Glorious Boy, page 25
Ward speculates that the Japanese are more interested in the eastern seaboard, from which they can monitor and defend supply lanes to Burma. “Let’s just hope they don’t get round the horn past Chittagong.”
A short climb from camp the next morning clarifies his concern. The nearest promontory gives a clear view of the Bay of Bengal, with Calcutta beyond the northern horizon and Madras due west. From a well concealed corner of this hill they direct their long-range antenna without obstruction toward the Allied planes and vessels that still dominate this air and sea space. The strategic value of this coastline to the Japanese would increase exponentially if their mainland offensive succeeded in pushing past Burma into India.
“So our job,” Ward says, “is to keep the Nips so busy to the east that they forget the west exists.”
Subtlety is beyond this man. He doesn’t notice the glance that passes between his Indian subordinates, but Claire does. They’ll follow Ward because they—unlike many of their countrymen—distrust the Japanese even more than they do the English. They’ll follow him because they respect his calculation, stamina, and skills. They might even come to like him, in a way, but they will never admire or fully trust him. Not the way, in just four days, they came to admire van Dulm. Not the way Leyo and Som and Dr. Ratna Bose admired Shep.
“How exactly do you propose we do that?” she asks, then adjusts her tone. She, too, can be her own worst enemy. “I mean, exactly.”
It’s a fair question, though not one the others would voice. The chain of command requires them to receive information if, as, and when their CO chooses to dole it out, so she expects pushback. Instead, Ward drops to a knee and pulls a map of the islands from his pocket.
“We’re here.” He points. “Four miles south of Flat Island, ten north of Andaman Strait and seventy as the crow flies from Ferrargunj.”
“Ferrargunj,” Luke repeats.
“Our informant’s the headman there, Pandu,” Ward says. “At least I hope he still is. We used to frequent the same toddy shop when I passed through.”
Claire peers at the map where Ward’s finger rests, northwest of Mount Harriet, about sixteen miles from Port Blair. Ferrargunj sits at the confluence of two rivers—some twenty miles southwest of Behalla. For our purposes, your husband and son are gone.
Ward says, “Too bad we’re not crows—their seventy will be more like two hundred for us.” His plan is to cross the strait by folboat, then head south overland. But there are no roads or rivers marked in the green, yellow, and brown elevations of the map’s interior. Most of the measurements are guesswork, since no British surveyor has ever penetrated the central forests. The combination of miserable terrain and primitive tribes with a false but widespread reputation for headhunting has kept westerners safely confined to the coastal areas for more than two centuries. If Captain van Dulm is right, then the Japanese will be equally reluctant to confront the primitive boogie man. Which means that Bolger I’s most secure route leads directly through Jarawa territory.
But Ward is focused on his destination. “Depending on what we find in Ferrargunj”—he aims his emphasis at Claire—“we’ll establish a wireless base on the west coast, as close to our source as feasible. Most likely here along Constance Bay.”
Tapping a long hook-shaped harbor on the opposite side of the island from Behalla, he might as well be saying, I dare you. But she doesn’t dare. Not yet.
Ward folds up the map and retires to his tent. Luke approaches Claire alone.
“Ferrargunj was where I met your husband,” Luke says. “There was a clinic there. First, he examined the children and treated those who were sick. Then we went into the forest to hunt for orchids. I liked him very much.”
And she just can’t help it. The tears come in a flood. They stream down her face and her hands and her arms, and although she doesn’t make a sound, poor Luke has no idea what to do with this weeping white woman who shouldn’t even be here, so she pats his arm as if he were the one who needed comforting.
“So,” she manages at last, “do I.”
They travel down the coast under a waning moon and against the current. From the first folboat, which has a silent outboard, Ward and Luke use fishing line to tow Claire and Hari in the second. It’s slow going, with the first crew navigating, the second keeping watch. None of the men Ward’s chosen wear glasses, and Claire now appreciates that. Vision is at a premium, and reflection off lenses could be lethal. The boats are black-skinned, and she and Ward use henna to darken their arms and faces. The others more naturally disappear in the night, especially Hari.
Even with a half load of rations and water, the front kayak sits so low that it’s almost impossible to maintain any freeboard, so they shift the heavier elements of the load back with “the lightweights,” as Ward takes to calling her and Hari.
He’s at such a natural disadvantage, Ward, a large ungainly white target of a man, and yet, even in blackface, he finds these small, perhaps unconscious, ways to demean those on whom his life might depend.
She scans the pale streamers breaking on the shadowed coastline. No visible light comes from the land, but there could be a bonfire twenty feet inside the jungle, and no one would be the wiser. Ty and Shep could be standing on a bluff in that patch of darkness right there. They could be attempting to signal from the shelter of that cove, or the top of that rise. They could be lying at the feet of a Japanese search party just beyond that beach. These islands have devoured whole tribes, perhaps whole races of human beings, without leaving a trace.
But no, she gives herself a ruthless jab. The islands themselves aren’t the culprit. The worst killers have always been the invaders who arrive by boat.
Around five in the morning, when the sky begins to gray, they pull up on Spike Island, at the mouth of Homfrey Strait. Ward found an abandoned hut here while exploring the Middle Andamans two years ago. The roof and walls have since been lost to the monsoons, but a square of hewn logs and a ring of stones still marks its history as a Jarawa camp. A flank of coconut palms screens the site from the main shore, which is about as far away as Aberdeen from Ross.
An image crosses Claire’s mind that she’s been resisting for months, of the young Jarawa mother Bathana and her daughter imprisoned in Port Blair, and behind that vision another, of their whole family diving and dying under a hail of bullets—all thanks to Ward’s bullying ignorance.
To recognize the enemy’s humanity is often very hard. She kneels beside the square of timbers and briefly shuts her eyes.
Before the marine layer lifts, Hari has laid a fire, made tea, and grilled a small barracuda, caught by Luke over a coral bed on the western point of the island. They extinguish the fire before eating, then, two at a time while the others keep watch, they sleep through the heat and light of the day. At six the sun sets, and they reverse the process, this time consuming an eel that Ward caught while on watch.
“Hope you like seafood,” he says to Claire.
“Hari has a way with it,” she says to her folboat partner, who grins as if she’s awarded him a prize from Le Cordon Bleu.
“Can’t cook a fish unless someone catches it,” Luke teases, “and Hari here would not know a hook from a sinker.”
“What I was afraid of.” Ward scans a dark train of clouds pulling in from the west.
The rain begins as they paddle out of the ocean current and enter the throat of the strait. It falls in pins on their necks and backs and threatens to fill the already low-riding kayaks, but it also gives them cover. The water here is less than a mile wide, cutting between limestone palisades that rise a hundred feet or more on either side before disappearing in mist.
About twenty minutes into the strait, the water drops, sucking them into an eddy, and when they pull out of it a stiff yellow light bores through the rain. They’ve been driven dangerously close to an old police outpost on an island near the north shore.
The beam moves, a searchlight skimming the water.
Ward signals them to stop paddling and let the current push them ashore. Their drills would have them portage well beyond the light’s radius, but the wall of mangroves to the south makes that impossible. Fortunately, a narrow channel runs between the first tier of trees and the shoreline. With wider boats it would be impassable, but they can use the roots on either side to propel themselves by hand. The problem is, they’re not quite out of the light’s reach, and the foliage is sparse, so they have to work from a flattened position, advancing by inches.
Minutes after the folboats enter the channel, the station guards come out to their dock. Silhouetted against the revolving beam, they toss stones into the current and grumble in Japanese. One tells a joke, and the others roar. Spirits apparently improving, they unholster their guns and shoot at something in the water. A turtle. A snake. Not fifteen feet away. One man jumps from the dock to retrieve the target. Another begins to sing.
It’s a melancholy tune, and Captain Van Dulm’s advice returns to Claire as she absorbs the sorrow of the clear, effeminate voice echoing down the strait’s canyon. These three marooned guards have been torn from their families, too. They probably don’t want to be here any more than she does.
The middle man helps the jumper back up onto the dock and slaps him on the back. They’re examining their trophy when the channel runs out on Bolger I, about ten yards shy of darkness.
For the next ten minutes they hold still, besieged by mosquitoes, until the trio on the dock finally go inside. Ward signals them to let the tide carry them forward. They’ve barely gotten beyond the light, however, when the tide turns. They have no choice but to take up their paddles, risking both sound and the disturbance of the water’s surface.
An hour later, at the junction of Homfrey and Andaman Straits, a white motor launch bobs at anchor. From here on out, the waterway will be wider, more navigable—and likely more crowded.
They lie flat as the folboats drift backward. Clouds hide the moon and stars, but the canyon’s rock walls are luminous enough to reveal black threads where cascades fall from tributaries above. Claire senses more than she can actually see Ward searching for the thread that will indicate a climbable slope.
He knows bird whistles. He’s told them his father used to take him out of school in Lahore to follow annual migrations over the local marahajah’s hunting grounds. Luke, too, is versed in birdcalls, which he and his brother used as a secret code when they wanted to ditch their chores to go fishing. Hari and Claire have no such skills, but the other two have taught them to recognize the nasal song of the bulbul, the whoop of the hoopoe, and the signature hiccupping cry of the cuckoo. Now Ward sounds the cuckoo, their signal to get to shore.
The mud beneath the giant mangrove roots sucks them to their knees, but Claire hardly notices for the mosquitoes. The DDT they applied before leaving Spike Island has no effect here, and she and Ward make a mad dance of slapping their heads and necks while lugging the boats ashore. Luke and Hari watch their two black-faced companions swatting and swearing for several minutes before Luke takes pity on Claire. He presses into her hand a tin containing a dark, oily emulsion. The smell takes her back to the kitchen on Ross Island and the first of several intensive conversations between Shep and Jina about the contents of her cooking and medicine cabinets. Jina insisted that neem oil was guaranteed to keep mosquitoes from biting. Somewhat shame-faced, she added that, unfortunately, it also turned one’s skin dark red. Now Claire and Ward greedily smear their faces and necks, rub the oil into their scalp and over their arms. It makes them smell like peanuts and garlic, but the relief is instantaneous.
For the next hour they work in silence dismantling and hiding the folding boats and redistributing the supplies among their rucksacks. Then Ward looms in front of them with a Logan Bar and his canteen.
Claire drinks just enough of the precious water to erase the taste of the unmeltable chocolate, and Hari helps her shoulder her pack. If she stood straight it would topple her backward, but his is double the size of hers, and he weighs not much more than she does. Luke and Ward carry the tents and wireless equipment. So, they begin to climb, Ward first, then Claire, with Hari and Luke bringing up the rear.
The rock is slick with mud and mist, and the plants here are not deep-rooted. After the first sapling comes away in his fist, Ward throws it backward in warning. They’re to rely on handholds in the stone, test each tree before trusting it. Claire was afraid she’d be the one to hold them up, but Ward’s progress is painstaking. After an hour she senses that they’re less than halfway to the top, and she’s glad then for the darkness. If she could see to the bottom, she’d freeze with vertigo.
When, minutes later, the sky begins to lighten, she sees the larger danger. If they keep going, they’ll soon be visible from across the gorge.
Ward reaches a deep ledge overgrown with bamboo and ficus trees and stands panting as the others catch up. A natural pool has formed at this step of the falls, and an outcropping above combines with the bamboo to form a shallow grotto, a shower room of sorts.
“Rest up,” Ward says.
Their rest lasts twenty-two hours, during which Ward and Luke make a reconnaissance trip to the top and decide to continue the journey by daylight. When Claire hauls herself over the lip she sees why. This section of the Andamans dwarfs any forest that she can remember around Behalla. It makes their training ground in Ceylon seem like Central Park.
The trees here grow so tall that their upper branches look like threads etched in tintype, while their lower trunks are buried in a waist-high web of vines, thorns, and nettles. Ordinarily, forest officers would use a dha or machete to whack their way through the undergrowth. They’d cut a trail, not only to help them move forward but also to guide them back. Here such a trail would spell certain death if found by a Japanese patrol.
Luke sets his compass to make sure they’re moving due south, then inches his way into the creepers. He slices vertically into the growth, then he and Ward pry the slits open for the others to close behind them. They can see no more than two feet in any direction, and each step is unsteady, as if they were treading on a living mattress—in a steam bath. Often, they’re forced to crawl.
Every now and then a distant snort signals the presence of a wild pig, and it’s tempting to follow the animals’ trails, but Luke vetoes that, pointing his fingers from his nose to mimic a charging boar. Ward pulls down on the corners of his eyes and crouches in caricature of a Japanese soldier.
Two hours into the forest a yelp up ahead causes Hari to pull Claire down. Before she can locate her stengun, however, Ward is gesturing frantically for them to get up. He flicks off several of what look like large dark slugs from his sleeve, then pulls up his left pant leg, which has come loose from his mosquito boot. Claire quells a surge of nausea at the streaks of blood and the sight of a dozen or more fist-sized leeches gorging on Ward’s leg. She looks away only to see Luke and Hari checking their own flesh. And then she examines herself.
They cling to her boots, to her trousers, collar, and sleeves. And neck. “Like this,” Luke murmurs, and uses his fingernails to detach the suckers.
“Why didn’t I feel the damn things?” Ward’s pulled a cigarette from his pack and is scrounging for a match.
“They express a natural anaesthetic to numb the victim. No, do not try to burn them off.”
“Why the hell not?” Ward’s face is livid with revulsion. Claire has never seen his guard drop so completely.
“If shocked they will regurgitate into the wound. More chance of infection, very bad.” Luke squats by Ward and uses his fingernail technique to remove the leeches one by one. Before he’s reached half of them Ward’s leg is awash in blood, as is Claire’s throat.
“No worry,” Luke assures them. “It is a natural anticoagulant. It permits the blood to flow so that the creatures may feed more quickly.”
In spite of her horror, Claire is fascinated. She hands Ward a sterile cloth and sulfa ointment from the first aid kit. “How do you know all this?” she asks Luke.
He ducks his head. “That day in Ferrargunj clinic, I am listening to Dr. Durant as he removes a great many leeches from one very small child. Afterward, the boy is asking to take the creatures in a bottle to his home.”
“Christ,” Ward says. “They’re bloodsuckers, not ladybugs. Let’s get out of here.”
They will trek—if a hundred feet an hour can be called trekking—for more than a week down the spine of South Andaman Island. In the rare moments when Claire pauses to look up, every other tree seems to hold a fountain of orchids that Shep would give his all for. But then, she tells herself, in Behalla he has plenty, and she can ill afford to look anywhere but straight ahead. The threat of poisonous centipedes and spiders is eternal. Vipers prefer to keep their distance, but the masses of them coiled around limbs to the right, left, and above, do give one pause. So do those huge prehistoric reptiles, the monitor lizards, until Luke uses the Welrod to shoot one for supper on a day when they’re all ravenous.
“The Malay say it’s an aphrodisiac,” Ward whispers in her ear, and the sight and smell of him repulses her even as she reaches for more of the meat. Hari has managed to grill it so that it tastes like smoked chicken.
The trick is to drink and eat enough to satisfy the leeches, which fall off on their own, once sated, but Ward can’t stand the sight of them ballooning on his blood, so he insists on stopping every few hours to scrape them off. Claire makes herself a veil of mosquito netting, like a beekeeper’s helmet, to keep them from dropping on her head or inside her shirt, and she checks periodically to see that they stay south of her knees. Otherwise, she lets them be. Luke’s story about Shep converting the child’s fear of leeches into fascination subdues her own horror. If it’s possible to make peace with leeches, then there must be hope for Shep and Ty with the Japanese.
But at night there is no peace. She lies stifling in her cocoon of mosquito netting as unidentified objects thump and slither against the shell of her tent. Beneath her ground cloth the earth pulses with its ceaseless work of decay. She imagines herself and her companions as fleas on the back of a putrid dog whose skin is so raw and painful that the dog pants in protest. It’s not difficult to see how the legends of the Biya arose.
