My Beautiful Enemy

by Cory Taylor

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. I was hoping he couldn’t see me blushing. I fiddled with the doorhandle, pretending it was stiff.

  ‘It’s a free country,’ he said.

  ‘Not for you it isn’t,’ I said.

  He smiled but I could tell that he didn’t think the joke was very funny. Then he asked me about my health and I told him I was feeling much better.

  ‘Nice shoes,’ I said.

  He looked down at his new shoes then rubbed them on the back of his pant legs.

  ‘Good for dancing,’ he said and did a little soft-shoe shuffle towards me.

  When he was closer he stopped dancing and put his hand inside his jacket pocket. I half-expected him to produce a knife, as proof that he was ready to take me on again if I wanted to fight him, but instead he pulled out a piece of folded paper and offered it to me with a quick bow. I took it from him and opened it out. Three sheets of paper were stuck together end to end like a scroll, then creased into a concertina. At the top he’d written The Spider Thread, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and underneath he’d written out the whole story in English. In the margins he’d drawn illustrations in pen and ink.

  ‘That’s a lot of work,’ I said.

  He didn’t respond. He still hadn’t really looked at me. He kept glancing around to make sure nobody had spotted him standing there. In his black suit and matching tie he looked like a mobster, an effect he’d no doubt intended.

  ‘Can you get me some smokes?’ he said. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a few coins, which he proceeded to count.

  ‘I don’t need payment,’ I said. I took out the packet of smokes I had on me and handed it to him.

  ‘Thanks for the story,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’s a masterpiece.’ I shoved the pages into my coat pocket.

  ‘I wrote it from memory,’ he said. ‘I’ve read it a hundred times.’

  And then we just stood there not knowing what else to say. It wasn’t the way it had been in the infirmary. Now we were back in the camp I was far more afraid than I had been before, and so was Stanley. I could tell by the way his hands trembled as he took out a fag and attempted to light it. Eventually I had to help him to hold the flame steady and shelter it from the wind. I cupped my hands around his for the few seconds it took for the cigarette to catch then slipped them back in my pockets feigning nonchalance.

  ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go,’ I said, glancing at his handsome suit.

  He raised himself up on his toes and danced another couple of steps.

  ‘They didn’t send you back to Ballarat then?’

  ‘I refused to go,’ he said, finally turning to look me in the face, his smile broadening into a grin.

  ‘What do you do all day?’ I said.

  ‘Plan my next escape,’ he said, pushing the hair back off his forehead in a gesture that made my heart alter its rhythm.

  ‘I thought you decided there wasn’t any point,’ I said.

  ‘Doesn’t mean I can’t dream,’ he said.

  He asked me if I was still teaching at the school and I said I was.

  ‘How’s that going?’ he said.

  ‘Passes the time,’ I said. ‘You should come round one day.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Help me sharpen pencils.’

  He took a long drag on his cigarette and glanced around again to check that we weren’t being watched.

  ‘When?’ he said.

  ‘Whenever you like.’

  ‘I might drop in. If I’m not too busy.’

  Then he turned and walked away the same way he’d come, swinging an imaginary cane and strutting like Chaplin’s little tramp for my amusement. Just before he disappeared around the corner of the hut he paused and gave me a wave with his fingers. The last I saw of him was the trail of smoke he left in his wake. As soon as the scent of it reached where I was standing I felt a feverish excitement. I hadn’t really expected to run into Stanley again. I’d expected him to disappear back into his own life, and me to disappear back into mine. At the same time the two or three glimpses I’d caught of him over the past few days had left me sick with longing. I took the folded paper out of my pocket and devoured Stanley’s schoolboy scrawl, expecting, I suppose, something revelatory and personal, instead of this obscure fable about a robber who is rescued from hell by the Buddha. A love letter it was not. Still I had the urge to raise the paper to my face and breathe in whatever trace remained of Stanley’s odour.

  I’d only just put the pages away again when Bryant, my chief tormentor, came looking for me to see if I couldn’t pick up some of his contraband while I was in town.

  ‘What’s in it for me?’ I said, relieved he hadn’t caught me with my nose buried in Stanley’s literary offering.

  ‘A packet of fags,’ he said.

  ‘A carton,’ I said. It was risky bringing stuff into the camp for Bryant. I knew that because Riley had told me.

  ‘Christ,’ said Bryant. ‘You must think I’m Father fucking Christmas.’

  He towered over me, his big meaty body blocking my escape route.

  ‘Country Life,’ he said.

  ‘Camels,’ I said, insisting on American smokes because I knew that would impress Stanley.

  ‘Five packs,’ he said.

  ‘Ten,’ I said, offering my hand so we could shake on the deal.

  To my surprise he took it and gripped it firmly, leering at me like I’d somehow gone up in his estimation.

  ‘Nice doing business with you,’ he said.

  ‘Likewise,’ I said, trying to pull my hand free, and finally succeeding.

  ‘Not a word to anyone,’ said Bryant.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ I said.

  May read the story when I showed it to her and laughed at the mistakes in spelling and grammar. Even so I could tell she was impressed.

  ‘Who is he?’ she said. ‘Where did he learn to write?’

  I told her what Matron Conlon had told me, that Stanley had grown up in America while his family was touring. ‘He speaks just like a Yank,’ I said.

  ‘I saw them perform just before the war broke out,’ said May, folding the paper up again. ‘They came to Melbourne with Wirth’s Circus.’

  Then she told me how her missing brother Owen had been so obsessed with the Jap tightrope walker that he’d spent days in the yard trying to learn how to keep his balance.

  ‘He started out on a long plank of wood set up between two chairs, then he decided to string a rope between two trees and walk along it with two sticks like ski poles to stop himself from falling. In the end he managed to throw the sticks away. He was like that. He could do anything he set his mind to.’

  She cried every time she talked about Owen. I was used to it. Tears would start to roll down her cheeks and she would wipe them away, at the same time her whole face would turn a blotchy red. I could never just sit there and do nothing. I always tried to comfort her, and this was how we started kissing that day, in the sitting room of the house where she was staying. It belonged to a farmer’s wife who was struggling to keep the farm going while her husband was away at the war. The farmer’s wife was out for the day, visiting a neighbour, so we had the place to ourselves. May had made me some scones and there was fresh cream from the cows. When we’d eaten she opened up the grog cabinet and poured us both a brandy.

  ‘Do you want to see my room?’ she said, after the brandy had done its work.

  I followed her down the hallway to the back of the house and into her bedroom. She shut the door behind me. There was nothing in the room except a narrow bed and a wardrobe, but it was cheery enough and the sun was pouring in, making it warmer than the rest of the house. I remember the cat had followed us in and positioned itself on the windowsill where it sat up and watched us fumble with each other’s clothing. After that there wasn’t much to see. It was all over very fast. We didn’t even lie down on the bed. One minute we were kissing. The next I was kneading May’s big freckled breasts while she unbutto
ned my pants and directed me where to put my prick. It wasn’t as if I already knew, because I didn’t. May and I had done a lot of feeling up and fondling, but I’d never seen a girl down there so I needed help.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she kept saying. ‘Do it. It’s all right.’

  So I did it, up against the back of the door, and was immediately sorry, not because it felt bad, but because it felt dirty. I turned away and pulled up my pants and all the time the cat stared at me out of its sly green eyes, blinking occasionally in an uneven way as if its internal mechanism was winding down.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That was terrible.’

  May took my hand and pulled me over to the bed where she made me lie down next to her.

  ‘It was fine,’ she said.

  She propped herself up on one elbow and gazed at me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I was just trying to imagine what you look like with all your clothes off.’

  She reached across and started to unbutton my shirt, but I stopped her.

  ‘Another time,’ I said. ‘I have to get my bus.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said. ‘We’re all born naked.’

  ‘Not me,’ I said. ‘I had my pants on.’

  May gave me a little slap on the cheek.

  ‘Liar,’ she said.

  ‘I think I need another brandy,’ I said.

  May got up off the bed and opened the door. In her bare feet she walked me back down the hallway to the kitchen where she’d wrapped some scones for me to take back to camp. The bottle of brandy was where she’d left it beside our teacups. She poured us each a measure, adding a generous dollop of cream and we sat at the kitchen table and spooned up our drinks like children who’d exhausted their limited supply of conversation topics. After what had happened I found I couldn’t look at anything but the floor, so eventually May came around to sit next to me and took my face in both hands.

  ‘You look like somebody died,’ she said.

  I stared at the scones and couldn’t think of what to say. I should have told her the whole story about Stanley, about how I’d climbed into his bed in the infirmary and how he’d kissed me on the cheek. I should have said that I found it impossible to get his kiss out of my mind, and that even as I was fucking her against the back of her bedroom door I was thinking of him, remembering his smell and the shape of his earlobe. But instead I put my arms around her and gave her a hug and breathed the scent of her cheap perfume and talcum powder. I had never minded it before because of the memories of my mother, but now it gave me a panicky feeling in my stomach as if I was about to be shot.

  ‘When are you coming again?’ she said, after I’d opened the back door. I was halfway out onto the porch.

  ‘I’ll write to you,’ I said. ‘Let you know.’

  ‘I’m making a new dress,’ she said. ‘I can show it to you the next time.’

  ‘Send me a picture,’ I said.

  She came out onto the back steps and waved me goodbye. As I walked down the road back towards the highway I could feel her still watching me. When I came to the cattle grid, about a hundred yards from the house, I broke into a run and sprinted all the way to the bus stop. It wasn’t until I sat down to wait for the bus that I realised I’d left the scones behind, but by then it was too late to go back and get them.

  On the bus back to town, I was filled with an uneasy sense of having crossed a line. Of course a part of me was pleased, because now I was officially a man. With May’s blessing I’d done the thing that needed to be done to demonstrate my virility. On the other hand, another part of me was unhappy at how I’d deceived May so easily, faked something I didn’t feel. It was to be the start of years of deception, first with her and after that with other women. May would tell me, many years later, that she’d always known I was not the man I seemed to be, but that she’d loved me regardless.

  ‘You were like a rabbit in the headlights,’ she said. ‘I found it irresistible.’

  ‘Poor May,’ I said.

  ‘Your loss,’ she said.

  At the time that struck me as the wisest thing I’d ever heard her say.

  ‘I’ll put that on your tombstone,’ I said.

  ‘Not if you die first.’

  I said I was already dead, just refusing to lie down. It was an old joke, and not especially funny. I’d been saying the same thing for years, in an attempt, I suppose, to ward off the common complaint that I was cold-hearted and remote.

  May had the good grace to laugh at it every time.

  8

  McMaster’s school was seeing a period of growth in the winter of 1945. He’d started out two years beforehand with about ten children and now there were three times that number, all crammed into a single airless room originally designed as a storeroom. A former country schoolteacher, McMaster had applied himself tirelessly to the task of building up the school from nothing. He’d written the textbooks, he’d designed the curriculum, he’d begged and borrowed equipment from wherever he could find it. He’d recently expanded the vegetable garden to twice its former size and introduced formal lessons in horticulture. But he didn’t think that was the reason for the swelling numbers of students. He put the change down to the fact that the war had turned so decisively against the Japs, and that the Americans seemed willing to stop at nothing in order to win it.

  ‘The Japs are starting to see the writing on the wall,’ McMaster told me. ‘And it isn’t good news.’

  Now that I knew him better, I could tell that his teasing back in our hut was not meant to be cruel, that to him I was just a kid not much older than his pupils.

  ‘They’re starting to think it might be wise to switch sides,’ he said.

  We were setting the classroom to rights at the end of a morning’s teaching. McMaster liked to keep things clean and tidy. I run a tight ship he used to tell me at least once a day. Sometimes he’d ruffle my hair as he said it, even though I’d asked him not to.

  ‘What’s going to happen to the internees once the war’s over?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s anyone’s guess,’ said McMaster.

  ‘Is it true they might all be shot?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I’ve heard rumours,’ I said. ‘Davies seems to think some kind of revenge is on the cards.’

  Davies was a guard I played chess with sometimes. He was of the firm opinion that the Japs, without exception, deserved everything they had coming to them.

  ‘It’s very unlikely,’ said McMaster. ‘They’ll ship them all back to Japan before they waste good ammunition on them. Let them starve to death back in their own country.’

  I was upset at the idea. Now that I’d met Stanley I’d been forced to reconsider my views on many things.

  ‘Do you think any of them will be allowed to stay?’ I said.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘We can only hope that compassion wins out over expediency.’

  McMaster was like Riley. He had no hard feelings against the Japs at Tatura. He counted some of them as friends. The rest he felt sorry for because he didn’t see why they were being punished for a crime they had never committed. He liked to lecture me about the legalities of the case while we marked arithmetic tests, or typed up handouts for English homework.

  ‘Not one shred of evidence was ever found,’ he said, ‘to link any of these people with any act of sabotage or any breach of national security. The crime was ours alone. Worse still it was committed in the name of liberty and justice.’

  ‘So you’re saying we should have waited until all of them had been tried in a court before we locked them up?’

  ‘I’m saying we should never have arrested them in the first place,’ said McMaster.

  ‘Even the ones who think the Emperor is a god?’

  ‘Since when is magical thinking a crime? A lot of people I know believe in the virgin birth. My mother’s one of them. Maybe she should be arrested?’

  ‘That’s religion,’ I sai
d. ‘Your mother didn’t start a war in the name of the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘Something she regrets to this day,’ he said.

  When he found out I played tennis McMaster asked me to run lessons after school since there was a court and some basic equipment but not many of the kids knew how to play. My tennis club proved so popular that within a fortnight of its launch I had the whole school population, plus stragglers, showing up every day. It was too many to handle on my own so I had a couple of the older kids ask around for someone in the camp who might volunteer to help me.

  ‘Preferably someone who’s played before,’ I said. ‘Otherwise it’s the blind leading the blind.’

  Soon after that Stanley showed up in his whites, with a few extra acolytes, and three tennis racquets he’d acquired from some mysterious source.

  McMaster took one look at him and laughed.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s not Wimbledon.’

  Stanley smiled vainly.

  ‘I play better when I’m properly dressed,’ he said. ‘It gives me a mental advantage.’ Then he made a show of touching his toes and stretching his neck muscles, which I gathered was for my benefit because he kept glancing at me and pouting in a ridiculous way.

  McMaster already knew Stanley. He had a certain notoriety in the camp because of his famous family. Not that they were universally popular, but in the intricate tribal world of Tatura Stanley’s clan—three uncles, two aunts, his mother and a cousin—seemed to have achieved respect in some quarters, and Stanley must have used this to foster his own reputation.

  After he’d finished his stretches, he challenged me to an exhibition match. ‘Show them how it’s done,’ he said, smirking.

  ‘I thought you didn’t like tennis,’ I said.

  ‘I lied,’ said Stanley. ‘Let’s play a set after the kids’ lessons? A set every afternoon until the end of the week. Best of five sets wins.’

  Of course I agreed, because it gave us a reason to meet. Stanley, on the other hand seemed more concerned to prove to everyone, me especially, that he was a decent player.

  McMaster was the umpire for our matches and, in the absence of a fence around the court, the kids were kept busy retrieving the balls. I was surprised to find that some of them at least were on my side. Perhaps they felt sorry for me, since it was pretty clear from the outset that Stanley was determined to beat me. He’d deceived me about his tennis game, a discovery that undermined my confidence right from the start. As the week went by my loyal supporters despaired.