The Narrow Road to the Deep North

by Richard Flanagan

  And as he listened to the colonel’s terrible story, Nakamura could see that even in such terrible acts, too, that there was no other way for the Emperor’s wishes to be realised.

  Necks, continued Colonel Kota, looking away to where an open door framed the rainswept night. That’s all I really see of people now. Their necks. It’s not right to think this way, is it? I don’t know. It’s how I am now. I meet someone new, I look at his neck, I size it up—easy to cut or hard to cut. And that’s all I want of people, their necks, that blow, this life, those colours, the red, the white, the yellow.

  Your neck, you see, Colonel Kota said, that was what I first saw. And such a good neck—I can see exactly where the sword should fall. A wonderful neck. Your head would fly a metre. As it should. Because sometimes the neck is just too thin or too fat, or they wriggle or squeal in terror—you can just imagine—and you botch it and end up hacking them to death in rage. Your corporal, though, bull-necked, his attitude, you see. I’d have to concentrate on my stroke and placement to kill him quickly.

  And all the time he was talking, Colonel Kota went on clenching and unclenching his hand, raising and lowering it when clenched, as though he were readying his sword for another beheading.

  It’s not just about the railway, Colonel Kota said, though the railway must be built. Or even the war, though the war must be won.

  It’s about the Europeans learning that they are not the superior race, Nakamura said.

  And us learning that we are, Colonel Kota said.

  For some moments neither man spoke, then Colonel Kota recited:

  Even in Kyoto

  when I hear the cuckoo

  I long for Kyoto.

  Basho, Nakamura said.

  Talking more, Nakamura was delighted to discover that Colonel Kota shared with him a passion for traditional Japanese literature. They grew sentimental as they talked of the earthy wisdom of Issa’s haiku, the greatness of Buson, the wonder of Basho’s great haibun, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which, Colonel Kota said, summed up in one book the genius of the Japanese spirit.

  They both fell silent again. For no reason, Nakamura felt his spirits abruptly rising at the thought of their railway delivering victory in the invasion of India, at the idea of the whole world under one roof, with the beauty of Basho’s verse. And all these things, which had seemed so confused and lacking in substance when he had tried to explain them to the Australian colonel, now seemed so clear and obvious and connected, so kind and good, when talking with such a kind, good man as Colonel Kota.

  To the railway, said Colonel Kota, raising his teacup.

  To Japan, said Nakamura, raising his cup in turn.

  To the Emperor! said Colonel Kota.

  To Basho! said Nakamura.

  Issa!

  Buson!

  They drained what was left of Tomokawa’s sour tea, then put down their teacups. And because they were two strangers with no idea what next to say, the silence that returned felt to Nakamura a mutual and profound understanding. The colonel opened a dark-blue cigarette case with the Kuomintang’s white sun emblazoned on it, and proffered it to his fellow officer. They lit up and relaxed.

  They recited to each other more of their favourite haiku, and they were deeply moved not so much by the poetry as by their sensitivity to poetry; not so much by the genius of the poem as by their wisdom in understanding the poem; not in knowing the poem but in knowing the poem demonstrated the higher side of themselves and of the Japanese spirit—that Japanese spirit that was soon to daily travel along their railway all the way to Burma, the Japanese spirit that from Burma would find its way to India, the Japanese spirit that would from there conquer the world.

  In this way, thought Nakamura, the Japanese spirit is now itself the railway, and the railway the Japanese spirit, our narrow road to the deep north, helping to take the beauty and wisdom of Basho to the larger world.

  And as they talked of renga and waka and haiku, of Burma and India and the railway, both men felt a great sense of shared meaning, though exactly what they had shared neither would afterwards have been able to say. Colonel Kota recited another haiku by Kato, and they agreed that it was this supreme Japanese gift—of portraying life so concisely, so exquisitely—that they, with their work on the railway, were helping bring to the world. And this conversation, which was really a series of mutual agreements, made them both feel considerably better about their own privations and the bitter struggle that was their work.

  And then Nakamura looked at his watch.

  You must excuse me, Colonel. It’s already 0350 hours. I must reschedule the work gangs to meet the new targets before reveille.

  As he was about to leave, the colonel put his hand on Nakamura’s shoulder.

  I could have talked poetry with you all night, the large man said.

  In the darkness and emptiness of the hut, Nakamura could feel the intense emotion of Colonel Kota as he drew his arm around Nakamura and brought his shark-fin face in close. He smelt of stale anchovies. His lips were open.

  In another world, Colonel Kota began. Men . . . men love.

  He couldn’t go on. Nakamura pulled away. Colonel Kota straightened up and hoped he had been misunderstood. In New Guinea they had butchered and eaten both American prisoners and their own men. They had been dying of starvation. He remembered the corpses with their skinned thigh bones sticking out like gnawed drumsticks. The colours. Brown, green, black. He remembered the sweet taste. He had wanted another human being to know. That they had been starving and had no choice. To say it was all right. To hold him. To—

  It can’t be helped, Nakamura said.

  No, Colonel Kota replied, stepping backwards and flipping open his Kuomintang cigarette case to proffer another cigarette to Nakamura. Of course not.

  As the major lit up, Colonel Kota said—

  Even in Manchukuo

  when I see a neck

  I long for Manchukuo.

  He snapped the cigarette case shut, smiled and, clenching his fist, turned and left, his strange laughter vanishing with him into the noise of the monsoon night.

  17

  AMY MULVANEY WAS astonished at how easily lying now came to her, and she felt both a shame and a joy in her new ability. Over dinner Keith had begun one of his rants about council politics, when she interrupted to tell him that she was spending the next day with an old girlfriend—they would drive to a distant, isolated beach for a picnic and a swim, and she would borrow the Ford Cabriolet for the purpose.

  Of course, Keith said, and then immediately returned to his story about the new council clerk and his antiquated thinking on sewerage.

  Say something real! Amy had nearly cried out. But what that real thing was, what it might sound like, she couldn’t say anymore, and besides, she didn’t really want his attention at all. And the more Keith rambled on about drains and the pressing need for sewers and modern planning regulations and water closets for all and national mechanisms, regulation and scientific administration, the more she longed for the brush of Dorrigo Evans’ fingers in the dark.

  That night she had difficulty sleeping. Keith woke twice and asked her if she was ill, but before she answered he was asleep again, mouth rumbling, a minuscule salt pan of dry spume in the crease below his lips.

  The next day began with her making her face up twice before she was satisfied and changing several times before settling on what she began with: dark shorts and a light cotton blouse cut to resemble a shawl which would show herself to advantage. Then she took the cotton blouse off in favour of a low-cut red blouse she fancied was like the one Olivia de Havilland wore in Captain Blood. But she had no skirt that went with it. And when, a little after ten, she picked up Dorrigo Evans from the sentry gate outside the barracks—Dorrigo Evans, who, she thought, with his smile, and his nose and the way he wore his hair a little longer than copyright, really wasn’t that unlike Errol Flynn—she was wearing a rather impractical but, she felt, fetching light-blue floral skirt an
d a cream halter top.

  With Dorrigo at her side, everything that had seemed to Amy dull and stupid now was delightful and interesting; all that yesterday felt like an ever more claustrophobic prison she had wished to escape today felt like the most wondrous backdrop to her life. But her nervousness was so great that she kept stalling the car and Dorrigo ended up driving.

  God, she thought, how she wanted him, and how unseemly and unspeakable were the ways in which she wanted him. She thought how disgraceful she was, how wicked her heart, and how the world would punish her. And that thought was almost immediately replaced by another. My disgraceful, wicked heart, thought Amy, is braver than the world. For a moment it seemed to Amy that there was nothing in the world she could not meet and vanquish. And though she knew this to be the most foolish idea, it excited and emboldened her further.

  The Ford was in a poor state. The engine roared, and the gears made a dreadful crunch whenever Dorrigo used them. In the general racket she felt free to talk, her words nothing, the drift of them everything.

  He’s a good man, she said. So kind. You have no idea. I mean, I love Keith. So much. Who wouldn’t? A good man.

  The best of blokes, said Dorrigo Evans, not entirely insincerely.

  Yes, said Amy. A good man. And that council clerk! He has no idea at all about sewerage.

  She knew she was babbling, that what she really wanted to tell Dorrigo was how Keith never said one word she felt was true to his heart. Every word was a mask. She wanted to tell Dorrigo how she longed for Keith to say real things. Or just one real thing.

  But what that real thing might be Amy in her heart didn’t know. What Amy Mulvaney wanted to hear just didn’t sound like water closets and garden cities and the necessity of sound sewerage planning. She knew she wanted contradictory things. Really, she did not want her husband to talk at all; while she wanted Dorrigo Evans to say so many things to her, and she wanted him to say nothing in case he broke the spell—in case he somehow said it was only an outing, that she was simply a duty he had incurred as part of what passed, at such distance from his home, as his family. And she expressed all this strange contradictory tumult, all this ocean of feeling about the man to whom she was not married, by saying about the man to whom she was—

  Keith is Keith.

  When they arrived at the start of the track to the beach, Dorrigo lit a cigarette, but had not taken it from his mouth when Amy, stretching awkwardly to protect both her skirt and her dignity as she stepped over a sagging barbed wire fence, scratched her thigh and cried out. She twisted her leg out. A string of minute blood beads was slowly rising on the inside of her thigh, three glistening red ball bearings.

  Dorrigo Evans threw his cigarette away and squatted down.

  Excuse me, he said in a formal manner, and with a finger slid the hem of the light-blue skirt slightly up Amy’s thigh. He dabbed at the wound with a handkerchief, halted and watched. The three blood balls beaded back up.

  He leant in. He put a hand around her other calf to steady himself. He could smell the sea. He looked up at her. She was staring at him with a look he couldn’t interpret. His face was very close to her thigh now. He heard a seagull squawk. He turned back to her leg.

  He put his lips to the lowest blood ball.

  Amy’s hand reached down and rested on the back of his head.

  What are you doing? she asked in a direct, hard voice.

  But her fingers were threading his hair in strange, creeping contradiction. He weighed the tension in her voice, the lightness of her fingers touching, the overwhelming scent of her body. Very slowly, the tips of his lips just touching her skin, he kissed the blood ball away, leaving a crimson smear on her thigh.

  Her hand remained resting on his head, her fingers in his hair. He turned into her a little more and, raising his hand, lightly cupped the back of her thigh.

  Dorrigo?

  The other beads kept growing, and the first began to return. As he waited for her to object, to shake her leg, to push him away, kick him even, he did not dare look up. He watched those perfect spheres of blood, three camellias of desire, continue swelling. Her body was a poem beyond memorising. He kissed the second blood ball.

  Her fingers tensed in his hair. The third blood ball he swept up with his tongue, just past the shadow line of her skirt where her thigh grew thicker. Amy’s fingertips dug into his head. He kissed her leg again, this time tasting the salt of her, closed his eyes and let his lips rest on her thigh, smelling her, feeling her warmth.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he let go of her leg and got back to his feet.

  18

  FOR THE NEXT quarter of an hour, in an awkward squall of silence, they followed an overgrown track to the beach. The day was growing hot, they were sweating, and both were grateful for the relief of that empty beach and ocean, its noise, its purpose, its solitude. After changing at a discreet distance from each other in the dunes, they ran into the sea together.

  Amy felt the water reform her into something whole and strong. Things that a day before had seemed at the centre of her being dissolved into trivia and then washed away altogether: next week’s dining room menu; the difficulty of procuring new wool blankets for the hotel rooms; the odour of the chief barman; the sickly sucking noise Keith made as he lit his pipe of an evening.

  Behind the wave line they turned, wet-faced and diamond-eyed. On the infinite plateau of ocean only their heads broke, they trod water, each gazing at the other. She felt him swim up from underneath and brush her body as he surfaced. Like a seal, like a man.

  After, they rested in the cleft of a dune, where the roar of breaking waves was hushed and the wind deflected. As their bodies dried, the heat returned as a stupefying weight. Amy stretched out and Dorrigo followed suit. She let her back soak up the heat and rested her face in the dark shadow thrown by her head. After a time she burrowed around and nestled her head against his stomach. He lit another cigarette.

  Dorrigo held his arm up to the white-streaked sky and thought he had never seen anything so perfect. He closed one eye and with his other watched his finger touch the beauty of a cloud.

  Why don’t we remember clouds? he said.

  Because they don’t mean anything.

  And yet they’re everything, thought Dorrigo, but this idea was too vast or absurd to hold or even care about, and he let it drift past him with the cloud.

  Time passed slowly or quickly. It was hard to say. They rolled into each other.

  Dorry?

  Dorrigo murmured.

  You know it’s when I’m alone with Keith that I can’t stand him and I hate myself, she said. Why’s that?

  Dorrigo Evans had no answer. He flicked his cigarette into a dune.

  Because I want to be with you, she said.

  Time had gone and everything had halted.

  That’s why, she said.

  Whatever had held them apart, whatever had restrained their bodies before, was now gone. If the earth spun it faltered, if the wind blew it waited. Hands found flesh; flesh, flesh. He felt the improbable weight of her eyelash with his own; he kissed the slight, rose-coloured trench that remained from her knicker elastic, running around her belly like the equator line circling the world. As they lost themselves in the circumnavigation of each other, there came from nearby shrill shrieks that ended in a deeper howl.

  Dorrigo looked up. A large dog stood at the top of the dune. Above blood-jagged drool, its slobbery mouth clutched a twitching fairy penguin. He had the strange sensation that suddenly Amy was very far away, that he was hovering above her naked body. His feelings abruptly transformed. Amy, whose body an instant before had made him feel almost drunk with its scent and touch and sweep, its sweet salt rime; Amy, who a moment earlier had seemed to him to have become another aspect of himself, was now remote and removed from him. Their understanding of each other had been greater than that of God’s. And a moment later it had vanished.

  The dog dropped its head sideways; the penguin’s now limp body flopp
ed, and the dog turned and vanished. But the penguin’s howl—eerie and long, with its abrupt end—remained in his mind.

  Look at me, he heard Amy whisper. Only me.

  When he looked back down, Amy’s eyes had changed. Her pupils seemed saucer-like, lost—and lost, he realised, in him. He felt the terrible gravity of her desire for him pulling him back to her, into a story that was not his, and now that he had all he had dreamt of in recent days, he wanted to escape it as quickly as possible. He feared losing himself, his freedom, his future. What had a moment before aroused him so intensely now seemed charmless and ordinary, and he wished to flee. But instead he closed his eyes, and as he entered her a groan escaped her lips in a voice he did not recognise.

  A wild, almost violent intensity took hold of their lovemaking and turned the strangeness of their bodies into a single thing. He forgot those short, sharp shrieks, that horror of ceaseless solitude, his dread of a nameless future. Her body transformed for him again. It was no longer desire or repulsion, but another element of him, without which he was incomplete. In her he felt the most powerful and necessary return. And without her, his life felt to him no longer any life at all.

  Even then though, his memory was eating the truth of them. Afterwards, he remembered only their bodies, rising and falling with the crash of waves, brushed by the sea breezes that ruffled the sand dune tops and raked the ash that ate his abandoned cigarette.

  19

  DYING AIR DOZED in the King of Cornwall’s corridors. There was a weariness to the dim light. In the hotel kitchen it smelt like gas, though no leak had ever been found. In the rising floors and elaborate staircases, with their dusty carpet runners, there rose and fell odours Amy recognised as disappointment, of dust balls and dryness mixed with the slumping grease of defective meals and the doomed assignations of travelling salesmen and women bored or desperate or both. Am I one of these women? Amy wondered as she made her way to the top floor. Am I one too?