“Feel up to some more flying today, Con?” the Colonel half turned in his seat.
“As you say,” Con replied impassively. He was staring at the intense confused activity of the airfield; the planes loading and unloading; the vehicles racing around the parked planes like ants around an ant hill; the voices of the scurrying men drowned beneath the deafening roar of the big plane engines.
The Colonel was eyeing Con thoroughly; from the green jungle boots and khaki pants to the old brown cashmere sweater and bush hat, then at the neatly trimmed goatee, and the hard brown eyes deepset under the bushy brows.
My God! the Colonel turned forward in his seat. Was it possible that a man could change so much in six months that he didn’t look the same. Certainly you didn’t expect a man to act the same, not after six months behind the lines. You expected him to thin out, to harden up. But it wasn’t just that.
Part of it was in his eyes, the Colonel decided. Beneath the cold uncalculating exterior there was a grave and profound softness that you would never anticipate in a young man’s eyes. Never in his life had the Colonel seen eyes quite like Con’s that morning. And still, really, there was much more than just the eyes that had changed. His whole manner, his personality was that of a stranger, the Colonel thought.
The jeep raced under the wing of a DC-3 and Ringa jumped out and threw Con’s gear aboard. Con followed the Colonel out of the jeep and they stood by the ladder of the plane.
“Con, why don’t you give Ringa your grenades and carbine,” the Colonel suggested. “He can drop them at the headquarters. You won’t need them where we’re going,” Colonel Pearson half-smiled, wondering just how in the hell he would talk to Con now.
Unhesitatingly Con peeled a grenade off his cartridge belt. He held it in his hand for a moment, then as Ringa was about to step forward he tossed the grenade to him. Ringa juggled it for an instant as the Colonel braced himself, then he grasped it, put it quickly in his jacket pocket, and grinned at Con as if to say, “Fire when ready, Gridley.” Rapidly Con threw him three more grenades, then threw him the carbine. Con smiled at Ringa and turned slightly to the attentive Colonel and winked, then walked toward the young driver.
Jesus Christ, the Colonel spoke half to himself. He had thrown those grenades around like they were softballs. And that kid driver of his had really stood up to it. What next? Last night I got my ass eaten out by the Airforce because Danny De Mortimer flying in from his camp yesterday makes the pilot come in low over the Burma Road so he can strafe the Jap positions with his Thompson gun.
That made the Colonel remember how he and Danny had sat talking in the jeep before Danny left for Calcutta, while Ringa had stood smoking, his foot on the front fender. They were talking about the supply problem when Danny had stopped, hesitated, and touched his monocle, staring through the windshield, then turned his good eye to him piercingly, as only Danny’s lone eye could pierce.
“I want that man,” Danny had said.
“Who?” The Colonel hadn’t known what he was talking about.
“Your driver, of course.” Danny had said fixedly.
“Ringa,” the Colonel said. “He’s only a baby-faced kid.”
“He may be only a kid to you, old man. But I need him.” Danny had spoken with an urgency.
“But we’re training men at base to send …”
“You said if there was anything you could do,” Danny had interrupted. “Remember, Colonel?” And the Colonel had agreed.
What was it in Ringa that Danny had perceived. What was it that had attracted Con, the Colonel wondered, seeing Ringa and Con talking familiarily now. The plane’s engine revved. The Colonel looked forward to the nose of the plane as the pilot signalled out the window.
“Get aboard, Con,” the Colonel motioned.
Con climbed the ladder and the Colonel followed. Immediately an airforce corporal came aft and slammed the door shut, the big plane moved, and in a few minutes they were airborne.
“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” the Colonel asked.
“Wherever you say, Colonel,” Con glanced around the empty plane. The Colonel must be getting to be a pretty big boy. No bucket seats in this job. He ran his hand over the heavy blue frieze of the upholstered chair. “I shouldn’t stay out too long, though.”
“You’ll get back soon enough,” the Colonel said. What kind of guys are these? What were they becoming? Danny had said the same thing. Six months fighting behind the lines and the first thing they want to know is when can they get back. “We’re stopping in Calcutta for a day or two. Then to the Gwalior Province in Central India for conferences. We’re picking up a passenger in Calcutta.”
“That’s fine,” Con said sullenly, taking his cigarettes from his breast pocket. He offered the Colonel a Chesterfield. “They’re fresh.”
The Colonel took one and held his lighter for Con.
“Danny’s the passenger,” the Colonel spoke softly, inhaling.
“When did he come out?” Con asked in a new voice. “How is he?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” the Colonel said casually. “Lost a lot of weight like you. But fine. He’s anxious to see you.”
“God, it will be good to see him,” Con stroked his goatee, looking out the window. They were flying through a solid grey wall of a cloud, the plane bouncing, up and up, then suddenly they came out of the mist into the bright sunshine, and in the north Con saw the tops of faraway mountains, then far below a billowy grey and white sea of clouds, as they continued to make altitude.
“Who did you leave in charge?” the Colonel asked.
“Niven,” Con said. This ought to stir things up, he thought.
“The young radio operator?” the Colonel asked incredulously, twisting his huge frame sideways in the seat.
“Now, Ray, you wouldn’t hold his age against him, would you?” He’d had about enough of this Colonel shit. If the Colonel didn’t want him to call him Ray, he’d soon say so.
The Colonel pondered a moment. “How many men have you recruited in the last month?” he asked. “I noticed your drops are getting bigger.”
“About fifty new men, Ray,” Con replied.
“What’s your strength?” the Colonel asked.
“Around four hundred. Give or take a few.”
“Don’t you know exactly?”
“Why should I?” Con said a little bitterly.
“Well supposing one is missing?”
“They’re missing, that’s all. I haven’t got a contract with those guys. If they get tired of fighting they can leave anytime,” Con hesitated, then smiled. “I haven’t had a man go yet, Ray,” There was a faint note of pride in his voice.
“There’s an American outfit training in India, Con,” the Colonel waited for the reaction. Con stared at him waiting. “The Chindits are there, too.”
“Wingate?”
“Yes. We’ll be seeing the General within the next couple of days.”
“He’s some man; a great man,” Con said thoughtfully. “Sad but great. I guess there isn’t a man alive today that knows more about the kind of work that we’re doing than Wingate. I’ve got a lot to ask him. Things that are important to all of us, I believe.”
The plane dipped smoothly to the left as the pilot altered his course. They talked about tactics for a while, then about the supply problem, then the Colonel yawned and went forward to the next seats and pulled a blanket over himself and slept. Con sat thinking about his Kachins, and the hills, and all that had happened. Vividly he recalled that night he and Nautaung had looked at the magic mountain and all the time he was mentally urging the plane on, anxious to see Danny, to get out of this trap of a thing that had closed him in. After a while he slept.
“Sir. Sir. Wake up,” the airforce corporal was shaking Con. “We’re circling Dum Dum, sir.”
After the engines had sputtered to a stop the pilot came up to the Colonel and saluted: “What time will we be leaving tomorrow, sir?”
“I’ll
contact you,” the Colonel returned the salute.
Con began to laugh uproariously.
“What’s so funny?” the Colonel asked as they stepped from the plane into the hot early afternoon sun.
“If you knew how goddamn silly that pilot looked saluting you in that empty plane,” Con said still laughing as they walked towards the administration building.
The main building was a maze of activity. Con saw cartoon style American pilots with caps jauntily set, strolling cockily. Negro supply-men and drivers laughing whitely. Soldiers and civilians of every race, creed, and color standing about in small groups or singly waiting transportation in and out: Punjabs big and bearded, colorfully turbaned; South Africans blacker than American negroes and cleaner, more composed; Chinese, blank and stupid faced, illiterate, lost in the muddle; Gurkhas, their curved Kukris knives held by their sides, short, stout, and proud; English, unassuming, jolly, let’s get on with it, lads; Indians hiding beneath a smug, superior aloofness; Scotchmen, red kilts, blue kilts, and above it all the loudspeaker blared. In a dozen languages it blared as the doors opened and shut, and other races walked in and other creeds walked out, the endless, futile, procession of men at war.
Then Con saw fine brown legs under a blue Red Cross skirt, the well arched feet in high heels. The legs turned and started left, paused, then stood staring back at him.
“Con. Con, old boy,” a voice from behind said.
Con turned. “Danny,” he shouted.
The Colonel saw the white flash of a smile beneath the goatee, then Danny and Con had embraced in the center of the depot.
“Did you ever drop it off?” Danny put his hands on Con’s shoulders.
“You’re pretty thin yourself,” Con was grinning.
“Crapped it off. I did have the shits rather bad, you know.”
At the word shits the Colonel saw the Red Cross girl flip her head defiantly, staring first very prissily at Danny and Con, then curiously. Briefly the Colonel glanced around the room and noticed that almost everyone was staring at them. No wonder, he thought. Danny, hatless, head shaven and monocled, Con, tall, goateed, jungle filthy, with the three foot long peacock feather in his bush hat. Obviously an American, the Colonel thought objectively, that somehow certainly did not look American, and an Englishman that looked so typically, idiotically English that he really didn’t look very English anymore.
“The Colonel says you’ve been putting on a dashing show,” Danny was saying.
“Corking,” Con mimicked. “But nothing like yours.”
“Good fun,” Danny said. “You look different, Con,” Danny spoke seriously. “And it’s a good difference. I’m glad.”
“I’ve learned an awful lot from those people.”
“They’re an unusual race, Con.”
“You know how I feel then.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s right.”
“The best thing that ever happened to you,” Danny put his hand to his monocle. “Let’s move on. We’ll get you cleaned up, then we can get good and pissed, you know. And really talk things over.”
“Pissed, you know,” Con repeated, kiddingly. “That’s fine by me. Lead the way.”
They moved over to Colonel Pearson, and the Colonel and Danny shook hands and chatted briefly.
“Danny,” the Colonel said, “you take Con in your command car,” the Colonel turned to Con. “Anything you want, Con, ask for it. We’ve a big house leased here in Calcutta. There’s a Major Lawson here. He’ll take good care of you.”
They got into the command car and started for the city. The top was down and the early afternoon sun was bright and pleasantly warm. They talked idly about the hills and the people of the hills, the war, and the forthcoming conferences. And as they drove out of the countryside of burning cowdung and dust and banyan trees, approaching the city, they grew silent, letting their conversation trail off slowly like a final note of music.
Into the suburbs the command car raced, the intrinsic musty odors welling up, the heavy reproachful odor of the Hoogly river, branch of the Sacred Ganges, the river that spilled into the Bay of Bengal and the river sacred to this ancient capital of the Hindus. Calcutta, City of the Black Hole, city of two million illiterates and one hundred thousand licensed whores, home of the Temple of the God Kali, land of the sacred cow.
What was there about this city, Con wondered. At times she smelled no different from Bombay, her buildings were not as fine as Rangoon’s, and she had accumulated no more white trash than any other port in the Orient.
Yet the city breathed differently. She had a toxic, insidious way about her, like a great evil whore; painted, primitive, hypnotic, the Whore of Whores. Panting wantonly, watching ominously, like the cold red death’s head of a vulture perched in a tree, Con thought, and just then they passed a group of the ugly, filthy birds picking and scrapping over a carcass on the side of the road. Yes, he decided, that was what she was like.
Now they were in the suburbs, the graceful women in the brightly colored saris carrying urns and bundled clothes balanced on their heads, the brown naked children playing in the dust and mud, as the Indian driver drove with complete abandon, leaning hard on the horn. They passed a bazaar hearing the scratchy wail of a Hindu phonograph, then over a small arched bridge, and Danny told the driver in curt Hindustani to slow. Then he leaned across Con pointing, to where standing naked on a corner was an old man, bearded, scrawny, caked with mud and ash, with a rusty nail six inches long and almost as round as a railroad spike driven through the center of his penis, and it dangled almost to his knees from the steel weight.
“They say he’s had it in him for eighteen years,” Danny said staidly. “I do hope the sacrifice will get him whatever he wants.”
“Jesus, Danny,” Con said mawkishly. “You shouldn’t show me things like that. You know I got a castration complex. God,” Con smiled half-sourly. “I’ll probably dream about that the rest of my life.”
Down the crowded streets they went, horn blaring and vividly clad natives scattering, slowing only for the sacred cows. Past a street car with Indians hanging on its sides and back and front, and through the downtown, past Picadilly Circus and the Grand Hotel, out Chowringee Avenue, past the fashionable Clubs, and the enormous white and pink stucco estates with their manicured lawns and flowerbeds and latticed iron fences, past the racecourse, left one block off Chowringee and up to the Colonel’s Calucutta headquarters.
Con lolled in the bathtub while nipping on a double scotch, and Danny sat in a wicker chair chatting with him. After his hour long bath the young American shaved the sides of his face, then brushed and trimmed his goatee. He found clean khakis with insignia all laid out for him. He dressed carefully, removed the peacock feather from his bush hat, set the hat on the back of his head, and they went down the stairs and out to the waiting command car heading for Firpo’s restaurant.
“What are you going to eat?” Danny asked. They were back on Chowringee driving fast, feeling the beginning of the stifling heat that came with every Calcutta sunset.
“I’m not going to eat for the longest time,” Con said. “I’m going to drink and drink, nice and slow, and mull that menu over.”
“Right. I’ll go along with that. We’ll drink ourselves to a tortured hunger.”
“Look at the sky, Danny. Where the sun is going down. It’s like the blue reflected from shiny black metal. Metallic blue.”
“That’s just the color of it, isn’t it,” Danny said. “And the sun is like a liquid red iron.”
“It is at that,” Con’s voice trailed away. That’s funny, Con thought. Neither of us have seen a city in almost three-quarters of a year, and now we both sit looking out over it back to where we’ve been.
They rode in silence and pulled up in front of the green awning. Then walked up the long sloping stairs of the restaurant, and paused on the middle landing hearing the string music as it floated down to them.
“What’s that tune, Danny?�
��
“I don’t recall. It sounds like Offenbach,” Danny said.
They continued up the stairs and stopped on the oriental carpet of the entranceway looking at the big, high ceilinged room with its great crystal chandelier, over to the black and white marble bar on the far side of the room. And to their left was the patio with its comfortable cocktail tables under large multicolored umbrellas.
The headwaiter knew Danny from better days and they got a fine table in the main room, just the right distance from the orchestra and not too far from the bar. Danny stopped at several tables on the way over, and Con was introduced to a table of British officers, then went on ahead and Danny joined him shortly. They ordered double gin-tonics.
“What a difference one day makes, what?” Danny smiled then brushed back his bushy moustaches.
“A complete and full world,” Con nodded at Danny. It was difficult for him to believe that only this morning he had been in the hills with his Kachins. He had a peculiar tingling feeling just thinking about it, as if all that was now was vague and unreal, and momentarily he felt out of place.
He ran his hand over the freshly laundered white damask table cloth, glanced at a neat, turbaned waiter, then picked up his heavy silver fork and began to tap it against his water goblet: “It is hard to believe, isn’t it Danny,” Con said. “You put all these things out of your mind, and down deep you think you miss them. They are like a dream. Now that you see it all you know you really didn’t miss anything, but it’s nice to get a look at it again. Is that the way you feel, Danny?”
“Exactly, old boy.”
The drinks came. They chatted and listened to the music. Several British officers stopped by the table to say hello to Danny. They ordered another drink.
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