by Carl Muller
Railway town made much of Carloboy. They all came to say the mutton was top-hole and the young ones congregated to hear him play. It had been so long, but once at the piano, he belted out all they asked for and the evening became a regular party with booze a-plenty.
Carloboy was happy. This, he thought, for the sixtieth time, was home. He played on and on and Sandra Vanderputt stood beside him, watching his fingers fly on the keys and kept asking him if he would like another sandwich ... or a cutlet . ... or if she could ask her father to pour another drink.
Oh, there was leave. Stacked up, actually, because nobody on Elara had anywhere to go. Weekends in Anuradhapura became a marvellous part of existence and Sandra drew him like a magnet. He knew that, given time, he would have her, and that when that time came, sooner or later, she would be very willing.
But someone up there, someone doubtless concerned for Sandra’s virginity, blew a whistle. The Navy must have heard, and the Navy intervened. Carloboy was aghast. He had come to Elara, hating the very thought of the banishment. Now, all he wanted was to stay. He knew that the next time he visited Anuradhapura, there would be no more holding back. Railway town, too, was aware of the ‘romance’ and was all for it. Sandra was a sailor’s girl. She had ripened at first, then accepted it in good humour. Other railway town daughters envied her. There was something magical about the uniform.
Brenda Von Haght was a stickler for detail. ‘My, men, it doesn’t tickle when he kisses you?’
Sandra would giggle redly, ‘His beard? I like it.’
Drafted! All signalmen had to return to Colombo. The news left Carloboy speechless.
Eventually, ‘When?’ he asked.
‘Tomorrow.’
‘What! Tomorrow?’
‘Yes. A replacement arrives tonight. Evening train, so you lot pack off tomorrow night.’
Only last week, Sandra and he had sat on the bund of the Nuwara Wewa, the city reservoir, and she had obligingly spread her legs while his squirming finger had dug in under her knickers and he had made her wet and urgent for more.
‘So suddenly? What is all the bloody hurry?’
She had come, panting heavily and pressed her legs together, trapping his hand while he kissed her breathlessly and did not know what he could do with his own rigid member.
‘Qualifying exams for all you buggers.’
‘Exams? That’s a hell of a thing. What exams?’
She must have known he had to have relief. Her fingers unzipped his trousers and probed his underpants. It was the work of a moment to take out his penis, watch it throb in her hand. She began to push with her finger, back and forth.
‘I told you, qualifying exams. What are you looking as if a duck has fucked you? Colombo, men. Colombo! And if you pass the exam, pay increment also.’
He had come in her hand and she ran down to the water to wash away the semen and run back to kiss him and cuddle close and let the breeze blow her brown hair across his face. They made plans for the next week. ‘Your mummy goes to Mass on Sunday morning, no?’
‘Um—yes.’
‘So you stay at home. I’ll come in the morning when she’s gone. Your daddy said he’s working Colombo on Saturday, so he won’t come back till Sunday night.’
‘Only about two hours we will have. That’s if she stays to chat. She’ll be earlier if she comes straight home.’
‘That’s OK. We have time.’
She had kissed him urgently. ‘You’ll be careful, no?’
‘Don’t worry. When it is coming, I’ll take out.’
Yes, like Onan, he would spill his seed on the floor. It would still be good, he had thought.
‘I wish I got drafted,’ Thomas said, ‘this place is getting me down.’
Carloboy left him, slightly dazed. What was he to tell Sandra? He had to write. Explain. What would she think? That afternoon he walked behind the heads, tossed a handful of sand at Carmencita’s window. It was no trouble creeping through the fence, and he rode her furiously. With her, at least, there was no need for coitus interruptus. She said she was sorry he was leaving.
‘Balls,’ he said, ‘you have enough to screw you here. And new fellows are coming. What do you care? Navy the whole day, your uncle in the night . . .’
‘You’re angry,’ she said simply, ‘why are you so angry?’
‘Because I’m going, that’s why.’
The girl misunderstood and held him close. ‘So don’t be angry. When you get leave, you take a train and come. I’ll be here.’
Carloboy lay on her, his head against her forehead. But he was a true child of Nature.
Here was a bird in the hand. He began to move, then increased rhythm stabbingly. She raised her hips to meet his every thrust.
When he boarded the train/he took a left-hand seat. He didn’t want to see railway town from the carriage window. As the train neared Colombo, he went to the washroom and with much effort, scraped away at his beard. The dingy washbasin and the small trickle of water did not help much, but he managed to shave. Let the Navy say anything, he swore.
Barnett, who studied them with a frown when they presented themselves at the main signals office, finally declared that somewhere, somehow, the Navy had missed the bus. ‘You were sent to Elara as conscientious signalmen,’ he said sadly. ‘You come back to us black, disrespectful, caps like FL’s, shoes like old tubes of toothpaste . . . look upon them, Patrick. Extraordinary Signalmen. Now why didn’t the Navy think of that designation? They were quite an obliging, ordinary bunch of half-arses before they left. Look at them now. Hah!’
Patrick grinned.
Carloboy thought of his diary entry. All it said, baldly, was: 3rd March, 1955. Drafted to HMCyS Gemunu. It said nothing about this welcome back.
Patrick stopped grinning. ‘You buggers have a talent for looking like the bottoms of trash cans!’
‘Extraordinary Signalmen,’ Barnett murmured.
‘There’s nothing extraordinary about them, Yeo. They’re just plain cussed. One year in Elara and they’re wild. Wild! Well, let me tell you something. This is a nice MSO. A nice, neat office. You remember this place, don’t you? We like to look nice here. We are in the NHQ and there are a lot of big brass here. Now if you will look at me what do you see?’
They looked.
‘Spotless uniform, starched, ironed, trousers neatly creased, stockings four fingers below the knee, shoes shining. Not an Irish pennant in sight. You see my cap? A dusting of Goya Black Rose on the rim. It keeps my hair from getting greasy. Smell my arse ... I spray it with lavender . . .’
‘Oh Patrick,’ said the Yeoman dreamily, ‘You never told me.’
‘Now look at our Yeo. Immaculate, I tell you. Immaculate.’
‘I’m the immaculate contraception,’ Barnett murmured.
‘So what have you to say for yourselves?’
‘I’ll tell you killick,’ Carloboy said, ‘we have been travelling all night and only got here half an hour ago. We got third class travel warrants. You ever travelled third class in the Talaimannar mail? It’s the bloody black hole of Calcutta. Tamil women, poultry, kallathonis, black cigars, people smelling of gingili oil. We haven’t slept a wink. Babies howled the whole night. One woman had a stomach like a dhoby’s bundle. There were children sleeping in the latrine and on the luggage racks. Then a truck picks us up at the station. A dirty truck. And wet. No canvas top and the MTO must have left it out in the rain. So we come here and the quartermaster yells, report to the MSO. We haven’t slept, haven’t bathed, we are tired as fuck-all and there’s no bloody lavender in our arseholes!’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Barnett, ‘why, the man is a silver-tongued orator, Patrick. He presents his case in a most seamanlike manner. So we now know why they look like overcooked corpses, don’t we?’
Patrick curled a lip.
‘Von Bloss, stop breathing fire and waxing worth. We have misjudged you, but then this is what awaits the best of men. Look what they did Jesus Christ. And Abraham Li
ncoln. Let us now proceed to put you wise. You are tired. You don’t like Colombo. You don’t like us. Good. You wish you were back in Elara eating goats . . . aha! we know all about the fun and games, me hearties. But be assured, you were summoned back for the good of your souls. Here, too, will you find mutton, dear chaps, and it will be even dressed as lamb. Pay no heed to Patrick. I doubt he sprays him bum with lavender. The aroma of hydrogen sulphide is what I usually get when he is downwind. From tomorrow, my chocolate drops, you are going to school.’
He wagged a finger when they made to speak. ‘Yes, school. Eventually, you will be tested and if any of you fail the qualifying exam, I will do terrible things to him. Very terrible, I assure you. You will study. You will learn the ANSB1 by heart. And you will get the X and Q codes implanted in your brains. You will do R/T2 with me as well as flaghoists. Yeoman Louis will take you in navigation, boat signals, harbour signals, the bloody works. Patrick will conduct semaphore and Aldis. Alfie will take recognition signals, procedure and MSO routine. Ranawana will take W/T and V/S3 and after three months you will sit a test—’
‘You mean we have to learn all that in three months?’ Daft paled.
‘I could give you the whole syllabus, but then you might soil this place in fright and Patrick will be very annoyed.’
Patrick grinned.
Barnett waved a hand in benediction. ‘Today, take a breather. Go to your huts, clean up, masturbate, get organized, sleep. Don’t screw the cat. I chanced upon a particularly fine-looking tabby in your hut this morning. Cultivate it. You could train it to pounce on your cocks at zero five hours each day which will be more effective than our traditional wakey-wakey, eh? Patrick?’
Patrick grinned. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘so get going. Von Bloss, you can bring us a can of tea before you turn in.’ It was his way of reminding Carloboy that he didn’t like being talked back to. Carloboy ignored him, turned to the door.
‘Von Bloss!’
Carloboy strode out with the others. Barnett soothed the indignant Patrick. ‘There, there . . . poor fellow must be a little hard of hearing. I think it’s all that goat he’s been eating. I must ask my doctor’s wife about this.’
What Patrick told the Yeoman he could do with the doctor’s wife was never known, but it must have been something most seamanlike and in the best of naval tradition.
Intense training. Deep, dogged, determined and utterly damnable. Daft took it to mind, heart and subconscious with the soreness of a martyr being chewed by a lion with bad teeth. He began to mutter in his sleep and then would struggle up, fling off his sheet and yell, ‘Corpen two zero!’ and open wild eyes to find himself wheeling a man-o’-war in a tight 20-degree arc with one hand and hoisting an imaginary signal with the other. These nightly performances got on everybody’s nerves.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked Todwell crossly.
‘Stuff his mouth with soap,’ Sims suggested.
‘Shh. Lissen . . .’
The mumbling became more distinct, ‘The way is off my ship—you may feel your way past me—the way is off my ship . . . you may—’
A hard pillow cut off the litany.
‘That’s flag Peter at sea!’ Daft yelled, leaping up, wide awake.
‘We know, you silly bugger. Now go to sleep!’
But half an hour later the man would crank up again. ‘Oscar in harbour—I am carrying mail . . . Oscar in harbour—I am carrying mail . . . Oscar in harbour—I am carrying maaa-yoorrgh! grooh! glub!’
Sims was using the hosepipe.
To their everlasting credit, they were all given a congratulatory ‘Yoicks! Tally-ho’ by Barnett who said he was chuffed. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased. Today as a special treat I will show you a 90 millimetre film of my wife taking a bath. She does very nice things with soap.’
Daft had fared very well indeed. Examination over, Yeoman Louis gave him an encouraging pat. ‘Well done, Daft, I can see you put a lot into this.’
Daft looked at him weakly, gaped and tottered away.
‘What’s the matter with him? He’s sick or something?’
Carloboy grinned. ‘Must be overstudy, Yeo.’
‘Dearie me. I hope he’s all right.’
Yes, Daft was all right. They were all all right. They had breezed through and scored top marks. Carloboy bought Daft a beer. The man gulped, made big eyes and gulped again.
‘I’ll tell you something.’ he said, ‘You ask me anything—any fucking thing about signals now ... I don’t remember a thing. Not a thing!’
‘So never mind. You got through.’
‘Yes, I got through. Let’s get some more beer.’
They did,
30
History—Japan’s Dream of Empire
It all began with the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-95. Japan began to, develop an appetite for conquest. She started with Korea and Taiwan, and these made her greedy. She was determined to match the West in prestige . . . and might. It was no accident, then, that she began her ravage of a continent and an ocean—from Burma to the Aleutians, from the coastal waters of Australia to Manchuria.
But Japan did something else. She loosened the western yoke on many restive Asian countries. For hundreds of years, most of Asia had lived under foreign rule. It was the Pacific war that toppled this old colonial order and this may explain why, to this day, there is a certain Asian ambivalence over the Allied victory in Asia.
True, the Asians of the time came to have little sympathy for the Japanese. Historians have recorded these feelings, mostly of dread and revulsion. Under Japanese occupation people were accused of the flimsiest things . . . and executed. Even to meet a Japanese in the street was fraught with danger. A citizen could be slapped, kicked, made to bow and take the near careless buffets of men who looked upon the vanquished as cattle.
The cruelty of the Japanese conqueror was terrible. Cruelty that made it very necessary to convene those war crimes tribunals when it was all over.
But Asia had its dilemmas. The Japanese at first offered many Asians an end to colonialism. In Indonesia, for example, the people wished to get rid of the Dutch. Indians were demanding that the British quit. Vietnam wanted the French to get out. Then were those Asians who supported the Japanese ‘collaborators’. There were those who actually betrayed nationalistic guerrilla and resistance movements to the Japanese, and there were those who simply worked for the occupied governments. Why, even pro-independence leaders worked for the Japanese.
Aung San of Burma did so. So did Manuel Roxas of the Philippines; and Sukarno planned his country’s independence with the help of a Japanese-trained Army.
The Japanese found it cosy to their expansionist ideals to declare an Asia for Asians. They cultivated Subhas Chandra Bose, when he quit India’s Congress Party because the party paid scant heed to his call for revolution against the British. Japan also built up Aremio Ricarte as their key man in the Philippines. And Burmese leader Ba Maw actually reviewed Bose’s Indian National Army in the company of Japanese Prime Minister Hideki.
But the Japanese also began to show the extent of their arrogance. By 1945 Asia was glad to have the Americans back. There was immense relief at the Allied victory, but they were also not going to undergo another Allied occupation. They were not going to be pawns in a game where one empire builder exacts revenge on another.
It had been a time of much trial for Asia. From 1937 to 1945—a period of occupation, destruction, disaster and death. On July 7, 1937, Japanese soldiers had approached the Chinese border town of Wampang. They said they had lost one of their men and wanted to enter the town. The Chinese refused to open the gates. That was the famous Marco Polo Bridge incident and it triggered the eight-year war between China and Japan. Millions died.
On March 7, 1942, Japanese soldiers entered the home of the Dutch mayor of Batavia. They marched the mayor and the colony’s resident to jail. They had entered Batavia after their victory over the Dutch in West Java.
The Indonesians never suspected a thing. The
Japanese, they were sure, should help them build their own, independent nation. Hadn’t the Japanese swarmed in with Indonesian flags on their armoured cars and battle wagons? They shattered the statue of Batavia’s. Dutch founder, Jan Pieterszoon Coen. The Dutch-named Van Heutsz Boulevard was given a Japanese name: Jalan Imamura. The Dutch Tamarind Street (Tamarindelaan) was renamed Jalan Nusantara. Batavia became Jakarta.
And the Japanese made their purpose painfully clear. No one could fly the Indonesian flag. The Indonesian anthem could no longer be sung. Local culture was all but wiped out. Even the clocks were set to Japanese mainland time and the people were compelled to learn Japanese.
In Korea, the degradation had begun much earlier and World War II was just another chapter. As far back as 1910, when the Japanese had marched into Korea, Korean Prime Minister Yi Wan Yong signed the annexation treaty that made Korea a Japanese colony. Then the unremitting exploitation began. Korean farmers grew their rice to fill Japanese bellies. By 1937, Koreans were forced to take Japanese names, write in Japanese characters and speak only Japanese in their homes. We are now aware how, in World War II, Korean girls were shipped to the front lines to serve as ‘comfort women’ for Japanese soldiers. Up to 139,000 women were forced to serve as prostitutes.
Burmese nationalists actually turned to Japan for help in their anti-colonial struggle. Several were taken up by Japan’s self-serving slogan: ‘Asia for Asians.’ Aung San and Ne Win actually went to Japan for military training, then slipped into Bangkok.
When the Japanese swept into Burma, they destroyed everything. The Allies were forced to retreat to the Indian border. But the Burmese soon realized that they had a Japanese controlled puppet government. Aung San realized how he had been hoodwinked. In March 1945, he took his men over to the Allied side.
The Japanese landed in Malaya in 1941 with 5,300 men. That was off Kota Bahru, but earlier rumours of war had made the Malayans gear themselves to defend their homeland. The British had the Indian Dogra Regiment posted at Kota Bahru. The battle was fierce, and despite the heroic stand taken by the Indian soldiers, the Japanese 18th Division won through. At the same time, other Japanese divisions entered the towns of Jitra and Kroh.
