by Cory Taylor
‘August,’ I said.
‘What day in August?’ he said.
‘Seventeenth,’ I said.
He tapped a finger on his right temple and told me he hadn’t really forgotten. He had the date stored away in his brain he said, because it was so important.
‘That wouldn’t leave room for much else then,’ said Donohue who was gathering up the cards and preparing to shuffle the pack again.
Bryant turned to him and smiled. ‘Shame,’ he said. ‘I was going to offer you the lovely virgin with the big knockers. But I just changed me mind.’
‘You’re a complete degenerate,’ said McMaster.
‘I do believe you’re jealous,’ said Bryant, cackling in the way he liked to when he was pretending to enjoy himself.
‘There are other things in life,’ said McMaster, ‘besides women and money and grog.’
‘I’d like to know what they are,’ said Bryant.
‘Beauty,’ said McMaster. ‘Poetry. Great art. True love.’
‘Stop,’ said Bryant, ‘before you make the kid cry.’
He turned to look at me, waiting for a reaction. I gathered up my winnings and rose from the table.
‘Where are you going?’ said Bryant.
‘Over to the store,’ I said, ‘to put in a call to my girl.’
‘She gonna give you one for your birthday too?’ he said.
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘What a busy boy,’ he said.
‘I do believe you’re jealous,’ I said.
Bryant blew me a kiss. ‘I don’t mind sharing,’ he said.
I called May as I’d promised to and thanked her for her last letter. She’d written to ask me what I wanted for my birthday.
‘I’m surprised you remembered,’ I said.
‘Of course I remembered,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t seem all that important,’ I said.
‘It is to me,’ she said. ‘I feel like you’re catching up with me at last. We’re practically grown-ups.’
I told her I missed her and that I would write again soon and she promised to write back.
‘You didn’t tell me what you wanted for your present,’ she said.
‘You know what I want,’ I said, trying to sound sexy.
She giggled. ‘I love you,’ she said.
‘I love you too,’ I said. My voice sounded hollow down the phone, like it was echoing in a cave.
On my way back to the barracks I stopped in at the schoolroom and sat down at one of the benches to write one of my pathetic notes to Stanley but all I produced was Dear Stanley, Fuck you, love Arthur. I stared at what I’d written for a long time and then I took the piece of paper outside in the cold and set fire to it with the end of my cigarette. I remember the burning page breaking up as I waved it around, sending fragments up into the air where they melted away to nothing.
11
The concert was scheduled for the evening of August the tenth. I looked forward to it because the kids’ excitement leading up to the event had infected even me. I also thought there might be an opportunity on the night for me to get Stanley on his own. In fact, for weeks on end, I thought about little else. At the same time I continued to correspond with May, lavishing on her all of the endearments that I dreamed of directing at Stanley once we were alone together. If May ever detected any insincerity, she never let on. It wasn’t in her nature to be suspicious or mistrustful. That was one of the things that had attracted me to her in the first place.
Meanwhile Stanley, for his part, continued to ignore me. He and Sawada had become inseparable. When they weren’t in Baba-san’s schoolhouse helping to teach the younger children, they were hanging around outside in the cold talking with their inner circle and sharing smokes. Worse still, the two of them would often head off together on long walks around the perimeter fence, because this gave them a chance to talk in private. Riley called them Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and when I asked him which was which he said they were the same man, which was the whole point.
‘Pardon my ignorance,’ I said.
‘Much learning doth make thee mad,’ said Riley almost to himself.
He was standing guard with me at the end of an unscheduled evening roll call. In the morning we’d heard the news about the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I don’t claim I understood at the time how momentous an event this was. All I did know was that it was likely to bring the war to an end sooner rather than later. By then I had no doubt that the war was won; it was just a matter of when the Japs would decide to surrender. The point of the extra parade in the evening of that day had been unclear. Our only task seemed to be to keep watch while the internees milled about on the parade ground. They seemed more and more reluctant to break up and go indoors in case there was some detail they’d missed hearing, something decisive that would clarify what the news might mean for them. The men who’d been away gathering firewood in the bush that day, and the women who’d been at work in the clothing factory, all wanted to hang around asking questions and listening out for any scrap of information that was going the rounds. This was exactly the rumour-mongering Colonel Hollows had cautioned against, but he seemed to feel it was an understandable impulse under the circumstances.
I could just make out Stanley and Sawada in the distance. They were sitting on the steps of the Jap school, at a slight remove from the other boys in their group. I watched them lean their heads together as if everything they had to say was just between the two of them.
‘I suppose Baba-san has told his boys that the Hiroshima story’s all lies,’ I said.
‘No doubt,’ said Riley. ‘I find it hard to believe myself.’
We were yet to see the pictures in the newspaper, but we’d heard the descriptions of the new bomb’s destructive power. It was said that sixty-five thousand people had died in Hiroshima in less than a second.
Riley and I continued to watch the crowd of inmates drifting around in the gathering dusk.
‘Every morning they all get out of bed,’ said Riley. ‘They put on their clothes and get their kids washed and dressed and their hair brushed with little ribbons and such. Have you noticed how you rarely see a dirty kid?’
‘Ralph Endo’s a bit grubby,’ I said, thinking of the mornings I’d taken Ralph round to the washbasins and given his face a good scrub before school. I could see him now in the distance piggy-backing one of his sisters round in circles while his mother stood gossiping, her belly ballooning out in front of her so far she had to lean backwards to stop herself from keeling over.
‘It’s a different kind of warfare,’ said Riley, ‘when you target women and children and old men just going about their daily business.’
‘The Japs should have surrendered,’ I snapped.
Riley glanced at me, clearly surprised by my vehemence.
‘It’s not how we fought the last war,’ he said. ‘Your enemy was the other soldier. It was kill or be killed.’
‘They were warned,’ I said.
‘So that makes it all right does it?’ said Riley.
‘If it means we’ve won,’ I said.
On the day before the concert news came through that a second atomic bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, killing around forty thousand. By then I think everybody knew what was going to happen next. The Japs were going to finally accept what the rest of us already knew. Not that there was an immediate recognition at Tatura of the ramifications of defeat. We were a long way from the centre of things; the whole rationale of the camp had been to cut off all communications with the outside world. As a result, the dawn of the atomic age was experienced as an abstraction, or a dream, rather than as a fact.
The concert went ahead as planned. The girls all came in their best dresses, some of them in kimonos, with special white socks and wooden clogs. The boys came in ties and jackets, and the men in suits or kimonos their wives had stitched together out of whatever they could salvage in the factory. Only the Sawada boys hadn’t bothered to dress up for the occasion, turnin
g up in their usual black outfits, with their bare heads as pale as stones. I’d been right about Baba-san. One of the kids told me the old man had come round to his hut in the night to talk to his mother and his brothers and sisters. He’d instructed the whole family not to pay any heed to the rumours about a new kind of bomb, because they weren’t true. There was no such thing.
I didn’t get to see much of the concert in the end. I was on duty outside the mess hall, checking everyone who went in or out. All I could do was crane my neck to get a view of a narrow section of the stage to one side. The rest I had to imagine. Stanley hadn’t arrived at the mess hall with Sawada so I guessed he must be appearing with the circus. I waited for a glimpse of him for over an hour and a half, right through the first half of the show and through the dinner break. It didn’t seem fair that McMaster had got the night off to help the kids, while I had to stand outside in the freezing wind. After the break I watched the two kids on the end of the row, Billy and Rose Watanabe, brother and sister, belting out ‘The Isle of Skye’ and ‘Pack up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag’. I nearly cried with relief when the songs ended and the hall filled with applause. Next there was a sorrowful and unrelenting tune on the Japanese recorder, and after that a comic routine in Japanese by two teenage boys who hadn’t rehearsed for long enough and kept forgetting their lines.
I caught sight of Stanley as he lined up with Shigeru and his other uncles at the bottom of the steps leading to the stage. Dressed in their colourful gowns, the men seemed to have undergone some miraculous transformation. It helps to remember that I’d so far been completely starved of entertainment at Tatura. The world of the camp was uniformly grey and drab, so the appearance of Stanley and the other acrobats in all their silk finery was like a vision. I watched entranced as they disrobed at the top of the stairs. Underneath their gowns they were wore nothing except plain white shorts, startling in their brevity. They may as well have been naked. Amidst applause and raucous laughter they started straight into their juggling act, using dinner plates at first and then incorporating fans and Japanese umbrellas. At the height of the act the stage was a flurry of flying objects all kept in motion at once. Stanley’s hands moved so fast it was impossible to see them, but the rest of him was immobile, always in a state of readiness for the next thing. It was as if his breathing was suspended—along with my own—until the umbrellas and plates and fans had all come to a standstill.
Their second act was to build a tower out of chairs and balance on them. Stanley was the last to climb the tower and that was the only time I had an uninterrupted view of him. By then I’d pushed inside and climbed on a table up the back of the hall. At the top of the tower Stanley performed a handstand then started to descend the tower on his hands. About halfway down he launched himself into a somersault and landed squarely on his feet centrestage. I watched while Stanley took his bow. Then he disappeared down the steps, his silken gown draped over his shoulders like he was a boxer leaving the ring.
I hadn’t expected to see anything so accomplished. I suppose I’d imagined a few tawdry tricks performed without much enthusiasm. Instead, the circus had dazzled everyone in the place. I realised the troupe must have been in constant training. I also understood Stanley’s devotion to running. His body had changed in the last few weeks. He was no taller but he seemed to have grown in strength and stamina, with the result that his beauty was even more heartbreaking than before. I stood outside in the cold and tried to hold onto the vision of him balancing at the top of the human tower with his arms outstretched and a half-smile on his face. He had offered himself up to the audience almost spitefully. I thought I had never seen anyone so unhappy in all my life.
In retrospect it was no real surprise what happened next. Anyone paying attention would have sensed trouble brewing. It was like a gradual shift in the barometric pressure. I searched for Stanley in the crowd as the chairs were cleared out of the hall and the band set up for the dance. I was worried that he might have left before I had time to speak to him. As the dance got under way the Sawada boys glared from the sidelines. They waited for the first few bars of the opening number to finish then they muscled their way through the dancers and climbed onto the stage. I stood at the doorway and watched while a couple of them tried to manhandle the musicians off the stage. The audience shouted at them to stop and let the band keep playing. Then Baba-san appeared and mounted the stairs. Everyone went quiet as he started his sermon. He spoke in Japanese, while members of the crowd tried to drown him out in English, saying he was telling lies and trying to stir up trouble for no reason. When the old man could no longer be heard, Sawada started to yell at the top of his voice so everyone could hear.
‘Why you dancing and singing?’ he shouted. ‘Japanese people die.’
It was more of a plea than anything else. You could tell the kid was hysterical. He kept wheeling around and pointing at the musicians. They’d fought off their attackers and were refusing to move.
‘Why you play American music?’
‘Because it’s better than Jap music,’ somebody in the crowd called out.
Sawada spun around again, searching wildly for whoever had spoken.
‘You die,’ he said. ‘I kill you.’
By then Colonel Hollows had arrived on the scene, flanked by a few extra guards. First he ordered Baba-san off the stage, then he approached Sawada and the other boys and called them to order. They fell into line immediately and Hollows mounted the stage.
‘The evening’s entertainment is over,’ he bellowed. ‘You will return to your huts and prepare for lights out. There will be a special hut inspection at twenty-one hundred hours. Anyone not in their quarters at that time will be arrested and placed in the lock-up on half rations.’
The guards herded the boys out of the hall, Sawada bringing up the rear. He didn’t go quietly. He kept shouting the Japanese battle cry, Banzai! Banzai! Some of the older men in the hall briefly took up the cry, but when the crowd told them to shut up, they shuffled out the doors with everybody else.
I took advantage of the general chaos to hurry over to Stanley’s compound. I wanted to know why he’d left the dance early and deserted the other boys and I had to warn him about the hut inspection. I also had a short speech prepared about the bombing of Nagasaki. The crude triumphalism I heard every day from Bryant and some of the others had made me uncomfortable and I wanted Stanley to know that. In Bryant’s opinion the Americans should just keep dropping A-bombs until every Jap city had been reduced to ashes. Blast the whole fuckin’ country back to the stone age, he said. When someone pointed out that there were allied POWs in camps all over Japan, Bryant was unmoved. You take your fuckin’ chances when you sign up for this job, he said.
I found Stanley standing under the light outside his hut, having a smoke. If he was surprised to see me he didn’t show it, he just kept leaning against the wall and staring at his shoes.
‘What happened to you?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you stay for the dance?’
‘My mother’s sick,’ he said.
I could hear voices from inside the hut. I assumed it was his mother who was crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Stanley didn’t reply.
‘Sawada’s gone to the lock-up,’ I said.
‘Where he belongs,’ said Stanley.
I couldn’t tell whether he cared or not. I watched the way he dangled his cigarette out of the corner of his lips. I hadn’t seen him do that before. I guessed it was another habit he’d picked up from his friend.
‘There’s a hut inspection at nine,’ I said.
‘I know.’
He still hadn’t looked at me. He kept kicking the dirt with the toe of his shoe.
‘They’re saying the Japs will have to surrender now,’ I said.
‘Looks that way,’ said Stanley.
‘Should have given up weeks ago if you ask me. It would have saved so many lives. It would have spared Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’
This b
rought a faintly mocking smile to Stanley’s face.
‘What’s so funny?’ I said. ‘You think I’m wrong?’
Stanley finally looked up at me, still smiling.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re perfectly right.’
His mother continued to cry inside the hut behind us. Stanley didn’t seem to be taking any notice of her, even though her cries sounded desperate.
‘Is she okay?’ I said.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked around to the back of the hut, where the wailing was less audible, and I followed. As soon as I caught up with him he turned to me, took hold of my arm, and slid a small package into the pocket of my jacket.
‘That’s for Hollows,’ he said. ‘Don’t show it to anyone but him.’
I went to take the package out of my pocket but he grabbed hold of my wrist.
‘Leave it,’ he said.
‘Why? What’s in it?’
‘I’ve written you a letter,’ he said. ‘It explains everything.’
It was hard to make out his face in the darkness but I could hear him sniffing from the cold. Underneath his overcoat he was still wearing only his silk gown and his white shorts.
‘What will I tell Hollows?’ I said.
‘Just tell him to read it.’
He finished his smoke and flicked the butt out into the blackness where it gave off a few sparks then dropped out of sight.
‘Can I read it too?’ I said.
‘As long as you don’t blab about it to everyone,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ I said.
‘Make sure you don’t,’ he said.
After a pause he gave me a lopsided smile, as if he was embarrassed.
‘Do you want me to suck your dick?’ he said.
I knew he was trying to make fun of me.
‘Jesus, Stanley,’ I said. ‘I’ve actually taken a risk by coming to see you. I’m not even supposed to be here.’
‘Quieten down,’ he said. ‘You’re shouting.’ He stepped forward so he was right up close to me.