"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."