The Wind Cannot Read

by Richard Mason

  “To India, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “What a pity you didn’t ask the Air Ministry to cancel your posting overseas.”

  “I could have got out of it.”

  “Could you?”

  “I was a coward,” he said. “There were a dozen ways. I always let myself get into a mess through indecision.”

  “You should have been in Burma.” I couldn’t resist that, though it sounded dreadfully priggish.

  “Oh, I know what you went through. I should have shot myself.”

  “You’d never shoot yourself.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “Nonsense!” Peter said. “Mervyn’s going to shoot himself, and you’re not to discourage him. He promised last week that he’d do so, and he’s sending us invitations. ‘You are invited to be present on the steps of Government Buildings at 21.30 hours on the evening of 23rd September, 1942, to witness the outstanding social event of the season.’ I’m going to keep the bullet as a memento. ‘It was with this bullet that Mervyn Bentley took his own life as a protest against the imprisonment of Mahatma Gandhi.’ ”

  “To hell with Gandhi,” said Mervyn. “As a protest against the enforced detention of myself in the unspeakably horrid country of India.”

  “India’s all right. You love it really.”

  “As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t be intolerable in the right circumstances. It’s the circumstances that are so appalling. I’m going home. It’s quite possible.”

  “You’re going to Bombay,” Peter said. “You don’t know about that yet, do you, Michael? We’re all going to Bombay. I’ve been waiting to tell you.”

  “How do you know what I’m going to do?” I said.

  “I’ve arranged it. I’ve been arranging it for weeks. You’re going to have a Medical Board.”

  “I’ve had a Medical Board.”

  “And you’re grounded? That’s fine. Now you’re going to Bombay.”

  “Why Bombay?”

  “It’s a nice place. There’s the Taj Mahal Hotel, and Juhu beach, and the most beautiful women you ever saw. But that’s not why we’re going there. We’re going to learn Japanese.”

  “I’ve never been able to master even Hindustani,” I said.

  “I’ve often heard you say dhobi and baksheesh. Anyway, you mustn’t let me down. I’ve told the Squadron-Leader that you’re a polyglot. I said you learnt Serbian in three weeks without a master.”

  “I didn’t know there was a language called Serbian.”

  “Nor did the Squadron-Leader—that’s what impressed him. You’ve only to say I was exaggerating, and he’ll like you all the more for being modest. We’re all going to have a wonderful time learning Japanese. Even Mervyn, though he doesn’t know it.”

  “It’ll have to be very wonderful,” Mervyn said. “Aren’t you looking forward to it?” I said.

  “I don’t mind. It’s all the same to me. It’s all the same waste of time.”

  “There’s a war,” I said. “There are a lot of people wasting time.”

  “Don’t preach.”

  “Don’t be selfish.”

  “I’ve never pretended to be anything but selfish. I’m not interested in war.”

  “What would you do at home that isn’t wasting time?”

  “I should live. This isn’t living, here. Everyone’s dead.”

  “You’re wrong. Some people are more alive here than they are at home.”

  “Well, one man’s meat . . .” Mervyn said.

  “It will be a good thing, this Japanese,” said Peter. “It’s going to take a year. I always had the instinct to return to the womb. Returning to school is a step in the right direction. We shall have long holidays, too, because it’s a great strain. Besides, it’s quite a compliment. Only the best brains can learn Japanese. It requires a reorientation of the mind. You think backwards and write upside down.’’

  “That’ll be fun. And what happens then?”

  “You wait until a Jap is shot down out of the sky. Then you ask him his name and Where the Big Attack is Coming.”

  “It’s already come,” I said. “Didn’t you know that’s why we got out of Burma?”

  “Well, then you ask him about his Weak Points. It’s all quite safe, because you do this at Headquarters, and there are two Gurkha guards pinning down his arms.”

  “The Japs don’t use parachutes,” I said. “So there won’t be any air prisoners.”

  “That’s why they’re only going to teach a few of us.”

  “Well,” I said, “it sounds all right.”

  “I tell you, it’s the best job of the war.”

  “Then it’s just what I’ve been looking for,” I said.

  (2)

  When we had finished a round of whiskies, we left the bar to find somewhere for lunch. Mervyn came along moodily, his hands plunged into his trouser pockets and his shoulders rounded. He looked as though he had spent the night in his khaki bush-shirt, which was probably the case. When we had been in the same cabin on the boat as far as Ceylon, he would often pace the deck until five or six in the morning, chain-smoking, and then collapse on his bunk without removing his clothes. He had the temperament of an artist and a strong artistic sense; but he could not harness himself to creation. He was better suited to attract by his conversation, which cost him no effort, than through the medium of paint or the written word; and his personality had brought success to his Chelsea bookshop.

  We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant, and ordered wine. The waiter said, “I will give wine, but in the hot middle day it is killing. I do not advise.” We thought this was very nice of him. Afterwards Peter swore he had said “in the hot day’s middle.” But at any rate he did not advise, and we drank water with our fried rice and noodles.

  In the afternoon I went to Headquarters, and was interviewed by the Squadron-Leader in the Intelligence Branch. I confessed that I did not speak Serbian, but had not found French and Spanish too difficult. He spoke to me fluently in both. I said I knew a few words of Polish, and he said, “I bet they’re na zdrovie!” It was a good thing I had not said I could speak Russian.

  “You’re keen to learn Japanese?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing I should prefer.”

  “I’m told it’s a short-cut to the madhouse.”

  “There are a lot of short-cuts,” I said.

  He added my name to a list he had in front of him.

  “The course begins on Monday,” he said. “You can get a ticket voucher and catch a train tomorrow.”

  Chapter Three

  (1)

  It is not the most beautiful or varied part of India that lies between Delhi and Bombay. There is no grandeur in the parched land that stretches grudgingly away to flat horizon. Rivers flow with a muddy sloth, and shrubs have to struggle to push out dry, dusty leaves. And at the stations nothing tempts you to leave the train and explore.

  At one of the stations at which we stopped I noticed the name Dhanapore, and I remembered that I had been at school in England with the Nawab of this state, who for some reason was not sent to Eton. I had always imagined his lands to be lush and jungly, because he had once spoken to me of tiger shooting. Now we were passing through it, I discovered that he ruled over a desert, with little villages as cramped as beehives, but dirtier and not so well organised. Nevertheless, the palace of which I caught a glimpse had a gigantic splendour. The train inspector told me that the Nawab was exceedingly rich and that he entertained all the bigwigs in India. He said that the Nawab’s wife had to keep strict Purdah, but once on the train she had asked the inspector if she could be seen from outside the carriage. When he said it was impossible, she removed her cloak with its tiny lattice window and lit a cigarette.

  “You must write and ask him to invite you to stay,” Mervyn said. “
You’ll be well away. One should make a point of visiting a Maharajah.”

  “I haven’t got the clothes. It’s altogether too big a proposition. I don’t know anything about manners in Oriental palaces.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “They emulate us in things like that.”

  I did not think, all the same, that I would write to the Nawab. Not unless I was very bored with Bombay. And if ever we were given a long leave I should want to get away to the hills.

  There were four of us in the compartment, and in the next compartment there were three other officers who were also going to Bombay to learn Japanese. One of them was a Flight-Lieutenant, who had come up to us on the station at Delhi with a conscientious hail-fellow-well-met manner, showing off his Hindustani by un­necessarily ordering about the porters. My dislike was instantaneous; but I wondered if I was being unjust until Peter said:

  “I shall have difficulty in preventing myself being vile to that man.”

  “He is trying awfully hard to be popular with us,” I said.

  The fourth person in our own carriage was called Mario Vargas. He was good-looking in a fine, swarthy, aristocratic, Latin way, with eyelids that fluttered like those of a coquettish woman. He was Portuguese, though his English was almost perfect; he had affected a little stammer that gave him time to think before a difficult word.

  Mervyn had met him before in Delhi.

  “He’s a grand fellow,” he assured me. “He’s the best person I’ve met in this God-forsaken country.”

  “How’s that?” I said.

  “He’s one of those people who always send for the manager. He’s frightfully good. He was in billets, and they wouldn’t give him any hot water in his room. He had a first-rate row with the woman. When he said he would leave, she refused to give him back his money. He took out the electric-light bulbs all over the house, packed them in his suitcase, and went off to an hotel in the middle of the night.”

  “Has he any other good qualities?”

  “Oh, he’s a person,” Mervyn said. “He’s not one of these narrow, emasculated puppets.”

  Mervyn was not always reliable on character. But this time I agreed with him. Mario was the nicest person I had known with eyelids that flutter beautifully when they stammer. There was all kinds of goodness in him. He must have been a wild success with women, but he was reticent over his conquests.

  There was no corridor on the train. The first-class compartments were the width of a carriage, with four bunks. My bearer, Bahadur, was in the servant’s carriage, and at each station he came running along the platform to make sure that I was all right and had not been drinking any dirty water. He also put things in order in the compartment, and sat there like a watchdog when we changed to the restaurant car for dinner. When we came back he was as pleased to see us as if we had been away for months. He was exactly like a spaniel, only he had no tail to wag.

  After dinner we played poker. We put two suitcases in the middle of the floor, and sat on the two bottom bunks. As we had not sufficient change, we made matches into counters, four annas, eight annas, and one rupee. Peter played boldly, raising high; Mervyn was very cautious. We often had to wait while he tried to make up his mind whether to spend four annas, which is fourpence, to see someone’s hand.

  Whilst we were playing, the train stopped in a station and a young boy came into the compartment with a tray of oranges and bananas. I thought he had a fine white smile and lovely eyes. I would like to have bought his fruit, but already we had too many oranges.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Very nice, Sahib. Good, Sahib.”

  “I don’t want any,” I said.

  “Good oranges, Sahib.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Very cheap, Sahib.”

  Mervyn leapt suddenly on his feet and waved his arms in the air.

  “Get out, you little devil, or I’ll break your blasted black neck!”

  The boy turned and disappeared like a frightened animal.

  “That’s the way to treat them!” Mervyn said. He was vastly amused. “That gets rid of them all right.”

  “Another way’s to shoot them,” Mario said.

  “Did you see him move! ‘Get out, you little black devil!’ ” He chuckled reminiscently. “That’s the way to move them.”

  “You’re a nigger beater,” I said.

  “It fixed him all right.”

  “It scared him, certainly.”

  “ ‘I’ll break your blasted neck!’ ” he repeated.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if you did, either.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I was only pretending.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “You’re a damned hypocrite.”

  “I don’t do anything I don’t profess.”

  “You’re always talking about the poor Indian people being exploited by the British, and you behave like a third-rate imperialist.”

  “You say silly things,” he said.

  “If you don’t pretend to be angry with these people, they make your life a misery.”

  “What about the poker?” Peter said.

  “I can’t afford to lose any more,” said Mervyn.

  “You only lose because you’re mean.”

  “I never have the cards.”

  “I’ve had no cards at all,” said Mario. “You’re so easy to bluff.”

  “Ah, c’est Mario qui blague.”

  “Say that in Japanese,” I said.

  “The first thing I shall ask Japanese prisoners is can they speak English.”

  “You won’t ask,” Peter said. “You’ll say to them, ‘If you don’t speak English I’ll break your blasted neck.’ ”

  “You little yellow devils!” Mervyn said, rolling the words over his tongue with delight.

  “I thought you were their champion.”

  “Please will you desist from misinterpreting my words. I am not their champion.”

  “You’re their apologist,” I said. “You’re always justifying them.”

  “On the contrary, I don’t try to justify anybody, certainly not the Japs. I wouldn’t justify ourselves, either. I can’t use a word like justification. I don’t think I’m qualified to say this is right and that is wrong, and I don’t think you are. In my own life I don’t admit other people’s standards with their arbitrary right and wrong. I base my own behaviour on what is expedient, so long as I have sufficient control over myself to base it on anything at all. In the same way, so far as I support the war it’s because it’s expedient to defeat the Germans and the Japanese. If they defeat us, life would be even more inconvenient than it is in normal times. But to say that our cause is just and the cause of the enemy unjust, stinks to me of prejudice and cant.”

  “Why did you join the Air Force?” I asked Mario. “Did you join to fight for cant?’’

  “I told everybody I would join if there was a war. I had to save my face.”

  “You told all the girls at Estoril,” Peter said.

  “He’s a liar,” Mervyn said. “He’s a hundred per cent. idealist.”

  “It’s only a question of my face.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Mervyn. “You can go back to Portugal tomorrow if you want.”

  “You can’t say you’re going to join the Air Force, and then walk out in the middle of a war because you don’t like it.”

  “You could if you were me,” said Mervyn. “I should go without a blush. I should tell them what they could do with their Air Force. That’s what I’m going to do, anyway. I’m going to get out.’’

  “You’ve been saying that for months.”

  “I know people who got out of the Army. They were mentally unfit. One was put in an asylum, and someone kept jumping out of bushes at him to condition him to something or other. In the end he was allow
ed to go back to his firm. He wrote a book about his treatment, but no publisher would touch it. It was too hot.”

  “Nobody can deny that you’re mentally unfitted.”

  “We shall all be mad by the end of this war,” Peter said. “You can’t live under unnatural conditions like this and not go mad.”

  “It’s the sun,” Mario said.

  “And bad whisky. It’s all very unnatural.”

  “It’s just how one had imagined India,” I said. “I always said my India would be different. But it’s curious how helpless you are against circumstances.”

  “Let’s drink some rum,” said Mervyn.

  He passed round his bottle, and we gulped down the liquid in turn. It was raw and burnt a channel down to my stomach. Peter found some cigars, and we sat there until after midnight, rattling along to Bombay. Then we climbed into our bunks. I remember lying in the dark with the fan purring on the ceiling to the right of my head, and wondering why I was there. There were thousands of millions of people in the world, and I was the one lying on the top right-hand bunk on the train going from Delhi to Bombay. And I was going to Bombay to learn Japanese.

  How very odd, I thought; I wonder why I wasn’t born to be the Nawab of Dhanapore. And I turned over and went to sleep.

  Chapter Four

  (1)

  We arrived on Friday afternoon, and were sent out to a unit on the outskirts of Bombay.

  The Adjutant said, “Oh, you’re the Jap-wallahs—good show,” and sent us in the back of a lorry to a hotel in Harrison Street. It was run by a woman called Miss Jackson. She was an Anglo-Indian, thirty-five perhaps, with Jewishly handsome features that showed signs of softening and running to seed; but there was a ripe attraction about her still.

  The hotel was clean and not badly furnished, and there were fans in all the rooms. As we went into the hall, Fenwick, the Flight­Lieutenant, said in my ear:

  “As I’m the senior officer, I should really have a single room, but I’m willing to share it with someone. You could come in with me.”

  I said, “Thank you, but Peter and I arranged to share.”

  “Perhaps Vargas would like to share my room,” he said.