“Cliché, darling,” I said.
“Please don’t scold, I shall never learn to speak proper English.”
“Say criché, then.”
“Darling, you said it was a criché, and I didn’t really love with heart. So perhaps also it is just a criché for you and you don’t love with heart.”
“It’s my heart that’s burning.”
“Not counting heart, you are in such bad pain.”
“When you were in pain, you didn’t show it,” I said.
“Darling, I am so ashamed and miserable because the Japanese are making your pain. Don’t you hate me when you think I am Japanese?”
“I don’t think of you as Japanese.”
“How do you think of Sabby?”
“I think of her as a woman.”
“Sabby is Japanese woman.”
“She is any woman,” I said.
“What does it mean, darling—any woman?”
“It just means woman.”
“I am not Indian woman. I have not got fine carriage like Indian woman.”
“You have got a fine heart,” I said.
“It is selfish heart, because it thinks of nothing but Michael.”
“Please let it go on thinking,” I said.
“I’m not going to let this kill me. This pain is nothing and soon it’ll be over. I’m going to get back to you somehow. Whatever you do don’t die before I get back. When I’m with you I shall make you want to live, and all our happiness has only been the beginning. You’re going to marry me and come back to Tewkesbury. When my parents have seen you they can’t help loving you, and we are going to have a beautiful life full of gentleness. Soon there will be no more of this pain. This is a test, darling. It’s a test for both of us, and it’s not going to beat us. I’m going to come back. I promise you I’m coming back.”
I was left embracing the tree until late in the afternoon. During my life I have seldom had to suffer pain, and I did not endure this heroically; but I learnt the lesson of heroics—that the determination not to be defeated by pain lessens the agony like a drug.
When I was released from the tree the handcuffs were at once put round my wrists again, and another short chain was attached with which to lead me through the jungle. All afternoon I had seen the troops moving off from this position with their equipment, and now I was taken by the rearguard. I don’t know whether they had intended to make this move, anyway, or whether the Hurricane had frightened them away, but at any rate we left behind us all the empty huts and trenches, and we crossed the spot where Lieutenant Nakamura had with great courage used his Samurai sword to cut off the Sikh’s head. We went in single file down the jungle tracks, and a guard in front of me held my chain and the guard behind me held a rifle, so that even when an aircraft came over and we buried ourselves in the undergrowth, it was hopeless to attempt to get away. Besides, I was exhausted, stumbling along anyhow to keep up and prevent the handcuffs dragging on my bleeding wrists. Since I had become a prisoner the only food I had been given was rice in small, inadequate quantities, and though I had not cared greatly about this yet, I could feel the effect now in the weakness of my body. I experienced sudden spells of dizziness; but I reeled on through them until my head cleared again.
Fortunately we only marched a couple of miles, though at times the track led steeply upwards. The new position for the head-quarters was on the crown of a hill, with encircling trenches and bunker positions with narrow entrances down steps of earth. I was led down into one of these deep bunkers that they called the ‘Guard Room,’ and found myself in the company of a sergeant and two or three privates.
“Am I going to live with you?” I said.
“You will spend the night here.”
“I’d like you to remove my handcuffs,” I said.
“It is not allowed,” the sergeant said. “As far as I am concerned, it is all right for you not to have handcuffs, but I must obey orders and it can’t be helped.”
“Then please will you let me sit down.”
“Please make yourself comfortable without ceremony.”
I sat down on the earth floor with my back against the side of the bunker. It was beginning to get dark, and there was only a tiny, flickering paraffin lamp that turned the faces of the soldiers a deeper yellow and painted them with shadows. They all had a thick stubble above their mouths and round their chins. I remembered that I had a stubble, too, which had been growing since my last shave in Dimapur. I ran my hand all over my face, wondering how I looked. One of the soldiers saw me and grinned. He pulled a metal mirror out of his pocket and held it up in front of me.
“Is it interesting?”
“I’ve changed since I’ve been with you,” I said.
“You are making more of a soldier’s face than when you came.”
“I feel more like a soldier,” I said.
Partly because of the light, I looked so ridiculously macabre that a little ripple of laughter went through me. But it did not come into my expression. My eyes looked very black and wild, and my hair was matted and dusty. My cheeks seemed to have receded, giving a new prominence to my cheekbones. My mouth also stood out with big, dry lips. I studied this for quite a time, trying to bring myself to realise that I was really seeing myself. But I could not reconcile the savage reflection with my feelings, for although I was aching and weary and could feel with every bone this severing from a past life, and in this respect was changed, the real core of me was there as it had always been. All my loves and sentiments and friendships, and all the impressions of my past life, all the things that had built me, were there in the core, hard and real. I knew that, in seeing them like this, I was learning more about myself than I had ever learnt before. But what I saw in the little dented mirror, held by the hand of a Japanese soldier who was quivering with amusement, was only one moment of myself, myself as a prisoner-of-war, miserable and uncouth.
Later on I was given a small handful of rice and a can of water. The guards were friendly and full of curiosity; I was still a museum piece to them, and they were half-awed because I could speak Japanese. They had seen Englishmen before in Japan, but I was the first they had ever met, although for years they had been learning to hate the English. They asked endless questions about my home, and how I felt about becoming a prisoner and how my family would feel. Would they be able to lift up their heads? And after the war, would I be able to go back to England?
“I may go back before that,” I thought. But I said: “I have dysentery. Will you kindly escort me outside.”
The sergeant detailed a man, and we began to climb the steps at the end of the bunker. I turned back:
“I can’t manage with these handcuffs,” I said.
“Very well,” the sergeant said. “You may have them off to go to the lavatory.” And he added to the escort: “Be careful.”
We went up the steps again, the escort with a pistol in his hand. There was no moon now, but the stars were brilliant and I could distinguish the outline of the trees, and after a moment the trunks took shape in the darkness. There was a heavy jungle smell. There was no sound from the other trenches, but in the open slit trenches that marked the perimeter I could distinguish the heads of sentries at intervals of a dozen yards. From beyond came an occasional cry of a bud or animal and the interminable sound of crickets but down on the road there was silence.
Under a tree a hole had been dug as a temporary convenience. There was no privacy, except that provided by the night. The guard stood facing me a few yards away, and all the time the revolver was in his hand, and I had seen him click the chamber into position. In the trench he had talked amicably, even with respect; but he was not taking any chances.
I had really got dysentery again, badly. The pains kept grinding my stomach. I stayed for a long time under the tree, and then ten minutes after we had returned to the bunker I had t
o go out again. The soldiers laughed. They knew what dysentery was from experience. When I came back they made jokes, and one said: “It is hardly worth putting him back in handcuffs.” But I was chained into them again, all the same, so that I couldn’t grab one of their rifles and start trouble.
I went out six or seven times, and the guard began to get careless. He came with me, but when I sat down at the tree he paced back-wards and forwards, so that half the time his back was turned to me. I pretended to be more ill than I was. In the dug-out I laid my head back against the wall and closed my eyes and tried to look even more ghastly than I had appeared to myself in the mirror. When I went out it was with sluggish, painful footsteps.
It was after midnight. The sergeant’s good humour suddenly turned to impatience.
“This can’t go on,” he said. “Do you want to be chained to a tree again outside?”
“No,” I said, “I would hate that.”
“Then you must control yourself.”
“Let me go once more,” I said.
He took off the metal links and I dragged my way up the steps. The night seemed to be getting lighter, but at the base of the tree it was almost totally dark. I took my place there and waited, whilst the escort strolled off for a dozen yards and returned. It was impossible to make a direct dash, because before I reached the perimeter trench, thirty yards away, he would have heard my movement and turned and shot me, or called to the sentry. I had worked out another plan during my visits here, not infallible, but the best I could do. I sat there in the awful stillness and knew that the next ten minutes would settle everything: whether I should ever see Sabby again, whether I should see anybody again. It was going to be life and freedom or death—if not with the first bullet, then with Lieutenant Nakamura’s once-christened sword.
It took all my strength of mind to bring myself to make the first movement. I was in a kind of suspense wondering if it could be that I should lack this strength; but in the midst of this doubt I found myself moving. I stood up. I could see the silhouette of the guard’s head as he paced away from me. I put my hands above my head and grasped the branch I knew to be there, forgetting all my pains and my weariness. I bent my elbows and pulled my legs slowly upwards. My head followed in the backward somersault—the same movement I had learnt on the bars in the gymnasium at school, but then only with the fear of being laughed at for failure, and now with a fear that was too great to realise completely in that moment. Then I was resting on the branch with my stomach. I remained like that while the guard returned. From my position I might almost have dropped down on to him and throttled him before he could utter a cry. I would have done that, I suppose, had there been no alternative: but I had got to know him in the dugout, a little fellow with a timid blink—he had been an assistant in a porcelain shop a year before, and I could imagine him selling some piece of crockery with pride. He was too human and simple to kill alone and at close range. I knew he would put a bullet into my back if I ran away, but only because he had been caught up in the war and given a gun, and for that I felt no bitterness towards him.
After a few moments I stood up on the branch, clinging on to the trunk, and felt my way to the next branch, ten feet above the ground. It was thick and steady, and I worked my way along it until I was close to the foliage, and sitting ready to jump. Then I waited. The guard was patient. It was ten minutes before he tentatively peered at the tree base. I could just make out his form in the shadows as he moved hesitantly. Then I heard him say:
“Have you finished?”
There was a silence. He was quite still, and I could imagine the horror dawning slowly upon him. He said again, with a quaver in his voice:
“You . . . have you finished?”
He stood for another second, and then he went up to the hole and felt about with his arms. He touched nothing but the tree trunk, and panic came into his movements. He walked round the tree looking into the undergrowth, and I heard him say softly, so that the sentry should not hear and learn of his negligence:
“Come out of there or I shall shoot. I shall shoot.”
He had no torch, because lights were forbidden, and in the darkness he became suddenly terrified. He knew now I had got away and there was no concealing it. He scurried like a rabbit back along the track to the dug-out.
I jumped. I hit he ground clumsily, recovered my balance and began to run. I ran at right angles to the track to the dug-out, towards the nearest perimeter trench. It seemed an interminable distance. I saw the trench getting nearer, and then I saw the sentry, and it was only the back of his head. He was guarding the encampment from outside attack and was not listening for unusual sounds within. I could make out the trench clearly. I leapt it a few yards from the sentry. As I flashed by I saw from the corner of my eye that his rifle was at his side, and not already in position, as I had feared. He began to turn his head, but the rifle had not moved as he disappeared from my sight. That gave me a few seconds’ grace. I kept my head down and bolted straight forward, aiming at the space between the trees that I had previously noticed. It was forty-five yards to the nearest cover, but downhill and against the dark background I knew that I would make a difficult target. All the same, I felt terribly exposed. I was in the firing line of at least three of the sentries, and I ran with half my mind concentrating on the small of my back, expecting a bullet there. I was three-quarters of the way and nothing had happened; I could hear nothing from behind. I thought that something must happen now. A sudden new terror exploded inside me, and electrified my legs, which went on out of my control. I was afraid of falling, because I was going too fast down the hill. But I drew level with the trees that would cut me off from immediate danger. Then I tripped over something and sprawled forward headlong.
At the same time there was a frightful metallic clattering a few yards away. I lay on my face, and it seemed an age before it came to me what had happened, but it may not have been more than a few seconds. I had fallen over the trip wire that the Japs had strung up to warn them of anyone approaching in the dark, and the clattering was only tin cans. I got up. I had to make myself move now the initial impetus was over. I went forward, stooping. There were only a few yards and I would be behind the trees, and at night no one would follow. I moved a hand to part the undergrowth, and at the same time, just above the elbow, I felt myself struck. The sound of the rifle came simultaneously. My arm was knocked forward, and there was a pain that spread at once to my shoulder. It was not severe. I went into the undergrowth and knew that no more bullets could reach me. There was another shot, and a whizzing through the air, but I had solid tree trunks behind me now. I pushed on, feeling my way with my left hand and letting my right hang at my side, crooked at the elbow. I could only go slowly because there was no light here at all, only the black tree-tops shown against the profusely starred sky. I did not know where I was going, and I didn’t care, so long as it was away from the camp. Fortunately the undergrowth was not thick, and I kept finding places where there was only grass, through which I could pass quickly. I scarcely noticed the sharp blades cutting my hands and face. Once I stopped and listened in the direction from which I had come. There was no sound, only insects and the occasional dash of an animal. I didn’t care about the animals or the snakes either, because the danger was nothing after the danger I had escaped. They could not rattle bayonets at me or shut me up behind barbed wire for years.
After a while I stopped again and leant against a tree to rest. I was exhausted with the hard work of going through the jungle blindly, and I wondered if I was losing much blood. There was a long, dull pain in my arm, and I couldn’t move my elbow. I ran my hand down the sleeve and found it sodden, so I unbuttoned the front of my bush shirt and began to pull it off. When I tried to raise my right arm I found it stiff and heavy as though it was weighted with lead, so I used my left hand to slide the shirt off it. I stood naked from the waist, and the air was cool, drying my perspiration. I looked at th
e wounded arm, but it was too dark to see anything except the blood which seemed quite black on the paler skin. I touched the flesh with my fingers and found where the surface was broken. As far as I could tell, the bone was all right, and I thought the bullet had passed through. It was nothing: I would have paid more dearly than that for this night in the jungle alone.
I put my foot over the shoulder of my bush shirt on the ground, and with my left hand tore off the sleeve. It was tough material but I tore down the seam, and I wound the whole sleeve round my arm as a bandage. Then I put the bush-shirt on again, and lay down on the ground on my side, with the injured arm on top. During the night of broken sleep I dreamt that Lieutenant Nakamura was emptying a machine-gun into me at point-blank range. I woke up and could still hear the machine-gun crackling, only it was a long way away on the road into Imphal.
Chapter Five
(1)
In the morning I started to unwind the sleeve from my arm, intending to look at the wound in the daylight, and turn a cleaner patch against the skin. But the material was glued to the flesh, and it was painful when I tried to pull it off. I thought the pain was a good thing, since it showed there was still life in the arm although I was unable to bend it or raise it from the shoulder. But I had no water with which to wash it, and I was afraid that if I tore away the bandage the bleeding would commence again; so I wound up the ends and tucked them in without uncovering the wound.
In whichever direction I went the going was equally difficult. I could find no tracks and I had to break my way through the intertwined vegetation without a knife and only one arm to help me. It was impossible to avoid the steep hillsides; there was nothing but hills here, chain after chain of pointed hills a thousand feet high, riven with narrow valleys. Descending, I kept slipping, crashing downwards until the undergrowth caught me up and I could stand again. My hand was bleeding with clutching at thorns and knife-like grasses. When I tried to climb, I slipped back often, and each time I lay a little longer to recover my spirits to go on. The only guide to direction was the noise of battle on the road. At least I supposed it to be on the road still, though in both ways the sound was receding as though we were being pushed steadily back. It was no use my making back towards Kohima; in the camp I had heard that the Japs had formed a road block a short distance from this side of the village, and beyond it too, and were certain of its fall. They were also certain of Imphal, for that matter, but they had got farther to go to reach it, and, anyway, I was closer to our lines in that direction. I reckoned the shelling was ten miles away, and that if I went parallel to the road for ten miles and then curved in to meet it, I should be well on the right side. I tried to keep along the valleys, but they twisted perpetually and led me from the right direction, so that I could not avoid climbing altogether. Now and again I saw a Naga village perched on a hilltop, but I was afraid of going near it because, although I had heard the Nagas were friendly, the Japs were likely to be there, commandeering the rice and trying to conscript labour. More hampering to my progress than my injured arm was my dysentery. There was little food in my stomach for it to play on, which gave it all the more scope with the walls of my bowels. It seemed to be tearing them to bits. This disease had never been really painful for me before, only inconvenient; and now the pain itself did not matter, for the circumstances made it easy to bear, but it drew on my strength which had already been diminished by loss of blood. It drew its own toll of blood, also. At first I stopped for it but that became too tedious and took too much time, so I just went on thinking I was already so ragged and filthy it made little difference. One sleeve of my shirt had gone, of course, and the buttons had been ripped away. The bottoms of my trousers were shredded, and everything was covered with bloodstains and grime from sleeping nightly on the ground since I was captured. But all this meant no more than the equally dishevelled face I had seen in the mirror, because it did not seem to be myself, despite the bodily discomforts that went with it. Or, at any rate, it was only a part of myself, the part that was living this moment, the particular section of film that was passing through the machine. My real self, the accumulation of all the film that had passed already, I was carrying intact out of the jungle; and still, whatever happened, whatever was done to me, nothing could destroy that. Once, when Sabby had said to me, “No one can ever take away all our happiness, darling,” I had thought, without saying it, that time could take it away. But I knew differently now, because I knew that the happiness was with me in the jungle as all the sadness was also; and that was why I could not think of myself only in terms of rags and dried blood and a ten days’ growth of beard.
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