Diseases of starvation, repeated Dorrigo Evans. Drugs would be good. But food and rest even better.
If their work building the railway line for the Japanese hadn’t yet become a madness that would kill them, it was already beginning to take a profound physical toll. Les Whittle, who had lost his fingers to pellagra, was now playing a rotting accordion—held together with stitching and buffalo hide patches—with bamboo sticks tied to his wrist. His singer, Jack Rainbow, had lost his vision. Watching him, Dorrigo Evans wondered if it was avitaminosis or the combined damage of several maladies that had done this—whatever the cause, he was painfully aware that food would cure this and almost all of the afflictions he saw. Jack Rainbow’s anchorite’s face was now puffy as a pumpkin, and his wasted body below also oddly bloated with beri-beri, lending an ulcer—which had eaten through a swollen shin to the bone—the appearance of a blinded pink iris that gazed out from the wound at the crowd of POWS, many as grotesquely affected, as if hoping finally to see the audience of its dreams.
The performers were now playing out a scene from the movie Waterloo Bridge, with Les Whittle as Robert Taylor and Jack Rainbow taking the role of Vivien Leigh. They were walking towards each other on a bamboo bridge.
I thought I’d never see you again, said Robert Taylor, disguised as the fingerless Les Whittle, in a highly affected English accent. It’s been a lifetime.
Nor me you, said Vivien Leigh, disguised as the blind, bloated, ulcerated Jack Rainbow.
Darling, said Les Whittle. You haven’t changed at all.
There was much laughter, after which they played the movie’s signature song, ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
You see, Colonel Rexroth continued, it’s what we carry within.
What?
British stoicism.
It was an American movie.
Pluck, Colonel Rexroth said.
Our officers are paid by the Japanese army. Twenty-five cents a day. They spend it on themselves. The Japanese do not expect them to work. They should.
Should what, Evans?
Should work here in the camp. Digging latrines. Nursing in the hospital. Orderlies. Building equipment for the sick. Crutches. New shelters. Operating theatres.
He took a deep breath.
And they should pool their wages so we draw on it to buy food and drugs for the sick.
That again, Evans, Colonel Rexroth said. It is example that will get us through. Not Bolshevism.
I agree. When it is the right example.
But Colonel Rexroth was already ascending the stage. He thanked the entertainers, then spoke of how the division of the British Empire into arbitrary nationalities was a fiction. From Oxford to Oodnadatta they were one people.
His accent was thin and reedy. He had no gift for rousing oratory but a misplaced sense that his rank gifted him with this talent. He sounded, as Gallipoli von Kessler said, as though he were playing a flute out of his arse.
And for that reason, Colonel Rexroth went on, as members of the British Empire, as Englishmen, we must observe the order and discipline that is the very lifeblood of the Empire. We will suffer as Englishmen, we will triumph as Englishmen. Thank you.
After, he asked Dorrigo Evans if he would like to be involved in planning for the building of a proper cemetery overlooking the river, where they would be able to inter their dead.
I’d rather get the Black Prince to steal some more tins of fish from the Japanese stores to keep the living from dying, Dorrigo Evans said.
The Black Prince is a thief, Colonel Rexroth replied. This, however, will be a beautiful final resting place and worthy of the efforts of all concerned for the welfare of the men and far better than the present practice of just marching off into the forest and burying them wherever.
The Black Prince helps me save lives.
Colonel Rexroth produced a large sketch map outlining the location of the cemetery and the layout of the graves, with different sections for different ranks. Proudly, he told Dorrigo that he had reserved a particularly idyllic spot overlooking the Kwai for officers. He pointed out that the men were beginning to die, and dealing with the corpses was now a matter of the highest priority.
It is an irrefutable argument, he said. It’s been a lot of work getting it this far. I’d love you to be part of this.
A monkey screeched in a nearby bamboo grove.
I am only doing it for the men, Colonel Rexroth said.
16
THE TREES BEGAN sprouting leaves and the leaves began covering up the sky and the sky turned black and the black swallowed more and more of the world. Food grew less and less. The monsoon came and, at first, before they learnt all that the rain portended, they were grateful.
Then the Speedo began.