King Rat

The King was thinking about the diamond. It would not be easy to swing this deal, and this deal he had to swing. Suddenly as he approached the hut, he noticed beside the path a young man sitting on his haunches, talking rapidly in Malay to a native. The man’s skin was heavily pigmented and beneath the skin the muscles showed. Wide shoulders. Slim hips. The man wore only a sarong, and the way he wore it, it seemed to belong. His face was craggy, and though he was Changi-thin, there was a grace to his movements and a sparkle about him.

The Malay—black-brown, tiny—was listening intently to the man’s lilting speech; then he laughed and showed teeth abused by betel nut, and replied, accenting the melodious language with a wave of his hand. The man joined his laugh and interrupted with a flood of words, oblivious of the King’s intent stare.

The King could catch only a word here and a word there, for his Malay was bad and he had to get by with a mixture of Malay and Japanese and pidgin English. He listened to the rich laugh and knew it was a rare thing. When this man was laughing, you could see that the laugh came from inside. This was very rare. Priceless.

Thoughtfully the King entered the hut. The other men looked up briefly and greeted him amiably. He returned their greetings without favor. But he knew and they knew.

Dino was lying on his bunk half asleep. He was a neat little man with dark skin and dark hair, prematurely flecked with gray, and veiled liquid eyes. The King felt the eyes and nodded and saw Dino’s smile. But the eyes were not smiling.

In the far corner of the hut Kurt looked up from the pants he was trying to patch up and spat on the floor. He was a stunted, evil-looking man with yellow-brown teeth, ratlike, and he always spat on the floor and not one of them liked him, for he would never bathe. Near the center of the hut Byron Jones III and Miller were playing their interminable chess. Both were naked. When Miller’s merchant ship was torpedoed two years before, he had weighed two hundred and eighty-eight pounds. He was six feet, seven inches. Now he turned the scale at a hundred and thirty-three, and the folds of belly skin hung like a pelt over his sex. His blue eyes lit up as he reached over and took a knight. Byron Jones III quickly removed the knight, and now Miller saw that his castle was threatened.

“You’ve had it, Miller,” Jones said, scratching the jungle sores on his legs.

“Go to hell!”

Jones laughed. “The Navy could always take the Merchant Marine at anything.”

“You bastards still got yourselves sunk. A battleship yet!”

“Yeah,” Jones said thoughtfully, toying with his eye patch, remembering the death of his ship, the Houston, and the deaths of his buddies and the loss of his eye.

The King walked the length of the hut. Max was still sitting beside his bed and the big black box that was chained to it.

“Okay, Max,” the King said. “Thanks. You can quit now.”

“Sure.” Max had a well-used face. He came from West Side New York and he had learned the lessons of life from those streets at an early age. His eyes were brown and restless.

Automatically the King took out his tobacco box and gave Max a little of the raw tobacco.

“Gee, thanks,” Max said. “Oh yeah, Lee told me to tell you he’s done your laundry. He’s getting chow today—we’re on the second shift—but he told me to tell you.”

“Thanks.” The King took out his pack of Kooas and a momentary hush fell upon the hut. Before the King could get his matches out, Max was striking his native flint lighter.

“Thanks, Max.” The King inhaled deeply. Then, after a pause, he said, “You like a Kooa?”

“Jesus, thanks,” Max said, careless of the irony in the King’s voice. “Anything else you want?”

“I’ll call you if I need you.”

Max walked down the hut to sit on his string bed beside the door. Eyes saw the cigarette but mouths said nothing. It was Max’s. Max had earned it. When it was their day to guard the King’s possessions, well, maybe they’d get one too.

Dino smiled at Max, who winked back. They would share the cigarette after chow. They always shared what they could find or steal or make. Max and Dino were a unit.

And it was the same throughout the world of Changi. Men ate and trusted in units. Twos, threes, rarely fours. One man could never cover enough ground, or find something edible and build a fire and cook it and eat it—not by himself. Three was the perfect unit. One to forage, one to guard what had been foraged and one spare. When the spare wasn’t sick, he too foraged or guarded. Everything was split three ways: if you got an egg or stole a coconut or found a banana on a work party—or made a touch somewhere, it went to the unit. The law, like all natural law, was simple. Only by mutual effort did you survive. To withhold from the unit was fatal, for if you were expelled from a unit, the word got around. And it was impossible to survive alone.

But the King didn’t have a unit. He was sufficient unto himself.