King Rat

“Like to be comfortable. How’s that chair feel?”

“Fine.” A flicker of surprise showed.

“Cost me eighty bucks,” the King said proudly. “Year ago.”

Peter Marlowe glanced at the King sharply to see if it was meant as a joke, to tell him the price, just like that, but he saw only happiness and evident pride. Extraordinary, he thought, to say such a thing to a stranger. “It’s very comfortable,” he said, covering his embarrassment.

“I’m going to fix chow. You like to join me?”

“I’ve just had—lunch,” Peter Marlowe said carefully.

“You could probably use some more. Like an egg?”

Now Peter Marlowe could no longer conceal his amazement, and his eyes widened. The King smiled and felt that it had been worthwhile to invite him to eat to get a reaction like that. He knelt down beside his black box and carefully unlocked it.

Peter Marlowe stared down at the contents, stunned. Half a dozen eggs, sacks of coffee beans. Glass jars of gula malacca, the delicious toffee-sugar of the Orient. Bananas. At least a pound of Java tobacco. Ten or eleven packs of Kooas. A glass jar full of rice. Another with katchang idju beans. Oil. Many delicacies in banana leaves. He had not seen treasure in such quantity for years.

The King took out the oil and two eggs and relocked the box. When he glanced back at Peter Marlowe, he saw that the eyes were once more guarded, the face composed.

“How you like your egg? Fried?”

“Well, it seems a little unfair to accept.” It was difficult for Peter Marlowe to speak. “I mean, you don’t go offering eggs, just like that.”

The King smiled. It was a good smile and warmed Peter Marlowe. “Think nothing of it. Put it down to ‘hands across the sea’—lend-lease.”

A flicker of annoyance crossed the Englishman’s face and his jaw muscles hardened.

“What’s the matter?” the King asked abruptly.

After a pause Peter Marlowe said, “Nothing.” He looked at the egg. He wasn’t due an egg for six days. “If you’re sure I won’t be putting you out, I’d like it fried.”

“Coming up,” the King said. He knew he had made a mistake somewhere, for the annoyance was real. Foreigners are weird, he thought. Never can tell how they’re going to react. He lifted his electric stove onto the table and plugged it into the electric socket. “Neat, huh?” he said pleasantly.

“Yes.”

“Max wired it for me,” he said, nodding down the hut.

Peter Marlowe followed his glance.

Max looked up, feeling eyes on him. “You want something?”

“No,” the King said. “Just telling him how you wired the hot plate.”

“Oh! It working all right?”

“Sure.”

Peter Marlowe got up and leaned out of the window, calling out in Malay. “I beg thee do not wait. I will see thee again tomorrow, Suliman.”

“Very well, tuan, peace be upon thee.”

“And upon thee.” Peter Marlowe smiled and sat down once more and Suliman walked away.

The King broke the eggs neatly and dropped them into the heated oil. The yolk was rich-gold and its circling jelly sputtered and hissed against the heat and began to set, and all at once the sizzle filled the hut. It filled the minds and filled the hearts and made the juices flow. But no one said anything or did anything. Except Tex. He forced himself up and walked out of the hut.

Many men who walked the path smelled the fragrance and hated the King anew. The smell swept down the slope and into the MP hut. Grey knew and Masters knew at once where it came from.

Grey got up, nauseated, and went to the doorway. He was going to walk around the camp to escape the aroma. Then he changed his mind and turned back.

“Come on, Sergeant,” he said. “We’ll pay a call on the American hut. Now’d be a good time to check on Sellars’ story!”

“All right,” Masters said, almost ruptured by the smell. “The bloody bastard could at least cook before lunch—not just after—not when supper’s five hours away.”

“The Americans are the second shift today. They haven’t eaten yet.”

Within the American hut, the men picked up the strings of time. Dino tried to go back to sleep and Kurt continued sewing and the poker game resumed and Miller and Byron Jones III resumed their interminable chess. But the sizzle destroyed the drama of an inside straight and Kurt stuck the needle in his finger and swore obscenely, and Dino’s sleep-urge left him and Byron Jones III watched appalled as Miller took his queen with a lousy stinking pawn.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Byron Jones III said to no one, choked. “I wish it would rain.”

No one answered. For no one heard anything except the crackle and the hiss.

The King too was concentrating. Over the frypan. He prided himself that no one could cook an egg better than he. To him a fried egg had to be cooked with an artist’s eye, and quickly—yet not too fast.

The King glanced up and smiled at Peter Marlowe, but Marlowe’s eyes were on the eggs.

“Christ,” he said softly, and it was a benediction, not a curse. “That smells so good.”