He looked blankly through his thick-lensed spectacles and asked, ‘What you say?’
‘How much? Ikura desu ka?’
‘Oh, yes. You got something? You got ring?’
‘Yes.’
‘I get you milk for one ring. Gold?’
‘No, silver.’
‘No milk.’
It was useless to argue with him.
The Australian returned to the barrack to talk with Sandingham.
‘No luck. Sold out,’ he reported. ‘But I’ll slip out later on and see if one of the other stores has had a delivery of charity. I’ll let you know what happens.’
‘Thank you,’ Sandingham said weakly. His head spun.
‘No need. We gotta muck in together.’
Later, the Australian saw one of the other interpreters walking through the camp and called to him. Kyoshi Watanabe had been a Lutheran minister before the war claimed him for its own religion, its own morbid theologies and dogma. He was kind to the prisoners when his superiors were not watching and he thought he could get away with it.
His was the nastiest dilemma of them all. He favoured his country yet loved his God. He dared not speak out or refuse military service for the sake of his kin, yet he abhorred the indignity and cruelty he was having to condone or often to enforce upon his fellow creatures. Prayer had not worked: no divine solution had come to him. He was therefore left to be human in his own way, as often as he could.
‘Can you get me some milk, pastor?’
He knew that to address the officer in such a way struck hard into that personal dilemma. Or at least, he hoped it did.
The interpreter’s smooth, blanched face peered back at him from the shadow cast by the barrack-hut wall.
‘Yes. I can. How much do you want? I can’t get a lot.’
‘A pint. And a few eggs? I’ve nothing left but a silver ring but you’re welcome to that.’
‘There’s no need to pay me. I see what I can do for you. Come here after tenko this evening. As soon as you are dismissed.’
The shadows were much longer and deeper when he returned. The Japanese was nowhere in sight. Beside a downpipe from the roof guttering was a small package wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. He hurried it into the hut. It contained a small medicine bottle full of milk, two eggs, a third of an apple and a tiny and dried raw fish.
He gave the eggs and fish to the first medical orderly he saw for him to smuggle into the sick bay. Sandingham drank the milk as he listened to the tale of its delivery. The apple pips stuck in the gaps between his teeth, which were increasing in width as the weeks passed.
* * *
‘Priorities. Get out the copper wiring. That’s the first thing, and it’s vital. And the dynamo. Then see if you can get a bulb or two from the lamps, if they’re still there. After that, any other bits – lead from the battery, for example. You can pour the acid out. Don’t need that.’
Over the space of a fortnight the Baby Austin was systematically stripped. The guards who stood over them as they worked in what was laughingly called the ‘vegetable patch’ did not notice as the various parts disappeared. Eventually all that was left was the chassis and wheels which were, with Panama Pete’s permission, adapted into a trolley that could be pulled to and fro, carrying buckets of night soil for fertiliser, meagre vegetable produce – and contraband. The copper wiring went into the entrails of the radio that was kept hidden in a false garden plot in the camp. No one who had built the car would ever have guessed that it would one day be reconstructed as a receiving set and the only source of life-supporting news from the BBC to six hundred men trapped and dying in a prison camp of their own making.
Indeed, as Sandingham pointed out when he delivered the speedometer, the garden had provided bugger-all by way of sustenance for the body, but what it had given to feed the soul was vast.
* * *
Number 177 suddenly appeared in the camp one day. He was marched in with a group of Chinese labourers who were to build a new prison building. The prisoners were either too weak or not to be trusted with the tools that went with such a task. Within the hour, Francis 177 had sought out Sandingham and accosted him in the barrack.
‘What you need?’
‘Everything, Francis. Food, news, medicines and drugs, tools. Guns.’ The joke was appreciated and Number 177 chuckled.
‘Got money or something?’
‘Nothing. All I have left is this.’
From a hollowed-out cavity in the upright support of his bunk, Sandingham produced the silver nail buffer he had taken from the abandoned flat that last time he’d been with Bob. He had sworn he’d never part with it, but that was before the unimaginable had become reality.
‘I can get you something for this. But not much. Not much silver in this.’
‘But it is English silver, not Chinese silver.’
Already, Sandingham was an authority on precious metals – copper from vehicles, lead from batteries – and he knew that Chinese silver had a high proportion of tin in it. And red gold was preferred to yellow gold.
‘I see. Also you tell you’ commander I can take message to Number 13. I come in every day for this week. For sure. Okay?’
Sandingham agreed and Francis 177 took the nail buffer. The next day he received two ounces of sulphur, three constipation pills and seven dried mushrooms which were chopped up finely and added to the evening’s usual soup of rice, carrot- and turnip-tops and chrysanthemum leaves. The fungi gave a good flavour to the soup and, being so finely cut, everyone had a share of them; the guards didn’t see that there was a luxury item in the ingredients.
* * *
‘White Pig’s made the headlines again.’
It was dark in the naval officers’ hut towards the north end of the camp but on the table there stood a flickering lamp which provided just sufficient light by which to read or write.
On the front page of the Hong Kong News was a photograph of Tokunaga. Under it was a paragraph in which Tokunaga stated unequivocally that all prisoners-of-war in Hong Kong were now happy with their lot and grateful to be in the benevolent and honourable hands of the Imperial Japanese Army. He pointed out that fewer escapes were now happening – none for the past nine weeks, in fact – and this showed prisoners were more ready to remain safely in captivity. What was more, he claimed, illness that had been present was now dying out.
‘For “present”, read “rampant”,’ said Tom Pedrick, not looking up from his pencil. ‘And if it is dying out it’s because the carriers and victims are.’
‘When this war’s over,’ commented a lieutenant-commander from the bottom bunk, where he reclined wearing a sarong-like skirt over his fandushi, ‘Tokunaga and his cronies are going to get boiled in oil.’
‘With luck, their own,’ a third voice added.
The Hong Kong News was a paper printed and published by the Japanese for the prisoners and the local population. It carried news of the war, obviously slanted, and was a source of ribaldry and depression in equal doses. The radio counteracted its effects. After it had been read, it was useful in the latrines, although the ink was of inferior quality and often besmirched buttocks and hands. ‘Black-arse’, they called it.
A light draught caused the flame to dance and a figure in the gloom leaned over to cup it with his hands. If it were extinguished, not having any matches, they’d not be able to relight it until morning.
‘Thanks, Steve. It’s hell writing by this pathetic flame. Dim as a bloody NAAFI candle.’
‘What are you going to do with that?’
‘Bury it in a minute. What the hell do you think I’m going to do with it?’
‘I mean in the long term.’
Pedrick looked up. The guttering flame added drama not only to his gaunt face but also to his words.
‘If I live, it’ll be a thing to read in the future, when I hit bad times. Nothing’ll be this bad again. If I die, it’ll be a testimony the bastards’ll get their come-uppance by. And i
t’ll show what we had to put up with. A bit of revenge and a bit of glory for us poor saps who hung too well on to the thread of living.’
‘If that diary gets found, you’ll be for the high jump.’
Putting down the stub of pencil, Pedrick shrugged.
* * *
He was neatly dressed in a grey tropical suit. His hands were clean. His hair was barber-cut and his shirt was ironed. The crease in his trousers was sharp except where the knee had pushed it out. He was clean-shaven and his sunglasses were unchipped. Upon his head was a panama hat. He wore a plain tie and his shoes were tightly laced in a bow knot. He carried a small briefcase and was walking with Tokunaga, Slap-Happy, several other top-brass Japanese officers and a Chinese clerk. His handshake was firm.
‘Who is he?’ whispered Sandingham.
The prisoners were standing round in groups, their work disregarded. The guards made no move to punch or slap them into activity.
‘The barracks are clean, airy and sanitary,’ Slap-Happy was saying, translating Tokunaga’s words. ‘The sick bay is well stocked with medicines – as well as our own, though you will understand that that is not all that we would want it to be.’
‘He might be the local Red Cross representative,’ explained Tom.
‘Ask him where the Red Cross parcels are.’
‘That’s for the senior officer to do. I don’t think we should say anything. The Japs’ll pick it up and we’ll be fucked if we speak the wrong words.’
‘Food is plain, but good.’ Slap-Happy was proferring a typed sheet folded into three. ‘Colonel Tokunaga asks you to take this list of the day’s foodstuffs as issued for the prisoners, for you to send with your report to Switzerland. As you will see, there is plenty.’
The party stopped by a group of internees. The Red Cross official spoke to the prisoner nearest to him.
‘How is your health?’
His words were in impeccable English with a hardly noticeable French intonation.
‘I’m fine, thank you. By and large. Some boils on my skin have cleared up.’
The man twisted his arm to show the inner, softer skin where red weals indicated recent infection. Some boils were still present. They were small by comparison with those vanished, but they oozed a little pus; the prisoner had been squeezing them to get them to weep on the off-chance that he might get an opportunity to show them.
As they spoke, Slap-Happy quietly translated every word into Japanese for Tokunaga and his staff.
‘And your clothing?’
‘We get by. We do need a few more items or more needles and thread, but we make do, just about.’
‘How is your food?’
‘Plain,’ echoed the officer, wisely.
They walked on. As the representative passed by them, Pedrick made an obvious show of picking up a cigarette butt that he had deliberately dropped and putting it in his pocket.
The inspection party congregated around the 1938 Ford provided by the Kempetai as the Red Cross man’s transport. Just then a plaintive voice from the back of the crowd of gathered prisoners shouted out. It was high-pitched and carried clearly in the hot afternoon air.
‘Monsieur!’ it called. ‘Monsieur! Nous mourons de faim. Nous mourons de faim.’
Slap-Happy looked dazed. Tokunaga’s face blackened. He asked what was being shouted. The interpreter said he didn’t know. It wasn’t English. Nor was the Red Cross visitor: he was Swiss. Tokunaga put two and two together.
The Ford drove off and the French-speaking officer was singled out by the guards and half-dragged, half-frog-marched away by Slap-Happy. Sandingham did not see him again.
* * *
In a light and edgy sleep he threshed and squirmed, waking twice in the early hours, a vagrant ghost of a worry circling in the outer reaches of his dreams.
The first time it was pitch dark and he could hear Shagrue, a captain in the Ordnance Corps, struggling to catch his breath in the humid cavern of the night. He was wheezing and his throat bubbled like a man gargling or preparing to hawk. Two of his friends stood by the sick man’s bunk, one holding his hand and the other wiping his brow, from time to time, with what Sandingham thought must be the last surviving fragment of the academic gown. When he was lucid, Shagrue talked in a halting voice of his father’s post office in a Herefordshire village. The name of the place was half-Welsh and half-English; it sounded like a mythical city from the Norse sagas as it slipped and stuttered off his tongue.
The second time he came to his senses, Sandingham heard first the shiftless murmur of men sleeping, living in other lives and other places. A few grunted in the love-making they were engaged upon with their wives, or lovers, or mistresses. One was talking softly, but the words were incomprehensible. Another was scratching himself hard in his sleep, the rake of his blunt nails rasping on the dessicated skin of his thigh. A mosquito whined in its typically lonely fashion in the dark over Sandingham’s head.
He could not hear Shagrue clinging to the air and guessed that he was dead. In the morning, this was confirmed. His friends carried his body out before most of the barracks had escaped from sleep.
‘Diphtheria,’ Pedrick said matter-of-factly. ‘What else? First the snuffles and a sore throat. Then the headaches and the grey membrane in the throat. Then death. There’s a lot of it in the other camps. The Indians have it badly in Ma Tau Chung. That’s not far away. Couple of hundred yards. Probably carry on the wind that short distance. Who’s to know?’
They had just been dismissed from tenko and were making their way towards the kitchens, both picked for that duty roster. There was no differentiation between one cook team and the next, and there was no demand for even the simplest of culinary expertise. There is only one way to cook rice and scanty vegetables when the only equipment is a series of Chinese cooking vats and water.
‘He’s not our first, of course,’ continued Pedrick. ‘Allen died of it last week and there are two others down with it. Another possible four. By the end of the month, it’ll have reached epidemic proportions.’
‘Why don’t the Nips act? They’ll catch it as readily as we do. Isn’t there a cure?’
‘Not a certain cure. I’ve heard rumour that boils can be cleared up by eating mouldy bread, but I’m not so sure. Maybe that would do the trick. That piece of information came in with a message passed from another camp. God knows which one. It seems there are more camps than we at first realised.’
‘There must be something, though.’
‘There is, Joe.’ Pedrick’s short laugh announced the breaking out of his ironical wittiness. ‘It’s called a decent diet and preventative medicine. Rump steak could do as either, in my case.’
Sandingham arched his eyebrows in a show of resignation, before adding, ‘With tomatoes, fried mushrooms and croquette potatoes.’
‘At least the tomatoes. Grilled.’
Like a schoolboy keeping cave at a classroom door, Tom looked around him to ensure no one was within easy earshot.
‘I’ve heard that there is food about, too. And drugs. It’s just that we don’t get it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve been told of a bloke who worked for the China Light and Power Company before the war. Electrical installations – mostly factories and the like. Apparently, he was called in with a former member of his Chinese staff to look at the wiring in Tokunaga’s quarters. When they got…’
‘Morning, youse guys!’
Panama Pete had come marching briskly around the corner of the barrack hut ahead of them. He had in tow two Japanese privates in fatigues, their torsos bare and their pantaloon trousers tied under their knees with draw-tapes. On their heads were the regulation-issue sun helmets.
The prisoners stood to attention, then bowed as low as they could from the waist as Panama Pete walked by. The bending hurt Sandingham’s stomach muscles. He had been getting the cramps in them of late. When they assessed that the interpreter was out of sight, they straightened up and walked on, t
alking more quietly.
‘… got into the place, they found White Pig had a Chinese tart installed, running the servants and no doubt serving the master’s desires. They inspected the wiring and were asked to make repairs to a big American refrigerator that ‘no longer he mek ice’. Ice! Jesus! – what I’d give for a block of that.’
The sun was over the hills and the heat of the day was rising into the eighties.
‘Trouble is, I’ve nothing to give.’
They mockingly laughed at each other.
‘And?’
‘The Chinese tart seemed to get guilty thoughts, seeing her fellow locals slaving for the Japs alongside the European. They’re still sure out there that the English’ll return one day and thrash the shit out of the Nips. That’ll also mean them getting those who turn collaborator and side with the enemy. So, to make amends – an insurance for the day of victory – she gave them each an ounce of coffee in a twist of paper.’
The two men entered the kitchens. Already, some other ranks were lighting the fires under the cauldrons. Three officers were coming in and out with buckets of water while another cleaned dishes with the wettened ashes of the extinguished fires. The morning bread ration had been given out before tenko.
‘Coffee!’
‘The CLP man asked her how she got it. The guard was out having a leak or something. She took them into a former servant’s quarters room at the back of the pantry. Piled high with Red Cross parcels. Unopened, for the best part. Some breached, hence the coffee.’
A huge woven basket was carried in. Sandingham peered inside it to see what the contents were, though it was plain they would not have changed since the day before. Assorted greenery. Outer leaves from cabbages, turnip tops, nondescript leaves of a glossy, almost evergreen hue, peelings from other vegetables, particularly carrots. An onion.
The onion was unique. He knew that. There was only ever the one and it was always shoved down the side of the basket, about a foot in. He took the vegetable out, split it apart along the cut with his fingers and extracted the tight curl of paper. Then he tossed the two halves of the onion back into the basket.
‘Coffee!’ he repeated. ‘Bugger me!’
Hiroshima Joe Page 19