ELEPHANT MOON

by John Sweeney

  Once inside, they both had to kneel. He put a finger to her lips and said, ‘I’ve got a little treat for you, Emily,’ and produced from his knapsack half a bar of chocolate, stolen from the one of the boxes carried by the pack elephants. Chocolate was as precious as gold, reserved for the sick. To steal it, a crime. Unwrapping the silver foil for her, he placed the chocolate just in front of her mouth, steadying himself by resting a hand lightly on the side of her ribcage, his fingers brushing her left breast. She’d had no proper meal since leaving Rangoon. The bar smelt delicious. Tilting forward, she bit into the chocolate and nibbled.

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  He suppressed a grimace.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He pulled out a cheroot from the packet in his shorts, lit it with a match, sucked in the smoke and exhaled.

  Dying sunlight slashed through the trees, falling on her face.

  ‘It’s hard work keeping clean.’ He started to speak.

  ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’ But so did she.

  Laughing, he invited her to go ahead.

  ‘The bandage. How did you…?’

  ‘Someone hit me with a frying pan.’

  ‘No!’

  He paused for perhaps a beat too long, then started to laugh. ‘No, I’m pulling your leg. It was the Japanese.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘There’s not much competition, is there? I mean, I can hardly go to the movies tonight, can I?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  His mind went back to what had happened before the ferry left. Better not tell Toots here about that.

  ‘We’d been shot up pretty badly by the Japanese. The captain, God bless him, had bought it, a bullet in the face. With him dead, that meant I was in charge. We found the ferry crossing, but we had to dump the guns, and our dead. We did our best, saying prayers and marking their graves, but we couldn’t hang about for long. Then we hopped on the ferry. Half-way across, along came the Zeroes. The first strafing run shot up two men.’

  The others were fussing over the injured, uselessly, panicking, but he wasn’t going to nurse dead meat. Gregory ignored the commotion and had his ears wide open, staring downriver, his eyes trained on where the Zeroes had gone to, and where they would come back from.

  ‘I was patching up the injured best as I could manage, when the Zeroes returned.’

  No relaxing of the muscle or the mind – the Leader was spot on about that. He’d realised what those Zeroes were up to, the military logic was clear. Knocking out one of the last ferries left working on the Chindwin was a must for the Japs. If they missed the ferry first time, they’d be back to finish the job.

  The chop-axe of aero-engines came towards them, fast.

  ‘I didn’t give it much thought. Just heard the engines and dived in and swam for it. I don’t want to sound boastful, but I’ve always been a good swimmer. For a bet, once, I swam the Thames just below the Tower. Have you been to London?’

  ‘No,’ said Emily. ‘But I’ve read all about it. “I will fill my pockets with change for a sovereign in half-pence and drown myself in the Thames… I will become a damned, damp, moist, unpleasant body!’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Nicholas Nickleby. Dickens. It’s a book.’

  ‘Books, eh? Haven’t read that much, myself. I was only a kid when I did it. The tide was on the way out and moving fast so I got worried I’d end up half the way to France. But I got stuck in and swam like I’d never swum before and I managed to stagger ashore at Shadwell. Bloody cold, excuse me, Emily. Still, I won the fiver. Luck of the devil, see?’

  ‘You’re not a devil. You saved me from that snake.’

  ‘I’m no angel, sweet.’

  ‘Go on. I love hearing your stories.’

  ‘You’re making me feel like an old war hero, now. Anyway, as the Zeroes came in, they hit the explosives we had on board, and the ferry blew up. I’d held my breath and dived deep, until my lungs were fit to burst and my ears were popping. And still I stayed down, until I could no longer bear it. When I came up, gasping for air, the water was blood-red. I’d got a nasty nick in the back of the head somehow. That was scary because I didn’t know what kind of creatures were in the river, crocodiles or snakes or whatever. But the cold of the water kept me conscious and I carried on swimming and my feet touched bottom on a sandbank, some five hundred yards, maybe more, from the west bank, from safety.’

  Muscle and mind. Yes, that was the true test of a man. The mind to survive, the mind to win. It would have been the easiest thing in the world just to have given up the ghost, lain down on that sandbank and gone to sleep. God knows, there hadn’t been enough of that. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since they had been on that old rust bucket troopship chugging across the Indian Ocean.

  ‘But I fought the temptation to have a kip, and I crawled across the sandbank – it was blazing hot and I burnt my hands and feet - and I forced myself to get back into the water. I swam to the far bank and climbed out onto a bit of grass, and only then did I allow myself to close my eyes. And the next thing I knew, I was being woken up by the elephant men. Bloody marvellous, it was.’

  ‘Emily! Emily!’ She could hear Ruby’s voice, calling out for her.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she said. ‘I’m just so pleased you managed to survive. So that you saved me from the snake.’

  ‘Stay.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Stay.’ He needed her badly.

  ‘No. I’ve got…’

  ‘Go and tell her you’ve got the shits, and that you want to steer clear of the others, lest it’s catching, and you will be back shortly. Then come back here.’

  She hurried off, and he didn’t really know whether she’d come back. He hadn’t had a tart for a very long time. Not that Emily was like the other women he’d slept with.

  The sun had dropped below a ridge to the west, but a rock face above them was still lit a brilliant ochre. He puffed on the last of his cheroot, thinking back to that day. The la-de-dah captain had been asking for it. If he hadn’t dealt with him, well… And that cheeky black bastard by the ferry? He had had no choice but to shoot him. Military necessity. They had no time to wait and besides, there were plenty more from where he’d come from. Blacks don’t tell whites what to do. He had it coming.

  Come to think of it, it was a good job none of his mates had survived the attack on the ferry. That fat bastard gunner, he smelt a rat when Gregory told them all that their officer had been shot in the face. The cheeky sod had turned the officer’s body over with his boot and checked out the back of his head and, blow me, the hole was tiny, the size of a bullet going in, like it was the true entry hole, like he’d been shot from behind, not by the Japanese. Fatty hadn’t said anything, but he’d looked at the tiny hole in the back of the head and the great gob-stopper mess where the officer’s mouth and nose had been and he looked up at Gregory and he knew Fatty was trouble too. And they’d seen what had happened to the Indian, the Jemadar. Fatty would have sung, had he had the chance. Some of the others too. Dead men can’t sing.

  But that teacher, she knew what he’d done all right. She’d warned the girls against him, said Emily. The way Teacher had looked at him when he caught her bathing, the deadness in her voice when she said: ‘You shot the Jemadar.’ Not much doubt about it, there was real hatred in her. He wasn’t scared of much – not after what he’d been through – but he knew he could never rest easy with her around.

  Still, that was a problem that could easily be fixed.

  The ferns parted and there she stood, a dark silhouette.

  ‘We’ve got to move at four tomorrow. The Japanese are getting closer. I’d better go now.’

  He winced, feigning pain.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Her voice was soft.

  ‘When I got shot up by the Japanese, I hurt my back somehow.’

  ‘Le
t me see.’

  Unbuttoning his shirt, he lifted it above his head and rolled on to his stomach. Fingers kneaded his shoulder muscles, knotted and tense, the pressure easing as the feather-light pads of her fingertips trickled down his spine, a caress of astonishing gentleness. A lifting, a pause, then it started again, down by his ankles, her fingers idly stroking, inching towards his thighs, whirling patterns on skin.

  He rolled over onto his back and she knelt between his legs and pulled her frock over her head. Inside the hide the light was a deep green, becoming gloomier by the minute, as she bent down and kissed his tummy button with her lips and her fingers undid his fly, button by button by button.

  ‘I’ve never done this before,’ she whispered, blushing.

  ‘Makes it all the sweeter for me, love…’

  Sated with pleasure, he lay on his back and lit a cheroot. No one would ever see the smoke, and besides, he no longer cared whether they found him or not.

  Kneeling beside him, her fingers stroked his hair, soothing him.

  ‘This lump on your head? How did you get it?’

  ‘Someone tried to kill me.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I was framed for a murder I didn’t commit, and went to prison.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I’m innocent, love. But no one believed me.’

  She half-reared, cupping his head with her hands and arcing her back so that her left breast brushed against his face, his lips finding the nipple.

  ‘You’re in trouble. I’ve heard Miss complain about you to Colonel Sam, that you’re a killer. Is that true?’

  His eyes widened. ‘I’m no killer.’

  Emily was a whole woman now. She’d made love to a man and that emboldened her to tell her secret.

  ‘Listen…’

  She began with the story of the school’s exodus from Rangoon, the naked lunatic, the disappearance of the old headmistress, ‘a lovely woman, worn out by war’ is how she described Miss Furroughs, and the arrival of the Jemadar, their saviour.

  Blushing, she told him of her unrequited love for the Jemadar and her growing resentment for her rival. That night, when the Jem and Grace had thought the whole party was fast asleep, she had followed them, hiding in the bushes when they almost fell on top of her, writhing, coupling a few feet from the undiscovered listener. She had laid down, closed her eyes and listened to every judder of lust, every gasp of pleasure and every word that they exchanged.

  ‘Quite the little spy, aren’t you, Emily? Eh?’ teased Gregory.

  She smacked his hand with a mockery of force. But her mind was lost in that time, the night before they crossed the Chindwin, when the Jem’s voice had lost its natural gentleness and the schoolgirl consumed with jealousy listened to the man she adored spit out his secret to his lover…

  ‘What if I became a Jiff not because I was a traitor but because I had been jailed by the British, jailed for trying to do my job, jailed for fighting for the very Empire that has imprisoned my grandfather? In Malaya, before the fall of Singapore, an officer, British, gave the order to retreat, yet again. I challenged him, saying that we should stay and fight, at least to protect the wounded. If we fell back, our wounded would end up in Japanese hands. He hit me. I hit him back. For this, I was sent back to Singapore under arrest and locked up in Changi prison, pending my court martial. I protested my innocence, banged on the cell door. No one came. We could see nothing, only a shaft of light coming through a high window. But we could hear, hear the drone of the bombers coming, high in the sky. We could hear the whistle of the bombs as they fell, the explosions, the screams, the barking of dogs. It was hard to bear.’

  He fell silent for a time. Then: ‘My first visitor? The cell door opened and I was looking at a Japanese captain. He spoke beautiful English, he’d read my Special Branch file, he was solicitous, clever. The Japanese gave me back my liberty. So what kind of traitor am I? How can I be a traitor if I never surrendered? It was the British who surrendered me.’

  ‘Is that all of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on, Jiff, the whole story.’

  ‘I was disgusted by the surrender at Singapore, at the disdain of the British towards their loyal Indian officers like me, the patronising contempt. But there is something more.’

  ‘Ouch, you’re hurting me, Jiff. Please, let me go…’

  The Jem released Grace, and the silent listener heard her gasp with relief as he released his grip on her arm.

  ‘If I don’t carry out my task, they will kill me. If I do, I would rather be dead. So it is no trivial question. Can I trust you, Grace? Can I tell you the truth, and you promise to me that you will never reveal it to a living soul?’

  A long pause. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet, barely audible. ‘Yes. Even though I have no idea who you really are. You can trust me.’

  ‘My satchel…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve wondered why you hold on to it all the time.’

  ‘I am carrying secret messages from the Netaji to his men in India, the signal for a new mutiny.’

  ‘From Bose? Hitler’s Indian?’

  ‘Yes, Bose himself. If these men do the Netaji’s bidding, at his command there will be an uprising across all India. The Raj will be finished, and Hitler’s soldiers and the Japanese will be shaking hands in Delhi or Baghdad.’

  ‘That is treason.’

  ‘Not treason, not to me. If these letters are delivered to the right people, the Axis may win the war. So this is no small thing.’

  ‘But why are you telling me this?’

  ‘What if I was jailed by the British, come from a family of Jiffs, or at least people who want the British out of India, but then see with my own eyes what the new conquerors are truly like? Exactly how our liberators from Nippon deal with people once they have fallen into their hands. What if I was a Jiff who started to have doubts about the Japanese? And then I fell in love with an Englishwoman, as proud and arrogant as she was beautiful? What then? If I don’t carry on with my mission I betray my fellow Indians and, what’s more, my father, who expects me to do my duty to the Netaji. But if I do, I betray the trust of the woman I love. So, what to do?’

  ‘Who are you? I have no idea of who you really are.’

  ‘First, I am exactly who I said I was. I did not lie to you but I did not tell you the whole story. My name really is Ahmed Rehman. I am the grandson of a Maharajah, the Lord of Swat. We are Pathans, Muslims who live in a beautiful valley, close to the line in the map the British drew, dividing Afghanistan and India. It snows where we live from November through to April, May. This place,’ he eyed the sweltering jungle with disgust, ‘is so far from what my home is like.

  ‘So, we have money, land, peacocks. At the age of three I had my own butler. At seven, my own Rolls, even though I was too small to sit in the driving seat, let alone drive it. At ten, my own little zoo. Monkeys, a snake, but the best were the wallabies. They used to hop in the snow… it was the most amazing sight, better than the butler or the Rolls by a million times. We are wealthy but my family is a madhouse. Throughout India, my grandfather is famous, the rebel Maharajah, a prince on the side of the paupers, a lord for Congress. He is a very old man now, but still dangerous to the British. They have locked him up in prison, without trial, under their wartime emergency powers. They do not realise the mistake they are making. He is their true friend. Throughout his life he has been a great supporter of the Mahatma, and, also of the rule of law. In ’31 he accompanied Gandhi to London, to listen to the British terms for the transfer of power. But it proved to be an empty trick, the British still playing games, playing divide and rule against us. India was insulted.’

  The Jiff sighed. ‘On the long series of hops flying home, Gandhi and my grandfather stopped off at Rome and, to play the British at their own game, it was decided that they would meet the Duce. My grandfather described Mussolini’s office, an enormous gilded ballroom, empty of people, apart from thi
s strutting ninny sitting at the very far end behind a very large desk. My grandfather was unimpressed with the Duce. His talk, he said, was full of violence, “blood, smoke, lava, destruction, and battles of all sorts, battles for the lira, battles for wheat, battles for births, battles against sparrows, battles against mice, battles for or against houseflies, he forgot which”. After ten minutes of the Duce, the old man said, he longed to be back with the British, their tea, cakes and hypocrisy. My grandfather knows the British put him in jail from time to time, but if Mussolini ruled India, then he suspects he might have been shot. Hitler? Worse. And what did the Mahatma ask of the Great Duce? He called very meekly for a glass of castor oil.’

  At the memory of this, the Jem smiled, explaining: ‘The fascists make their enemies drink castor oil so they soil themselves, a bespoke humiliation. My grandfather said the translator didn’t dare translate the request. When they brought tea instead, the Mahatma looked at the cup quizzically. He’d made his point. Mussolini understood it well enough. So Congress is wary of the men who march in step, fascists and Communists both.

  ‘This is not India’s way,’ the Jemadar had continued. ‘But as the thirties wore on, the British still would not leave. People became frustrated, frustrated with the British hanging on, frustrated, too, with the non-violence of the Mahatma. My father was one of them. He fell out with my grandfather, and became attracted to Bose, who said: “If someone strikes you, strike him back, twice”.’

  ‘That’s why you ended up in Changi.’

  ‘I am a soldier, not a pacifist. The independence movement in India had always been democratic, but Bose models himself on Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, dreaming of a strong, authoritarian state by the Ganges, directed by himself, the Leader, the Netaji. Bose came to Swat many times, a funny man, clever, educated – at least, they must do something at Cambridge - cynical, aware of what the Big Men he admires are capable of, but so enthused with the lust for power he didn’t care. My father supports Bose, believes in him as India’s only hope. When the war started, the British arrested my grandfather, not my father. They took the wrong man.