The Wind Cannot Read

by Richard Mason

  “It doesn’t matter whether it’s with a sword or a bullet.”

  “It does matter. It’s in cold blood when you do it with a sword.”

  “The Sikh was too far gone to see it.”

  “I saw it, though. You saw it. He just cut off the head with his sword. That little pompous swine . . . cut off the Sikh’s head. He was a fine man, my driver!”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to have seen those two matched in a fair fight.”

  “I’d like to fight that Jap. But I’m too old. I’m done for now. I’m finished.”

  “You’ll be all right,” I said. “We’ll get out of this soon. You don’t think we’re going to let them sit on the main Imphal Road, do you? When they start to retreat, we’ll get out of it somehow.”

  I told that to myself, to cheer myself as well as to cheer the Major, but I was only nursing a tiny seed of genuine hope. I knew that if they had to retreat in a hurry, the Emperor’s clemency would be bitterly interpreted; and if they advanced we should get sent back to the rear once their lines of communication were working properly. Meanwhile they were taking no chances. When it was dark, besides leaving a guard on our hut they clapped us in hand­ cuffs and joined us together by a chain. They gave us a little more rice and some brackish water. I drank the water because my throat was parched and rough and the rice was like sawdust. After that we lay down on the ground without covering, facing each other, and tried to sleep. I awoke once in the night to hear my own terror-stricken voice, and find myself tugging violently at the chain, almost tearing away the Major’s arm. I could see the guard’s silhouette in the doorway as he rushed in to silence me. He was about to strike me with the butt of his rifle when I stopped shrieking in time: we were too near the ‘enemy’ for sound or lights to be welcome. For the rest of the night I was feverish, conceiving fantastic plans of escape that in the morning were unthinkable.

  The next day from sunrise there was the noise of two brisk battles in progress—one down towards Imphal and the other in the direction of Kohima, and both presumably on the road. At midday some more prisoners were brought in. A barbed-wire compound had been constructed, and we saw a dozen battle-worn British soldiers and a few Indians brought in and confined. We were not allowed to communicate with them, until I was called in and told to interpret for the Lieutenant, whilst the N.C.O. interrogated on his own. The first man was a little fellow from Exeter, or somewhere like that. He was dazed and stupid. The Lieutenant asked some questions about tanks and numbers of men and positions, and I passed them on vaguely and had vague replies, misinterpreting them wholesale. I thought this would either bring my life to a quick end if I was discovered or else earn me the privileges of a collaborator, giving me a chance to escape. At any rate, the risk was worthwhile. After the intimidated private a rough, bland-faced sergeant was brought in. He strolled in between the guards and looked around the hut and at us as though he was a contemptuous sight-seer in a foreign town.

  “Tell anything but the truth,” I said.

  “I’d like to tell that bloke the truth,” he said. “The truth about that ugly mug of his.”

  I kept the insolence out of the replies, but his face was superbly defensive. The Lieutenant slapped him, and he sat stolidly with an unchanging expression, muttering to me. He went out between the rattling bayonets, having lost none of his Cockney aplomb.

  In the afternoon, chained to the Major, I was allowed to take exercise. We walked round the huts in the jungle, in front of an escort. I had delayed the time purposely until five o’clock because from the huts I had seen a wireless in the open under the trees. It was a transmitting and receiving set, with an operator sitting before it on a camp-stool. When we passed by I said:

  “What is the news?”

  The operator looked amiable. He was young, with a flat nose and wide mouth.

  “This isn’t for listening to the news,” he said. “But you could do so.”

  “It won’t get Japan.”

  “It would get India.”

  “I suppose it would, but . . .”

  “I would like to hear the news,” I said.

  “You had better continue walking,” said the guard.

  “The Lieutenant wouldn’t mind us listening to the news. It’s good news for you. I hear you’re going to take Imphal.”

  “Do the English say we are going to take Imphal?” the operator said.

  “You will find out if you tune in.”

  I told him the wavelength and he moved the dial hesitatingly. He pulled the earphones down over his ears, whilst I waited breathlessly. He listened in silence for a long time, and the guard kept his bayonet ready in case we were up to some monkey-business. He was doubtful that we should be doing this at all, but I had made good friends with him when he was guarding the hut by letting him tell me about his family, and he didn’t want to push us on. He thought we were high officers, and treated us with some respect, using the politest language.

  “This is English propaganda news,” the operator said, taking off the earphones.

  “Please let me listen.”

  “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “I’m not going to touch your set.”

  “It is an impossible thing.”

  “Just for a moment,” I said.

  “I will get into trouble.”

  “There is nobody to see.”

  He scratched the top of his head with one hand, looking ridiculously apish in this characteristic gesture of uncertainty.

  “Saa . . . I don’t know what I ought to do.”

  “It is all right,” I said. “There couldn’t be any harm in it.”

  He handed me the earphones tentatively. I tried not to snatch them with too much eagerness. Without waiting to put them on I pushed one ear-piece against my ear, and there was Sabby’s voice, just as I had heard it before, her rather sing-song wireless voice.

  I was drunk with joy. The single night as a captive had seemed to carry me beyond a great ravine—a ravine of distance and time—that had made Sabby in some way less real to me, more of a marvellous dream. Now suddenly her voice brought her right to my jungle prison. For though it was no more than her voice and she was only reading news-script, I could see her wrinkle her nose at me and feel the gentle caress of her hand, as when a familiar melody awakens old memories that once accompanied it. And since yesterday it seemed as though a year had gone by—an age in which anything might have happened to Sabby. It was like hearing good news after months of anxiety, and it reminded me that for Sabby it was only a normal twenty-four hours that had passed.

  She was talking now about Burma. “British and Indian forces are attacking the two road blocks which have been established on the Imphal–Kohima Road . . .” Could she guess, I wondered, that I had been caught by this unexpected inrush of the Japanese, and in what circumstances I was listening to her? Was she afraid for me? If only I could have called back to her through the wireless: “I’m listening to you—I’m alive!” But there could be no calling to her, no writing to her; for months, for more than a year perhaps, I should not be able to send her word. The days would go by, one by one, and no letter would come from me. She would not even be told that I was missing. The telegram would go to Tewkesbury. ‘We regret to inform you—your son—missing.’ My parents would not tell Sabby, because I had never written to them that I loved Sabby, knowing with what consternation they would have read, ‘a Japanese.’ Probably Peter would tell her eventually.

  “That is enough. Give them back.”

  The operator was all of a sudden afraid of what he had done. He could not account for my sudden show of happiness because however the news was worded it was bad for the British. He was suspicious and annoyed with me or himself. I handed him back his earphones.

  “Thank you,” I said. “That is interesting. Your army seems to be sticking to the road.”

&
nbsp; “Of course. It is the invasion of India. We have been told so by our officers.”

  (2)

  The second night in the hut was worse than the first. To begin with, I had accepted the chains with resignation, and had thought the chance would present itself to escape. Now a deep depression came over me, and I had to close my eyes and try to imagine there were no handcuffs round my wrist, because a sudden panicky hatred of them kept shooting down my spine. I was afraid that if I lost control of this I would become hysterical and try to tear them away madly.

  My body was sore already with lying on the hard ground, and there were new pains in my belly that felt like dysentery again, a likely thing after the foul water we were given to drink.

  I asked the guard for a cigarette. He gave me one and the smoke calmed me, but it did not assuage the dull pain of depression. To get away from the thoughts of Sabby and of home, I began to discuss ways of escape with the Major. He was full of despair, but he played the game for the sake of playing it, and we agreed, knowing that it would come to nothing, to try something on the following night. I went to sleep at last, going over our scheme again and again in my mind. In the morning we had only to look round the camp once to see that it was impossible. Even if we throttled our own guard with the chain that linked us without attracting attention, we had to get past the bunker positions and the sentries. It was suicide. At night suicide seemed preferable to years in a prison camp. But in the daylight life seemed better.

  Then the Major was taken away. They came in and took him without any explanation, and I saw the other prisoners being led from their barbed-wire compound. They were all handcuffed. They formed up near my hut and the Major looked back at me sorrowfully. He was the most tragic of them all. I saw their backs as they went off down the jungle tracks, with an escort as numerous as themselves, and it was the last I saw of them, the last I saw of the Major.

  Down below on the road the battle burst out sporadically. A single shot fired seemed to bring all the guns in the neighbourhood into action, and for twenty minutes or so there would be the uninterrupted sound of shelling. But in both directions the sound was retreating, which meant the Japs were widening their block and pushing our troops back towards Kohima and Imphal. It also meant that if ever I made a break, I should have farther to go. There were a great number of British aircraft over the battle area, and I could hear them all day long. Once one flew right overhead. It was a Hurricane, and I could see the four cannons sticking out of the wings. One of the Jap soldiers watching out for aircraft from the top of a tree beat a shell-case for all he was worth, and at the sound everyone dashed into trenches, scurrying between the trees. I was taken out by my guard, but the Hurricane had disappeared long before we had reached the trench. I hoped that all the movement might have attracted its attention, and that it would come back and strafe us. Those cannons could have put the place in confusion, just what I was waiting for. But the noise of its engine died away, and we all climbed out of our holes and trooped back.

  In the afternoon I engineered my walk at the same time, and we went past the wireless-set.

  “May I listen again?” I said.

  “No, it is not allowed.”

  “I shall ask the Lieutenant,” I said.

  “I advise you not to do that,” the operator said.

  “I shall certainly do so.”

  “Then I request you not to mention that you have already listened.”

  “I won’t mention it,” I said, “if you will let me listen again.”

  “I am not going to do that. I will listen myself and tell you the news.”

  He twirled the dial, and for a while he was absorbed in what he heard, but the earphones were close against his ear and I could hear nothing at all.

  “Go away and come back,” he said.

  We strolled about for ten minutes, the guard carrying the bayonet pointed at the small of my back all the time. When we came back I said:

  “What did you hear?”

  “The Japanese have got four road blocks between Imphal and Kohima, and they are also on the road north of Kohima.”

  “And the British?”

  “He said they were not afraid of Imphal being captured, but it cannot be true.”

  “He?”

  “The man who read the news.”

  “It was a man?” I said.

  “Yes, today it was a man.”

  “A woman didn’t speak at all?”

  “No,” he said. “Yesterday there was a woman.”

  The next day I was not allowed out of the hut at all. I asked the guard why I was not to have exercise, and he said he did not know but that Lieutenant Nakamura had given orders. I saw nobody but the guards who came and stood in front of the hut, but I came to know all of these well, because they were mostly simple peasant folk, none of whom had been in the army for more than a year. It was not difficult to scratch through the façade that the army had given them, and once that was done they spoke sentimentally of their longing for the day to go home. But they did not really think they would ever go home; they all had a fatalistic belief that death was waiting for them in the jungle. I said:

  “When you move forward, why don’t you hand yourselves over to the British? You will be well treated and get good food.”

  I thought if I could encourage one to do this, I might get him to help me escape, too; but it was a futile attempt. They were less afraid of bullets than they were of the shame which they believed such an act would bring upon them, and, only a prisoner myself in their charge, I could not break down that belief.

  As I was unable to talk to the wireless operator again I persuaded one of them to do this for me, asking him to inquire about the news, and only incidentally about who read it. On the following day it was a man’s voice once more. I began to grow desperate, and during the night my imagination found the worst explanations for Sabby’s absence. All my first reactions to Margaret and Jennifer’s letter reared up again, but in these more unfortunate circumstances they came with more force. That dark, numb core inside me began to burn. My heart was burning, too, a sensation I had never had before, and the worst sensation I had ever known, because it was both physical and mental; a slow, fearful torture, impossible to resist. It began to stifle me, and in my frustration I swore that if in two more days I did not hear that Sabby was speaking again, I should try to get away in the night, however hopeless success seemed. To remain here and to believe that Sabby was suffering and perhaps dying was a continuous death for myself.

  The next day it was the same: the news was read by a man. I wanted to break my way out then, rush out of the encampment in daylight like the Sikh. A kind of madness was upon me, and if I had given myself up to this madness, that is what I should have done, and in five seconds I should have been no more alive than the Sikh. But I held on to myself, and it was like keeping myself from vomiting or from giving way to drunkenness, knowing that it was touch and go. All the mad urge was tingling through my body. I sat down on the earth floor of the hut and gripped the bamboos behind my shoulders, looking out of the doorway instead of at the walls, which added claustrophobia to my frenzy.

  Then on the following morning shortly after dawn another Hurricane came over. It dropped two light bombs, one either side of the bashas, and not until the explosions had died was the shell-case beaten from the tree-top. Again there was a wild scattering and there was nothing to be seen but running figures. The aircraft circled and came back with all its cannons opened up, and looking back over my shoulder as I ran to a trench, I could see it swerving from one side to the other, raking the whole encampment. I dropped down in the shallow hole. All round there were little explosions and earth spurting up. Then there was only the sound of the Hurricane’s engine fading, and everyone waited, raising only their heads above ground level to see a dozen of their comrades sprawling dead or dying. Some seconds later it came in to attack agai
n, only a few feet above the tree-tops, this time setting two of the bamboo huts on fire, but not my own amongst them. After that it made off on a straight course and at speed, its job done.

  There was excitement but no loophole for myself. The Lieutenant came across at once to the trench where the guard had taken me. He threw out his hand towards the scattered corpses.

  “The death of these Japanese warriors,” he said, “will be paid for by a hundred times their weight in British blood. I am only sparing you because you will be of use to us.”

  He slapped my face with all the angry force he could muster. He was a foot smaller than I, and he had to reach up to do this, but he was powerful and the shock was stunning. His eyes were full of the hard light of hatred.

  “Handcuff him to the tree,” he ordered the guard.

  It was a large tree, and my arms would not go all the way round. When the handcuffs were linked to my wrists, the metal cut into the skin and I was held tightly against the trunk. I could not slip my arms up or down, and I was standing almost on tiptoe. At first I pushed up on my toes to take the weight from my arms, but my feet soon grew tired and I let myself hang. It seemed as though my arms were going to tear away at the sockets or that the steel would cut through my wrists. For half an hour the pain was intense. I bit a piece of jutting bark with my teeth and played little games with myself to distract some of my attention. I pretended the bark was Sabby’s nose, and I shook it. Then I carried on an imaginary conversation with her.

  “Darling,” I said, “it’s not really true that you’re going to die, is it?”

  “Now I have been so happy, it doesn’t matter to die.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me what was wrong?”

  “Then you would have been kind because you were sorry for me, and I only wanted you to be kind because you loved me a little bit. You did love me a little bit, didn’t you, darling?”

  “I loved you with all my heart.”

  “When I said that, you told me it was a criché and I couldn’t mean it.”