The Great World

by David Malouf

  So all their watches were wrong – that too. They were on Jap time now, and would be for as long as it lasted. They had, without knowing it, lost their status as soldiers, and some other qualifications as well, and been prisoners of war for the last two hours.

  On the Monday they began marching, fifty thousand of them it was said, into captivity, though all it meant as yet was to move twelve miles to the other end of the island; a mass of men so huge that you couldn’t conceive of it, Digger couldn’t, till you came to a slope and looked back and saw the dense massed columns passing away into ghostliness in the haze.

  They took everything they could carry. The army had taught them that much. What you had you hung on to: rations, equipment, an old tobacco tin, spare sweaters and socks. But also cheap watches traded or knocked off from the Chinese, propelling pencils, fly-swats, bronze Buddhas, copies of Gone with the Wind and Moby Dick and Edgar Wallace, bolts of shantung and Thai silk, inkwells, packs of cards, flasks of Johnny Walker Red Label whisky. Each man was weighed down with twenty to forty pounds of it and staggering; his shirt pockets stuffed, and such lighter articles as bottle-openers, penknives, screwdrivers, metal cups and water-bottles dangling from the straps of his pack or his belt-loops or from a thong round his neck. They looked less like the remnants of a military enterprise, even a failed one, than the medicine men of an advanced cargo cult, or a horde of Syrian pedlars about to be unleashed on all the country towns of New South Wales. They tottered, they clanked with relics, the accumulated paraphernalia (anything that could be upended and slung across a shoulder, or unscrewed or wrenched off) of a world that had exploded in fragments around them, and would have now, in the spirit of improvisation, to be reconstructed elsewhere – on the move if that’s what it came to. But they were experts at that. They were Australians. A good many of them had been training for it all their lives.

  These miscellaneous oddments, the detachable parts and symbols of civilised life, were all they had now to reassure themselves of where they had come from and what they were. What was contained in a set of surgeons’ knives or a pair of pliers and a coil of wire – and in a way that was very nearly mystical – was the superior status, guaranteed, of those who had invented them and knew their use. Civilisation? That’s us. Look at this.

  But as the day wore on, and the twelve miles became a martyrdom of raw feet, raw shoulders, thighs chafed with sweat, and the sun beat down shadeless and blinding, the weight would not balance, not even against an unknown future. By nightfall even the dullest and most stubborn of them had learned something, and what he had learned could be picked up, weighed, turned over and a price put upon it, by the thousands of scavengers who moved along with them, snapping up whatever they cast aside or dropped, and would be laid out that night under lamps in shanty shops – as proof of what till now had been barely graspable: an extraordinary surrender of power, made once on paper and once in a form you could actually see and lay your hands on; in the world of commodities. What a break-up! Idlers surveying this windfall were bug-eyed with amazement at the sheer scope of it. A quartz inkwell, look, without a single chip!

  It was a general stripping. In it, whether they knew it or not, they had been making decisions on which their lives would depend. Everything a man had grasped about human nature (including his own), and the unpredictability of things, was in the choice between a six-bob alarm clock and a pair of scuffed but serviceable boots.

  At a point back there they had stepped, each one of them, across a line where the weight of each thing in the world, even the smallest, had been added to; but they themselves were lighter.

  Sitting among so many in the sweltering dark, Digger rested against his pack, boots off at last, socks peeled painfully from the blistered flesh.

  They were in an open encampment at the eastern end of the island. Changi, the place was called.

  The unit was scattered, They had started off in good order, but men had kept falling behind, some to bargain with one another or with the natives who ran alongside, grinning, pointing to things that had caught their eye and shouting offers, others because they had gone sick or lame, or been poleaxed by the sun. Many of them were still straggling in, and on all sides the company sergeants were at work, shouting roll calls of their men.

  Twelve days ago Mac had been wounded, not too badly, in the thigh. For most of the march, Digger on one side, Doug on the other, they had half-carried him. He lay now with one arm across his eyes, as white as chalk. Digger worried and fussed.

  Doug, who could never sit still for more than two minutes at a time, was out scavenging. That was the excuse. What he was really doing was walking up and down in jubilation at the scene.

  He was in his element. The sanctified irregularity and disorder of it, the mixing in of Australians and British and Dutch and native troops, the great braying noise they made far off into the night, all this was tonic to him. He danced up and down among the various groups – he was a big fellow but very light on his feet – chiacking, greeting acquaintances, dipping down every now and again to share a word or two with this one or that, and to draw out the bullshit artists among them who were already sketching glorious futures for themselves among the guerrillas, or boasting of what they would have done if they’d been given the chance. He came back with a packet of Ardaths and a swag of gleeful tales to tell.

  ‘I tellya,’ he told them, ‘this is gunna be a little Chicago, you mark my word. You’ll see now what human nature is.’

  This last was a crack at Mac. Human nature was a term Mac was strong on; he and Doug did not see eye to eye on it, or on much else, really. Their affection was based on passionate difference. He threw it out now in the hope that it might stir Mac up.

  Like most men who have never had a day off work, Doug was uncomfortable with illness. His belief was that if he could only stir Mac up a bit, and lift his spirits, he would be himself again.

  ‘Word is,’ he told them, ‘that we’re gunna give in our gear. Wouldn’ you know? So that the bloody officers can be turned out like gentlemen and impress the Nips. Walkin’ shoes for all officers, two pairs apiece. Commandeered if fellers aren’t willing to give ’em up. Shoes are goin’ pretty cheap out there. Blokes are gettin’ rid of ’em fer anything they can get, smokes, watches, silk stockin’s. Silk stockin’s are pretty safe.’ He laughed. ‘I’d settle fer smokes, meself. You watch. Smokes, bully, condensed milk, that’ll be the currency. A good pair a’ boots. It always comes down to the same things in the long run, belly, dick or feet. There won’t be too much dick in it this time, I reckon. It’ll be bellies, you watch, an’ feet.’

  He shook out the pack of Ardaths, offered one to Digger, then passed it across to Mac. He raised his head and looked out over the great mob of them that was scattered over the flat ground. All the nonsense had gone out of him.

  ‘They’re mugs, most a’ these blokes,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Wouldn’ know their arseholes from the back end of a rabbit warren. It’s pathetic. Half of ’em are still puking up their mother’s milk.’

  Mac had lighted up and had his head back, drawing in smoke.

  ‘How’s it going, chief?’ Doug said, settling beside him. ‘A bit rugged, eh?’ He looked quickly at Digger, then away.

  They were spread out over a low area without definition, except that somewhere, away in the darkness, you could smell the sea. No fences, no wire, no sign of Nips. There was movement, a kind of restlessness as of a huge animal stretched out on the ground there, the sound of its breathing, a muffled roar. But everything, their movements, their voices when they spoke, had a subdued air, as if they were under surveillance and the Nips were there after all, but out of sight.

  They were in the open, without protection, contained only by the gentlemen’s agreement some Englishman had made in their name. It was eerie, that.

  ‘What’s up, Dig?’

  Mac, who often knew what Digger was thinking, looked back over his shoulder. His expression was quizzical.

  ‘Not
hin’,’ Digger said. ‘Just thinkin’.’

  ‘Farewell the plumed troop, eh? And the big wars that make ambition virtue.’ Mac’s voice was hoarse and full of weariness, but there was some of his old humour in it. He could see they were concerned about him and was making an effort.

  Doug, who got embarrassed when things took a literary turn, drew on the last of his fag and sent it in a fiery arc across the dark.

  ‘Farewell the neighing steed,’ Digger recited, taking up where Mac had left off, and in a voice that had none of the roughness of his ordinary speech, ‘and the shrill trump, the spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, the royal banner, and all quality, pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.’

  He came to an end, and looked up, a little shy but not at all self-conscious. They often played this game.

  Mac was grinning, genuinely delighted.

  He was an older fellow, thirty-eight. Back home he was on the trams. He lived at Bondi Junction with his sister-in-law, Iris, who worked in a cake shop (he had told Digger all this), and was what Doug called a black-stump philosopher, full of all sorts of wild arguments and theories and extravagant optimisms that wouldn’t have worked in Paradise, let alone where they were now. His pack was crammed with books, and every week at home he bought at least a dozen of them from barrows or second-hand bookshops down George Street. His room at home was stacked to the ceiling with them.

  ‘He never fails, this boy,’ he said now, inviting Doug to admire the phenomenon. ‘Amazing, eh?’

  Digger shook his head. It was nothing, a trick, that’s all.

  Doug was about to offer his own ironical comment when another voice broke in: ‘Hey, I know that.’

  It was Doug’s mate, if you could call him that, Vic.

  ‘Good fer you, son,’ Doug said drily. The others, Digger and Mac, exchanged glances.

  He was a big, solidly-built fellow, not yet twenty, who had recently attached himself to them and was proving hard to shake off. Originally, like Doug, from a mining village up Newcastle way, he saw this as a bond between them and made a good deal of it. He was just out of school and had, so far as Digger could see, no experience of any kind. He tried to hide it by speaking rough and making a big man of himself. Digger couldn’t stand him. Mac didn’t think much of him either.

  It was Doug he had set his sights on, but for some reason it was the others he played up to, and this made them like him even less. But when they complained about him, Doug, who was all generosity, would shrug his shoulders and say: ‘Oh, Vic’s all right.’ Still, this didn’t prevent him from teasing the fellow.

  ‘Go on,’ he’d say with mock astonishment when Vic came out with some bit of self-promotion by which he hoped they might be impressed.

  He did, too, regularly, and sank himself.

  ‘Here,’ he said now, ‘I brought you something.’ It was a little tin of Ideal milk.

  Doug took it and turned it over in his hand. ‘What’s this for?’ he said. ‘Somebody got a birthday?’

  Vic’s neck burned. It wasn’t for anything. It was something he had picked up for them, that’s all. He waited for Doug to accept the thing and get it out of the way.

  ‘Ta,’ Doug said at last, and set the tin down, a bit too prominently, on his pack. Vic took this as an invitation to settle on the grass among them.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘here we are, eh? How long d’ya reckon this’ll last?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Doug offered him the pack of Ardaths. ‘Long as the war, could be. How long d’you reckon?’

  ‘Well,’ Vic said, ‘I heard they want to exchange us. Right away, one bloke says.’

  ‘Go on! – You hear that, Mac? – What would they exchange us for?’

  ‘Wool, I heard. They want wool.’

  Doug laughed outright. ‘They’ll need a lotta bloody sheep in exchange fer this lot,’ he said, looking out over the mob of them. ‘So howdaya reckon they’ll do it – by weight? I’ll be oright, they’ll do pretty well outa me. You too. But waddabout Digger? Hardly be worth tradin’ a mingy little bugger like that. Waddaya weigh, Digger?’

  ‘Eight eight,’ Digger laughed.

  ‘I can just see it,’ Doug said, ‘It’d be like the bloody day a’ judgement. I don’t know whether I could be in that.’

  ‘Well,’ Vic said uncomfortably, ‘it’s on’y a rumour anyway. You know, ya hear all sorts a’ things. I don’t suppose it’ll happen.’

  ‘No,’ Doug said, ‘I don’t think so either. You can breathe again, Dig, we’ve scrapped that plan.’

  Vic watched the exchange of smiles between them. He wasn’t a fool. He caught Digger’s eye on him. Scornful. Digger was the one he would have trouble with. He looked like nothing, there was nothing you would notice about him; but of the three he was the one who considered longest, said least, and would be the hardest to win.

  ‘I wish he’d bugger off,’ Digger was thinking. ‘Can’t he see we don’t want him? He spoils things.’

  He was one of a large number of replacements who had only recently arrived on the island.

  Three weeks before, they were still being seasick on the way up from Perth, or, in baggy shorts and boots, their shoulders blistering, had been leaning far out over the rails to sight flying fish. They had been recruited and shipped straight here, it being the intention of the service chiefs to train them on the spot. Their kit and a week’s rifle practice on the range at Bukit Timar was the sum total of what made them soldiers.

  The voyage, the adventure of leaving Australia, the tales they brought with them, heard from old-timers in country pubs and on the job in timberyards and sales rooms, or from uncles while the women were washing up after Sunday dinner, had raised them to a pitch of heroic impatience, a keenness untempered by any contact with army regulations or the rigours of drill. All fired up and ready for conflict, they had walked down the gang plank into this. Captivity.

  Vic had taken the turn of events as a personal affront. Since ten o’clock on Sunday night, all the qualities he knew to be in him were out of fashion. He was among men here who had already been toughened by experience, even those of them, like Digger, who were no older than himself. They might think they had the right to despise him, for no other reason than that he was young, raw, and had had no chance to show himself. But he couldn’t put up with that. He knew what he was.

  He squatted on his heels looking easy – he was a pleasant-looking fellow, his hands hanging loosely over his thighs, his slouch hat across his back. But he was never easy. There was always some little irritation that pricked at him. Very aware of slights, he stayed alert and watchful.

  Doug, meanwhile, had found a new topic to rave over.

  ‘They reckon Gordon Bennett’s missing,’ he said. ‘Have you heard that? Pissed off home in his own little rowboat and left the rest of us up the creek. Be just like ’im, eh?’

  He had a poor view of anyone in authority; officers, bosses, little jumped-up clerks behind a desk who hum and ha and make you feel like shit before they’ll stamp anything for you; all of them eager to lick an arse or kick one according to whether it’s above or below them; all of them determined, like the bloody second lieutenants here who would soon be strutting about in their shoes, to hang on to every last little sign of privilege.

  ‘Typical,’ Doug said, and spat.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Vic said. He had always to be saying something. ‘D’ya reckon one of our blokes would? I mean, I know ’e’s a general and that, but would ’e?’

  Doug said nothing, just sat there with his eyebrows raised and looked at him. The silence was too much for Vic.

  ‘Well, would you?’

  Doug laughed. ‘Are you barmy? Of course I wouldn’t. But I’m a bloody footslogger, I can’t just piss off home. Haven’t got a bloody rowboat for one thing. Neither can Mac here, or Digger. Neither can you. But who’s t’ say what I might do if I was a general? Or you either – well, not you maybe, but I wouldn’t like to swear what I mightn’t do if I h
ad half the chance.’

  Vic frowned. He didn’t care much for the line the talk was taking. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s just a rumour, really. Like that wool business, eh? The place is full of ’em.’ There was a beat of silence. ‘So,’ he said, ‘here we are, eh?’

  Doug looked about, and the sigh he gave was theatrical. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘How did I get inta this? I was always such a careful bloke. Never put me foot down on cracks – not even when I was a grown-up. Changed me socks twice a week, never went out with fast women or stepped under ladders or broke mirrors, or let ’em give me a ticket with a thirteen in it. Ya can’t be more careful than that. If I saw a Chinaman I’d rush right up, you know, and jus’ tip ’im, like, then duck away, fer luck. An’ after all that I was mug enough to join up. I ask you, what makes us do it? Are we rational beings or aren’t we? Oh Gawd, I thought, they’ll send me to the real war. Greece maybe, Egypt, I don’t want that. But they sent me up here. I ’ad Digger ’n Mac with me. I thought, “This is all right. Tropic nights. Taxi dancers ten cents a go. Chinamen all over. You’ll be all right here, Douggy. This’ll do.” An’ now look what’s happened. I ask you, honestly, is there any logic to it? Do any of us know what we’re doing, even when we’re bloody doin’ it? Is anyone weighin’ it all up in a pan? – and I don’t jus’ mean so they can trade me for my bloody weight in wool!’ He laughed. ‘Still, if it does come t’ that – we oughta start buildin’ you up, Digger –’

  ‘I’m all right,’ Digger said, laughing.

  ‘Here, mate.’ He scooped his big hand down, swept up the tin of Ideal milk and flipped it to Digger in a quick pass. ‘You get that down ya,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind, do ya Vic? Digger’s our local flyweight –’

  ‘Feather,’ Digger put in, to be accurate.

  ‘No one in this mob can touch him.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Vic. You could see the little flicker of challenge and interest. He was surprised. Digger was such a mild fellow.