‘I ordered you,’ he told us through the interpreter, his voice tight and thin like the lash of a whip and the s’s hissing like a serpent on his tongue, ‘to parade all your men. You not only lie to me but are disobedient and wilful as well. You will parade all your men.’
Before I could stop him, Hicksley-Ellis stepped out of the ranks and said: ‘But we are all here.’
Without waiting for the interpreter, Yonoi, his handsome face almost aglitter with the resentment of a whole people and the outrage of a long history, hissed: ‘Come here!’
We watched the tall knock-kneed officer walk awkwardly to within a yard of Yonoi and then stop to stand facing him.
‘I’m afraid that’s done it,’ I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, my heart dark with dismay.
I had barely finished when Yonoi, quite beside himself, shrieked: ‘You! You lie again! I said all, all people! Where are hospital people?’
I thought he was going to draw his sword and stick Hicksley-Ellis there and then but he just slashed him about the head and neck a dozen times with his cane before commanding: ‘Now fetch all, all people!’
The order was instantly repeated by the interpreter. We were forced to get our doctors to move all the sick out of their improvised hospital and on to the parade ground into the most cruel of suns. They had tried to do so in a way most considerate to the sick, the orderlies carrying the worst cases out on stretchers. But Yonoi would have none of that. Incensed with a sense of injury against both us and life he walked down to the doctors and ordered all the sick to their feet. The senior medical officer protested and was immediately knocked senseless for his pains. Yonoi shrieking: ‘You not sick, you lie! You, you all lie. Your spirit bad, very bad. You not sick!’
Fortunately we had no operation cases in hospital that day. Even so it was as bad as it could be. There were men with temperatures close on hundred and five from the fever which took such a heavy toll among a community as consistently under-nourished as we were. They stood swaying like drunkards on their feet and before long several of them fainted and lay moaning on the ground where they had fallen. At first Yonoi tried to prod them to their feet but when they failed to respond he just stamped his feet in disgust and left them lying there for he was eager to get to the climax of his affair with us.
All this time Celliers went on standing beside me as if hardly there, the look of light and height upon his face. He was still, I imagined, listening in to his illusion of cosmic voices and tidal music. But when Yonoi turned to face us for the final account I found that Celliers after all was also with us. He mumbled to me that Yonoi was only behaving the way he was because, like us, he was doing just what was expected of him. Celliers added that confronting Yonoi with the unexpected alone could save Yonoi, his men, and us. To be the mere opposite of what he was would do no good. It would merely mean that we would all drown in our spirits like swimmers locked in one another’s arms.
‘There’s going to be more than just drowning in our spirits,’ I retorted grimly finding this too euphemistic a rendering of the situation. ‘Look! Here it comes!’
Yonoi had summoned Hicksley-Ellis to him in the centre of the parade ground.
‘Ask him?’ Yonoi told the interpreter, ‘how many armourers and armaments officers he has in his group?’
Of course Hicksley-Ellis, as arranged, answered ‘None.’
Then, Yonoi, being what he was, cracked inside. He had Hicksley-Ellis tied with hands behind his back and made to kneel bare-headed on the ground near him. Yonoi then stepped back, drew his sword, raised it flashing in the sun and with his lips to the naked steel said a prayer to it as I had seen other officers do before other executions. The machine-gun crews released their safety catches and all four guns clicked loudly as they rammed the first bullet into the firing breech. Nothing could prevent it coming now, I thought. One by one the heads would fall until someone broke – and even then it would not be the end. This appetite for disaster would have to be fed, and not until it was sated would the devourer in Yonoi and others desist. Whatever we did from now on would be wrong and only make it worse for those who survived the day – if any did.
In my despair I turned openly to Celliers.
Before I could speak he spoke to me in a low and reassuring voice as if he were still hearing the music in his ear. He said: ‘I’m going to stop it now. It’ll be all right. But whatever happens do nothing about me. Remember, nothing. Goodbye.’
I did not have time or mind to take in the significance of that ‘good-bye’, nor recognize it then as a clear indication of his knowledge of what the end was going to be for him for as he spoke he stepped out of the ranks his new hat at a rakish angle on his head and the sun flashing on its mutilated badge. He walked, as Lawrence had already remarked, most beautifully. Without hurry he advanced on Yonoi as if he were going across a paddock at home to do no more than take a high-spirited stallion in hand.
The effect among our prison ranks was startling. No sound broke from us but the atmosphere became unlocked and flowing. I knew that without even looking round. Celliers’s reputation had already spread throughout the camp and hope flared up in our ranks again. Even I, though I had no idea what he could or would do, found a too-sweet excitement going through me as I watched his easy almost nonchalant approach. It was truly wonderful; perfectly timed and executed. Anything faster would have alarmed them. Anything slower given them time to recover. Anything before that moment would have failed for Yonoi and his men still would have been free to rush forward and stop him. But finding themselves abandoned by the conclusion they thought foregone they hesitated and just gaped at Celliers, waiting for Yonoi to give them the lead.
When Yonoi opened his eyes again after his short prayer to the spirit, the Maru of his sword, Celliers was barely fifteen yards away. Amazement like the shock of a head-long collision went through him. Going white in the process he stared in a blank unbelieving way at Celliers. For the first time in days he was compelled, because of the unfathomed identification between Celliers and himself, to see someone outside himself.
Amazement then gave way to consternation and he cried out a command in English that was also a plea: ‘You – officer – go – back, go back, go back!’
But Celliers went on to place himself between Hicksley-Ellis and Yonoi and said something quietly and unhurriedly to Yonoi.
Yonoi appeared not to have heard him. He shrieked again: ‘You – go back, back, back!’ like someone trying to scare a ghost.
Celliers shook his head quietly and went on staring at him steadily as a disarmed hunter might stare a growling lion straight in the face. Perhaps more in terror than in anger, Yonoi raised his sword and knocked Celliers down with the flat of it. The crack on his head rang out like a pistol-shot to be followed by another exhortation to Celliers to go back. Dazed, Celliers struggled to his feet, swayed and half-turned as if to obey – then swung around suddenly. He took a couple of paces back towards Yonoi, put his hands on Yonoi’s arms and embraced him on both cheeks rather like a French general embracing a soldier after a decoration for valour.
The shock of this strange action was unbelievable. I do not know who apart from Yonoi was shocked the most: the Japanese or ourselves.
‘My God, what a bastard!’ an Australian infantry officer behind me exclaimed bitterly.