“I’ve got the Changi balls too,” said Smalls. “Fucking Poms.”
“You blame the English for that?” asked Harry.
“And who do you blame? Who sent you here? Who gives a shit if there are Japs in Singapore?”
Harry nodded.
“There are Singapore slanty-eyes and Jap slanty-eyes. What’s the bloody difference?”
“You’re angry.”
“I’m alive,” Smalls said. He seemed to find the complacency of the dead offensive.
Four hours passed and Harry was still squatting in the sun.
The guard in charge of overseeing the distribution of water had disappeared without explanation. Now, all the prisoners in line were quiet and vigilant. Three men had already been carted off, dead or nearly dead. Harry’s tongue was thick in his throat and he breathed with short breaths through his nose. His hands were folded over his head to shield him from the sun. He had meditated himself into a half-wakeful state in order to conserve energy and was rocking very slowly back and forth on his heels, which he thought helped his circulation. The man in front of him, whom he recognized but did not know, had blood dripping through his loincloth onto the baked dirt. Harry had closed his eyes because the redness of the man’s blood made him dizzy. He wondered if the man contemplated his imminent death, whether he took it for granted.
The sound of a truck grinding up to the gate stirred Harry and he looked, squinting, over at the guards swinging the gate open. The sun was brilliant on the barbed wire, glittering in places like earthbound stars. No. The stars were in the space of air just before Harry’s eyes. He would soon pass out and if he did that, he might not get water and there was a strong likelihood that this would be his last memory of life. The truck entered the compound. The engine was shut off and then the tailgate dropped with a screech and boom. Harry turned his head with effort. More prisoners. More men. He watched as they lowered themselves from the back of the truck, aware of their fragility yet poised and fluid, worried about attracting the attention of the guards. Harry hazarded a deep breath. The last of the men descended the truck, a small thin man in a loincloth with a fringe of gray hair, on his beaky nose a pair of wire glasses, and for one moment Harry thought he saw the radical Gandhi. He shut his eyes briefly. It was no hallucination. The man was still there, but it was not Gandhi. No. The man in the loincloth and glasses was Major Berystede.
“Move on, Harry,” said Smalls, who was poised at his shoulder. “Move on.” The guard had returned to the pump and slowly the coils of waiting men moved forward.
Harry knew there was no room for mistakes. He could not slip up. A careless word here or there would be failure. A dirty cuff or a missing stud and it was over. He would have to make it through dinner, drinks, and maybe a game of poker. He would be scrutinized the whole time. The members then voted by writing a ball beside their names — a white ball would mean acceptance, a black ball rejection. But how much could Harry care about all of this? He could see his face reflected in the toe of his shoe, which struck him as extravagant and ridiculous. He remembered how his grandfather had made him jog up and down the driveway in bare feet to toughen him up, to save him from his mother’s “oily sweetness.” But even his grandfather, opinionated and coarse, with curls of hair in his nostrils and ears, whose temper sent the servants scurrying and his wife into silent fury, even he would find Harry’s membership impressive. A victory for Harry would be a victory for all Anglo-Indians. Despite the fact that Harry did not see himself as a victim, he had faithfully cataloged the many slights against him: playful references to his “touch of the tar,” the awkward moments at the end of the evening when his British friends retired to the white-only brothel and he to his room, the English girl he had met while at Christ Church who had thought him fine to fool around with, but not to take home. Harry took a deep breath and went to the mirror to finish his hair.
The table had been set according to the Order of Precedence, which meant Harry was way down at the end, but thankfully close to Tunsdale, who was also a lieutenant. Someone’s young nieces had shown up to tour India and were seated to Harry’s left and across the table. The blond one seemed both exceedingly young and exceedingly stupid. She stared openly at Harry, as did her dark-haired sister, who was older and, although not much more than twenty, somehow past her prime.
“Harry’s a great polo player,” said Tunsdale. “He’s also a lot of fun.”
“What’s that?” asked Major Berystede, who sat farther up, appropriately seated between the wife of a senior Indian Civil Service officer and an engineer.
“More polo,” said Mrs. Berystede, who was seated across and two seats down from the major. “I prefer hunting.”
“The major’s wife is an excellent shot,” said Tunsdale.
“And hunter,” continued Mrs. Berystede. “In fact, I’ve been hunting in India for so long that I prefer jackal to fox. I think they run better.”
This last statement was met with some approval.
“Is it true,” said the blond-haired girl, addressing Harry, “that Indians keep harems?”
“Not a harem in the Arab sense of the word,” Harry said, smiling in studied calm, “but often the women are kept out of sight and in the past more wife than one was permitted.”
“Is it true,” she continued, “that Indians burn young widows?”
“Oh shut up, please,” said her sister. “I’m sorry. I apologize on her behalf.”
“No, don’t do that,” said Harry. “I prefer when people say what they’re thinking. How else can we understand each other?” The table had hushed silent to hear Harry’s response. “The practice to which you refer is suttee, which is now illegal thanks to a law introduced by the British and quickly embraced by a majority of Indians.” True or not, it was the appropriate thing to say. It occurred to Harry that this ignorant girl had been seated by him precisely for the members to gauge his performance under pressure. He waited for her to approach the topic of the Quit India movement, to ask him what he thought of England’s shameless draining of India’s resources, the mayhem that would follow their (hypothetical) withdrawal. But the girl, like the majority of people seated at the table, was blissfully unaware of the movement or didn’t think it table-worthy conversation. Which was fine with Harry, because on this point, as with everything that made him choose between India and England, he was deeply conflicted.
After dinner, Harry thought that he had earned a cigarette on his own. There were people on the veranda and Tunsdale had only just left him to go to the bathroom, so Harry did not feel the need to engage in another conversation just yet. But he was not so lucky. Berystede’s jackal-slaying wife was quickly shortening the distance between them, glass raised, and in Harry’s judgment, a little unsteady on her feet.
“Harry,” she said, “may I call you Harry?”
“Of course,” said Harry.
“And I’m Christina and you may call me Mrs. Berystede or Major Berystede’s wife.” She laughed. “I’m so sorry that we are so horribly boring and pretentious.”