Spit and Polish

by Carl Muller

  She simply stared, her mouth working soundlessly. She really was good-looking, but she didn’t seem to have much wits.

  ‘Where can we bring the bag? Do you live close by?’

  No answer.

  ‘What is your name? Shall we give the bag to the police?’

  ‘Poliss,’ she said. The colour rushed to her face and her eyes widened. ‘Poliss!’ she said again, then waving her hands at him, she scurried away.

  ‘Hey! What about your bag?’

  ‘Poliss!’ she cried, and darted into a small alley.

  Carloboy scratched his head. Things like this were always rather complex. There was Aubrey running around Rangoon sans cap, which, if one considered the Navy, was an offence of the first magnitude, guaranteed to merit fourteen days Number Ten. To cap it all, Carloboy had two caps and felt rather foolish. There was nothing to do but charge on after his madcap friend who could be across the border into Thailand by now.

  Navigation through a maze of side streets brought him to the Rangoon market square and wriggling through, he saw in one corner, the bag-snatcher. He was in animated conversation with a crew of cut -throats. Then, a fair distance away, Aubrey rounded a stall where an old man sold some hideously-painted glass vases while an older woman turned a crusher into which she was feeding sticks of sugarcane.

  Aubrey seemed to recognize the bag-snatcher too. There was no mistaking the man. His sarong was like a sunset gone mad and the handbag was distinctive enough. He raced up, clamped on the man’s shoulder and pointed to the bag.

  Carloboy closed rapidly. It was a high-pitched argument—Aubrey in choice Sinhala and breaking into English and the Burman in nasal Burmese. Both were convinced that the other was mad while a crowd swarmed round and began to give freely to their nastiest thoughts and looks.

  The mob hemmed Carloboy out. Many seemed anxious to contribute to the argument. Carloboy waved both caps, semaphoring wildly.

  Aubrey turned, caught his eye, turned again and caught the bag-snatcher’s eye with a powerful right. Then he tore the bag from the man’s grasp and punched another who pushed his face in to say how.

  Carloboy had to create a diversion. It was nice to know that these people favoured sarongs. He beaned a man who had begun to edge away and swarmed upon another, yanking down his sarong. There is nothing a like a falling sarong to hamper the intents of the best of men. They concentrate on the falling tube of cloth, leaving other bodily parts to be pounded. Carloboy pounded.

  Aubrey was in his element. He had this terrible habit of roaring ‘Hah!’ before delivering a blow and these yells were most demoralizing. Between them, they cut through, met, and while most of the opposition were dragging up their sarongs, decided to make a break for it. They ran madly down the cobbled street.

  Those immediately behind flourished knives, anything that could serve as a club and picked up stones

  ‘Very in-in-inhos-damn-inhospitable,’ Aubrey panted, ‘run!’

  ‘I’m running,’ Carloboy puffed, ‘Come on!’

  Stones whizzed uncomfortably close.

  ‘The whole bloody market is behind.’

  ‘Don’t talk—run!’

  They took a bend, raced up a narrow street and there, a large gate loomed. Beside it was a board. In neat white letters were the blessed words,

  GOOD SHEPHERD CONVENT, RANGOON.

  ‘In there!’ Carloboy shouted.

  They wheeled. Aubrey swung shut the gates and looked curiously at the red gravel drive. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Don’t just stand there. Come on!’

  They pelted up the drive and were soon hidden from the gates behind a tall, boxed hedge. A long building, steps, a broad corridor, evenly-spaced pillars. In the wall, a big door of rose-coloured wood. They checked, looked around. The door was open and from within came the sound of sweet music. They walked in. They were in the chapel.

  In a shaded comer, six nuns round an old bellows organ stopped singing ‘O Sanctissima’. They were rather flustered. The organ died with a sucking gurgle. They knew that twelve eyes were on them and Aubrey, who wasn’t a Christian, stared at them in a manner wholly disconcerting. The nuns stared back. Aubrey shrugged. Men who stared at him he could clobber, but nuns? He felt that life was becoming more difficult by the minute.

  Carloboy grabbed his arm. ‘Come and kneel,’ he hissed.

  ‘You’re mad? What’ll they say?

  ‘They’ were speechless. They simply stood and stared.

  Carloboy hurriedly genuflected, made the sign of the cross. The nuns gave a relieved sigh and a foot was placed on the organ’s bellows pedal. Slowly the music began to issue, and the nuns rustled as they turned to their sheet music.

  ‘Kneel down,’ Carloboy gritted.

  Aubrey knelt heavily, looked warily round him. ‘What the hell is this place?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘Shhh. Pray.’

  ‘Pray?’

  ‘Just be quiet.’

  After a while the singing stopped and the sisters of the Good Shepherd trooped gravely out, Indian file. They did not look at the boys.

  After a few moments, Carloboy said, ‘Let’s go.’

  They rose, went out, looking to right and left. The nuns were nowhere to be seen. Just the long corridor, the screening hedge.

  ‘I think we can get back now. Know the way?’

  ‘But what about them?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those women in the blue things.’

  ‘Don’t worry about them. They will understand—I think.’

  The streets were quiet. They walked away soberly enough, checked the setting sun, used their seamen’s bump of direction and found themselves on the Pagoda road. They returned to ship.

  The quartermaster grinned. ‘What? Went to buy a ladies handbag?’

  Aubrey scorned reply. He wasn’t in the best of moods. Girls, he said, were, what was the word?

  Carloboy smiled. ‘Open the bag. Might find her name, or address even.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell that earlier? Could have seen in the convent.’

  ‘Convent? You buggers went to a convent?’

  ‘Where else to go?’ Carloboy said cryptically, ‘What’s in the bag?’

  ‘Bloody hell! Cigarettes. Whole bag is full of cigarettes!’

  They emptied the bag on deck. About four hundred cigarettes, sealed in wraps of ten. Carloboy broke a pack, sniffed. ‘Funny, smell is like tobacco but the colour is not right.’

  The QM took one, eyed it distastefully. ‘And not in real cigarette packs. Don’t know if its dope or something. Where did you get?’

  Carloboy said quietly, ‘That bloody girl. Must be a carrier. I spoke to her. When I said police, she bolted. These must be what they call joints. That’s how they smoke it. Put marijuana in cigarette wrappers.’

  Aubrey whistled. ‘Let’s light one and see.’

  ‘You’re mad? You’ll get into deep shit. Throw the damn thing in the sea.’

  ‘Then that bugger we hammered . . .’

  ‘Must have known she was coming. Grabbed the bag and ran. And you also ran, and I had to run behind.’

  The QM was very interested. ‘To where?’

  ‘The bloody convent! That’s where. With this!’

  ‘And half of bloody Rangoon chasing!’

  Carloboy stuffed the packs into the bag, then hurled it over the side.

  Aubrey had the last word. ‘I hate convents. All bloody virgins playing organs.’

  He cheered up when he was told that there would be a film show on the boat deck. The vegetable locker was free. The statue was safely ashore. The Vijaya was very much back to its old self again.

  They sailed at dawn. The monsoon practically blew them back as they caught its full fury and the seas boiled around them. The Army and Air Force wept on each other’s shoulders. Great oaths were made between protracted bouts of bringing up whatever they did not eat. After all, they moaned, they were soldiers, not bloody turtles.

  Past Barbe
ryn Light, within sight of Colombo roads, the whitecaps were fewer although the swell was tremendous. The Vijaya wallowed, was shoved mightily, seemed to stand still, then plunged on. The motion caused havoc in many khaki-clad stomachs.

  Mission accomplished, the Vijaya tied up at Kochchikade on December 23. Carloboy asked for leave and got it. All Christians did. At home, he found his father admiring a big fir tree.

  ‘Ah, so you came? How was the trip?’ Sonnaboy von Bloss asked.

  ‘Not bad. From where did you get the tree?’

  Sonnaboy was in his merriest of moods. The shop was doing well. Oh, very well indeed. He had stocked lots of Christmas goodies and even cylindrical boxes of crackers that were guaranteed to burst every eardrum for miles. They were venomous triangular crackers with long wicks which gave the man who lit them the opportunity to run for the nearest wall and scale it before the cracker exploded. Sonnaboy said he had tried out a few. The next-door dog had gone crazy. It broke loose, ran to the canal, swam to the other side and then bit a man who was minding his own business. ‘Battas they are called. Like to try one? Your mother dropped the pot of hot water in the kitchen when I threw one near the bloody window.’

  Carloboy grinned. He emptied his bag. NAAFI whisky, cigarettes, wine. He had gone to the Fort for little gifts for his brothers and sisters. Home for Christmas. He didn’t realize how tired he was until he sagged into a chair, sipping whisky with his father.

  52

  History—Hiroshima and Nagasaki

  At 8.15 on the morning of August 6, 1945, men, women and children ran screaming into rivers in Hiroshima, the skin hanging off their bones much like tattered kimonos. In midair, birds burst into flames.

  Ringing the islands of Japan, the American troops preparing for Operation Downfall, danced between the rows of their tents, fred into the air, cheered and whooped and yelled themselves hoarse. They drank all the beer they could in a mad celebration. Some sat to weep in relief and joy. They were going to live. There would be no invasion, no ‘20,000 soldiers dead’, as the planners had made allowance for.

  What were they celebrating? Were they celebrating the instant death of about 70,000 civilians—men, women and children of Hiroshima? Months later, 130,000 more would die to radiation poisoning and burns.

  They were celebrating the dropping of the first atom bomb over Hiroshima; Truman’s most terrible bomb in the history of the world.

  Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was the pilot of the B-29 Enola Gay. His co-pilot at his shoulder kept thumping him as they climbed away after dropping their terrible capsule. ‘Look at that!’ he kept exclaiming, just look at that!’

  A bright light had filled the plane making everything on the instrument panels glow like antimony. They could not see their target. All they could see with eyes unbelieving, was a huge cloud, boiling up, spreading like a massive flower. Belolo the city, as one described it, was nothing but a cauldron of boiling oil. What no one knew was that Emperor Hirohito had already decided to surrender. This decsion had been made before the devastation of Hiroshima.

  Truman was giddy wth happiness. ‘This is the greatest thing in history,’ he said. American newspaper headlines screamed: THANK GOD FOR THE ATOMIC BOMB. And Truman later told reporters, much later, ‘I didn’t have any doubts at the time.’ In 1956 he said, ‘Why, I’d do it again.’ And in 1965, repeated that he would not hesitate to use the A-bomb.

  In Newsweek of July 24, 1995, we have the account of a young ensign, Osborne Elliott, who was on board the heavy cruiser Boston. He was steaming towards the coast of Japan with the US Third Fleet, a part of Operation Downfall.

  Then came the news of the incineration of Hiroshima. Osborne said later how his ship ‘erupted with whoops and shouts of joy’. There was no feeling of pity even when, not many weeks later, he and some other officers toured the city. They could not feel pity. Remorse, maybe, but not pity. In his view, the atom bomb had saved many lives—‘Quite possibly including our own.’

  Standing in the middle of Hiroshima he found nothing rising above the level of his knees, ‘except for the shell of a building or the grotesque skeleton of a tree . . .’

  Everything was oxidized by the heat beyond recognition. With gratitude and acknowledgement to Newsweek, the writer quotes Elliott:

  How anybody was left alive, I do not know. But here and there, women and children were sittng on the rubble that was once their homes. We didn’t see many wounded—just a few on crutches or with bandages on their heads. Many people had sores on their faces. We stared at them and they gazed blanky back at us.

  But why the follow on? Indeed, the Americans were all for it. Groves was most eager to show what he could do. The second atom bomb, an implosion type missile was exploded over the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the Far East. It killed 70,000 people including many Allied P-O-W’s held prisoner in Nagasaki.

  Maybe there are some feelings of shame and remorse on both sides now. As the gruesome details of Hiroshima and Nagasaki emerged there was a queasiness among the American public. This is evident in the number of new books now being written about the end of World War II. And no, the world will also not forget the infamous Nanking massacre, the terrible Bataan death march, Japan’s vicious medical experiments on Allied prisoners. Much barbarity was inflicted by Japan on her neighbours. There were the ‘normal’ crimes of a ‘normal’ nation fighting a ‘normal’ war: colonization, killing of civilians, ill treatment of prisoners. But the Tokyo War Crimes trials showed much worse.

  It’s all over now, but Japan still struggles to confront her wartime past.

  Somehow, it will not go away.

  53

  Of an end to a Beginning and a Sailor’s Diary and the Best That’s Left Unsaid

  Home. Chapter one began at home, and not long ago, we brought Carloboy home. Home for Christmas. And there, the writer wishes to leave him. This, many will say is but the beginning, and if so, it is time to bring this beginning to an end. Carloboy spent a merry Christmas indeed, and a boozy Christmas evening at Eardley’s where he tried hard to remember the name of the Burmese girl—the only one, he said, who washed and powdered his prick.

  ‘Mylord, I think . . .’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘I don’t know, men. Sounded something like that.’

  ‘What? She took one look at you and said “My Lord”?’ Eardley guffawed. They laughed heartily. They had both relished the ‘Oh brother’ story and chortled some more.

  ‘You thought I’m like Pedro?’ Carloboy asked.

  It was a nice story, actually. Seems there was this Mexican boy named Pedro who married Juanita of the smouldering eyes and who walked as though her tail was on fire. But early the next morning a worried Pedro was beating on the padre’s door.

  ‘Padre Juan, Padre Juan, wake op! I theenk I have made terrible meestake!’

  The padre tried to calm the agitated Pedro. ‘Why Pedro, what ees the matter? Happy you should be, with your new wife, no?’

  ‘But padre, I sure I marry my seester!’

  The padre stepped back amazed. ‘Your seester? How this can be? Is it that so early you drink the cactus juice?’

  ‘No, no, padre. You must help me, I marry my seester!’

  ‘Nonsense. You are taking the loco weed, my poor Pedro. I know Juanita. Her family. Her oncle on the other side of the mesa. All good people when not dreenking. How you can say like this? You no marry your seester. What seester? You no have seester.’

  Pedro frowned. ‘Then padre, last night when I ondress to go to bed . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes?’

  ‘Why, she look at me. Look at me in the place . . . you know, padre?’

  ‘Yes, yes?’

  ‘So why she look and say oh brother?’

  It certainly was a very liquid evening and Carloboy slept late and rose and yawned hugely and went to the ‘shop’ where his father was addressing a sack of New Year cards to people who had sent him Christmas cards.

  ‘Buggers you send
cards to never reply,’ Sonnaboy grumbled, ‘and buggers you never think of send cards and you have to wish them back.’

  It was all too complicated, so he drifted to the kitchen for breakfast which was a stack of leftovers from the 25th night celebrations. His mother was washing a stack of tumblers.

  Being the season to be jolly, we will leave him full of the Christmas spirit. The writer could take him back to the Vijaya but rather, if only to hint at the best that is left unsaid, we could skip a few years and take a peek at Carloboy’s diary. Many dramatic entries, to be sure, and most enigmatic.

  Item. Minesweeping exercises in Bombay. And the startling information about being drunk and disorderly in the Eros Cinema and a night in the Bombay jail. He makes a note about the largest cockroaches in the world.

  Item. East African cruise. Some pithy remarks about a French girl in Seychelles and how he had used his raincoat to cover them for the sake of decency until a policeman had become over-inquisitive. Note of a cracked rib in Mombasa. The African girl had no idea of her crushing powers when having her orgasm. Illuminating details about the red light district of Crater, in Aden and the smell of cloves when approaching Zanzibar.

  Item. Signals course and examination on INS Vendrurthi, Indian Navy shore sation in Cochin. Dhal and bread for breakfast, bread and dhal for supper, he writes. Also falling into a disused well and wearing a gas mask before being hauled out. Mention of an angry cobra in the old brickwork, four feet over his head.

  Item. Far East cruise. Many entries here. Basket girls of Hong Kong and much about Banda Street, Singapore and playing piano at a nightclub and HMS Terror and tidal wave at Banjerinasin in South Borneo. Some high jinks on a rubber estate too.

  Item. Going with Eardley to the Good Shepherd Convent in Hendala, Sri Lanka. Meeting Karina, the girl he is determined to marry.

  Item. Drafted to HMCyS Rangalla as a signals instructor. Some strange entries to be sure. Cobras in waste paper baskets and giving his flannel trousers to a viper. One needs to know more about this, to be sure.