Brother Fish

by Bryce Courtenay

  There was also a more serious reason for having to venture outside, which was to dispose of the dead. Burial would be the wrong word – at best we’d manage a shallow ditch scraped out of the snow with the body hastily dumped into it. In conditions such as this the ritual of death went almost unobserved. Apart from a short prayer before the body was removed from the cave, the cold dictated everything, and the dead soldier became a macabre asset. His parka, boots, socks and belt, as well as his warm undershirt, were removed – the boots for bribes to the guards and the rest for use by the living.

  Jimmy also attempted to create a rice-bag blanket redistribution. At the very beginning the less sick and those men with the ability to defend themselves had grabbed the rice bags, while the badly wounded and immobile had been left to freeze. When I first arrived in the cave, most mornings the guards would move around to see who had died during the night and order them removed. These were invariably the badly wounded who lacked the physical strength to beat the cold and had simply frozen to death. Attempting a fairer distribution wasn’t easy. Survival is a strong instinct and those among us who possessed bags were not interested in the argument that redistribution was for the greater good. Altruism is not commonly observed in a POW camp.

  Jimmy counted the rice bags and discovered there were twenty-seven supplied for forty men. Twenty-seven prisoners would need to be persuaded to part with an object they believed would save their lives. Frankly, I thought he had Buckley’s. But then one of the prisoners talked to him about convection heat and how it worked. What it amounted to was this: if he could get all the rice-bag blankets and make them into one large blanket and then use it to trap the heat generated from all the bodies placed under it, the sum of the heat retained would be greater for each individual body than the heat generated by a single rice bag that covered less than half an individual’s body. Jimmy then got him to work out the total area of the twenty-seven rice bags joined together. If we all slept cheek by jowl, the single sheet created would be sufficient to cover everyone.

  I think I pointed out earlier that Jimmy could persuade anyone to do anything, but getting the owners of the rice bags to part with them was, as far as I was concerned, a new benchmark in the art of persuasion. Over fifty years I’ve seen Jimmy pull off some remarkable deals, but I still rate Operation Rice Bag as the best of them. All but six prisoners agreed to contribute to the community blanket – not unexpectedly, those in protest were all southerners, and among the dissenters was Ward Brady Buckworth Junior, the bloke Jimmy had damn near throttled to death. I hasten to say that the soldiers from the South were not all uncooperative – there was a fair number among us, and most of them had joined in to create better communal conditions.

  Jimmy traded another Zippo lighter with a guard for an awl, whereupon the stitching was carefully unpicked from the top and bottom edges of the rice bags and the thread used to sew the twenty-one bags together. It worked a treat, not that we ended up exactly cosy, but the mass body heat generated and trapped under one large rice-bag blanket worked a lot better to maintain warmth than a single rice bag. Nor did it take too long to bring the six renegade southern rice bags in from the cold, though only after Ward Brady Buckworth Junior (who’d not yet recovered his voice beyond a sort of wheezing sound) and his cohorts made Jimmy agree to have the choir drop ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ from its repertoire. Jimmy very nearly baulked at this as it was the anthem of the Unionists during the American Civil War, and their primary reason for going to war had been to free the Negro slaves in the South.

  When we’d learned the words, Jimmy had told us how they sang the ‘Battle Hymn’ in the orphanage choir not because it was a Unionist song, but because it was originally sung as a tribute to John Brown, who had been hanged in 1859 for leading an attempted slave insurrection at a place known as Harper’s Ferry. ‘We learned dat story ’bout John Brown an’ we sing da words dey use dat time when dey hanged him. Da words we sing here, dey da words of Julia Ward Howe – she done make dem new ones for da Civil War. But when I hear dat song I think o’ John Brown, he my hero, man!’

  Jimmy finally agreed to eliminate the hymn on the basis that the greater good was involved, but he added, ‘It don’t rightly matter, Brother Jacko. Da slaves, dey’s gonna get der revenge. Iffen we get out o’ dis pree-dick-kay-ment I’s gonna whup dat bastid Brady Buckworth one time real good!’

  But I must say I liked the words Julia Ward Howe had written – the version we sang in the cave. I memorised them, determined that if ever I got home again we’d add it to our harmonica repertoire.

  Battle Hymn of the Republic

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword:

  His truth is marching on.

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!

  His truth is marching on.

  I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;

  They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

  I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

  His day is marching on.

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! . . .

  I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: ‘As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;

  Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,

  Since God is marching on.’

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! . . .

  He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

  He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:

  O, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!

  Our God is marching on.

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! . . .

  In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

  With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:

  As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

  While God is marching on.

  Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! . . .

  I don’t want to exaggerate Jimmy’s Ogoya activity – it’s not as if it suddenly transformed us into a model POW group. While conditions were infinitely improved and the men were working more or less as a team, without medication wounds continued to fester and men still died. But there was a new ray of hope, and soldiers weren’t dying of despair or trying to survive on their own.

  During this time something happened that, at the time, seemed of little or no consequence. Of an afternoon I’d try to get to the mouth of the cave to look at the world outside. It was freezing but the cave inside was almost as cold, and just watching the clean white landscape stretching to the mountains on the horizon seemed to give me hope that there was life going on beyond the misery of the cave. On one such occasion a guard, protected from the icy wind by the wooden stockade fence and seated beside a brazier, a contraption constructed from a petrol drum with holes knocked in the side in which charcoal was burning, was singing a song. The way noggies sing is different to us but his voice was strong and steady and the melody, obviously a folksong, had a longing, haunting sound that was pleasant even to my untrained occidental ear. I listened for a while then reached into the pocket of my parka for my mouth organ, and soon enough picked up the tune. He seemed delighted with my accompaniment, and after a while he stopped singing and turned to me and then sang a new verse of what appeared to be quite a long song, then he repeated it to my accompaniment. I don’t have too many natural gifts, but Gloria always used to say, ‘Hum anything once and Jacko’ll have it down pat.’

  His first name turned out to be Kim, though it was only later that I learned his other name. Kim and I got to doing the song on a regular basis until I’d learned the lyrics phonetically. Over a period of two weeks I taught it to the choir, with
Jimmy doing a solo part we’d devised, the barbershop quartet coming in for some beautiful four-part harmony for some of the lyrics and the choir swelling for the chorus. It was very much a Western arrangement, and quite different to the way it might have been sung in Kim’s village, but because of the very strong melody it seemed to work.

  When we reckoned we had it down pat Jimmy went to see the officer in charge of the guards, who had a few words of English, and invited them to hear us. They, of course, knew something was going on because of the rehearsals, but they all turned up, even the off-duty men. I invited Kim to join us, but he declined. I guess it would have amounted to consorting with the enemy in his eyes, and those of his comrades. Anyway, they clapped and cheered when we’d completed the folksong and made us repeat it three times. It seemed we had a hit on our hands. Only the lieutenant remained poker-faced, playing the mandatory role of the inscrutable Oriental.

  ‘Brother Jacko, yo’ da man,’ Jimmy said, congratulating me afterwards. ‘Dem gook cats, dey ain’t gonna forget dis – dey gonna tell der gran-chillen what happen tonight.’

  But he couldn’t have been more wrong. The following morning the guards, led by the lieutenant of the inscrutable face, took Jimmy away. He was returned three days later when the guards carried him into the cave and dropped him unconscious beside me. His face and body were badly swollen, blood running from the corner of his mouth, and his splints had been removed. He’d obviously taken an unmerciful beating. The lieutenant pointed to Jimmy’s unconscious form. ‘No cop-perate! Song insul Norse Korea pipple!’ Then he turned to look at the prisoners who’d gathered around, and with a sweep of his hand indicated the entire cave. ‘You die dis caves!’

  Jimmy had been made to pay for my dumb idea to do Kim’s song. The North Koreans, or their lieutenant anyway, had seen the gesture as an insult. I was consumed by the remorse I felt for what had happened and insisted that two of the blokes who worked as medics remove my splints and strap them to Jimmy’s leg. It wasn’t a big deal – despite the splints, my leg had started to bother me in a different way and I was finding it increasingly hard to get around. As long as someone could pull me up to a vertical position so I could still stand for a while I could play for the choir.

  Jimmy, of course, received the best care we were capable of giving him, which wasn’t much, but it wasn’t going to be easy to kill him, and in a week or so he’d recovered sufficiently to be back with us. But by this time my leg was troubling me a great deal – the swelling had increased, and it felt as though it was going to burst. Infection had set in, and the pain was accompanied by a high fever that on occasions made me delirious. Jimmy, himself not yet fully recovered, never left my side, but I knew I was on the way out. In my rational moments all I could think was that I hoped when my time came it would be quick. I envied the way Johnny Gordon had died – a hail of Chinese bullets and a few moments later, the end.

  Then one morning, during one of my now-infrequent periods of lucidity, ‘Inscrutable’, the North Korean officer who’d done for Jimmy, arrived accompanied by a Chinese officer and six soldiers. The North Korean pointed to me and the Chinese officer stooped and threw off the rice sack covering my leg and examined it, then turned and jabbered something to two Chinese soldiers.

  ‘Don’t let the bastards take me, Jimmy!’ I pleaded. ‘Let me die here.’

  Jimmy moved towards me and the Chinese officer put his arm out, restraining him. ‘He go hospital,’ he said.

  ‘Yoh gonna be okay,’ Jimmy said softly, ‘they gonna take yoh to hospital.’

  ‘No! Don’t let them take me, Jimmy!’ I cried again. Of course, there was nothing Jimmy could have done to stop them.

  ‘He don’t want to go, sir,’ he said to the officer.

  ‘He go – leg velly bad,’ the officer said, not unkindly. ‘Hospital, we fix – he no die.’

  ‘Let me come with him, sir,’ Jimmy pleaded. He pointed to his splint. ‘I got me a broken leg also.’

  ‘No, dis one only,’ the officer insisted.

  Then the two Chinese soldiers bent and lifted me, one under my armpits and the other round my buttocks allowing my broken leg to hang loose. The pain was so intense I screamed, then passed out.

  It was dark when I became conscious again, the sky clear. A near-full moon shone down, its glow reflecting from the snow to light the surrounding countryside and dim the stars. It was almost an exact replica of the night I’d been captured, though deeper into winter. I was lying on straw in the back of a bullock cart. The track we were taking was extremely rough and it was bitterly cold, although they’d thrown a blanket over me. Two Chinese with their backs to me were seated each on a box at the front of the cart; a third holding his rifle was seated beside me. I turned to look at him and thought I must be hallucinating – the man beside me wasn’t Chinese, it was Kim, the singer of songs.

  ‘G’day, Kim,’ I murmured weakly. It was the way I’d greeted him on each occasion when we’d met at the entrance of the cave, and now hearing my greeting again he smiled. I must have still been half out of it because then I attempted to sing the first line of the folksong and one of the Chinese turned around and cracked me across the face with the back of his hand. Kim clasped his hand over my mouth and placed his forefinger to his mouth to tell me to shut up.

  The track got worse and worse and with each pothole we hit, despite myself, I yelled out. The Chinese would immediately turn around and crack me one until my nose streamed blood and had probably been broken again. Each time Kim would shout at them and they’d shout back at him, though I’m not sure they were speaking the same language. Eventually Kim sat on my chest facing the front so that when I screamed out the Chinese guards couldn’t get to me. The Koreans are meant to be the cruellest people on earth, and certainly I’d met some terrible bastards among them, but Kim wasn’t one of them. He was a good bloke, and a mate is a mate in any language.

  The nightmare ride continued until dawn, and thankfully I spent a reasonable part of it unconscious. We stopped at what appeared to be a farmhouse, and Kim took his leave. Pointing to his chest he repeated several times, ‘Kim Sun’.

  That’s how I finally learned his name. I was pretty out of it by then but managed the words, ‘Kim Sun, you’re a good bloke, mate,’ and stretched out and touched him on the arm, and then I must have passed out again.

  When I came to I was lying on a large raised platform together with several wounded Korean and Chinese soldiers. The bloke next to me was sitting up as if he was frozen into position, with his hands clasped about his knees. He was a blackish-brown colour, the skin on his body so completely burned that only his eyes moved. Only napalm does that. It was only months ago that I’d held Bluey Walsh in my arms, ineffectually emptying a water bottle over his scorched body as he died. I recoiled inwardly at the horror of it happening to any human being. Despite my own condition, I felt deep sorrow for the poor bastard. I looked into his eyes but was forced to turn away – I could see the hatred for me in them. I felt ashamed and appalled that my side could do this to a fellow human being. He would have killed me, choked the life out of me, if only he could have unclasped his blackened arms. Korea has left me with several recurring nightmares. Those accusing brown eyes watching me, never leaving me, is one that still causes me to wake up sobbing. I recall thinking how glad I would be if only those terrible arms would reach out and do the deed. I didn’t want to live, I reckoned I’d had enough. The next day I watched the poor bastard die without even crying out. I guess his vocal cords had been crisped.

  Night came again and I suppose it must have been fairly early the next morning when they came to fetch me, because I recall a rooster crowing in the farmyard. I was carried into an adjoining room with roughly cut pole rafters and a thatched roof. Down its centre ran a narrow table made of wooden slats and above it hung a hissing pressure lamp, its bluish-white glow throwing a wide circle of light over the centre of the table and spilling onto the earthen floor. I guessed correctly that this was th
e operating theatre. I was placed on the table and an orderly cut away what remained of my tattered army pants and pulled my parka up to my chest so that I lay naked from the chest down. He then swabbed me from the waist halfway down my hugely swollen broken leg with what I took from the smell to be surgery alcohol, and then turned me on my side. A Chinese doctor entered the room jabbering away, seemingly at no one in particular, and gave me a spinal injection.

  I couldn’t believe the relief as the area below my torso became anaesthetised. It was the first time in a couple of months that I’d been relatively free of pain and I remember starting to cry from the relief. The doctor, still jabbering away, made me half sit up so that I was leaning back on my elbows. I think he was talking to me in Chinese but he made no eye contact so it was impossible to tell. He cut a six-inch incision to release the pus and blood that had caused the swelling, and this took quite a while to drain. Meanwhile, he poked and prodded, locating pieces of my shattered femur, which he removed with tweezers. I was beginning to panic as the anaesthetic was starting to wear off when he began to stitch me up. By the time it was completed I was biting down on my lip to prevent myself from crying out. As they lifted me onto a stretcher, one of the attendants lost his grip and my leg fell loose, the movement causing the stitches to unravel. I screamed out in pain – the idea of going through the process of restitching the wound without an anaesthetic filled me with dread. The doctor, still muttering and apparently unconcerned, simply sprinkled my wound with sulphanilamide from an American first-aid pack and the attendants carried me through to an adjacent room, which in retrospect I refer to as the torture room.

  They placed me onto a device not unlike one of those ancient torture racks you see in cartoons, my leg strapped to the uppermost bar, composed of two facing wooden strips with a ratchet attached to the end. One of two female nurses in the room worked the ratchet, which pulled the topmost bar to which my broken leg was attached towards her until my leg could stretch no further and felt as if it was about to part from my body. Needless to say, I screamed and sobbed. Throughout this torture the expression on the faces of the two nurses remained impassive. They performed the task as if the leg was detached and not a part of my body. With the rack completed they applied plaster that made a cast that covered my entire leg from the ankle to my waist.