The Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Richard Flanagan

  And this sense, this feeling of communion, would at moments overwhelm him. At such times he had the sensation that there was only one book in the universe, and that all books were simply portals into this greater ongoing work—an inexhaustible, beautiful world that was not imaginary but the world as it truly was, a book without beginning or end.

  There were some shouts coming up the staircase, and following it there came a cluster of noisy men and two women, one large, red-haired, wearing a dark beret, the other smaller, blonde, wearing a bright crimson flower behind her ear. Every now and again they would reprise a half-song, half-chant, raucously chorusing Roll on, Old Rowley, roll on!

  The men were a jumble of service uniforms, RAAF, RAN and AIF—they were, he guessed, a little drunk, and all in one way or another were seeking the attention of the smaller woman. Yet she seemed to have no interest in them. Something set her apart from them, and much as they tried to find ways of getting in close to her, no uniformed arm could be seen resting on her arm, no uniformed leg brushing her leg.

  Dorrigo Evans saw all this clearly in a glance, and she and they bored him. They were nothing more than her ornaments, and he despised them for being in thrall to something that so obviously would never be theirs. He disliked her power to turn men into what he regarded as little more than slavering dogs, and he rather disliked her in consequence.

  He turned away and looked back at the bookshelves. He was in any case thinking of Ella, whom he had met in Melbourne while completing his surgical training. Ella’s father was a prominent Melbourne solicitor, her mother from a well-known grazing family; her grandfather was an author of the federal constitution. She herself was a teacher. If she was sometimes dull, her world and her looks still burnt brightly for Dorrigo. If her talk was full of commonplaces learnt as if by rote and repeated so determinedly that he really wasn’t sure what she thought, he nevertheless found her kind and devoted. And with her came a world that seemed to Dorrigo secure, timeless, confident, unchanging; a world of darkwood living rooms and clubs, crystal decanters of sherry and single malt, the cloying, slightly intoxicating, slightly claustrophobic smell of polished must. Ella’s family was sufficiently liberal to welcome into that world a young man of great expectations from the lower orders, and sufficiently conventional for it to be understood that the terms of its welcome were to be entirely of that world.

  The young Dorrigo Evans did not disappoint. He was now a surgeon, and he assumed he would marry Ella, and though they had never spoken about it, he knew she did too. He thought that marrying Ella was another thing like completing his medical degree, receiving his commission, another step up, along, onwards. Ever since Tom’s cave, where he had recognised the power of reading, every step forward for Dorrigo had been like that.

  He took a book from a shelf, and as he brought it up to his chest it passed from shadow into one of the sun shafts. He held the book there, looking at that book, that light, that dust. It was as though there were two worlds. This world, and a hidden world that it took the momentary shafts of late-afternoon light to reveal as the real world—of flying particles wildly spinning, shimmering, randomly bouncing into each other and heading off into entirely new directions. Standing there in that late-afternoon light, it was impossible to believe any step would not be for the better. He never thought to where or what, he never thought why, he never wondered what might happen if, instead of progressing, he collided like one of the dust motes in the sunlight.

  The small group at the far side of the room began once more to swarm and head towards him. It moved like a school of fish or a flock of birds at dusk. Having no desire to be near it, Dorrigo made down the length of bookshelves closer to the street windows. But like birds or fish, the swarm halted as suddenly as it had begun and formed a cluster a few steps away from the bookshelves. Sensing some were glancing his way, he stared more intently at the books.

  And when he looked up again he realised why the swarm had moved. The woman with the red flower had walked over to where he stood and now, striped in shadow and light, was standing in front of him.

  2

  HER EYES BURNT like the blue in a gas flame. They were ferocious things. For some moments her eyes were all he was aware of. And they were looking at him. But there was no look in them. It was as if she were just drinking him up. Was she assessing him? Judging him? He didn’t know. Maybe it was this sureness that made him both resentful and unsure. He feared it was all some elaborate joke, and that in a moment she would burst out laughing and have her ring of men joining in, laughing at him. He took a step backwards, bumped into the bookcase and could retreat no more. He stood there, one hand jammed between him and a bookcase shelf, his body twisted at an awkward angle to her.

  I saw you come into the bookshop, she said, smiling.

  Afterwards, if asked to say what she looked like, he would have been stumped. It was the flower, he decided finally, something about her audacity in wearing a big red flower in her hair, stem tucked behind her ear, that summed her up. But that, he knew, really told you nothing at all about her.

  Your eyes, she said suddenly.

  He said nothing. In truth, he had no idea what to say. He had never heard anything so ridiculous. Eyes? And without meaning to, he found himself returning her stare, looking at her intently, drinking her up as she was him. She seemed not to care. There was some strange and unsettling intimacy, an inexplicable knowledge in this that shocked him—that he could just gaze all over a woman and she not give a damn as long as it was him looking at her.

  It was as dizzying as it was bewildering. She seemed a series of slight flaws best expressed in a beauty spot above her right lip. And he understood that the sum of all these blemishes was somehow beauty, and there was about this beauty a power, and that power was at once conscious and unconscious. Perhaps, he resolved, she thinks her beauty allows her the right to have whatever she wants. Well, she would not have him.

  So black, she said, now smiling. But I’m sure you get told that a lot.

  No, he said.

  It wasn’t entirely true, but then no one had ever said it exactly how she had just said it. Something stopped him from turning away from her, from her outlandish talk, and walking out. He glanced at the ring of men at the far end of the bookcases. He had the unsettling sensation that she meant what she said, and that what she said was meant only for him.

  Your flower, Dorrigo Evans said. It’s—

  He had no idea what the flower was.

  Stolen, she said.

  She seemed to have all the time in the world to appraise him, and having done so and found him to her liking, she laughed in a way that made him feel that she had found in him all the things most appealing in the world. It was as if her beauty, her eyes, everything that was charming and wonderful about her, now also existed in him.

  Do you like it? she asked.

  Very much.

  From a camellia bush, she said, and laughed again. And then her laugh—more a little cackle, sudden and slightly throaty and somehow deeply intimate—stopped. She leaned forward. He could smell her perfume. And alcohol. Yet he understood she was oblivious to his unease and that this was no attempt at charm. Or flirting. And though he did not will it or want it, he could feel that something was passing between them, something undeniable.

  He dropped the hand behind his back and turned so that he was facing her square-on. Between them a shaft of light was falling through the window, dust rising within it, and he saw her as if out of a cell window. He smiled, he said something—he didn’t know what. He looked beyond the light to the ring of men, her praetorian guard waiting in the shadows, hoping one out of self-interest might come over and take advantage of his awkwardness and sweep her back.

  What sort of soldier are you? she asked.

  Not much of one.

  Using his book, he tapped the triangular brown patch with its inset green circle sewn on his tunic shoulder.

  2/7th Casualty Clearing Station. I’m a doctor.

&n
bsp; He found himself feeling both slightly resentful and somewhat nervous. What business did beauty have with him? Particularly when her expression, her voice, her clothing, everything about her, he understood as that of a woman of some standing, and though he was a doctor now, and an officer, he was not so far removed from his origins that he did not feel these things acutely.

  I worried I had gatecrashed the—

  The magazine launch? Oh, no. I think they’d welcome anyone with a pulse. Or even without one. Tippy over there—she waved a hand towards the other woman—Tippy says that poet who was reading his work is going to revolutionise Australian literature.

  Brave man. I only signed up to take on Hitler.

  Did a word of it make any sense to you? she said, her look at once unwavering and searching.

  Penguins?

  She smiled broadly, as though some difficult bridge had been crossed.

  I rather liked shoelaces, she said.

  One of the group of her swarming admirers was singing in the manner of Paul Robeson: Old horse Rowley, he just keep on rolling.

  Tippy roped us all into coming, she said in a new tone of familiarity, as though they’d been friends for many years. Me, her brother and some of his friends. She’s a student with the poet downstairs. We’d been at some services officers’ club listening to the Cup and she wanted us to come here to listen to Max.

  Who’s Max? Dorrigo asked.

  The poet. But that’s not important.

  Who’s Rowley?

  A horse. That’s not important either.

  He was mute, he didn’t know what to say, her words made no sense, her words were irrelevant to everything that was passing between them. If the horse and the poet were both unimportant, what was important? There was something about her—intensity? directness? wildness?—that he found greatly unsettling. What did she want? What did it mean? He longed for her to leave.

  On hearing a man’s voice, Dorrigo turned to see that one of the swarm—wearing a RAAF officer’s light-blue uniform—was standing next to them, telling her in an affected English accent that they needed her back to help sort out a discussion we’re having on tote odds. Her gaze followed Dorrigo’s, and recognising the blue uniform, her face changed entirely. It was as if she were another woman, and her eyes, which had been so alive looking at Dorrigo, were now, while looking at the other man, suddenly dead.

  The blue uniform sought to ignore her stare by turning to Dorrigo.

  You know she picked him, he said.

  Picked who?

  Old Rowley. Hundred to one. Longest odds in the history of the Cup. And she knew. She bloody well knew which gee-gee. Harry over there made twenty quid.

  Before Dorrigo could reply, the woman spoke to the RAAF officer in a way that Dorrigo understood was charming but without any feeling.

  I just have one more question for my friend, she said, pointing to Dorrigo. Then I’ll be back over with you to talk turf accountancy.

  And, that short conversation done, she turned back to Dorrigo and froze the blue uniform out so completely that, after a moment or two, he returned to the others.

  3

  WHAT QUESTION?

  I have no idea what question, she said.

  He feared she was playing with him. His instinct was to get away but something held him there.

  What’s the book? she asked, pointing to his hands.

  Catullus.

  Really? She smiled once more.

  Dorrigo Evans wanted to be free of her but he was unable to free himself. Those eyes, that red flower. The way—but he would not believe it—the way she seemed to be smiling at him. He pushed one hand behind his back, drummed his fingers on the book spines there, on Lucretius and Herodotus and Ovid. But they made no reply.

  A Roman poet, he said.

  Read one of his poems to me.

  He opened the book, looked down, and looked up.

  You sure?

  Of course.

  It’s very dry.

  So’s Adelaide.

  He looked back down to the book and read—

  I felt another hunger poke

  Up between

  My tunic and my cloak.

  He closed the book.

  It’s all Latin to me, she said.

  Us both, Dorrigo Evans said. He had hoped to insult her with the poem and realised he had failed. She was smiling again. Somehow she made even an insult of his sound like he was flirting, until he began to wonder if he wasn’t.

  He looked to the window for help. There was none.

  Read more, she said.

  He hastily flicked some pages, stopped, flicked through a few more, stopped, and began.

  Let us live and love

  And not care tuppence for old men

  Who sermonise and disapprove.

  Suns when they sink can rise again,

  But we—

  He felt a strange rising anger. Why was he reading this, of all poems? Why not something else that might give offence? But some other force had hold of him now, was guiding him, keeping his voice low and strong, as he went on.

  But we, when our brief light has shone,

  Must sleep the long night on and on.

  She pinched the top of her blouse with her thumb and forefinger, tugging it upwards while all the while looking at him with eyes that seemed to say she’d really like it tugged downwards.

  He closed the book. He didn’t know what to say. Many things rushed through his mind, diverting things, innocuous things, brutal things that got him away from the bookcase, away from her and that terrible gaze, her eyes of ferocious blue flame—but he said none of them. Of all the stupid things he might say, all the things he felt rude and necessary, he instead heard himself saying—

  Your eyes are—

  We were talking about what a nonsense love is, a stranger’s voice interrupted.

  Turning, Dorrigo saw that most hapless of pretenders, the close friend, had come over from the ring of admirers to join them and, presumably, take the blue eyes back. Perhaps feeling he had to address Dorrigo as well, the friend smiled at him, trying, Dorrigo felt, to gauge who Dorrigo Evans was, and where he stood with the woman. Undone, he would have liked to have told him.

  Most people live without love, the friend said. Wouldn’t you agree?

  I don’t know, Dorrigo replied.

  The friend smiled, a twist of the mouth for Dorrigo, a slow opening for her, a complicit invitation for her to return to his company, his world, the swarm of drones. She ignored the pretender, turning her shoulder to him and saying she would be back in a minute; making it clear that he was to leave in order that she might stay with Dorrigo. Because this was strictly, well, them, though Dorrigo, watching her silent but clear communication, realised he had not wished for it nor consented to it.

  All these conversations about love, continued the pretender, just nonsense. There’s no need for love. The best marriages are ones of compatibility. The science shows that we all generate electromagnetic fields. When one meets a person with opposite ions aligned in the right direction, they’re attracted. But that’s not love.

  What is it then? asked Dorrigo.

  Magnetism, said the pretender.

  4

  MAJOR NAKAMURA WAS bad at cards yet he had just won the final hand, because it was understood both by his junior officers and the Australian POWs playing with him that it was better that he didn’t lose. Through his interpreter, Lieutenant Fukuhara, Nakamura thanked the Australian colonel and major for the evening. The Japanese major stood up, stumbled backwards, almost fell, but recovered his balance. Nakamura seemed oddly ebullient in spite of nearly falling flat on his face.

  The Mekhong whisky he had provided had also taken its toll on the two Australian officers, and Dorrigo Evans moved carefully in standing up. He knew he now had his part to play as the Big Fella. He had held off all night, but he judged now was the moment to act.

  The Speedo has been going thirty-seven days non-stop, Major, Dorrigo E
vans began. Nakamura looked at him, smiling. Dorrigo Evans smiled back. To fulfil the Emperor’s wishes, we would be wisest to harness our resources. To best build the railway, we need to rest our men rather than destroy them. A day’s rest would do an enormous amount to help preserve not just the men’s energy, but the men themselves.

  He fully expected Nakamura to explode, to hit him or threaten him, or at the very least to yell and scream at him. But the Japanese commander only laughed as Lieutenant Fukuhara translated. He made a quick aside and was already lurching out as Fukuhara translated his reply for Dorrigo.

  Major Nakamura say prisoners lucky. They redeem honour by dying for the Emperor.

  Nakamura halted, turned back and was speaking to them.

  It is true this war is cruel, Lieutenant Fukuhara translated. What war is not? But war is human beings. War what we are. War what we do. Railway might kill human beings, but I do not make human beings. I make railway. Progress does not demand freedom. Progress has no need of freedom. Major Nakamura, he say progress can arise for other reasons. You, doctor, call it non-freedom. We call it spirit, nation, Emperor. You, doctor, call it cruelty. We call it destiny. With us, or without us. It is the future.

  Dorrigo Evans bowed. Squizzy Taylor, a major and his second-in-command, did likewise.

  But Major Nakamura wasn’t done. He spoke again and when he finished Fukuhara said—

  Your British Empire, Major Nakamura say. He say: You think it did not need non-freedom, Colonel? It was built sleeper by sleeper of non-freedom, bridge by bridge of non-freedom.

  Major Nakamura turned and left. Dorrigo Evans staggered off to the POW officers’ hut and his bed there, a cot that was too short for him. The cot was an absurd privilege that he liked because it was in reality no privilege at all. He looked at his watch. It showed the time as 1240 hours. He groaned. To accommodate his long legs he had rigged up a bamboo tripod, on which sat a flattened kerosene tin braced with more bamboo. It frequently tumbled over when he shifted in his sleep.