The Story of Dr. Wassell (10 page)

The hotel, with its portico and patio and piazza and other architectural
trappings, was crowded yet also strangely quiet; for most of its occupants
were asleep, and hundreds of sleepers had not found beds. They sat about in
the lobby and lounges, sprawled in chairs, curled up against kit bags or
bundles of clothing, open-mouthed, grotesque, sweat-streaked, a litter of
humanity—Dutch and English and Javanese, old and young, white and brown
(but the white were either dusty-gray with fatigue or sunburnt red), soldier
and civilian, man, woman, and child. Little sleeping movements flickered over
the strange assemblage as if to symbolize the death of some kind of life, but
not of life itself. And over the whole scene, labeling it for history with an
ironic finger point, were giant framed posters of the Javanese railway
system, inviting the wide world to take its holiday amidst the ruined temples
of Boro Budur.

The doctor parked his car at the front of this equally ruined temple of
tourism, and walked inside. There was no sound but snoring and a few
whimperings of children. He went to the desk near the entrance but there was
no one on duty. He pressed a bell, but it did not ring. He went behind the
counter and picked up a telephone but there was no answer. He pressed another
bell, which rang, but no one came. Then he picked his way amidst sprawled
bodies into the hotel’s interior. He saw people sleeping on tables, under
tables, in passageways, half wedged in telephone booths. There was nothing to
eat, and the taps, when turned on, yielded nothing but a slight hiss and a
few drops of yellow water. Presently, however, the doctor wandered into the
hotel kitchen, where several Chinese were cooking rice over a stove. He
talked to them and found that they proposed, when morning came, to serve this
rice to the crowd. No one had asked them to do it; they had just made the
decision themselves, and it somehow encouraged the doctor immensely. He
chatted with them for a little while, asking about boats in the harbor and so
on. Then they gave him some bread and several bottles of warm beer. As he was
picking his way through the lobby to reach the car again a man in a bathrobe
approached him carrying a pair of white shoes.

“Good day.” he said, holding them out. “You will take them perhaps? The
Admiral left them by mistake…They all went away last night—all your
Navy people—it is unfortunate. But I will find you a place to sleep. I
am an officer of the Staatswacht and have some influence.”

“What’sthat? You say the Navy isn’t here?”

“They picked up as many as they could. They were very wise to
leave…”

“But surely there are
some
ships that haven’t yet gone?”

“They all left yesterday, but a few more will come tomorrow on their way
from other places…It is all very unfortunate.”

“I’ll say it is. What on earth do you think I’m going to do if I can’t
find a ship”

“You will sleep first of all. Nothing can be done till daylight.”

Later this Dutchman found a room with two beds in it, and helped the
doctor to carry his patients one by one out of the car and through the hotel
lobby over the sprawled bodies. Sun and Wilson had each a bed; Francini who
must sit up all the time, was given a chair.

The Dutch officer placed the white shoes in the exact center of the room,
as if he hoped someone would pay attention to them, but nobody did. Then he
said, settling himself as if for a pleasant conversation: “Good day to all of
you. It is very unfortunate to be here.”

The doctor said he would like to go down to the harbor right away and size
up the situation: he didn’t feel he could sleep.

“But it is very unfortunate there are no ships yet, and nothing can be
done till daylight,” said the officer. “Then I will go with you.”

“All the same, I’d like to have a look around.”

He went back to the car and found four or five people, color and race
indeterminable in the half light, already sleeping inside it. He was
wondering what to do, and how he could get them out, when a Dutch wireless
operator came to his rescue, inquiring in excellent English if the car were
his and if he needed help. The doctor explained his position, liking the
fellow instantly and feeling a kind of sudden confidence that must be a
mystic thing since it is no way otherwise explicable. The Dutch wireless man
was tall, young, and very handsome. “Nothing can be done till daylight,” he
said. “Then I will go with you.”

Although this was exactly what the Dutch officer had said, it somehow
sounded immensely different, so they left the intruders sleeping in the car
and returned to the hotel. There were only a couple of hours till dawn and
the two men spent them in a very calm conversation. It was the wireless man
who told the doctor that most of the people in the hotel hadn’t a ghost of a
chance of getting away. “There are too many of them for the ships that will
come in tomorrow. They will only be small ships. The people do not know that.
They think they will find room, and so they sleep here tonight and hope there
will be no air raid.” He smiled faintly and added: “I hope so too.”

The doctor asked if he thought there was a chance of finding passage room
for nine American sailors, most of whom must lie on their backs. The man
answered quietly: “No, sir. I do not think there will be any chance. But I
may be wrong. I have been wrong lately about so many things. I did not think
Singapore would be taken. I did not think the Japs would land in Java at
all…So maybe I am wrong again.”

At dawn the town faced the problems of a new day. The sleepers at the
hotel began to move and talk, peering into the gray light; the Dutch officer
took a last look at Sun and Wilson (whom he had practically talked to sleep),
then a last look at the Admiral’s white shoes, before he went to his own room
in another part of the hotel and changed out of the bathrobe into his green
uniform. He was very sad.

At dawn the Chinese in the kitchen put the finishing touches on a huge
dish of rice and assorted oddments—a kind of impromptu ristaffel with a
distinctly Cantonese flavor. They carried it steaming into the hotel lobby,
blandly smiling. They carried also great urns of tea. It was for all to
share, but those who wanted could pay or—meaninglessly—sign
chits.

At dawn Francini sat upright in his chair and closed his eyes, sleeping
and dreaming instantly, the sleep troubled, but the dreams riding high over
pain and fever.

At dawn the sea mist drifted in, covering the hills behind the town; and
later the sun did not rise, but a fine rain began. Those who saw this from
streets and windows were glad, because they thought it might keep off the air
raiders. Soon after dawn, however, the sirens screamed, and for half an hour
planes could be heard droning high and invisible over the town. People
said
they could hear them, anyway.

Two ships edged through the mist and anchored like ghosts in the harbor.
The doctor left the wireless man in the Ford car on the pier, and signaled a
Javanese whose launch he had already engaged and paid for. With his thin
tropical uniform already drenched and sticking to him coldly, the doctor
watched the rain whip the harbor waves into a still calm. The downpour
increased till the ship they were approaching disappeared behind a wall of
rain that fell, no longer in hitting drops, but as long emptying funnels from
sky to sea.

Presently the grayness ahead darkened into the side of a ship and the
doctor climbed aboard.

The captain, a tall blond man wearing a blue beret, said it was utterly,
utterly impossible to take nine wounded men. His was only a small
inter-island coastal steamer; he had no sick bay or medical supplies beyond
the merest first- aid kit; and furthermore his ship was already chartered and
he had only put into Tjilatjap to take on Dutch Army personnel. He would not
refuse passage to able-bodied Americans, if any there were; but men who could
not look after themselves in an emergency (torpedo attack, for instance) had
better stay on land. It would be far safer for them. The doctor had heard
that argument before, but never quite so emphatically, for the captain (whose
name was Prass) spoke a kind of English that could he called even more
ferocious than atrocious. It was, indeed, a very effective language, and
after ten minutes of it the doctor sloshed his way back and signaled the
waiting Javanese to take him to the other ship. As the launch chugged away he
noticed that the ship Captain Prass commanded was called the
Janssens
, He thought to himself, a little ruefully, that he would always remember
Captain Prass of the
Janssens
.

It took him twenty minutes to reach the other ship, where refugees were
already streaming on hoard from rowboats and launches; the whole deck space
crammed, he could see, with not an inch to spare. It was not a very roomy
ship, anyhow, and neither so modern nor so well-kept as the
Janssens
.
The doctor had already made up his mind that if this second captain said no,
he would go back to the
Janssens
and ask again.

He did not see the second captain, but he got a vaguely helpless “no” from
every subordinate officer who could remotely understand what he said. And his
own instinct (though he did not realize this till long afterwards) had
already supplied the same answer.

So he went back to Captain Prass.

The terrible Captain Prass was shaving in his cabin. Somehow that seemed
to give the doctor an initial advantage, for every time the captain took a
sweeping stroke with the razor (his mouth being stretched stiff for the
purpose), the doctor had a chance to edge in a few quick sentences. These
sentences, put together, and leaving out the Prass replies, amounted to
something like this: “Sir, I have to get these men aboard some ship and out
of Java. They don’t mind taking a chance—they
want
to take a
chance. And I’m going to see that they get a chance. And it’s no good saying
no—I won’t take no from you, Captain Prass—now what are you going
to do to a fellow who won’t take no from you?”

Captain Prass spat gobs of soap across the floor of the cabin, while over
a scraped cheek a streak of blood showed itself with difficulty upon skin
almost as red. “I have cut myself,” he replied mournfully. Then he added,
snapping back to normal: “But you understand—you and your men must keep
out of my way. This is not a hospital ship, there is no proper accommodation.
You must look after them yourself. And get them here soon—we leave
anytime after dark. And we shall all be killed doubtless—a hundred to
one we shall all be killed…You understand all that?”

The doctor answered joyfully that he understood all that; then he hurried
back to the hotel as quick as launch and car could take him.

The street in front of the hotel was wedged tight with British Army
trucks; the convoy had arrived. This, on top of his success with Captain
Prass, raised the doctor’s spirits to a point where people stared at him,
wondering incredulously what he could have to be so happy
about—especially as he beamed his way through the crowded hotel lobby
as if he hadn’t heard the air- raid sirens sounding off for the second time
that morning. When he opened the door of the bedroom his eyes took in a sight
that to most people would have seemed unspeakably tragic—his men in
drenched clothes, in drenched bandages, sprawling on floor and beds in
attitudes of pain and discomfort; but to him the sight was reassuring,
because he had good news for them and their very presence was good news to
him. And he noticed, in the trivial way these things obtrude, that McGuffey
was wearing the Admiral’s white shoes and that the Dutch officer was rubbing
one of the men’s feet with a towel.

“Boys,” he cried, “I’ve found a ship that’ll take us and we go on board
just as soon as I can fix you all up and get you there…”

Greetings came from the floor where the men lay. Most of them were too
tired to be excited, some were in too great pain to care what happened to
them, but none withheld a murmur of cheer.

The Dutch officer said: “It is very unfortunate that the sirens have just
gone again—do you want to get your men into the shelter?”

Promptly the doctor answered: “Hell, no—when we move from here, we
move out for good, eh, boys?” A murmur of acquiescence answered him. “Sure, I
thought so. All you want is a rest and a fixing-up, there can’t be much of a
raid in this weather.” He shook the water from his own dripping clothes.

“Bombs can fall in the rain,” said the Dutch officer, with the air of one
stating a scientific fact.

“But they can’t see where they’re dropping ‘em—not through
this
rain.”

“You do not have rains like this in America?” said the Dutch officer,
making polite conversation.

“Yes, sir—we have
everything
in America, though this is a
pretty good rain, I will say. It’s not what I’d call a sprinkle, and it’s not
a chip washer or a gully washer—it’s a real regular toad-strangler, and
I’ve seen ‘em like this in Arkansas when it turns all the roads into black
gumbo.”

The Dutch officer stared uncomprehendingly. “Gumbo,” he echoed, as if
sampling the word. “Gumbo. That is unfortunate.”

The doctor was taking Hanrahan’s temperature when his attention was
suddenly riveted elsewhere. “Why—there’s only seven of you all here?
Where’s the other two?” His eyes ran round, identifying them. “Where’s
Muller? Where’s Renny?”

McGuffey answered: “Don’t know where Muller is—downstairs, maybe.
But Renny got left behind.”

“
What?
“

“They dropped him off at a place along the road. About sixty miles
back.”

The doctor was on his feet in an instant. “But I don’t like this at
all…What happened?”

When he had extracted a few more details he rushed downstairs.

The British officer (the one with the air of languid aloofness) sat before
a glass-topped table as if waiting for a waiter who never came. The doctor
approached hint without preamble. “Look here, sir—I want to know where
two of my men are—there’s the one who was in the truck, and there’s
Muller, who was with you in the car…”