King Rat

“Either way, I’d say he deserved it, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so.” Dr. Kennedy wanted to continue the conversation, for he was lonely, but he saw that Prudhomme was interested only in Steven.

“Well,” he said, “I’d better make my rounds. Would you like to come along?”

“Thanks, but I have to prepare the patients for operation.”

As Dr. Kennedy left the ward, from the corner of his eye he saw Steven brush past Prudhomme and he saw Prudhomme’s furtive caress. He heard Steven’s laugh and saw him return the caress openly and intimately.

Their obscenity overwhelmed him and he knew that he should go back into the ward and order them apart and court-martial them. But he was too tired, so he just walked to the far end of the veranda.

The air was still, the night dark and leafless, the moon like a giant arc light hanging from the rafters of the heavens. Men still walked the path, but they were all silent. Everything was awaiting the coming of dawn.

Kennedy looked up into the stars, trying to read from them an answer to his constant question. When, oh God, when will this nightmare end?

But there was no answer.

Peter Marlowe was at the officers’ latrine, enjoying the beauty of a false dawn and the beauty of a contented bowel movement. The first was frequent, the second rare.

He always picked the back row when he came to the latrines, partly because he still hated to relieve himself in the open, partly because he hated anyone behind him, and partly because it was entertaining to watch others.

The boreholes were twenty-five feet deep and two feet in diameter and six feet apart. Twenty rows heading down the slope, thirty to a row. Each had a wooden cover and a loose lid.

In the center of the area was a single throne made out of wood. A conventional one-holer. This was the prerogative of colonels. Everyone else had to squat, native style, feet either side of the hole. There were no screens of any sort and the whole area was open to the sky and camp.

Seated in lonely splendor on the throne was Colonel Samson. He was naked but for his tattered coolie hat. He always wore his hat, a quirk with him. Except when he was shaving his head or massaging it or rubbing in coconut oil or weird ointments to recover his hair. He had caught some unknown disease and all his head hair had fallen out one day—eyebrows and lashes too. The rest of him was furry as a monkey.

Other men were dotted around the area, each as far from the next man as possible. Each with a bottle of water. Each waving at the constant swarming flies.

Peter Marlowe told himself again that a squatting naked man relieving himself is the ugliest creature in the world—perhaps the most pathetic.

As yet there was only the promise of day, a lightening haze, fingers of gold spreading the velvet sky. The earth was cool, for the rains had come in the night, and the breeze was cool and delicate with sea-salt and frangipani.

Yes, Peter Marlowe thought contentedly, it’s going to be a good day.

When he had finished, he tilted the bottle of water while he still squatted and washed away the trace of feces, deftly using the fingers of his left hand. Always the left. The right is the eating hand. The natives have no word for left hand or right hand, only dung hand and eating hand. And all men used water, for paper, any paper, was too valuable. Except the King. He had real toilet paper. He had given Peter Marlowe a piece and Peter Marlowe had shared it amongst the unit, for it made superb cigarette paper.

Peter Marlowe stood up and retied his sarong and headed back to his hut, anticipating breakfast. It would be rice pap and weak tea as always, but today the unit also had a coconut—another present from the King.

In the few short days he had known the King, a rare friendship had developed. The bonds were part food and part tobacco and part help—the King had cured the tropical ulcers on Mac’s ankles with salvarsan, cured them in two days, that which had suppurated for two years. Peter Marlowe knew, too, that though all three of them welcomed the King’s wealth and help, their liking for him was due mainly to the man himself. When you were with him he poured out strength and confidence. You felt better and stronger yourself—for you seemed to be able to feed on the magic that surrounded him.

“He’s a witch doctor!” Involuntarily, Peter Marlowe said it aloud.

Most of the officers in Hut Sixteen were still asleep, or lying on their bunks waiting for breakfast, when he entered. He pulled the coconut from under his pillow and picked up the scraper and parang machete. Then he went outside and sat on a bench. A deft tap with the parang split the coconut in two perfect halves and spilled the milk into a billycan. Then he carefully began scraping one half of the coconut. Shreds of white meat fell into the milk.