The Story of Dr. Wassell

by James Hilton

  He pulled over to the side of the road and clamped on the brake with his last ounce of energy.

  Then all was suddenly alive in a still world. For a mile or so ahead British soldiers were jumping down from trucks and cars, shouting excitedly as they threw down gear. The road was lined with tall trees, and beyond the trees were rice fields channeled with running water. The doctor could not help thinking it was rather like Arkansas, for there too were tall trees and rice fields. It was a fine choice for a stopping place—in happier days not a bad place for a picnic, either. He wondered if the Dutch and Javanese had ever had picnics there, and all at once that reminded him of something—he had never kept his promise about that giant ice-cream feast for the men and the nurses. He was sorry about that; he liked to keep his promises, and now, as if to wipe the regret from his mind, he silently made another promise: “I’ll get these men safely to Tjilatjap, and I’ll put them on a ship, and I’ll stay with them till safety…” That, he suddenly realized, was more than a promise; it was a decision made to himself, and in Some ways, come to think of it, it was a prayer.

  The doctor rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and got down from the car. Already the sun was lowering, and the air though warm, lay fresh and pleasant under the shade. Wilson and Sun were waking; Francini still slept, but the doctor leaned into the back of the car and gently waked him, for he had to be attended to; that was the first job of all. Meanwhile hundreds of men along the road ahead were scurrying about in units of concentrated yet somehow independent effort—some were changing or washing clothes, others making tea or heating cans of baked beans over blowpots, many sluicing themselves in the rice-field channels and lying naked in the sun to dry. Little Javanese boys, appearing as it were from nowhere, shinned up cocoanut trees and dropped the nuts to the men, who gave them small coins in exchange; the men knocked open the nuts and drank the green milk out of them. All this varied activity the doctor watched out of one eye while he serviced his three passengers; then he restarted the car and drove slowly along the length of the convoy till he spotted the truck in which the five others were.

  He found them. Two British soldiers who had driven the truck were making tea by the roadside; they gave him a cheery greeting and shouted that his boys were all right, only tired. The doctor nodded and climbed into the truck. He was glad his boys had at least given the impression they were all right; his last instructions had bidden them do that. He dropped his voice as he saw the supine figures lying on stretchers with British Army coats thrown over them to keep off the glare of the sun; some of the men had nothing but thin pyjamas underneath. “Well, boys,” he exclaimed, “how’s everything?” He said it quietly, almost confidentially, as if he really wanted them to tell him.

  One of them grumbled: “These trucks sure must run on square wheels,”

  That was a good sign; the doctor liked to hear a grumble. He moved round to each man, scrutinizing him carefully, seeing if there were any personal thing to be done; and of course there was, and he did it.

  “These Britishers treating you all right?” he said meanwhile.

  Several answers came then. “Oh, fine. They’re swell guys. They gave us candy and corned beef. And now they’re making tea for us.”

  “And if you don’t die of a diet like that, then nothing’ll kill you,” responded the doctor. He turned to McGuffey, who he thought might have been helping him instead of sitting there crouched against a pile of Army uniforms as if he were hiding something. All at once he saw that McGuffey was hiding something. “Well, for heaven’s sake…” he began…

  Three Martini was behind the uniforms that were behind McGuffey.

  The doctor went fighting-mad for about a minute and a half. He cursed McGuffey with a language he hardly knew he knew; then he caught the brown girl’s eye and had to stop. Even though she knew no English she must know he was angry, and he did not want her to think he was angry with her personally. So he smiled at her and went on cursing McGuffey as long as he could keep up the joint effort; but that was not very easy, and in the end he just said: “Well, all I can say is, McGuffey, this is about the limit. What the hell do you think will happen to her when we get to Tjilatjap?”

  “Dunno, Doc. I guess she figured that out herself. I didn’t ask her to come.”

  “Now don’t give me that stuff. I know if there’s any trouble anywhere, you’re in on it.”

  “Honest, Doc—I’m telling you the truth. She came on account of Renny.”

  “Renny? ” The doctor swung round. “Well, Renny, what do you say about all this?”

  Renny didn’t answer, and after a pause McGuffey said: “She thought Renny might get worse on the way.”

  The doctor snorted and was about to argue the matter further when he saw over the edge of the truck the two British Tommies returning with cans of steaming tea. “Well, anyhow,” he added quickly, “you’d better keep her out of sight because if the captain of the convoy sees her he’ll put her off, sure as you’re born.”

  McGuffey nodded. “That’s what I thought, Doc.”

  The Tommies clambered aboard, and from the way they looked at the girl the doctor realized that they had thought of it too. In fact everyone seemed to be quite reconciled to the girl’s presence except himself, and as he disliked being in a minority of one he couldn’t keep up his truculence, especially when one of the Tommies offered him a can of tea. “No, no,” he said gallantly. “Ladies first…” And with that he looked across at Three Martini and gave her a distinct wink, to show that he was by that time even less angry with her than before.

  So the doctor stayed and drank tea with the men, his own men and the British, and the Javanese nurse; in fact, he even provided out of a flask in his pocket something extra to put in the tea; and by the time the last drops were drained he was feeling quite happy about the whole business.

  A mile in front, in the staff car with Muller, the man with the languid aloofness was also drinking a cup of tea. Actually he was neither languid nor aloof, but just overwhelmingly weary, and terribly shy of this American boy to whom he was giving a lift. He was also facing facts himself while concealing them from others, and for this purpose the air of languid aloofness was the only technique he knew. He had been told that he and his men were to remain at Tjilatjap to make a last stand, and he guessed that there was small chance for any of them, save to be killed or to spend uncounted time in a Jap prison camp. Quite calmly—almost languidly—he hoped that he, at the right moment, would be killed. And as he hoped this, he thought of home in England and the road over a hill to the house where his wife and children lived. He did not think they would ever receive the last letters he had written. And half glancing sideways at the American boy, he envied him passionately the chance of escape to fight again with better luck another day; but still he could not think of anything to say. He had been trying to think of something ever since the convoy had stopped, and with every minute’s silence he knew that the American boy must be thinking him snootier and snootier.

  Presently he cleared his throat and began: “Er…er…how’re you feeling, eh? Pretty ghastly, I guess, eh?” (He put the “I guess” in because he thought all Americans said “I guess.”)

  Muller honestly could not understand a word the Englishman said, but he smiled and said “Okay, okay.”

  The convoy started again and the nine men from the Marblehead went riding down to the sea.

  The doctor felt refreshed after the halt, but that made him eager to get ahead and also—beyond the eagerness—anxious about what would happen in Tjilatjap. It was like climbing a mountain and, when you are getting near the summit, seeing another one higher and further. Every mile made him more confident about the road journey, the British officer, and everything connected with the convoy, but Tjilatjap was another ordeal to face; his memories of it were singularly unpleasant; it was a place to get in and out of, and especially out of, as quickly as possible. The very urgency of this gave him the idea to drive ahead and make speedy arrangements
, so when next the convoy halted he rode on, waving as he passed the men in the truck, and asked the British officer’s advice. The officer said he thought it was not half a bad idea.

  It was almost nightfall by then, but there was no darkness; a terrible bright moon (terrible because of the help it would give to Jap bombers) rose in the sky, and all along the horizons the fires of demolition spurted into a flickering frieze. Fortunately the state of the road improved, so that the doctor could drive at forty miles an hour instead of twenty without bumping his passengers too much; but in any case, they sensed the reason for his haste and would have paid for it willingly with extra discomfort. And this willingness, half enthusiastic, half apprehensive, made all of them increasingly silent as they neared Tjilatjap.

  Presently they saw lights in the approaching distance which the doctor thought must be either the town or a great fire. He did not speak his third thought, which was that it might be both, or his fourth thought, which was that Jap air raiders were already at work. He just drove on faster. The roads were more crowded now, and with refugees on foot as well as wheeled traffic; the doctor honked his horn and at each debatable turn in the road yelled “Chillyjap” till someone answered him affirmatively. Despite this, he lost his way several times and had to go back on his tracks. Once the car overheated, and the doctor, who was no mechanic, had an awful fear of being stranded; but Wilson said the radiator might need water, so they stopped by a roadside stream and filled it with some difficulty by means of an empty whiskey bottle. As the bottle was not quite empty at first, the doctor gave Sun and Wilson a stiff drink to make it so; Francini could not have one, because of his injury, and the doctor refused for himself, saying in the half-jocular way that was the only one possible for what was in his mind: “Boys, I’m saving mine for the time we’re easin’ out of the harbor with all of us safe on board. That’s the time I’ll feel like percolatin’.”

  While they were filling the radiator a Javanese passed them. Almost by now automatically, the doctor pointed along the road and exclaimed: “Chillyjap?”

  “Tjilatjap,” said the man, nodding politely. He gave the name a different pronunciation.

  Wilson then asked him, mouthing the words with great distinctness and with much gesturing and finger work to convey their meaning: “How far you say—how many kilometers—Chillyjap? You understand?”

  The man then replied: “I do not know precisely, sir, but I should say about thirty-five miles…as the crow flies.”

  “Well, I’m damned!” muttered Wilson, speechless for any more original comment. It was something to laugh about, however, when they resumed the journey.

  From now on every bridge they passed was mined for dynamiting, its structure often loosened so that traffic must crawl over with utmost care; and sometimes when they had crossed and traveled on some distance, a heavy rearward explosion gave them the knowledge that they had been narrowly in time, just before entering Tjilatjap they came to a long suspension bridge over a river. Like the others, it had been mined and was under strict guard and patrol, with a Dutch officer scrutinizing all traffic before he let it go through. He did not know any English, and none of the car’s occupants knew any Dutch, but a Javanese sentry spoke a little Chinese, so the doctor became eloquent for several minutes, after which the deal was cemented by opening a fresh whiskey bottle and passing it round for as much as every man could take at one gulp. At the other end of the bridge there were more sentries, but the Javanese who had spoken Chinese obligingly ran across to expedite matters. Then there were more drinks and an extra one for the Javanese. Scotch whiskey, the doctor was finding, was really a universal currency, handier even than dollars—certainly than guilders.

  Francini had a sudden gust of pain during that last lap into the town; and this perhaps was why, when the doctor asked how he was feeling, he answered: “Pretty lousy. I hope it won’t be like it was before, Doc. I mean—when you didn’t get us on the Breskens .”

  The doctor answered without turning round (for he was in the town now and had to keep his eyes on the road): “So you think it was bad luck not getting on the Breskens , do you? Well, I’ll tell you this…something they just told me there at the bridge. The Breskens was torpedoed. All our men were saved except four, but you’d have made five if you’d been on it.”

  Francini was silent for a moment, then he said: “Sorry, Doc. We don’t know what’s best for us always.”

  “Sure we don’t,” agreed the doctor cordially. “You gotta be like the hog and know a persimmon tree from an acorn tree…anythin’ more’n that’s just guesswork.”

  Tjilatjap, in the middle of the night, was fantastically alive, and yet it was also dead. It had died, as it were, and was attending its own funeral. Or some such metaphor; the doctor had no time to think of any. But he was aware of the unquiet stillness of the place, the almost sinister movement of people who did not talk about what they were doing, but were intensely occupied in doing it; doors wide-open where one would have expected them to be shut; lights burning remotely in isolated rooms. And over it all a curious scent in the hot night air, a scent too faint to be unpleasant till one guessed what it might be rather than knew what it was—the smell of burning over a great distance.

  The hotel, with its portico and patio and piazza and other architectural trappings, was crowded yet also strangely quiet; for most of its occupants were asleep, and hundreds of sleepers had not found beds. They sat about in the lobby and lounges, sprawled in chairs, curled up against kit bags or bundles of clothing, open-mouthed, grotesque, sweat-streaked, a litter of humanity—Dutch and English and Javanese, old and young, white and brown (but the white were either dusty-gray with fatigue or sunburnt red), soldier and civilian, man, woman, and child. Little sleeping movements flickered over the strange assemblage as if to symbolize the death of some kind of life, but not of life itself. And over the whole scene, labeling it for history with an ironic finger point, were giant framed posters of the Javanese railway system, inviting the wide world to take its holiday amidst the ruined temples of Boro Budur.

  The doctor parked his car at the front of this equally ruined temple of tourism, and walked inside. There was no sound but snoring and a few whimperings of children. He went to the desk near the entrance but there was no one on duty. He pressed a bell, but it did not ring. He went behind the counter and picked up a telephone but there was no answer. He pressed another bell, which rang, but no one came. Then he picked his way amidst sprawled bodies into the hotel’s interior. He saw people sleeping on tables, under tables, in passageways, half wedged in telephone booths. There was nothing to eat, and the taps, when turned on, yielded nothing but a slight hiss and a few drops of yellow water. Presently, however, the doctor wandered into the hotel kitchen, where several Chinese were cooking rice over a stove. He talked to them and found that they proposed, when morning came, to serve this rice to the crowd. No one had asked them to do it; they had just made the decision themselves, and it somehow encouraged the doctor immensely. He chatted with them for a little while, asking about boats in the harbor and so on. Then they gave him some bread and several bottles of warm beer. As he was picking his way through the lobby to reach the car again a man in a bathrobe approached him carrying a pair of white shoes.

  “Good day.” he said, holding them out. “You will take them perhaps? The Admiral left them by mistake…They all went away last night—all your Navy people—it is unfortunate. But I will find you a place to sleep. I am an officer of the Staatswacht and have some influence.”

  “What’sthat? You say the Navy isn’t here?”

  “They picked up as many as they could. They were very wise to leave…”

  “But surely there are some ships that haven’t yet gone?”

  “They all left yesterday, but a few more will come tomorrow on their way from other places…It is all very unfortunate.”

  “I’ll say it is. What on earth do you think I’m going to do if I can’t find a ship”

  “You w
ill sleep first of all. Nothing can be done till daylight.”

  Later this Dutchman found a room with two beds in it, and helped the doctor to carry his patients one by one out of the car and through the hotel lobby over the sprawled bodies. Sun and Wilson had each a bed; Francini who must sit up all the time, was given a chair.

  The Dutch officer placed the white shoes in the exact center of the room, as if he hoped someone would pay attention to them, but nobody did. Then he said, settling himself as if for a pleasant conversation: “Good day to all of you. It is very unfortunate to be here.”

  The doctor said he would like to go down to the harbor right away and size up the situation: he didn’t feel he could sleep.

  “But it is very unfortunate there are no ships yet, and nothing can be done till daylight,” said the officer. “Then I will go with you.”

  “All the same, I’d like to have a look around.”

  He went back to the car and found four or five people, color and race indeterminable in the half light, already sleeping inside it. He was wondering what to do, and how he could get them out, when a Dutch wireless operator came to his rescue, inquiring in excellent English if the car were his and if he needed help. The doctor explained his position, liking the fellow instantly and feeling a kind of sudden confidence that must be a mystic thing since it is no way otherwise explicable. The Dutch wireless man was tall, young, and very handsome. “Nothing can be done till daylight,” he said. “Then I will go with you.”