by Alan Chin
“Chowtime,” Stokes said before realizing what was going on.
Hudson glanced at Mitchell. “Sir, okay if we eat lunch before the rice cools?”
“Go ahead, Hudson. Eat by your bunks.”
Hudson nodded at Cocoa with a wink. “How’s about fryin’ up some eggs?”
“Sure thing.” Cocoa’s smile was angelic.
Stokes sauntered to the unit footlocker, unlocked it, and opened the lid. Fowler and Cox were quickly there to inspect the contents. In addition to pots, pans, a hotplate, and a coffee grinder, there were five eggs laying in a pearl-white bowl, three sacks of coffee beans, a dozen bananas, four cans of sardines, six cans of condensed milk, two pounds of roasted pork meat wrapped in leaves, a sack of dried shrimp, and a bottle of hooch. There were also containers of cooking oil, salt, pepper, sugar, and seven packs of Kooas.
Neither Fowler nor Cox could conceal their amazement. Cox ran his tongue over his dry lip. Fowler was too dazed to ask where it all came from.
“We’ve been lucky at gambling,” Hudson offered, patting Cox on the shoulder.
Stokes pulled the hotplate and frying pan from the box while Cocoa took the oil, eggs, salt, and pepper.
Fowler found his voice before Stokes could relock the box. “Just a minute. I want a closer look at that.” He knelt and rummaged through the entire box, obviously looking for money, but he found nothing more than the food and cigarettes. He told Cox to make sure everything in the box went on the list.
Stokes took the pan and hotplate to the electric outlet, plugged in the hotplate, and set the pan on top. While the pan heated, Cocoa readied the oil and eggs. Normally for the midday meal, they combined all the unit’s rice together, mixed in two raw eggs, and redistributed equal portions to each man. Today, however, they silently agreed to splurge.
Cocoa suggested frying up some pork meat as well, but Andrew vigorously shook his head no. He knew that would be going too far over the top.
Fowler and Cox examined every shelf, food box, mattress, and pillow. Bunk by bunk they made their way through the hut.
Cocoa broke an eggshell on the side of the pan and dropped the contents neatly into the hot oil. A sputtering sound filled the entire hut. Everybody froze. All eyes involuntarily focused on the frying pan. The sunrise-yellow yolk surrounded by a circle of clear jelly began to set. Cocoa repeated the operation until five eggs covered the bottom of the pan. The sizzle, an arduous, torturing sound, consumed every mind.
Cocoa used a spatula to work the eggs around the pan so they didn’t stick. The unit stood at a respectful distance, drinking their soup and watching the amazing vision of frying eggs.
Hudson turned to Mitchell. “Sorry, we don’t have enough to offer you some.”
Mitchell’s voice cracked, “We couldn’t accept anyway. We’re here on official business.”
“Perhaps you’ll join us for a cup of coffee after we eat?”
“Thank you, no,” Henman said, but everybody knew he would kill for a cup of real coffee.
The marvelous fragrance of frying eggs is one of life’s simple pleasures—that is, unless you’re starving. Then it’s bamboo-shoots-under-fingernails torture. Henman couldn’t hide the strain any longer. He took Mitchell by the arm and suggested they step outside for a moment. He had something to say to Mitchell in private. Mitchell seemed only too happy to follow him outside.
Fowler leaned out the nearest window, taking breaths of outside air. Sweat streamed down his face. Every pop of grease echoed like a kettledrum. Andrew heard Fowler’s stomach growl from twenty feet away.
Cocoa flipped the eggs over one by one, adding a pinch of salt and pepper to each. “The secret to fried eggs is spicing them while the little buggers are still cookin’.” He smacked his lips together.
He visibly poured all his concentration into making each egg a work of art. “Jesus H., this smells so damn good. It’s going to taste like heaven. Stokes, line up those rice cans.” Cocoa pulled the frying pan off the hotplate. One by one he slipped the spatula under an egg, glided it over a billycan, and laid the egg neatly over the rice. He tilted the pan over the top of the mess-cans to let a thin stream of oil trickle over each egg until the pan was dry.
A hush haunted the still air.
“Chowtime, boys.” Cocoa’s voice cut the silence like a gong.
Each man in the unit picked up his rice and egg and brought it under his nose to savor the aroma. Andrew broke his yoke to let the golden nectar saturate his rice. He took a bite of egg and moaned.
Cox said, “Sir, I think I’ve found something.”
Fowler raced over, nearly screaming, “Whose bunk is this?”
“That would be mine,” Hudson said through a mouthful of egg. He strutted right up to Fowler and ate another spoonful of egg, chewing loudly.
As Cox uncovered the silk sarong and five cigars, Hudson looked as if a lightning bolt had zapped his testicles. He had forgotten about the silk. His mouth dropped open as the blood drained from his face. He stammered an unintelligible word and went silent.
Fowler’s chest expanded. “Hudson, you are under arrest.” Fowler’s words were magisterial and final. “This proves that you’re trading with guards. You couldn’t possibly have gotten either of these items inside the camp.” Fowler told Cox to ask Henman and Mitchell to step inside.
“I’ve got you now, you arrogant bastard,” Fowler hissed only loud enough for Hudson and Andrew to hear. Hudson took another mouthful of rice and egg, trying desperately to act unruffled, but he couldn’t hide the sweat beading on his forehead.
Andrew knew he had had it. Even if he told the truth about going under the wire, that was illegal too, and it would also implicate Darby McGaven. Going under the wire or trading with the guards, he was screwed either way.
Fowler glowed by the time Henman and Mitchell ambled up to study the contraband spread out on Hudson’s mattress.
“Sir,” Fowler said, “we were unable to find their money stash, but we did find this. There is no way Hudson could have gotten this from other prisoners or from Little Sister Wu. It had to have come from trading with the guards.” A note of mirth colored his voice.
“Well, Hudson,” Mitchell said. “What have you got to say for yourself?”
“Sir, I… I… I mean, sir—”
“Those belong to me, sir.” Andrew set his half-eaten rice on his bunk and stepped forward. A dull ache rose to the top of his head, but he ignored it. “Tomorrow is Christmas. I got those as presents. Hudson was hiding them for me until I could wrap them. The silk is for Clifford Baldrich, the cigars are for Cocoa.”
Hudson’s body went limp. The relief in his face was evident to everyone.
“But where did you get them?”
“They were a gift from Commandant Tottori, sir. Lieutenant Fowler, you’re perfectly welcome to corroborate my story with the commandant.”
“You’re lying!” Fowler’s voice rose to borderline hysterical.
Andrew stared at Fowler with flinty eyes. “Prove it.”
Mitchell said, “I can vouch for this man,” He laid a hand on Andrew’s shoulder. “He’s not capable of lying. I’d stake my life on it.”
Mitchell’s solemn voice echoed in the pit of Andrew’s stomach. He felt shame coloring his face in scarlet streaks. The dull ache in his head grew sharp. He glanced down at the floor, seeing the dark gap between the floorboards, and he wished with all his might that he could crawl right through there and keep on going.
Colonel Henman nodded his head, “All right, Fowler, seems we’ve done all we can do here. Let’s leave these men to their lunch.”
Fowler’s face colored a scalded red. He gasped for breath. “You Yanks are scum. You have no discipline, no integrity, and no dignity. You gather wealth at any cost and flaunt it with grotesque arrogance. I hate you! I hate you all!”
“Now just a Goddamned minute,” Mitchell said, his voice becoming brusque. “I’ve put up with this invasion of my crew’s privacy and e
ven your calling Waters a liar, but I won’t stand for your insults any longer. I want you to leave, now, and don’t come here again unless you have hard evidence. Now move out!”
“I quite agree,” Henman said. “Fowler, there’s no need for that kind of rubbish, ’ey what?”
Cocoa stepped closer to Fowler. “Let me see if I understand you correctly. An Englishman is calling Americans arrogant?”
Laughter burst from the men standing around their bunks.
Fowler stepped closer to Cocoa, but Colonel Henman grasped his arm and turned him toward the doorway. “That will do, Lieutenant. There seems to be nothing out of place here and no stash of money to be found. I suggest you rely on better sources of information in the future.”
Once Fowler and Cox were twenty feet down the path, Henman frowned at Andrew. “We know about your making the balachong. The senior staff have known for some time.”
Silence hung in the air until Hudson said, “Then you know how we’re getting our money.”
“Of course.”
“Well, tell Fowler and get him off our backs.”
“You’ve put us in a rather difficult position,” Henman said. “You see, what you chaps are doing is smashing. Thanks to you, the death rate has dropped from fifty a day to five. We even had three zero-death days last month. That was unheard of before you came. And you’ve virtually wiped out blindness from beriberi. You supply the camp with a steady source of protein at a fair price, and we are extremely grateful. The difficulty is that if the men find out they’ve been eating cockroaches for the past few years, they’ll undoubtedly rip you to shreds, and we won’t be able to stop them. We don’t trust Fowler to keep such an important secret. One little slip, and the camp forfeits the balachong, and you could very well forfeit your lives. Obviously we can’t allow that. Please understand that the whole camp hates you as venomously as Fowler does. Not because you’re Americans, but because you’re living and eating so much better than they are, Darby McGaven excluded, of course. There’s simply no way to hide it. That hate would explode like a powder keg if word got out.”
Mitchell said, “We’re doing our best to keep Fowler on a short chain, but we can’t go so far that he becomes suspicious. This whole operation could backfire.”
Stokes said, “So we keep producing balachong and hope he doesn’t find out?”
“Actually, the reason that I mentioned it is that I’m hoping to persuade you chaps to increase production. I mean, you’re doing a jolly good job, but it’s not enough for ten thousand men.”
Hudson told them that they had just been discussing how to double output without being noticed.
“If there is a way,” Henman said, “I can assure you the senior staff will be delighted.” That said, he and Mitchell walked the length of the hut. “Cheerio!” he said as he strolled out the doorway.
Hudson put his arm over Andrew’s shoulder. “You saved my life, rookie.”
Andrew grabbed Hudson’s arm and flung it away. “If you hadn’t been so bloody stupid I wouldn’t have had to lie. Do you know what you’ve done to me? You bastard!”
Andrew raced out the doorway.
Grady patted Hudson on the shoulder. “Don’t you fret, ol’ Hud. Soon as he’s had a chance to think a bit, he’ll be jim-dandy. He’s always peevish after he pulls burial duty.”
Hudson shook his head. “Naw, rookie’s been flying off the handle at everything lately. All that good food must be fuckin’ with his head—too much protein or something. It’s like he’s slowly going loony. I sure as hell wish there was something we could do to help him.”
Cocoa winked at Hudson. “Loony or not, he sure saved your ass.”
“The colonel’s right,” Stokes said. “The Brits will kill us if they find out.”
Hudson, Grady, and Stokes gathered around Cocoa, who sat on his bunk. Cocoa’s face went hard as stone. “Well, boys, if the senior staff know about us, that means we have a little white mouse in the hut. It’s the only way they could have found out about the balachong and the stash of money. We’ve been too careful otherwise.”
White mouse was slang for an informer. They all turned to glare around the hut, trying to guess who it could be.
“It don’t make sense,” Grady said. “Who’d do such a low-down deed?”
“We need to be more careful ’bout what we say and what we show,” Hudson said.
Cocoa smiled. “At least they didn’t find our money stash. We kept that hiding place secret.”
Stokes chuckled. “Knock on wood.” He leaned down and rapped his knuckles on Cocoa’s hollow wooden leg. They all laughed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
December 24, 1944—1400 hours
ANDREW’S life had become a perfectly balanced pendulum swinging between days in the prison and nights with Tottori. News of the war’s progress and the looming end of the hostilities had formed boundaries around the time those two worlds could ultimately survive, but Andrew forced himself to focus only on the moment.
He left camp early, couldn’t wait to distance himself from the lie. As he hurried through camp, his mind rambled through a dense fog. He imagined himself strolling down a busy Saigon street. He could smell the charcoal cooking fires, hear the wind-song melody of people speaking the language of South China. Master Jung-Wei’s soothing voice vibrated through his being.
“You are troubled, Lingtse.” The old man’s voice was as serene as ever.
Startled, Andrew turned, but there was nobody within a hundred yards of him.
“Lingtse,” the voice returned, “it is not our abilities or even our deeds that determine who we are. It is our choices. Have you not chosen in every case to protect someone?”
“Yes, master, at the cost of my integrity.”
“Is your integrity more important than those you love?”
“I’ve lost the person you taught me to be.” Andrew had promised his master before leaving Saigon that he would follow the old man’s teachings. Now, he tallied his broken promises. One: tricking the marine, which had cost the man his life. Two: coming close to killing Hurlburt on the beach. Three: becoming Tottori’s whore. Four: lying to Fowler moments ago. Five: lying to Mitchell about his relationship with Tottori. Actually, he had lied to everyone about that, but did that mean a broken promise for each prisoner? He felt himself fall like a stone into a void.
“All you can be is what you are at this moment. Experience that and work with it. That’s all anyone can do. Everything else is a dream of the ego.”
He turned again to see nothing there, but there seemed to be a faint orange glimmer wavering in the afternoon air.
Andrew hurried out the camp gates. The voice had been so real that he questioned his sanity. This was not the first time Andrew had experienced hallucinations. But the fact that it was someone other than the dead he had buried made him worry that perhaps a sickness was gradually consuming his mind.
Climbing the steps to Tottori’s hut, he stumbled over the tortoise that was tied to the stone lantern. He hurried into the living room and cut a direct path into Tottori’s arms.
The surprised commandant stroked the nape of Andrew’s neck. “I’m glad you’ve come early. You can join me while I explore for rocks.”
Andrew wanted to tell him about the hallucination, that he was losing his grip on reality, but now that he was in Tottori’s protective aura, he felt new clarity surging through him. He decided to say nothing and hope that the voices of the dead would leave him in peace.
An hour later they crawled alongside a streambed under a cloud-swollen sky. Tottori inched from one stone outcrop to another with his hammer tucked in his belt and a magnifying glass in hand. Andrew wandered behind him, carrying a canvas bag to hold the specimens.
It was the first time since coming to Changi that Andrew had been outside the camp compound. His heart throbbed as he took in the jungle sounds and earthy fragrances. Light poured over everything, creating a spectrum of colors. The stream was fed by artesia
n wells and the pure water splashed in brisk freshets. The forest teemed with lush, tantalizing life squirming with energy. Hairy palm-trunks reached for the sky, fleshy green plants as tall as a man seemed to burst with vivacious flowers, and flamboyant colored birds with grotesque beaks squawked while traversing the canopy. Within this jungle, he witnessed the moment-by-moment intermingling of life, creation, and annihilation, in all its dizzying exhibition of transformation.
When his rapture overwhelmed him, Andrew turned his attention on Tottori, who seemed oblivious to the wonder happening around them. He watched Tottori select a stone, scrape away dirt, and inspect it under his magnifying glass. Tottori took great pride in his small but impressive stone collection, with specimens ranging in size from a hen’s egg to a hog’s head. He piled pebbles around his office and placed larger specimens in front of his shrine. He also kept some in bowls of clear water to expose their glossy brilliance.
Tottori meticulously cleaned, polished and labeled each new specimen. Some rocks he split into segments using a cheap diamond stone saw, smoothed them with fine sandpaper, and polished them to a radiant luster. His collection was equally divided into three categories—igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. His true passion, however, was the mineral crystals such as quartz and amphibole.
“Why do you find these rocks so fascinating?”
Tottori held out a small green stone in his left hand. “This pebble reveals the history of the world. Some stones are formed from magma deep within the earth’s crust. Many are created from living organisms. Coal is simply fossilized wood. Chert is created from sea creatures’ skeletons compressed by the weight of the sea over eons of time. The earth will eventually turn the calcium in our bones into minerals, and our histories will also be reflected in stone. When I look within these silent, lovely rocks, I see my past and my future.”
He went on to explain the important role of erosion—how water, ice, wind, and time reshaped living organic matter into these beautiful storybooks of history. Andrew only half listened. They had worked their way close to the sea and the scent of salt water saturated the air.
