The Caprices (7 page)

“I have heard of this,” said Sergeant Singh.

“Yes,” said Harry.

Then the spattering noise of gunfire reached them across the yard, the hearty shouts of men (like a football game), and the screech of a bird.

“Why weren’t you and the major captured together?” Smalls asked. He and Harry were again in line, this time for food. Harry had an old sardine can for a bowl, a spoon cut from beaten tin. The sun was still hot and high. Past the fence, the column of bearers carried out the daily dead, slung between them in sheets. Harry breathed deeply and raised a hand to his forehead.

“Well,” said Harry, “Sergeant Singh and I heard the shots. The Japanese didn’t know we were there. Sergeant Singh and I went out the back door.” Harry remembered the open pit by the clothesline, the little boy flung face up, his mother’s shoeless but stockinged foot. “We were outnumbered. I had an idea that later, when it was dark, the sergeant and I would free some men, create a disturbance.” There was Tunsdale again with his hands tied, towering over his Japanese captor. And there was Tunsdale crumpling, his intestines unraveling onto the wet earth, the bayonet greased with his blood. “We had no opportunity. I thought if we could find more men . . .”

“Well,” said Smalls, “did you?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “And here we all are.”

Harry did not know what had compelled him to visit Major Berystede the last two days. He did not know what comforted him in their uneasy truce.

With the remnants of the 11th Indian struggling on the Malay Peninsula, the major had seen endless opportunities to rid himself of the embarrassment of Lieutenant Gillen and he had taken all of them. More than once Harry had caught the major eyeing him with a look somewhere between fear and guilt. Harry dryly noted that he was being singled out either for heroism or death. Only the hand of fate would make it clear which of these it was to
be, so Harry was first at the mercy of a capricious man and, after that, an even more capricious God.

Harry had been ordered to lead a group of men up a slope to a makeshift bunker the Japanese had set into a hillside. The line of greenery broke abruptly to a smooth ascent. There wasn’t much on this side of the hill, but scouts had come back with descriptions of a series of fields on the other side, already strewn with their dead. The major had decided to take the bunker and he had decided that Harry would do it, just as yesterday he had decided that Harry was the best man to run a message to Lieutenant Colonel Lifkin, which involved a good two-hundred-meter sprint through a papaya grove, whose slim trunks and umbrella foliage offered little protection from snipers. Harry tried to control himself, but he hadn’t slept in days and had never been much good at anything but feigned deference. The men were checking their rifles, whispering requests to their respective deities. Harry approached Major Berystede and asked in a low voice, “Excuse me, sir, but I must ask you, are you trying to kill me?”

“Lieutenant Gillen . . .”

“I apologize. A voice inside keeps telling me this is none of my business. But surely it is.”

Berystede was taken aback. “What kind of insubordination is this?”

“Some variety, but at this rate I’ll be dead by sundown, so the chances of my being court-martialed are very slim.”

The major was rattled. He inhaled deeply. “Are you refusing to execute the order?”

Harry thought about it for a minute. “No, sir.”

But despite the major’s best efforts, it hadn’t been Harry’s time. The bunker was empty, the battle already won by the Japanese, the field deserted.

• • •

From the look on the doctor’s face, Harry knew the major was close to death. Berystede’s eyes brightened when he saw Harry, as if all the troubles of the past were gone and Harry was still the handsome horseman, the major his eager patron, and the rumble of war an ugly rumor. Harry squatted by the cot and helped the major drink a little water, which was set on the crate along with the major’s belongings—a worn photo of Mrs. Berystede on a horse, carrying a rifle, and a set of keys, one of which unlocked the liquor cabinet back in the mess hall at camp.

“Harry,” said the major, “what are you going to do when you get home?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said.

“The English will all be gone.”

“I find that hard to believe, sir.”

“Please, call me Edgar.”

“Edgar,” Harry said, “you should probably sleep.”

“I will sleep and sleep and sleep.” The major smiled. His eyes were watering. Harry breathed deeply and took the major’s hand. He’d done this on impulse and once he was holding it, didn’t know how to put it down. The major’s hand was cool, despite the thick heat. The bones were thin and fragile, like the skeleton of a bird. His skin already had the look of death. When the major finally drifted off, Harry set the hand down on the cot. Mrs. Berystede stared bravely out of the photograph from atop her horse, in approval of Harry’s loyalty, or maybe deep disapproval of her husband’s succumbing to his limitations. Harry would survive. He had no doubt about that. He would return to see how India had been altered by the war, as he too had been altered.

Outside, the sun slid down the sky, slipping through a cloud, touching the barbed wire. Harry hadn’t told the doctor that the major was dead. Colonel Takashi was watching the sky. Harry thought he detected, in his posture, in the way his hand rested on the hilt of his sword, a nervousness. He realized then that the
Japanese were losing. He wondered if Smalls was still on work detail, if he’d made it back to the camp in one piece. Harry watched the dirt road, glowing in the final moments of the day, shining bright like the surface of a river.

There was a precise moment when Harry realized that he’d misjudged his battle. He had wrongly attributed the stakes. After Harry and Sergeant Singh had left the house, they pushed through the jungle for about four hours before hitting a dirt road. They rested there, unsure if they should risk the easy path, or if they should try their odds at surviving in the jungle. Maybe they could tough it out for a couple of weeks until Singapore was secure and the reinforcements arrived. Harry had been standing on the bank of civilization—the road, which gave no hint of its origin or terminus—when he heard a rattling, banging sound coming down the road. There was no rumble of engines, nor the sound of marching infantry, and the very strangeness of the noise froze him in place, until Sergeant Singh dragged him down. At the side of the road with his eyes level to its surface, Harry waited. A half minute later in a whir of pedals and wheels Harry saw a hundred Japanese flying down the road, a tight pack, all heavily armed and fortified. They were conquering the peninsula on bicycles.

“If we had our horses . . .” said Sergeant Singh.

But Harry heard no more. This was no place for horses, or English, or Indians. This was no place, only a dirt road that wound on and on, sinking heavily into its coils, crushing all in its path. This was a road with no origin or destination, just a brief breathing space in the heart of the jungle, a halting, a nothingness, that offered a limited view and a few hundred miles of packed dirt, meter upon meter, extending endlessly north and south without ever reaching home.

Guinea

M
IDWAY THROUGH HIS TIME
as a soldier, Francino found himself lost in the heart of the jungle. His companion was an Irishman from Boston named Burns and in their protection was a Japanese prisoner, starved beyond hope, who would most likely not survive the next two days. They wandered without the warmth of natural sun. The large leaves and woven canopy of the jungle ceiling filtered the light into a thousand gradations of shade. In this strange place, nothing was inanimate. Even the trees and rocks appeared to breathe.

The three men marched, not talking. The prisoner stumbled onward, scared and without will. Francino had let Burns decide to let the prisoner live. Francino did not like deciding the fate of other men any more than he liked contending with his own survival; his concerns were with the afterlife and how he was going to reconcile his current rifle-wielding life with God.

Maybe he had not suffered long enough, not like Burns who had been battling it out on active duty for eighteen months. This was the first Jap that Francino had seen close up—an emaciated soldier with his clothes rotted and a white loincloth visible through the seat of his shorts.

“If you’d seen more, you’d be dead by now,” Burns told him. “In Guinea, a Jap close up is the last thing a man sees.” Which made Burns sound wise, when he wasn’t. Burns talked like the majority of the people Francino knew. He had a loud voice and an admirable sense of purpose, which was one of the perks war had for the unsophisticated. Francino listened for the thrum of engines in the sky, the powerful cough of machinery to cut through the billion singing insects. But there was no sound not intended by nature. Here, it was the Garden of Eden—primordial, pristine, unforgiving. Here, there was nothing to eat and Francino amused himself with the thought that if anyone offered food, even a snake holding an apple, he would take it and eat it—no questions asked.

But suffering was fine. He would be happy to get home in one piece.

On a plane trip to Sydney, Francino had found himself dozing off on his pack. An Australian soldier lay just beyond his head, on a stretcher. The Aussie was talking to someone farther off, whose voice Francino couldn’t hear at all because the engine was too loud. Francino’s eyelids were droopy with booze and fatigue, but the nasal voice of the Aussie on the stretcher kept him half awake.

“Yeah,” the Aussie said, “the war’s been a bit of disaster for me, you know?”

His companion must have said something.

“Yeah,” said the Aussie, “me Mum’s not gonna be too happy. I’m the only one left and riding a horse is gonna be a bit of a problem on account of me legs.”

“Yeah,” said the Aussie, “both of them. I wasn’t too pleased about that.”

“Yeah,” said the Aussie, “Dad’s not too fond of the Japs, and neither am I.”

Francino fell asleep, with the Aussie’s voice and his brilliant
gift for understatement ringing in his ears, above the deafening drone of the airplane.

“Let’s take a rest,” said Francino. He nodded over at the prisoner, whose head was lolling onto his chest even though he was still walking. “I think we should untie his hands.”

Burns held the rope which ran from the prisoner’s wrists. “This is the only thing that’s holding him up.”

Francino sat with his back against the trunk of a tree. Burns was restless, looking back and forth. The Japanese soldier had passed out cross-legged, leaned against a rock. He looked like pictures Francino had seen of Peruvian mummies, who spent eternity sitting wrapped in blankets on a wind-swept desert plateau. Funny, he thought, how the dead who looked alive and the living who looked dead were similar in appearance.

“How long do you think we’ve gone today?” asked Francino.

“I’d guess around five miles.”

Francino nodded to himself. What difference did it make if it was five miles in no particular direction? They had been wandering in the jungle for four days.

Francino and the entire 163rd Infantry had been in New Guinea since January. It was 1942. He’d witnessed Horri’s startling advance across the Owen Stanley Mountains. He’d been a part of the effort that halted the Japanese in mid-September, and now he was pushing them back over the steep, punishing ridge. New Guinea was a great, sleeping alligator and the Owen Stanleys ran the length of her back. Sometimes, if you had a chance to be still and concentrate, you could feel the great beast heave beneath you in sweet, dreamless sleep.

The patrol had gone out on a Monday, at dawn. Mist was heavy in the air and the calls of birds sounded mere inches away, when they were really coming from the jungle ceiling. There
were seven men, which was a lucky number, although Francino’s lucky number was four. There were seven days in the week, seven seas. And seven deadly sins. Avarice. Lust. Gluttony. Sloth. Envy. Pride. And what else? A mosquito buzzed in his ear. Francino shook it off, rattling his gear. Burns, who was walking ahead of him, swung around. The end of Burns’s rifle was in Francino’s face.

Francino smiled. “Anger.”

“What?”

“Anger. It’s the seventh deadly sin.”

Burns spat in response. Burns must have always been tightly wound and the war had rewarded this; Burns’s superiors liked him, on the ready, alert. He was courting a mental breakdown. New Guinea was the perfect place for him. Burns was one of those men who would be made by war, whose last vestiges of childhood would be burned out of him bullet by bullet. People like Burns were grateful for such abundant, sanctioned violence. A month earlier, Francino might have felt sorry for him.

It was late October—fall—but in New Guinea things were green. It was as if that first startling instant of spring—when the trees started popping out little-fisted leaves and the ground was spongy with thaw—had been stalled and then expanded; the brief spring second here was repeated over and over, multiplied within itself and then replicated in a riot of leaves, steam, and fungus. The trees stretched against the very dome of sky. The air was compressed until it dripped down your face. Francino pushed his glasses back up his nose and the column drew to a halt. Sergeant Cole was nervous. He drank some water and squinted around at the men, even though the sunlight wasn’t strong.

“I need a couple of scouts,” he said.

Burns had volunteered and somehow it had been decided that Francino would join him. Francino couldn’t figure out if Burns didn’t like his hesitant manner or the fact that he was Italian
or both. Burns wasn’t too bright. At first Francino ignored him, but week after week in close quarters had worn down Francino’s indifference. Their animosity had become undeniable.

Francino and Burns pushed through the undergrowth and circled around some kind of knoll. Francino looked to the edge of the trees. He and Burns had trampled a wide path. If there were Japanese hiding in the dense vines at the edge of the trees, Burns and he would see them, or evidence of them, from where they stood.