The Narrow Road to the Deep North (27 page)

And though his whole body was aflame while playing this terrible bugle call, this music of death, still he played on, hearing it all anew, not understanding what it meant, hating that they had died, knowing that he had to keep playing this music he hated above all other music, but was determined never to stop playing. It did not mean those things he had been told it meant, that the soldier could now rest, that his job was done. What job? Why? How could anyone rest? That’s what he was playing now, and he would not stop playing those questions for the rest of his life, at Anzac Days, at gatherings of POWs, at official functions, and occasionally at home late of an evening when overwhelmed by memory. He hoped what he was playing would be understood for what it was. But people made other things of it and there was nothing he could do. Music asked questions of questions, and of these questions there was no end, every breath of Jimmy’s amplified in a brass cone spiralled out towards a shared dream of human transcendence that perished in the same sound, that was just out of reach, until the next note, the next phrase, the next time—

Immediately after the war it was quickly like the war had never been, only occasionally rising up like a bad bump in the mattress in the middle of the night and bringing him to an unpleasant consciousness. After all, as Shugs later said, it wasn’t really that bloody long, it just seemed to never bloody end. And then it was ended, and for a time it was hard to recall that much at all about it. Everyone had stories far more incredible—fighting at El Alamein and Tobruk, Borneo, sailing in a North Sea convoy. And now, besides, there was a life to live. The war had been an interruption to the real world and a real life. Jobs, women, houses, new friends, old family, new lives, children, promotions, sackings, sicknesses, deaths, retirements—it became hard for Jimmy Bigelow to recall whether Hobart came before or after the camps and the Line, before or after, that is, the war. It became hard to believe that all the things that had happened to him had ever really happened, that he had seen all the things he had seen. Sometimes, it was hard to believe he had ever really been to war at all.

There came good years, grandchildren, then the slow decline, and the war came to him more and more and the other ninety years of his life slowly dissolved. In the end he thought and spoke of little else—because, he came to think, little else had ever happened. For a time he could play the ‘Last Post’ as he had played it during the war, with a feeling that had nothing to do with him, as a duty, as his work as a soldier. Then for years, then decades, he never played it at all until at the age of ninety-two, as he lay dying in hospital after his third stroke, he put the bugle to his lips with his good arm and once more saw the smoke and smelt the flesh burning, and suddenly he knew it was the only thing that had ever happened to him.

I’ve got no argument with God, Dorrigo Evans said to Bonox Baker as they pushed and poked the pyre to keep the flames wrapping around the corpses. Can’t be bothered arguing with others about His existence or otherwise. It’s not Him I’m shitty with, it’s me. Finishing that way.

What way?

The God way. Talking about God this and God that.

Fuck God, he had actually wanted to say. Fuck God for having made this world, fucked be His name, now and for fucking ever, fuck God for our lives, fuck God for not saving us, fuck God for not fucking being here and for not fucking saving the men burning on the fucking bamboo.

But because he was a man, and because as a man he was the most conventional of unconventional men, he had instead gabbled God God God during his funeral service whenever he had nothing else to say, and about untimely, pointless death he had found that there was very little that he had to say. The men seemed satisfied but Dorrigo Evans could not swallow the toad of disgust that rolled around in his mouth after. He did not want God, he did not want these fires, he wanted Amy, and yet all he could see was flames.

You still believe in God, Bonox?

Dunno, Colonel. It’s human beings I’m starting to wonder about.

As the bodies burnt they crackled and popped. One raised an arm as the nerves tautened in the heat.

One of the pyre makers waved back.

Have a good one, Jackie. You’re out of here now, mate.

Guess that’s how it is, Bonox Baker said.

I’m not sure it’s how it should be, Dorrigo Evans said.

Meant something to the men. I suppose. Even if it didn’t for you.

Did it? Dorrigo Evans said.

He remembered a joke he had heard in a Cairo café. A prophet in the middle of a desert tells a traveller who is dying of thirst that all he needs is water. There is no water, replies the traveller. Yes, the prophet agrees, but if there was you would not be thirsty and you would not die. So I will die, says the traveller. Not if you drink water, replies the prophet.

As the flames leapt higher and the air filled with smoke and gyrating cinders, Dorrigo Evans took a step back. The smell was sweet and sickening. To his disgust, he realised he was salivating.

Rabbit Hendricks sat up and raised both arms, as though embracing the flames that were now charring his face, then something inside him popped with such force that they all had to jump backwards to miss being hit by pieces of burning bamboo and embers. The bamboo pyre transformed into an ever more ferocious fire, and Rabbit Hendricks finally fell sideways and was lost in the flames. There was a loud bang as another of the corpses exploded, and everyone ducked.

The Big Fella stood up and, grabbing a bamboo pole, helped the pyre makers push the corpses back into the centre of the fire, where they would be incinerated most fully and quickly. Together they all laboured, poking and levering and flicking the bamboo back to feed the ever-rising flames, sweating, puffing, not stopping, not wanting to stop, just losing themselves in the soaring flames for a few moments more.

When they were done and went to leave, Dorrigo Evans noticed something lying in the mud. It was Rabbit Hendricks’ sketchbook, slightly charred but otherwise unscathed. He guessed it had been blown off the fire by the force of the small explosion. The card cover was gone, along with the early pages. Its front page was now a sketch of Darky Gardiner sitting in an opulent armchair covered in little fish, drinking coffee in a ruined street of a Syrian village, with some others standing around behind him, including Yabby Burrows with his hot boxes. Rabbit Hendricks must have sketched Yabby in
after
he was blown up, Dorrigo realised. The picture was all that was left of him.

Dorrigo Evans picked the sketchbook up and went to toss it back into the fire, but at the last moment changed his mind.

MEN AND MORE
men began to overtake Darky Gardiner, shapeless empty sticks, their mouths grim set or gaping and their eyes like dry mud, moving no longer fluidly but fitfully jerking and jolting, and he fell further and further back in the column. All was gone from him. And what remained, he knew, what was strong and burning in his head and flesh, was sickness. His ulcerated legs only had to brush against leaves for a rush of agony to part his body in strange oscillations of pure pain.

Still, Darky Gardiner counted himself lucky: he had his boots, he told himself, and if one was temporarily soleless, tonight he would somehow fix it. No doubt about it, Darky Gardiner thought, even when they were buggered it was a good thing to have boots. And bolstered by this thought of good fortune at such a bleak moment, he dragged the coil of thick hemp rope back across his collarbone to stop it falling off, shrugged to better position it against his neck, and kept going.

And though he kept falling ever further behind, he still managed to make his way deeper into the jungle. His day he understood as a series of insurmountable battles that he would nevertheless surmount. To get to the Line, and at the Line to work till lunch, then after lunch—and so on. And each battle now reduced to the next impossible step that he would make happen.

He fell into a thicket of thorny bamboo, gashing his hand as he put it out to stop the fall. When he got back to his feet, he no longer had the agility and strength to poise on one rock and leap to the next, to take the long step up and over. Everything began to go wrong. He stumbled repeatedly. He swayed and lost what reserves of energy he had left trying to keep his balance. He fell again and again. And each time it was harder to get back to his feet.

When he next looked up as he lurched forward into the green bleakness he realised he was alone. The men out front had disappeared over a rise, and whoever was behind him was a very long way behind. The hemp hawser soaked up more rain and grew heavier on his shoulder. It kept losing its furl, spooling out into uneven bands of rope that snagged in roots, causing him to stumble. Each time he halted, refurled the rope and rebalanced the coil on his shoulder, the heavier and more awkward it became.

He stumbled on. He felt terribly weak and his head felt sloppy and unbalanced. The rope snagged again, he tripped, fell face-first into the mud, slowly turned onto his side and lay there. He told himself he needed to rest for a minute or two, then he would be fine. Almost immediately he passed out.

When he awoke he was in a dark jungle with a mess of rope beside him. He staggered to his feet, put a finger to a nostril, snorted snot and mud out of his nose, and shook his groggy head. Taking a stuttery step forward, he fell against a rock outcrop and dislodged some crumbling limestone from an overhang, which hit him on the shoulder.

I’ve got to get going, he thought—or thought he thought, his mind now so frayed that it felt a separate thing, a weight, a boulder; and all he knew for sure was that he was panicked and that he had momentarily passed out.

He gathered his balance, and, angry at the rock, the world, his life, he leant down, picked up a piece of the limestone and, with what strength his small fury could drag out of his fevered body, he hurled it at the jungle.

There was a soft thud and a simultaneous curse. His body tensed.

Fuck you, Gardiner, a familiar voice hissed.

Darky Gardiner looked about. Rooster MacNeice stepped out from a bamboo grove, hand on his head.

You coming with us or giving us away?

And behind Rooster MacNeice there appeared six other prisoners he didn’t recognise, and behind them Gallipoli von Kessler, who gave Darky his familiar, somewhat casual Nazi salute.

We thought you were onto us, Kes said.

Onto what? Darky Gardiner asked.

We thought you knew and were just going careful, pretending to have a quick kip, Rooster MacNeice said.

Knew what? Darky Gardiner said.

Our rest day. Japs won’t give us one so we’re taking our own.

Darky Gardiner looked back up the track.

We’ve been counted this morning, and the Japs don’t count again till evening parade back at camp, Rooster MacNeice went on. Out on the Line they never count and never notice. We hide away and rest up and just fall back in with everyone else as they head back to camp. Fall in, get counted, Tojo’s your uncle.

You can’t expect others to cover for you, Darky Gardiner said. It won’t work.

We did it last week, not a squeak out of the squint-eyed bastards. And we’re doing it again today.

But you blokes are in my gang today, Darky Gardiner said.

So? Rooster MacNeice said.

So how’s it fair on the other blokes?

Kes said they’d found an overhanging cliff half a mile away, out of the rain. No one could hear or see them, and they had a good pack of cards, only missing the jack of diamonds. How was his five hundred?

They’ll flog the hide off you, Darky Gardiner said.

How will they know? Rooster MacNeice said.

They’ll work it out and they’ll flog you.

You’ll cover for us, Rooster MacNeice said. You’re sergeant in charge of the gang today. Micky did it last time. Said nothing. Sliced and diced it a bit different so there were still men on each job. Just one less on each of the gangs.

Kes said that not having the jack of diamonds made five hundred a lot more interesting. And—

That’s not the point, Rooster MacNeice interrupted. At all. It’s about refusing to collaborate with the nips’ war effort. We have to make a stand somewhere, sometime, and this is it.

Darky Gardiner thought about it, but not a lot.

I can’t stand five hundred, Darky Gardiner said.

Kes said that, to be honest, there wasn’t that much else to do. Five hundred or sleep. Maybe patience, but who ever saw the point of that?

Fuck it, said Darky Gardiner, to whom sleep sounded good and whose head was once more throbbing. I’m too buggered to argue. But it’s an order. I don’t mind you skiving, but I do mind if others suffer for it.

No one’s going to suffer, said Rooster MacNeice.

You will, said Darky, if you disobey me. Let’s go.

But when he picked up the rope, furled and shouldered it once more, and resumed his hapless march to the railway cutting, only Gallipoli von Kessler went on with him.

Gardiner’s too weak a sergeant to ever say anything, said Rooster MacNeice to the other men as they turned and headed away from the path and into the jungle. Not a leader like the old leaders.

COLONEL KOTA WAS
less than surprised that his fears had been realised. The Thais were not to be trusted in the mass and were spectacular thieves in the individual. In the four hours of night between him and his driver leaving their truck in the middle of the jungle and a rescue crew of POWs arriving to push it into camp, some Thai bandits had stolen several hoses, rendering the truck undriveable. He was forced to stay at the camp until a guard—expected by dusk—returned from the closest camp with some new hoses.

Having been delayed for the day, Colonel Kota decided on an inspection of the work on the railway line. With the Goanna as his guide, he was making his way to the Line when they came upon two prisoners, one sitting, the other lying in the mud. The sitting prisoner leapt to his feet, but the one lying across the track did nothing. He seemed unaware of anything. They thought he was dead, but after the Goanna rolled him over with his foot they realised their error and yelled at him. When that did no good, the Goanna gave him a good kick, but the man only moaned. They could see that he was beyond threats and blows.