by JH Fletcher
She was almost asleep when she felt rather than heard a movement, opened her eyes to see Richard looking down at her.
She knew at once why he had come.
Unfinished business, he had told her. So they both had thought but that had been before the massacre. Last night she would have welcomed him, had wanted him so much that her body had ached. Not now.
‘Yes?’ Her voice as jagged as her emotions.
He watched her. ‘I thought —’
‘You thought wrong.’
She turned from him. Lay still. Presently she heard him move away.
For two days the trauma of what had happened sealed Ruth’s tongue. Sounds and images lingered: the burst of gunfire, the screeching requiem of the birds, above all Richard’s expression, remote and implacable, as the silence returned. Men aping God, she thought, was that what war did? In which case, surely, we are all damned.
The conviction of impending doom accompanied her as she fought her way down the steep slopes, sliding and tobogganing in the mud, beset by hunger and utter exhaustion.
We do not deserve to survive.
We have killed and do not deserve …
Killers …
Fatigue gnawing at anger until she could no longer remember with any clarity what she had been so angry about. The Chinese were dead. So? During the first days of the march they had passed a hundred dead Chinese. After the first shock she had thought little of it, averting eyes and mind from the inevitable brutalities of war. What were half a dozen more, if it meant that the villagers who had welcomed them, primitive, smiling, defenceless, were safe?
Right and wrong had no meaning when body, mind, spirit were absorbed utterly in the struggle to survive. Even Richard … They had travelled all this way together. Initial indifference had become liking, liking desire. She had wanted him, thought herself on the edge of loving him. After the villagers’ dance she would have lain with him gladly, only to have her feelings turn to revulsion as she watched him assume the helmet of a ruthless and implacable god.
Now none of it meant anything. There were times, lurching, falling, the forest swimming dizzily about her, her ears buzzing with exhaustion, when she had difficulty remembering who Richard was. As to her feelings for him …
Nothing.
They found a dead creature, over-ripe, riddled with maggots. Ate it raw. Ravenously.
They reached the valley floor. The forest was even thicker here, the air close and oppressive. However, there were villages, sometimes more than one in a day’s march, and the food supply grew marginally easier.
‘This is a settled area,’ Richard warned. ‘There’ll be Japs about.’
And people willing to inform on strangers. They were out of Karen country, now, into the Kachin hills, and the danger was accordingly greater.
Whenever they reached habitation the main group hid in the forest while one of the soldiers went alone into the village. Sometimes he returned with food, sometimes not. Usually he had word of what was going on in the area. They learned that the Japanese had overrun the valley country and set up posts in the major villages. Tracks were patrolled. Troops guarded all river and road crossings. If they wished to survive they would have to stick to the jungle.
They heard a rumour. Of a tiny settlement, two or three huts deep in the forest, far from tracks or troops. Of — the faintest of whispers — a white man who lived there, a priest who ministered to the local tribes.
It seemed inconceivable that the Japanese, too, had not heard of the man but the word was that they had not. Or perhaps had chosen not to bother with one man who could hardly be a threat to their new order.
They went to look for him. Found him. Or what remained.
A great tree in the middle of a clearing, branches spread in what might once have been thought a blessing. Three huts, as described. Burnt to ashes, gaunt mausoleums of charred wood like rotted teeth, jutting from the engulfing forest. To the tree …
A figure, crow-pecked and eyeless, sun-blackened, conveying in its contorted flesh the lingering memory of unendurable pain. The priest, arms outstretched in crucifixion, nailed to the tree by bayonets. One man, perhaps good, perhaps not, unspared. In the rubbish of the huts the remains of others who had, no doubt, given him succour.
Ruth stared, dry-eyed. Hatred, as love, had been swallowed by exhaustion yet she knew that this image, this wounding of the spirit, would remain with her forever.
She could say nothing, could neither weep nor curse. Even the scalding purity of rage was denied her. There came again the memory of the Chinese soldiers being herded to their death.
Damned. Like the embers of a dying fire, the thought glowed momentarily in her mind. All — Japanese, Chinese, Burmese, European, priest and soldier and nurse — all damned.
She turned away, wordless, was surprised to find Richard’s arm around her. In the scarecrow strut that these days passed for walking, Ruth moved from Golgotha.
Three days later they reached the road, little more than a track, that ran between the towns of Bhamo and Sipu. Or so Richard said. How he knew where they were Ruth could not understand but accepted his word, having no other.
Not that it mattered. She had long lost any idea that this journey might one day end, that it had any purpose other than to continue day by day forever.
There was a tiny village by the road. A post manned by the Japanese. From the trees they watched the distinctive steel helmets, the strutting figures.
‘We’ll wait till dark.’ Richard’s voice the faintest breath in her ear. ‘Cross then.’
Night fell. Stealthily they negotiated the sandy track, walking backwards to confuse possible pursuers. A sudden cacophony as the village dogs awoke. A shout from the guard post, a series of shouts. There was the ripping squirt of machine gun fire, a confusion of figures erupting through the opened gate.
Richard’s voice, urgent, high. ‘Run!’
Darkness. A confusion of trees, bushes, tangled grass. Ruth lay still, listening to the yip-yip yells of the excited Japanese soldiers as they ran, stumbling and crashing, in pursuit of shadows.
The moon stained the forest with silver. It was dangerous, revealing too little and too much. To begin with she had run like all the rest, sprinting into the shadows, hiding from the soldiers and the tracer fire that sought them through the undergrowth. She had lost her way, lost all contact with the others. She was alone, gasping, weak, blood drumming in her head. Fear stalked the silvered bush.
At first she had feared only discovery; then a new fear came upon her. She had no idea in which direction village or road lay. If she went on she might become irretrievably lost. Or perhaps she had turned full circle, in which case walking forward would bring her back to the village and whatever might await her there.
What had the young lieutenant said?
It wouldn’t be a good idea to let yourself be captured by them.
Other memories came: eviscerated women, the priest nailed to the trunk of the great tree.
Terror crippled her. She dared not stay, dared not move.
The yelping cries of the Japanese soldiers were all about her.
A dark shadow lay ahead of her beneath the trunk of another great tree. Her eyes strained, trying to make out what it was. Against the buttressed trunk, a hollow. If she could reach it, hide in it …
Two steps, holding her breath. Slid forward into the hollow. Shadow shielded her. She lay motionless, eyes watching darkness.
A sudden flicker of movement, all the more terrifying for being silent. A shadow passed. Feet crunched on fallen leaves. She heard the rasp of breath, held her own.
Terror.
The man stopped, not three yards from where she lay.
She could feel his eyes, searching. Could smell the sour, acrid smell of sweat. She held her breath until she could hold it no more, let it out little by little, lungs exploding in her chest. A furtive step made her almost cry out. Another. She risked a glance. The figure was moving away. Moonlight gl
eamed on a steel helmet. As she watched the figure froze, crouching, then threw itself flat as the darkness erupted in a brilliant thunder of gunfire.
Muzzles flashed with magnesium brilliance. After the silence, noise engulfed her. Figures ran to and fro, crying, yelling. Racing footsteps hammered the ground. The night boiled with violence. Ruth lay at the bottom of her hollow, eyes clenched shut. Above her the great tree held up its branches against the stars.
A running man collided with the tree, turned, spinning, stumbled full length into the hollow, lay across Ruth’s body. The collision crushed her breath, stifled the cry of terror and despair that rose within her. Before the man could move she had snatched Richard’s knife from the sheath she had worn all these weeks and struck madly, without thought, burying it in the man’s chest.
He convulsed with a muffled cry, breath a sudden explosion as it left his throat. His legs thrashed. She wanted to strike again, to do anything to shut him up before he could betray her. Before she could move she felt him collapse, the cry tailing away to a whimpering groan. He still lived, she could hear his labouring breath over the pounding of her heart. She held the knife ready, haft sticky with blood, but he did not stir.
More movement through the forest, more figures running. With dread Ruth thought what would happen to her if the Japanese discovered her now with one of their colleagues dead or dying beside her but no one came near. Slowly the shouting and pursuit died.
At last all was still. She waited. The injured man gasped and gurgled; beyond the hollow there was only silence.
The moon climbed higher. Here, at the edge of the forest, it shone through the canopy of the trees and fell upon the face of the injured man. Ruth was frightened to show herself to him, terrified that he might even now raise the alarm, yet something stronger than herself drew her to him. She moved closer, the knife forgotten. He did not stir, only the panting showed that he still lived. The light showed his features.
It was Ba Gyaw, the man who had helped her when she fell, whose few words of English had helped bring her out of isolation.
War is murder. Richard’s words. And her own scornful reply. And you are the murderer.
Now she, too, had killed.
She looked at her hand in the moonlight. The blood was black upon it. She felt sick. She held Ba Gyaw to her, cradled his head against her breast, willed him to live, for his sake and her own. She could not tell if he were aware of her or not. From time to time he jerked feebly, his breath stopped, started again, she listened with bated breath, willing him to live, to live. He weighed heavier upon her, his head slipped lower on her breast, she would have bared her breast to him if it would have given him life. He gasped, stiffened. She held her breath, heard him once again renew his breathing. He seemed easier now.
And, suddenly, was gone.
She shut her senses to it, knew despite all her efforts that it was so.
Murderer.
She did not move, crouched with her back against the protective buttress of the great tree with the dead man’s head cradled in her lap. After an infinity of loneliness a figure flitted shadowy through the brush, a voice whispered, ‘Ruth …? Ruth …?’
She roused herself enough to say, ‘Here …’
Richard had found her.
He stared down at her, at the man in her arms. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Ba Gyaw. He’s dead.’
‘Leave him, then. There’s nothing you can do for him.’
She was grateful to him for not asking how Ba Gyaw had died.
‘Come …’
She knew she must yet it was hard to leave the hollow that had protected her, to face once again the rigours of the endless march. Above all, it was hard to give back to the forest the body of the man she had killed.
She did so at last, forcing herself to struggle from beneath his weight, stand swaying, then follow Richard’s figure through the darkness.
She felt a hundred years old.
Later she remembered only incidents of what happened on their journey. Snapshots.
The storm that descended on them days — weeks? — later, lashing the jungle to frenzy so that the trees howled as they clung together, wind-tossed, branches crashing. The tiny deer that ran to them in terror, seeking shelter. They slit its throat, ate well for the first time in days.
‘What happened to your knife?’ he asked her.
‘I must have dropped it.’
She had thought the other Karens would have guessed what had happened, would have murmured against her. They did not. No one mentioned Ba Gyaw. All their efforts were directed towards survival. The dead were dead.
Fort Morton. Its battlemented walls stood on a knoll outside a deserted village. There was a barracks, hospital, gun emplacements. No guns. The dead stones stood witness, blank faces turned to the vast and empty jungle. The Japanese had been here before them. Rubbish and filth everywhere, a notice in Japanese script pinned to the door. Beyond the walls, the tide of jungle flowed unchecked. Ruth imagined the troopers of the Empire who had occupied the fort, staring out across the empty miles. The frontier of the known. So far from home … And now they, the newcomers, also far from home, caught on an endless treadmill of exhaustion, hunger, the utter absence of hope. The past, like the dead, was gone. The future was unimaginable, perhaps non-existent. Like flies, they were stuck to the flypaper of an endless present.
They were dying, staggering, falling, eyes blank, minds blank. Tun Lin died. No more farting now, no more laughter. Ruth expected to die, did not.
They found a clutch of eggs, cooked them in the fire, encased in a section of bamboo.
They came to a river, full of silt, turbulent.
‘Must have been raining upstream.’
It was raining here, heavily. Through the downpour they stared at the river. Here and there jagged rocks showed their teeth above the surface. The water swept past them in grey waves, foam flecked, turbulent. The river was full of fallen timber and the grating of rocks in the stream bed was loud enough to drown other sounds.
‘Must be two hundred yards wide,’ Richard shouted.
‘We’ll never cross it.’
‘We must.’
They explored upriver, came upon a few huts clustered on the bank. After what seemed hours of haggling the Kachins who lived there agreed to help them make a ramshackle raft. They climbed aboard, poled out into the stream, were at once swept away and round a bend in the river. The village disappeared. They were alone with the turbulent water, the endless torrents of rain.
The raft struck a rock, lodged unmoving upon it, began to break up. Strength gone, will gone, Ruth would have given up then, allowed herself to be washed away. Richard would not allow it. Over the rock the water was waist-deep, the current dragged at them, yet somehow he found a series of other rocks like a succession of stepping stones connecting them to the shore. Part coaxing, part shouting, he dragged her and the rest of the party to land.
They came to another fort set in the midst of an empty plain. They had given up concealment, given up everything. Mindlessly, they set one foot before another. All of them were reduced to skeletons, eyes like craters in their wasted faces. The fort might be occupied by the Japanese yet even this no longer mattered. They could go no further. They could die as well here as anywhere.
Figures came running. They stood swaying, staring without comprehension. It was only later they understood. The men capering around them were British. Somehow they had rejoined the army.
They had survived.
It took days to recover. Not completely; that would take months, might never happen at all.
‘You must expect that,’ Sister Rogan said. ‘The human body is not designed to put up with the sort of treatment you’ve been giving it.’ She spoke severely, exasperated by their irresponsibility.
There were beds. There was water, cleanliness. There was even food, tiny portions to begin with, mostly liquid. But strength, little by little, returned.
There were ad
vantages in being young, after all.
Sister Rogan, Irish as shamrocks, improved on acquaintance.
‘You did a good job, Sister,’ she complimented Ruth. ‘How you managed to keep them all alive I’ll never be knowing.’
‘I didn’t. Two died.’
‘Of what?’
‘One was stabbed, when we met up with some Japanese. The other just … died.’
‘It happens.’ Sister Rogan dismissed Ruth’s words. ‘Even so …’
To lose two, it seemed, was acceptable. Day by day, as Ruth recovered, she began to think so, too. What had happened with Ba Gyaw had been a nightmare, yes, but with the coming of daylight had begun to fade, like all nightmares. There was nothing she could do about it. Guilt had no place.
Ruth found Richard sitting alone on the ramparts of the fort.
‘Like a crusader’s castle,’ she said.
He grinned at her. ‘I doubt the crusaders got this far.’
‘I’m amazed we did.’
‘Me, too.’
They spoke no more of their ordeal; to talk was to relive and neither of them wanted that.
‘They’re going to fly us out,’ he told her. ‘If they can get a plane to land.’
The fort was isolated, supplied by parachute. It seemed no one had used the airstrip for a long time.
‘Will they manage?’
‘If they don’t we’re here for the duration.’ He grinned again. That boyish grin. ‘Unless you fancy walking the rest of the way.’
‘Don’t.’
Ruth got up restlessly. Beneath her clean clothes — Sister Rogan had told her they’d burned what was left of the old ones; where these had come from she did not know, presumably from Sister Rogan — her body was like a bundle of sticks. Run a pencil over her ribs she’d rattle, her face was more skull than face, but she could feel the strength beginning to return. She was back from the edge. Rediscovering feelings that for weeks she had forgotten she had ever had.
