jowls shaking. “You’ll all get what you deserve. You! What’s your name?”
“Flight Lieutenant Marlowe, sir.”
“Where’s the wireless?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Then Sellars saw Grey. “Grey! You’re supposed to be Provost Marshal. If there’s a wireless here it’s your responsibility and no one else’s. You should have reported it to the authorities. I’ll have you court-martialed and it’ll show on your record…”
“I know nothing about a wireless, sir.”
“Then by God you should,” Sellars screamed at him, his face contorted and purple. He stormed up the hut to where the five American officers bunked. “Brough! What do you know about this?”
“Nothing. And it’s Captain Brough, Colonel!”
“I don’t believe you. It’s just the sort of trouble you bloody Americans’d cause. You’re nothing but an ill-disciplined rabble…”
“I’m not taking that goddam crap from you!”
“Don’t you talk to me like that. Say ‘Sir’ and stand to attention.”
“I’m the senior American officer and I’m not taking insults from you or anyone else. There’s no radio in the American contingent that I know of. There’s no radio in this hut that I know of. And if there was, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you. Colonel!”