‘I should carry her,’ said Sameer, standing up. ‘I’m her father, it’s my duty.’
Fred laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘You don’t look well yourself. She will make you much slower, which is no use to any of us. Let me take her – I promise I will be as gentle with her as if she were my own.’
*
They camped that night in an abandoned animal shelter, a little way off the road. As she chewed steadily at her watery rice Kate realised that from now on every night would be the same, every day the same, and each step would take her further away from the country that she had grown to love. Leaving meant surviving, she knew that, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.
‘Are you all right?’ she said quietly to Myia, watching her fiddle once again with her necklace. ‘Did your fiancé give you that?’
Myia nodded. ‘It was a promise. I can’t bear to let go of it yet.’
‘Where is he?’
‘For a long time I didn’t know,’ said Myia. ‘He told me he had business to attend to and then just . . . disappeared. I thought he no longer loved me. But I had a letter.’
‘A letter from him?’
‘Yes. From Denpo. He had been in Japan.’
Kate stared at her as the implications of this sank in. ‘Did you know he was going there?’
‘No. I supposed that he and his friends would be working to undermine the British somehow but I never supposed that they would join forces with the Japanese.’
‘What was he doing there?’
‘He didn’t say.’
She understood now why Myia had seemed so preoccupied, almost since the day they had met. ‘Was he alone?’
Myia shook her head. ‘He follows another young man, a rebel leader called Aung San. I am sure he went with him to Japan, perhaps many others too. I had not heard from him for over a year when the letter came.’ She chewed her lip. ‘He said he still loved me.’
‘Oh, Myia.’
‘I didn’t know what to do. I wrote back but heard nothing.’ She looked up at Kate. ‘He’s not a bad person. It hasn’t always been easy, under the British. These men believe that Burma should be ruled by the Burmese.’
It’s hard to argue with, thought Kate, although she recoiled at the thought of Denpo collaborating with the enemy. Was he, even now, marching through Upper Burma with a rifle in his hand, rounding up the Britons and Indians who were left behind? How far would he go in his desire to rid Burma of the British imperialists?
‘Did he know your family worked for the British?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Myia, smiling ruefully. ‘I think he hoped to convince me one day that they were not my friends. I would never betray those I care about, though – in fact, I hoped to change his mind. I suppose we were a very poor match.’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘Through friends, in Mandalay. He was part of a Yoke thé troupe – a puppet show. He was so clever and so kind. I loved him at once.’ She smiled, her eyes full of tears.
‘He sounds like a good man.’
‘He is,’ said Myia, although she looked uncertain. ‘I hope he will remember it before long.’ She looked down at the silver crescent and tucked it back into her blouse. ‘I do not think I will ever see him again.’
*
The monsoon and the army arrived on the same day. Six days of walking had passed, each much like the last, a monotonous trudge along a rough, dry track that seemed to go on forever. The middle of the day was gaspingly hot, the nights sticky and humid. At each camp they kept a fire burning to deter tigers.
Now and then they passed an abandoned car or truck that had broken down or run out of fuel. Each time Fred tried to get it going again, but to no avail. Also littering the roadside were bags of clothing, personal belongings and even occasional items of furniture.
One morning it began to rain and soon the drizzle became a deluge. They walked on. Kate felt her feet being rubbed raw and her clothes were suddenly soaked and heavy. The children scampered around at first, delighted to catch the first raindrops, but by afternoon they looked miserable and exhausted.
At a crossroads they found an army jeep with four young Indian soldiers perched on the bonnet. They looked as though they would rather be anywhere else.
‘The road to Fort Hertz is closed,’ said their leader, gesturing with his rifle. ‘We expect a Japanese attack there any day.’
‘Which way should we go instead?’ asked Fred, pulling out his sodden map.
They pointed to a turning a few miles ahead that would take the group westwards. ‘This route will take you via the Hukawng Valley and Shinbwiyang towards Assam. The Indian government is setting up aid camps in the hills. If you keep going that way you should join up with them.’
‘I had hoped to avoid the Hukawng Valley,’ said Fred.
‘It’s a dangerous route,’ said Myia. ‘It will be very risky. Especially in this season.’ The rest of the group, already sunk in the misery of sore feet and wet clothes, said nothing.
*
They followed a precipitous path through the hills for two days, and at last the ground began to slope away, although the shadowy outlines of other mountains rose nearby.
‘This must be the valley,’ said Myia. They stood on a high promontory in the trees, looking out at the dense forest before them.
‘How far is it to India?’ asked Satish.
‘A long way, my boy,’ said Fred heavily. ‘Hundreds of miles.’
‘It sounds very far,’ said Nabanita, her voice quavering. ‘I am worried.’ She gripped her husband’s hand and stared out at the curtain of rain that fell over the valley. Her children looked anxiously up at her.
‘We have no choice,’ said Sameer.
‘Mrs Bryant, take my arm,’ said Fred. ‘This bit’s going to be steep.’ He looked back at the group and jerked his head. ‘Come on, everyone. Let’s just take it day by day.’
They scrambled slowly down, clinging on to shrubs and vines, following a winding path. Kate looked around. The jungle seemed sinister, with gnarled evergreens and giant ferns looming out of the mist. For a moment she remembered lying beside the pool in Rangoon with Edwin, laughing and gazing up at the blue sky. It seemed another world, and she pushed the thought of him away. At least Myia, who knew the country, was here, as well as Fred, so strong and dependable. She felt already that she would trust him with her life.
The trees closed overhead, and soon the only sounds were the rustling of leaves and the heavy falling rain.
29
Tavoy, June 1942
Edwin was woken by a banging on the cell door, the same as every day. Fumbling for his glasses, he pulled on his tattered shoes and followed the other prisoners out into the yard, the air already sticky in the early morning.
They stood in rows, heads bowed, as Japanese officers ticked off their numbers on a list. The captain stood at the far end, watching impassively.
Hundreds of men stood in the yard. Some of them were Burmese, but there were also many Indians and Europeans, soldiers who had been captured as the Japanese tightened their grip on the countries of Asia. Edwin had heard Australian voices in the distance, and also what he guessed was Dutch, spoken by men who were rumoured to have been brought from Java. He had been a prisoner for weeks; he thought five or six, but the days merged into one another and he could only guess at the date.
One of the lieutenants called to the captain and he marched over to where the officer stood in front of a young Burmese man. The two Japanese conferred and then both looked at the prisoner, who was visibly trembling, his hands knotting and unknotting the ragged longyi that was all he wore. The officer grabbed the man by the shoulder and dragged him forward out of the line to a clear spot.
‘Kneel!’ he barked, and the man knelt in the dirt. The captain studied him carefully and then lashed out with the back of his hand, sending him reeling.
‘You are thief,’ he said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.
; He slapped the man again, drawing blood from his nose and cheek and he knelt again and cowered.
‘This man,’ said the captain, looking around at the assembled lines of men, who watched with trepidation, ‘this man steal. He steal bread from kitchen, and we think not first time. He steal from you!’
Before the man could move the officer beside him kicked him, hard, and he rolled over onto his side, groaning. But they were not finished. Taking turns, the two Japanese men kicked him in the side and head. He curled into a ball but there was no escaping the onslaught.
‘Stop!’
The shout came from an Indian man in the row nearby. He was young, twenty-five or so, with dark hair curled around his cheeks and a thick beard. He was much taller than the Japanese men and towered over the Burmese. His fists were clenched.
‘He was starving. His rations were cut because his shovel broke.’
‘Quiet,’ said the captain, and approached the Indian man, staring impassively at him.
‘But—’
‘If you speak again, you die.’
The man was silent. On the ground the prisoner lay whimpering, blood running from his head. He tried to sit up but the pain was too much and he slumped back down.
The captain barked an order in Japanese. The officer lifted his rifle and stood over the writhing figure, taking his time, walking around him to find the best angle. He held it aloft, the blade of the bayonet glinting. Then it was thrust down with a sickening crunch, once, twice, three times, until the ground was swilling with blood.
Edwin felt his underarms prickling with sweat, disgust rising in his throat.
‘And him,’ said the captain, jerking his head at the Indian and speaking briefly to his men in Japanese. He looked at the man and frowned. ‘You will be punished.’
Looking around at the lines of prisoners, he raised his voice. ‘This what we do to men who steal. Thieves will die. Men who speak out of turn will be beaten. If you do again,’ he said, turning to the Indian man, ‘then you die.’
They dragged the unprotesting man out of the line, making him kneel, and the captain took his narrow sword from its sheath, handing it to the officer. He watched calmly as the officer lifted the sword high and then brought it down, the flat of the blade connecting with the man’s back with a stinging slap.
The man flinched but immediately tensed again, his body bent over. More strokes came and Edwin could see his fists clenched on the ground, his whole body absorbing the blows. The surrounding men watched silently.
Finally, when blood began to show through the man’s khaki shirt, they stopped. He was pulled up and shoved back into the line.
‘Next time,’ said the captain, ‘you die.’
Orders were shouted, and the lines of prisoners marched out of the yard. The Indian man passed where Edwin stood, his handsome face rigid with pain. Watching him go, Edwin saw his back, where bloody stripes seeped through his shirt.
*
All that week they toiled on the hillside, where the new road towards India snaked slowly north. Each day, after a breakfast of rice gruel, they were taken by truck to the worksite where they shovelled earth and stones for ten hours before being taken back to the camp as darkness fell.
Edwin felt stronger and yet more wretched than ever before. There were times when he felt that he could not go on, when it seemed that his body could not take any more. Sometimes he stood and gasped for breath between shovel-loads and wished to collapse and die there on the road. But a shout would come from the overseer and he would find, somehow, the strength to go on again.
At night he looked with surprise at the muscles that were suddenly visible, though his body was thinner than ever, and his hands and feet were blistered and bloody.
Keeping sane was his priority, although he had no idea how. Sometimes he recited poems in his head, and often found himself trying to recite whole books that he had known and loved, a thousand years ago. Oliver Twist had been his favourite book as a boy, and each night before sleep he found the opening lines coming to his mind.
Occasionally one of the work groups would not be needed on the road, and they were put to work chopping wood, sweeping the yard, folding sacks, or one of a hundred other tasks.
On these days Edwin found that he was able to think, something that on the road he barely had the time or energy to do. He could hardly remember the faces of those he had known before Burma, although Emilia’s voice sometimes echoed in his dreams. Kate came often to his mind, and he hoped that she was safe. He remembered the strange moments they had shared and wondered where she was. He imagined that she was in India already, trying to make herself useful. Kate, who hated to sit still, would not be content to wait the war out.
*
Raking gravel one day in the drizzling rain, Edwin saw the tall Indian man who had been beaten by the Japanese. He was shifting sacks of stones, his strong arms lifting them on and off his shoulder with ease. He wore shorts and a ragged shirt, and battered army boots.
‘I saw what you did that day in the yard,’ said Edwin. It felt strange speaking, after so long almost silent. ‘I thought it was very brave.’
The man looked at him and shrugged. ‘It was foolish, I think.’ He looked too young and mild to be a soldier, but his arms were thickly muscled and his shoulders broad.
He heaved the sack off his shoulder and dropped it with a thud on the ground. ‘The man died anyway.’
‘At least you tried.’
‘Would you do the same?’
Edwin was taken aback. ‘Me? Oh, no. I’m not brave at all.’
They worked in silence for a while. Edwin felt his shirt sticking to his back and a terrible dry thirst in his throat. He swallowed and wondered if he could drink the rain that pooled in the mud around his feet.
‘Yet here you are,’ said the man.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’re here, in this camp. Which means you stayed on in Burma when the rest of your people had gone.’ He looked over at Edwin and gave a small smile. ‘You have been brave.’
Edwin cleared his throat and looked away, discomfited, busying himself with the spade. He shovelled hard, feeling the blisters on his hand burst as he dug.
‘I’m Edwin,’ he said as an afterthought.
‘Rama,’ said the man and smiled again. ‘Like the wolf in your Mr Kipling’s stories.’
*
The next day Rama worked beside him again and at lunchtime, as they ate their pathetic ration of rice, they sat side by side in the dirt.
‘How did you come to be here?’ asked Edwin, but he immediately regretted the question, for the young man beside him looked depressed.
‘They killed my friends,’ he said at last.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘We were separated from our unit. We came across a village in the jungle where the inhabitants had all been killed. Men’s tongues cut out, women and girls raped and then killed with bayonets.’ He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘We started to bury them. Then a group of enemy soldiers came back and found us.’
Edwin felt the hairs on his arms stand up as he listened. How was it possible that such horrors could take place?
‘They put the others in a row by a ditch and made them kneel,’ said Rama, his hands kneading the forgotten rice to a sticky pulp. ‘Then they killed them.’ He shook his head. ‘I thought they were going to kill me, too, but instead they took away my turban and used it for target practice, laughing. Why did they let me live?’
‘I ask myself the same question every day,’ said Edwin hesitantly. ‘For over a year I’ve wondered why I am alive.’
‘A year?’ said Rama. ‘What happened to you?’
‘Last May,’ said Edwin, swallowing the last bit of rice with difficulty. ‘I suppose you know that London was bombed by Germany?’
For a moment he wondered why he was telling Rama this, but he felt an affinity with the young soldier and knew instinctively that he understood the pain and the grief of being left behind.
>
‘Yes,’ said Rama.
‘My wife was killed. Our house was hit. I wasn’t there.’
‘But you might as well have been,’ said Rama.
‘Exactly. I failed to protect her. When the Japs caught me I thought my time had come. I was so scared, but I had this feeling that God was simply catching up with me. That it had been an oversight that I’d survived and that now the debt was being collected.’
‘Did they hurt you?’
‘A bit. It was a stick, though, not a sword. Not like your—’ He gestured at Rama’s back, remembering how the Japanese had struck him.
Rama lifted his shirt and half-turned. The thick welts on his back were red and raw, showing livid on his dark skin.
‘Does it still hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mine are mostly healed,’ said Edwin, and pulled up the frayed cotton of his shirt, twisting to look at the thin silver lines that crossed his back.
Rama leaned forward to examine them. He lifted a hand and for a moment his warm fingers touched Edwin’s pale skin. Edwin started at the strange intimacy of it and stood quickly, his shirt falling back down to cover the scars.
30
The Hukawng Valley, June 1942
They were now deep in the Hukawng Valley, following paths that led gradually west. The weather was cool and wet and they all suffered from colds, malnourishment, and the unpleasant effects of constant dampness. Kate watched the skin on her feet starting to peel away, initially with disgust and then, as time went by, with a detached interest.
The food they carried was mostly rice, and when it was too wet to make a fire they rationed the remaining tinned food, pulled up forest greens, or simply went hungry.
Often they slept in huts that were dotted through the jungle. Some of them were abandoned native huts, which Fred called bashas, but many more had been built from bamboo and plantain leaves by other refugees who had passed that way. Once they found the dead bodies of two men in a hut and moved swiftly on, making an excuse before the children saw.
Somewhere in the depths of the Hukawng Valley they camped one night, repairing a battered hut that lay a few yards from the path. In the morning the little boy Satish started a fever, so they stayed for another day, and then another, the others using the time to rest and scout for food as he lay sweating and shivering under a rug.
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