"I don't think even Suliman would risk that."
"Who?"
"Suliman. The Malay I was talking to. This afternoon."
"It seems more like a month ago," the King said.
"It does, doesn't it?"
"What the hell's a guy like Suliman doing in this dump? Why didn't he just take off when the war ended?"
"He was caught in Java. Suliman was a rubber tapper on Mac's plantation.
Mac's one of my unit. Well, Mac's battalion, the Malayan Regiment, got out of Singapore and were sent to Java. When the war ended, Suliman had to stick with the battalion."
"Hell, he could've got lost. There are millions of them in Java…"
"The Javanese would have recognized him instantly, and probably turned him in."
"What about the co-prosperity sphere yak? You know, Asia for the Asiatics?"
"I'm afraid that doesn't mean much. It didn't do the Javanese much good, either. Not if they didn't obey."
"How do you mean?"
"In '42, autumn of '42, I was in a camp just outside Bandung," Peter Marlowe said. "That's up in the hills of Java, in the center of the island. At that time there were a lot of Ambonese, Menadonese and a number of Javanese with us — men who were in the Dutch army. Well, the camp was tough on the Javanese because many of them were from Bandung, and their wives and children were living just outside the wire. For a long time they used to slip out and spend the night, then get back into the camp before dawn. The camp was lightly guarded, so it was easy. Very dangerous for Europeans though, because the Javanese'd turn you over to the Japs and that'd be your lot. One day the Japs gave out an order that anyone caught outside would be shot. Of course the Javanese thought it applied to everyone except them — they had been told that in a couple of weeks they were all to go free anyway. One morning seven of them got caught. We were paraded the next day. The whole camp. The Javanese were put up against a wall and shot. Just like that, in front of us. The seven bodies were buried — with military honors — where they fell. Then the Japs made a little garden around the graves. They planted flowers and put a tiny white rope fence around the whole area and put up a sign in Malay, Japanese and English. It said, These men died for their country."
"You're kidding!"
"No I'm not. But the funny thing about it was that the Japs posted an honor guard at the grave. After that, every Jap guard, every Jap officer who passed the 'shrine,' saluted. Everyone. And at that time POW's had to get up and bow if a Jap private came within seeing distance. If you didn't, you got the thick end of a rifle butt around your head."
"Doesn't make sense. The garden and saluting."
"It does to them. That's the Oriental mind. To them that's complete sense."
"It sure as hell isn't. Nohow!"
"That's why I don't like them," Peter Marlowe said thoughtfully. "I'm afraid of them, because you've no yardstick to judge them. They don't react the way they should. Never."
"I don't know about that. They know the value of a buck and you can trust them most times."
"You mean in business?" Peter Marlowe laughed. "Well, I don't know about that. But as far as the people themselves… Another thing I saw. In another camp in Java — they were always shifting us around there, not like in Singapore — it was also in Bandung. There was a Jap guard, one of the better ones. Didn't pick on you like most of them. Well, this man, we used to call him Sunny because he was always smiling. Sunny loved dogs.
And he always had half a dozen with him as he went around the camp.
His favorite was a sheepdog — a bitch. One day the bitch had a litter of puppies, the cutest dogs you ever saw, and Sunny was just about the happiest Jap in the whole world, training the puppies, laughing and playing with them. When they could walk he made leads for them out of string and he'd walk around the camp with them in tow. One day he was pulling the pups around — one of them sat on its haunches. You know how pups are, they get tired, and they just sit. So Sunny dragged it a little way, then gave it a real jerk. The pup yelped but stuck its feet in."
Peter Marlowe paused and made a cigarette. Then he continued. "Sunny took a firm grip on the string and started swinging the pup around his head on the end of the rope. He whirled it maybe a dozen times, laughing as though this was the greatest joke in the world. Then as the screaming pup gathered momentum, he gave it a final whirl and let go of the string. The pup must have gone fifty feet into the air. And when it fell on the iron-hard ground, it burst like a ripe tomato."
"Bastard!"
After a moment Peter Marlowe said, "Sunny went over to the pup. He looked down at it, then burst into tears. One of our chaps got a spade and buried the remains and, all the time, Sunny tore at himself with grief.
When the grave was smoothed over, he brushed away his tears, gave the man a pack of cigarettes, cursed him for five minutes, angrily shoved the butt of the rifle in the man's groin, then bowed to the grave, bowed to the hurt man, and marched off, beaming happily, with the other pups and dogs."
The King shook his head slowly. "Maybe he was just crazy. Syphilitic."
"No, Sunny wasn't. Japs seem to act like children — but they've men's bodies and men's strength. They just look at things as a child does. Their perspective is oblique - to us - and distorted."
"I heard things were rough in Java, after the capitulation," the King said to keep him talking. It had taken him almost an hour to get Peter Marlowe started and he wanted him to feel at home.
"In some ways. Of course in Singapore there were over a hundred thousand troops, so the Japs had to be a little careful. The chain of command still existed, and a lot of units were intact. The Japs were pressing hard in the drive to Australia, and didn't care too much so long as the POW's behaved themselves and got themselves organized into camps.
Same thing in Sumatra and Java for a time. Their idea was to press on and take Australia, then we were all going to be sent down there as slaves."
"You're crazy," said the King.
"Oh no. A Jap officer told me after I was picked up. But when their drive was stopped in New Guinea, they started cleaning up their lines. In Java there weren't too many of us, so they could afford to be rough. They said we were without honor — the officers — because we had allowed ourselves to be captured. So they wouldn't consider us POW's. They cut off our hair and forbade us to wear officers' insignia. Eventually they allowed us to 'become' officers again, though they never allowed us back our hair." Peter Marlowe smiled. "How did you get here?"
"The usual foul-up. I was in an airstrip building outfit. In the Philippines.
We had to get out of there in a hurry. The first ship we could get was heading here, so we took it. We figured Singapore'd be safe as Fort Knox.
By the time we got here, the Japs were almost through Johore. There was a last-minute panic, and all the guys got on the last convoy out. Me, I thought that was a bad gamble, so I stayed. The convoy got blown out of the sea. I used my head - and I'm alive. Most times, only suckers get killed."
"I don't think I would have had the wisdom not to go - if I had had the opportunity," Peter Marlowe said.
"You got to look after number one, Peter. No one else does."
Peter Marlowe thought about that for a long time. Snatches of conversation fled through the night. Occasionally a burst of anger.