The Narrow Road to the Deep North (8 page)

Your eyes, she said suddenly.

He said nothing. In truth, he had no idea what to say. He had never heard anything so ridiculous.
Eyes?
And without meaning to, he found himself returning her stare, looking at her intently, drinking her up as she was him. She seemed not to care. There was some strange and unsettling intimacy, an inexplicable knowledge in this that shocked him—that he could just gaze all over a woman and she not give a damn as long as it was
him
looking at her.

It was as dizzying as it was bewildering. She seemed a series of slight flaws best expressed in a beauty spot above her right lip. And he understood that the sum of all these blemishes was somehow beauty, and there was about this beauty a power, and that power was at once conscious and unconscious. Perhaps, he resolved, she thinks her beauty allows her the right to have whatever she wants. Well, she would not have him.

So black, she said, now smiling. But I’m sure you get told that a lot.

No, he said.

It wasn’t entirely true, but then no one had ever said it exactly how she had just said it. Something stopped him from turning away from her, from her outlandish talk, and walking out. He glanced at the ring of men at the far end of the bookcases. He had the unsettling sensation that she meant what she said, and that what she said was meant only for him.

Your flower, Dorrigo Evans said. It’s—

He had no idea what the flower was.

Stolen, she said.

She seemed to have all the time in the world to appraise him, and having done so and found him to her liking, she laughed in a way that made him feel that she had found in him all the things most appealing in the world. It was as if her beauty, her eyes, everything that was charming and wonderful about her, now also existed in him.

Do you like it? she asked.

Very much.

From a camellia bush, she said, and laughed again. And then her laugh—more a little cackle, sudden and slightly throaty and somehow deeply intimate—stopped. She leaned forward. He could smell her perfume. And alcohol. Yet he understood she was oblivious to his unease and that this was no attempt at charm. Or flirting. And though he did not will it or want it, he could feel that something was passing between them, something undeniable.

He dropped the hand behind his back and turned so that he was facing her square-on. Between them a shaft of light was falling through the window, dust rising within it, and he saw her as if out of a cell window. He smiled, he said something—he didn’t know what. He looked beyond the light to the ring of men, her praetorian guard waiting in the shadows, hoping one out of self-interest might come over and take advantage of his awkwardness and sweep her back.

What sort of soldier are you? she asked.

Not much of one.

Using his book, he tapped the triangular brown patch with its inset green circle sewn on his tunic shoulder.

2/7th Casualty Clearing Station. I’m a doctor.

He found himself feeling both slightly resentful and somewhat nervous. What business did beauty have with him? Particularly when her expression, her voice, her clothing, everything about her, he understood as that of a woman of some standing, and though he was a doctor now, and an officer, he was not so far removed from his origins that he did not feel these things acutely.

I worried I had gatecrashed the—

The magazine launch? Oh, no. I think they’d welcome anyone with a pulse. Or even without one. Tippy over there—she waved a hand towards the other woman—Tippy says that poet who was reading his work is going to revolutionise Australian literature.

Brave man. I only signed up to take on Hitler.

Did a word of it make any sense to you? she said, her look at once unwavering and searching.

Penguins?

She smiled broadly, as though some difficult bridge had been crossed.

I rather liked shoelaces, she said.

One of the group of her swarming admirers was singing in the manner of Paul Robeson:
Old horse Rowley, he just keep on rolling.

Tippy roped us all into coming, she said in a new tone of familiarity, as though they’d been friends for many years. Me, her brother and some of his friends. She’s a student with the poet downstairs. We’d been at some services officers’ club listening to the Cup and she wanted us to come here to listen to Max.

Who’s Max? Dorrigo asked.

The poet. But that’s not important.

Who’s Rowley?

A horse. That’s not important either.

He was mute, he didn’t know what to say, her words made no sense, her words were irrelevant to everything that was passing between them. If the horse and the poet were both unimportant, what was important? There was something about her—intensity? directness? wildness?—that he found greatly unsettling. What did she want? What did it mean? He longed for her to leave.

On hearing a man’s voice, Dorrigo turned to see that one of the swarm—wearing a RAAF officer’s light-blue uniform—was standing next to them, telling her in an affected English accent that they needed her back to
help sort out a discussion we’re having on tote odds.
Her gaze followed Dorrigo’s, and recognising the blue uniform, her face changed entirely. It was as if she were another woman, and her eyes, which had been so alive looking at Dorrigo, were now, while looking at the other man, suddenly dead.

The blue uniform sought to ignore her stare by turning to Dorrigo.

You know she picked him, he said.

Picked who?

Old Rowley. Hundred to one. Longest odds in the history of the Cup. And
she
knew. She bloody well knew which gee-gee. Harry over there made twenty quid.

Before Dorrigo could reply, the woman spoke to the RAAF officer in a way that Dorrigo understood was charming but without any feeling.

I just have one more question for my friend, she said, pointing to Dorrigo. Then I’ll be back over with you to talk turf accountancy.

And, that short conversation done, she turned back to Dorrigo and froze the blue uniform out so completely that, after a moment or two, he returned to the others.

WHAT QUESTION?

I have no idea what question, she said.

He feared she was playing with him. His instinct was to get away but something held him there.

What’s the book? she asked, pointing to his hands.

Catullus.

Really? She smiled once more.

Dorrigo Evans wanted to be free of her but he was unable to free himself. Those eyes, that red flower. The way—but he would not believe it—the way she seemed to be smiling at
him
. He pushed one hand behind his back, drummed his fingers on the book spines there, on Lucretius and Herodotus and Ovid. But they made no reply.

A Roman poet, he said.

Read one of his poems to me.

He opened the book, looked down, and looked up.

You sure?

Of course.

It’s very dry.

So’s Adelaide.

He looked back down to the book and read—

He closed the book.

It’s all Latin to me, she said.

Us both, Dorrigo Evans said. He had hoped to insult her with the poem and realised he had failed. She was smiling again. Somehow she made even an insult of his sound like he was flirting, until he began to wonder if he wasn’t.

He looked to the window for help. There was none.

Read more, she said.

He hastily flicked some pages, stopped, flicked through a few more, stopped, and began.

He felt a strange rising anger. Why was he reading this, of all poems? Why not something else that might give offence? But some other force had hold of him now, was guiding him, keeping his voice low and strong, as he went on.

She pinched the top of her blouse with her thumb and forefinger, tugging it upwards while all the while looking at him with eyes that seemed to say she’d really like it tugged downwards.

He closed the book. He didn’t know what to say. Many things rushed through his mind, diverting things, innocuous things, brutal things that got him away from the bookcase, away from her and that terrible gaze, her eyes of ferocious blue flame—but he said none of them. Of all the stupid things he might say, all the things he felt rude and necessary, he instead heard himself saying—

Your eyes are—

We were talking about what a nonsense love is, a stranger’s voice interrupted.

Turning, Dorrigo saw that most hapless of pretenders, the close friend, had come over from the ring of admirers to join them and, presumably, take the blue eyes back. Perhaps feeling he had to address Dorrigo as well, the friend smiled at him, trying, Dorrigo felt, to gauge who Dorrigo Evans was, and where he stood with the woman. Undone, he would have liked to have told him.

Most people live without love, the friend said. Wouldn’t you agree?

I don’t know, Dorrigo replied.

The friend smiled, a twist of the mouth for Dorrigo, a slow opening for her, a complicit invitation for her to return to his company, his world, the swarm of drones. She ignored the pretender, turning her shoulder to him and saying she would be back in a minute; making it clear that he was to leave in order that she might stay with Dorrigo. Because this was strictly, well,
them
, though Dorrigo, watching her silent but clear communication, realised he had not wished for it nor consented to it.

All these conversations about love, continued the pretender, just nonsense. There’s no need for love. The best marriages are ones of compatibility. The science shows that we all generate electromagnetic fields. When one meets a person with opposite ions aligned in the right direction, they’re attracted. But that’s not love.

What is it then? asked Dorrigo.

Magnetism, said the pretender.

MAJOR NAKAMURA WAS
bad at cards yet he had just won the final hand, because it was understood both by his junior officers and the Australian POWs playing with him that it was better that he didn’t lose. Through his interpreter, Lieutenant Fukuhara, Nakamura thanked the Australian colonel and major for the evening. The Japanese major stood up, stumbled backwards, almost fell, but recovered his balance. Nakamura seemed oddly ebullient in spite of nearly falling flat on his face.

The Mekhong whisky he had provided had also taken its toll on the two Australian officers, and Dorrigo Evans moved carefully in standing up. He knew he now had his part to play as the Big Fella. He had held off all night, but he judged now was the moment to act.

The Speedo has been going thirty-seven days non-stop, Major, Dorrigo Evans began. Nakamura looked at him, smiling. Dorrigo Evans smiled back. To fulfil the Emperor’s wishes, we would be wisest to harness our resources. To best build the railway, we need to rest our men rather than destroy them. A day’s rest would do an enormous amount to help preserve not just the men’s energy, but the men themselves.

He fully expected Nakamura to explode, to hit him or threaten him, or at the very least to yell and scream at him. But the Japanese commander only laughed as Lieutenant Fukuhara translated. He made a quick aside and was already lurching out as Fukuhara translated his reply for Dorrigo.

Major Nakamura say prisoners lucky. They redeem honour by dying for the Emperor.

Nakamura halted, turned back and was speaking to them.

It is true this war is cruel, Lieutenant Fukuhara translated. What war is not? But war is human beings. War what we are. War what we do. Railway might kill human beings, but I do not make human beings. I make railway. Progress does not demand freedom. Progress has no need of freedom. Major Nakamura, he say progress can arise for other reasons. You, doctor, call it non-freedom. We call it spirit, nation, Emperor. You, doctor, call it cruelty. We call it destiny. With us, or without us. It is the future.

Dorrigo Evans bowed. Squizzy Taylor, a major and his second-in-command, did likewise.

But Major Nakamura wasn’t done. He spoke again and when he finished Fukuhara said—

Your British Empire, Major Nakamura say. He say: You think it did not need non-freedom, Colonel? It was built sleeper by sleeper of non-freedom, bridge by bridge of non-freedom.

Major Nakamura turned and left. Dorrigo Evans staggered off to the POW officers’ hut and his bed there, a cot that was too short for him. The cot was an absurd privilege that he liked because it was in reality no privilege at all. He looked at his watch. It showed the time as 1240 hours. He groaned. To accommodate his long legs he had rigged up a bamboo tripod, on which sat a flattened kerosene tin braced with more bamboo. It frequently tumbled over when he shifted in his sleep.

He lit a candle stub by his cot side and lay down. He picked up a dog-eared book—a precious commodity in the camp—a romance which he was reading before sleep to take his mind elsewhere and had nearly finished. But now drunk, exhausted, sick, Dorrigo Evans had neither the energy to read nor the desire to move, and he could feel sleep already claiming him. He put the book back down and snuffed the candle out.

THE OLD MAN
was dreaming he was a young man sleeping in a prisoner-of-war camp. Dreaming was the most real thing Dorrigo Evans now knew. He had followed knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

He sat up.

What’s the time?

Nearly three.

I have to go.

He didn’t dare say Ella’s name. Nor the word
wife,
nor the word
home
.

Where’s that kilt?

You were thinking of her again, weren’t you?

My kilt?

It hurts me, you know.

Bloody damn kilt.

He had arrived in a kilt, following the annual dinner of the Parramatta Burns Society, to which he had belonged since his work had brought him to Sydney in 1974, and of which he was patron for no reason that he could fathom other than, perhaps, his public vice of whisky and his secret vice of women. And now the kilt was lost.