The Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Richard Flanagan

  At the King of Cornwall Keith took Dorrigo to a room on the fourth floor. As they made their way up the grand staircase with its threadbare runner, they met Amy coming down, carrying a bag of dirty linen. Dorrigo felt a strange elation that was as inappropriate as it was undeniable. She glanced at her husband, a look in which Dorrigo glimpsed a complex mud of intimacies copyrightly invisible to the world—the shared sleep, scents, sounds, the habits endearing and frustrating, the pleasures and sadnesses, small and large—the plain mortar that finally renders two as one.

  Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, ruby-gold in the atrium light. As he was introduced, complicity took hold before anything complicit had happened. In a glance he saw her face unnaturally glowing, a loose lock of hair landing like a trout fly in front of her right ear, and he understood that they had silently agreed to say nothing at that moment of the bookshop.

  Well, Amy, said Keith, I hope you have some entertainment arranged for our guest.

  She shrugged, and he was conscious of the slight roll of her breasts in her cornflower blue blouse.

  Do you like Vivien Leigh? asked Amy. There’s a new Vivien Leigh movie in the city called Waterloo Bridge. Would you like to—

  I’ve seen it, said Dorrigo, who had done no such thing and suddenly thought what a nasty man he was, his mind abuzz. Was he frightened of being with her? Was he trying to prove his power over her?

  That’s a shame, said Keith. But I’m sure it’s not the only movie.

  Dorrigo no longer understood himself, nor why he said such things. But he had said it, and then, equally unexpectedly, he heard himself say:

  But I’d love to see it again.

  Pushing away, pushing in: the pattern of so much that was to follow.

  Amy shrugged once more, and Dorrigo Evans forced his eyes away from her and down the staircase until she re-entered his vision a floor below, the fingers of her extended hand running along the varnished bannister. His gaze followed her ponytail bobbing as she continued stepping down into the void.

  10

  OF THE MANY things Dorrigo Evans expected to happen that evening, he did not expect to be taken to a nightclub off Hindley Street. She said if he had already seen the movie, he would know what was going to happen next, and that would ruin everything. He was in uniform, she in an apricot oriental shirt and baggy black silk trousers. The effect was of something liquid. Her body seemed to him so definite and strong; when she moved, she glided.

  The point is in never knowing, Amy said. Don’t you think?

  He didn’t think. He didn’t know. The nightclub was a large room, low lit with the blackout curtains all up, full of shadows and uniforms. Dorrigo noticed a yeasty odour, the slightly drunk smell of spring weeds. They drank martinis as a swing orchestra played. There was a strange excitement in the air. After a time, the house lights were turned down, each band member lit candles on their music stands, and waiters lit candles on the tables.

  Why the candles? asked Dorrigo.

  You’ll see, said Amy.

  She talked about herself. She was twenty-four, three years younger than him. She had moved a few years before from Sydney, where she had worked in department stores, and had met Keith through her work as a barmaid at the King of Cornwall. He told her about Ella, and every word sounded both a defence against what he truly felt and a betrayal of all that he was. And then he dismissed such feelings.

  Dorrigo told himself that the divide between him and Amy was absolute. Theirs was a friendship buttressed on one side by the pillar of her husband, his uncle, and on the other by his prospective engagement with Ella. And there was in this a great security for him that led him to relax with Amy perhaps more than he might have otherwise.

  He found himself feeling unaccountably happy with her in a way he could not remember being for a very long time. He watched as the candlelight shadows leapt over a face that made him ever more curious. It was so strange that when he had first met her in the bookshop, it was not her looks that had made such an impression on him. But now he could not conceive of a more beautiful woman. He enjoyed his proximity to Amy, even the way other men looked enviously, covetously, at the woman who so wrongly seemed to be his. Of course, he told himself, she wasn’t his, but the sensation wasn’t unpleasant. He was flattered.

  They ended up talking with some naval officers, who later drifted away to the far end of the table and other conversations, leaving the couple alone. Amy leant across and put her hand over his. He looked down, unsure what it meant. He felt extremely awkward. But he did not take his hand away.

  What’s this? Dorrigo asked.

  He realised that she was looking at their hands too.

  Nothing, she said.

  Her touch electrified him, paralysed him, and amidst the noise and smoke and bustle that touch was the only thing he knew. The universe and the world, his life and his body, all reduced to that one electric point of contact. He stared with her at their hands. Yet he presumed it all meant nothing. Because it had to mean nothing. Her hand on his. His in hers. Because to believe anything else was a mistake. Come tomorrow, he would once more be her nephew, soon to be engaged, and she his uncle’s wife. But it must mean something, he desperately wished to think—

  Nothing? he heard himself repeating.

  He tried to relax, but he could not stop the excitement he felt at her touch. She ran her index finger over the back of his hand.

  I am Keith’s, she said.

  She continued to gaze absent-mindedly down at his hand.

  Yes, he said.

  But she was not really listening. She was watching her finger, its long shadow, and he was watching her, knowing she was not really listening.

  Yes, he said.

  He was feeling her touching him, and the feeling ran through his entire body and he could think of nothing else.

  And you, she said, you’re mine.

  He looked up, startled. For a second time she had taken him completely unawares. And for a second time, he felt oddly fearful, as he very slowly came to realise that far from mocking him, she was genuine in her strange frankness. And all that this meant terrified him. But she was still looking at her finger, at their hands between their half-empty glasses, at the circles she traced.

  What?

  And only then did she look up.

  I mean, she said, I mean you’re Ella’s. But tonight. Tonight you’re mine.

  She laughed lightly, as though it all meant nothing.

  As a companion.

  Lifting her hand, she waved it behind her ear in a gesture of dismissal.

  You know what I mean.

  But he didn’t. He had no idea at all. And he felt both excited and frightened, that what she said meant nothing, that it meant everything. She was elusive. He was lost.

  As the table candles were extinguished by the waiters, the band struck up with ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as a swing waltz. It was a memory being made of coming together and separating, circles forming only to be torn apart. At the end of every few bars another musician would reach forward and snuff out the candle in front of him.

  Dorrigo found himself dancing with Amy, and as the dance floor slowly descended into darkness, she somehow came to rest her head on his shoulder. Her body seemed to be inviting his into a supple, shared swaying. As his body cautiously melded into hers, he again told himself it was nothing, that it meant nothing, that it could lead to nothing.

  What are you mumbling? she asked.

  Nothing, he whispered.

  As they circled, their bodies found a strange peace in resting on each other that was also the most terrible anticipation and tension. He could feel her breath, the slightest breeze on his neck.

  The last candle was snuffed, there was a bar of darkness, the curtains suddenly dropped from the windows and—to gasps of wonder—a full moon flooded the room. The waltz now circled to its finale, and he understood the whole event as a strange nostalgia for a future that everyone feared would never belong to them, a sense of to
morrow already foretold and only tonight capable of change.

  In the quicksilver light and blue ink shadow, couples slowly separated and clapped. For a moment they were looking at each other and he knew he could kiss her, that he only had to lean slightly forward into her shadow and he would fall forever. But then he remembered who they were and instead asked if she wanted another drink.

  Take me home, she said.

  11

  AT THE HOTEL she took him to the rooms where she lived with Keith. He sat down in a russet armchair. He could smell Keith’s brilliantine on the antimacassar, his pipe tobacco in the brocade upholstery. Amy wound the gramophone, put on a record she said she wanted him to hear, placed the needle and sat on the arm of Dorrigo’s chair. The piano shuffled, the sax swept in and out with the breeze off the ocean that ruffled the lace curtains, and a voice began to sing.

  A tinkling piano in the next apartment

  Those stumbling words that told you

  What my heart meant

  A fairground’s painted swings

  These foolish things

  Remind me of you

  It’s Leslie Hutchinson, she said. Apparently he is, you know, familiar with the ladies of the Royal family.

  Familiar?

  She smiled.

  Yes, she said very softly, looking across at him. Familiar.

  She laughed again, from her throat, and he thought how much he liked the full-bodied, large-souled feel of it.

  The song ended. He stood up and went to go. She put the record on again. He said goodbye. At the door he leant in, kissed her politely on the cheek, and when he went to pull away, she leant her face in against his neck. He waited for her to pull her head away.

  You’ve got to go, he heard her whisper. But she kept her face against his.

  The gramophone needle was ch-ch-ing as it circled the record’s end.

  Yes, he said.

  He waited but nothing happened.

  The needle remained stuck in its groove, scratching circles of sand into the night.

  Yes, he said.

  He waited but she did not move. After a time, he put one arm lightly around her. She did not pull away.

  Soon, he said.

  He held his breath until he felt her ever so slightly press into him. He did not move.

  Amy?

  Yes?

  He did not dare answer. He breathed out. He shuffled his feet to better get his balance. He had no idea what to say, worrying that to say anything more might upset this delicate equation. He let his hand drop and shape her waist, expecting her to push it away. But instead she whispered:

  Amie. French for friend.

  His other hand found the wondrous curve of her buttocks.

  My mother, she said, taught me that when I was little.

  She did not push that hand away either.

  Amy, amie, amour, she used to call me. Amy, friend, love.

  A winning trifecta, Dorrigo said.

  She turned her lips onto his neck. He could feel her breath on his skin. He could feel her body with his, now hard, and he was embarrassed to realise that she must be able to feel him. He did not dare move in any direction in case it broke this spell. It was not clear to him what this meant or what he should do. He did not dare kiss her.

  12

  DORRIGO FELT A warm hand creeping up his legs and jolted awake. It took him some moments to realise it was the early-morning sun stepping across his room. He found a note from Amy under his door saying that she would be busy until mid-afternoon with hotel business—there was to be a lunchtime wedding reception—so she would not be able to say goodbye.

  He wrapped a towel around himself, and went out on the deep balcony, lit a cigarette, sat down, and looked out through the Victorian arches to where the Southern Ocean, ceaseless and open, rippled in front of him.

  Nothing has happened, she had said when he left her rooms. Those were her exact words. They had held each other, but she had said it was nothing. How could it be anything to him? Beyond a hug, nothing had happened. That much was true. Nothing had happened at the bookshop. A hug? People did more than that at funerals.

  Amy, amie, amour, he whispered under his breath.

  Nothing had happened, yet everything had changed.

  He was falling.

  He listened to the waves break and shimmer sand and he was falling. A slight breeze rose from the long shadows of early morning and he still was falling. He was falling and falling, and it felt a wild freedom. Whatever it might be was as unknowable and perplexing as she was. He understood that much. He did not know where it would end.

  He stood up, excited, confused, determined. He threw his cigarette away, and went inside to get dressed. Nothing had happened and yet he knew something had begun.

  13

  HE RETURNED TO the army camp and a life of order and discipline. But that life, for Dorrigo, no longer had substance. It hardly seemed real. People came, people talked, people said many things, and not one was interesting. They talked of Hitler, Stalin, North Africa, the Blitz. Not one talked of Amy. They talked of matériel, strategy, maps, timetables, morale, Mussolini, Churchill, Himmler. He longed to cry out Amy! Amie! Amour! He wished to scruff them and tell them what had happened, how he longed for her, how she made him feel.

  But much as he wanted everyone to hear, he could afford to have none know. Their dreary conversation, their ignorance of Amy and the passion she had for him and he had for her, was his insurance against his indiscretion. The day their talk turned to him and Amy was the day their private passion would have transformed into public tragedy.

  He read books. He liked none of them. He searched their pages for Amy. She was not there. He went to parties. They bored him. He walked the streets, gazing into strangers’ faces. Amy was not there. The world, in all its infinite wonder, bored him. He searched every room of his life for Amy. But Amy was not anywhere to be found. And he realised Amy was married to his uncle, that his passion was a madness, that it had no future, that whatever it was must end, and that he must end it. He reasoned that, as there was nothing he could do about his feelings, he must avoid acting on them. If he did not see her, he could not do anything wrong. And so he resolved never to visit Amy again.

  When his next leave—a six-day furlough—arose, he did not return to his uncle’s hotel but took the overnight train to Melbourne, where he spent all his money on outings and presents for Ella, trying to lose himself in her, seeking to exorcise all memory of his strange encounter with Amy. Ella, for her part, would look greedily into his face, his eyes, and—with a growing concern in his heart which at moments approached terror—he could see her face straining to discover in his face and his eyes the same hunger. And what had been a beautiful, exotic face to Dorrigo Evans now simply seemed dull beyond imagining. Her dark eyes—which at first he had found bewitching—now appeared to him as credulous, even cow-like in their trust, though he tried very hard not to think it, and loathed himself all the more for thinking it anyway. And so he poured himself with renewed determination into her arms, into her conversations, into her fears and jokes and stories, hoping that this intimacy would finally smother all memory of Amy Mulvaney.

  On his last night they went for dinner at her father’s club. A RAAF major whom they met there made Ella laugh over and over with his jokes and stories. When the major announced he was leaving to go to a nearby nightclub, Ella begged Dorrigo that they go with him because he was such a hoot. Dorrigo felt a strange emotion that was neither jealousy nor gratitude but a strange mingling of both.

  I love being with people, Ella said.

  The more people I am with, Dorrigo thought, the more alone I feel.

  14

  NOW THE DAY began before the prisoners were awake, before the main body of guards and engineers were up, some hours before even the sun had risen; now, as Nakamura strode through the mud, breathing the wet night air, as his nightmares dissolved, as the methamphetamines cranked his heart and mind, he felt a pleasant anti
cipation. This day, this camp, this world, was his to shape. He found Colonel Kota, as Fukuhara had said, in an empty mess, sitting at a bamboo bench table eating tinned fish.

  The colonel was a well-built man almost the height of an Australian, his physique belying a face that seemed to Nakamura to sag and fall away from either side of a shark-fin nose to ripples that trailed down his wrinkled cheeks.

  Kota did not bother with small talk but got straight to business, saying he would be leaving in the morning as soon as transport could be arranged. From a soggy leather satchel the colonel produced an oiled japara folder, out of which he took a single sheet of typewritten orders and several pages of technical drawings so damp that they wrapped around Nakamura’s fingers as he read them. The orders were no more complex than they were welcome.

  The first order was technical: even though the major railway cutting was already half-completed, the Railway Command Group had altered Nakamura’s original plans. They now wanted the cutting enlarged by a third to help with gradient issues in the next sector. The new cutting would entail a further three-thousand cubic metres of rock to be cut and carried away.

  As Tomokawa poured sour tea for them both, Nakamura bent down and retied the tapes of his puttee. They didn’t have enough saws or axes to clear the jungle. The prisoners cut the rock by hand with a hammer and chisel. He didn’t even have proper chisels for the prisoners to use, and when what they did have blunted, there wasn’t enough coke for their forge to resharpen them. Nakamura sat back up.

  Drilling machines with compressors would help, he said.

  Colonel Kota stroked his sagging cheek.

  Machinery?

  He let the word hang in the air, leaving Nakamura to finish it off in his own mind—with the knowledge that there was no machinery, with the shame of having begged, the sense of being mocked. Nakamura lowered his head. Kota once more spoke.