The Story of Dr. Wassell (9 page)

He pulled over to the side of the road and clamped on the brake with his
last ounce of energy.

Then all was suddenly alive in a still world. For a mile or so ahead
British soldiers were jumping down from trucks and cars, shouting excitedly
as they threw down gear. The road was lined with tall trees, and beyond the
trees were rice fields channeled with running water. The doctor could not
help thinking it was rather like Arkansas, for there too were tall trees and
rice fields. It was a fine choice for a stopping place—in happier days
not a bad place for a picnic, either. He wondered if the Dutch and Javanese
had ever had picnics there, and all at once that reminded him of
something—he had never kept his promise about that giant ice-cream
feast for the men and the nurses. He was sorry about that; he liked to keep
his promises, and now, as if to wipe the regret from his mind, he silently
made another promise: “I’ll get these men safely to Tjilatjap, and I’ll put
them on a ship, and I’ll stay with them till safety…” That, he suddenly
realized, was more than a promise; it was a decision made to himself, and in
Some ways, come to think of it, it was a prayer.

The doctor rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and got down from the car.
Already the sun was lowering, and the air though warm, lay fresh and pleasant
under the shade. Wilson and Sun were waking; Francini still slept, but the
doctor leaned into the back of the car and gently waked him, for he had to be
attended to; that was the first job of all. Meanwhile hundreds of men along
the road ahead were scurrying about in units of concentrated yet somehow
independent effort—some were changing or washing clothes, others making
tea or heating cans of baked beans over blowpots, many sluicing themselves in
the rice-field channels and lying naked in the sun to dry. Little Javanese
boys, appearing as it were from nowhere, shinned up cocoanut trees and
dropped the nuts to the men, who gave them small coins in exchange; the men
knocked open the nuts and drank the green milk out of them. All this varied
activity the doctor watched out of one eye while he serviced his three
passengers; then he restarted the car and drove slowly along the length of
the convoy till he spotted the truck in which the five others were.

He found them. Two British soldiers who had driven the truck were making
tea by the roadside; they gave him a cheery greeting and shouted that his
boys were all right, only tired. The doctor nodded and climbed into the
truck. He was glad his boys had at least given the impression they were all
right; his last instructions had bidden them do that. He dropped his voice as
he saw the supine figures lying on stretchers with British Army coats thrown
over them to keep off the glare of the sun; some of the men had nothing but
thin pyjamas underneath. “Well, boys,” he exclaimed, “how’s everything?” He
said it quietly, almost confidentially, as if he really wanted them to tell
him.

One of them grumbled: “These trucks sure must run on square wheels,”

That was a good sign; the doctor liked to hear a grumble. He moved round
to each man, scrutinizing him carefully, seeing if there were any personal
thing to be done; and of course there was, and he did it.

“These Britishers treating you all right?” he said meanwhile.

Several answers came then. “Oh, fine. They’re swell guys. They gave us
candy and corned beef. And now they’re making tea for us.”

“And if you don’t die of a diet like that, then nothing’ll kill you,”
responded the doctor. He turned to McGuffey, who he thought might have been
helping him instead of sitting there crouched against a pile of Army uniforms
as if he were hiding something. All at once he saw that McGuffey
was
hiding something. “Well, for heaven’s sake…” he began…

Three Martini was behind the uniforms that were behind McGuffey.

The doctor went fighting-mad for about a minute and a half. He cursed
McGuffey with a language he hardly knew he knew; then he caught the brown
girl’s eye and had to stop. Even though she knew no English she must know he
was angry, and he did not want her to think he was angry with her personally.
So he smiled at her and went on cursing McGuffey as long as he could keep up
the joint effort; but that was not very easy, and in the end he just said:
“Well, all I can say is, McGuffey, this is about the limit. What the hell do
you think will happen to her when we get to Tjilatjap?”

“Dunno, Doc. I guess she figured that out herself. I didn’t ask her to
come.”

“Now don’t give me that stuff. I know if there’s any trouble anywhere,
you’re in on it.”

“Honest, Doc—I’m telling you the truth. She came on account of
Renny.”

“
Renny?
” The doctor swung round. “Well, Renny, what do
you
say about all this?”

Renny didn’t answer, and after a pause McGuffey said: “She thought Renny
might get worse on the way.”

The doctor snorted and was about to argue the matter further when he saw
over the edge of the truck the two British Tommies returning with cans of
steaming tea. “Well, anyhow,” he added quickly, “you’d better keep her out of
sight because if the captain of the convoy sees her he’ll put her off, sure
as you’re born.”

McGuffey nodded. “That’s what I thought, Doc.”

The Tommies clambered aboard, and from the way they looked at the girl the
doctor realized that they had thought of it too. In fact everyone seemed to
be quite reconciled to the girl’s presence except himself, and as he disliked
being in a minority of one he couldn’t keep up his truculence, especially
when one of the Tommies offered him a can of tea. “No, no,” he said
gallantly. “Ladies first…” And with that he looked across at Three Martini
and gave her a distinct wink, to show that he was by that time even less
angry with her than before.

So the doctor stayed and drank tea with the men, his own men and the
British, and the Javanese nurse; in fact, he even provided out of a flask in
his pocket something extra to put in the tea; and by the time the last drops
were drained he was feeling quite happy about the whole business.

A mile in front, in the staff car with Muller, the man with the languid
aloofness was also drinking a cup of tea. Actually he was neither languid nor
aloof, but just overwhelmingly weary, and terribly shy of this American boy
to whom he was giving a lift. He was also facing facts himself while
concealing them from others, and for this purpose the air of languid
aloofness was the only technique he knew. He had been told that he and his
men were to remain at Tjilatjap to make a last stand, and he guessed that
there was small chance for any of them, save to be killed or to spend
uncounted time in a Jap prison camp. Quite calmly—almost
languidly—he hoped that he, at the right moment, would be killed. And
as he hoped this, he thought of home in England and the road over a hill to
the house where his wife and children lived. He did not think they would ever
receive the last letters he had written. And half glancing sideways at the
American boy, he envied him passionately the chance of escape to fight again
with better luck another day; but still he could not think of anything to
say. He had been trying to think of something ever since the convoy had
stopped, and with every minute’s silence he knew that the American boy must
be thinking him snootier and snootier.

Presently he cleared his throat and began: “Er…er…how’re you feeling,
eh? Pretty ghastly, I guess, eh?” (He put the “I guess” in because he thought
all Americans said “I guess.”)

Muller honestly could not understand a word the Englishman said, but he
smiled and said “Okay, okay.”

The convoy started again and the nine men from the
Marblehead
went
riding down to the sea.

The doctor felt refreshed after the halt, but that made him eager to get
ahead and also—beyond the eagerness—anxious about what would
happen in Tjilatjap. It was like climbing a mountain and, when you are
getting near the summit, seeing another one higher and further. Every mile
made him more confident about the road journey, the British officer, and
everything connected with the convoy, but Tjilatjap was another ordeal to
face; his memories of it were singularly unpleasant; it was a place to get in
and out of, and especially out of, as quickly as possible. The very urgency
of this gave him the idea to drive ahead and make speedy arrangements, so
when next the convoy halted he rode on, waving as he passed the men in the
truck, and asked the British officer’s advice. The officer said he thought it
was not half a bad idea.

It was almost nightfall by then, but there was no darkness; a terrible
bright moon (terrible because of the help it would give to Jap bombers) rose
in the sky, and all along the horizons the fires of demolition spurted into a
flickering frieze. Fortunately the state of the road improved, so that the
doctor could drive at forty miles an hour instead of twenty without bumping
his passengers too much; but in any case, they sensed the reason for his
haste and would have paid for it willingly with extra discomfort. And this
willingness, half enthusiastic, half apprehensive, made all of them
increasingly silent as they neared Tjilatjap.

Presently they saw lights in the approaching distance which the doctor
thought must be either the town or a great fire. He did not speak his third
thought, which was that it might be both, or his fourth thought, which was
that Jap air raiders were already at work. He just drove on faster. The roads
were more crowded now, and with refugees on foot as well as wheeled traffic;
the doctor honked his horn and at each debatable turn in the road yelled
“Chillyjap” till someone answered him affirmatively. Despite this, he lost
his way several times and had to go back on his tracks. Once the car
overheated, and the doctor, who was no mechanic, had an awful fear of being
stranded; but Wilson said the radiator might need water, so they stopped by a
roadside stream and filled it with some difficulty by means of an empty
whiskey bottle. As the bottle was not quite empty at first, the doctor gave
Sun and Wilson a stiff drink to make it so; Francini could not have one,
because of his injury, and the doctor refused for himself, saying in the
half-jocular way that was the only one possible for what was in his mind:
“Boys, I’m saving mine for the time we’re easin’ out of the harbor with all
of us safe on board. That’s the time I’ll feel like percolatin’.”

While they were filling the radiator a Javanese passed them. Almost by now
automatically, the doctor pointed along the road and exclaimed:
“Chillyjap?”

“Tjilatjap,” said the man, nodding politely. He gave the name a different
pronunciation.

Wilson then asked him, mouthing the words with great distinctness and with
much gesturing and finger work to convey their meaning: “How far you
say—how many kilometers—Chillyjap? You understand?”

The man then replied: “I do not know precisely, sir, but I should say
about thirty-five miles…as the crow flies.”

“Well, I’m damned!” muttered Wilson, speechless for any more original
comment. It was something to laugh about, however, when they resumed the
journey.

From now on every bridge they passed was mined for dynamiting, its
structure often loosened so that traffic must crawl over with utmost care;
and sometimes when they had crossed and traveled on some distance, a heavy
rearward explosion gave them the knowledge that they had been narrowly in
time, just before entering Tjilatjap they came to a long suspension bridge
over a river. Like the others, it had been mined and was under strict guard
and patrol, with a Dutch officer scrutinizing all traffic before he let it go
through. He did not know any English, and none of the car’s occupants knew
any Dutch, but a Javanese sentry spoke a little Chinese, so the doctor became
eloquent for several minutes, after which the deal was cemented by opening a
fresh whiskey bottle and passing it round for as much as every man could take
at one gulp. At the other end of the bridge there were more sentries, but the
Javanese who had spoken Chinese obligingly ran across to expedite matters.
Then there were more drinks and an extra one for the Javanese. Scotch
whiskey, the doctor was finding, was really a universal currency, handier
even than dollars—certainly than guilders.

Francini had a sudden gust of pain during that last lap into the town; and
this perhaps was why, when the doctor asked how he was feeling, he answered:
“Pretty lousy. I hope it won’t be like it was before, Doc. I mean—when
you didn’t get us on the
Breskens
.”

The doctor answered without turning round (for he was in the town now and
had to keep his eyes on the road): “So you think it was bad luck not getting
on the
Breskens
, do you? Well, I’ll tell you this…something they
just told me there at the bridge. The
Breskens
was torpedoed. All our
men were saved except four, but you’d have made five if you’d been on
it.”

Francini was silent for a moment, then he said: “Sorry, Doc. We don’t know
what’s best for us always.”

“Sure we don’t,” agreed the doctor cordially. “You gotta be like the hog
and know a persimmon tree from an acorn tree…anythin’ more’n that’s just
guesswork.”

Tjilatjap, in the middle of the night, was fantastically alive, and yet it
was also dead. It had died, as it were, and was attending its own funeral. Or
some such metaphor; the doctor had no time to think of any. But he was aware
of the unquiet stillness of the place, the almost sinister movement of people
who did not talk about what they were doing, but were intensely occupied in
doing it; doors wide-open where one would have expected them to be shut;
lights burning remotely in isolated rooms. And over it all a curious scent in
the hot night air, a scent too faint to be unpleasant till one guessed what
it might be rather than knew what it was—the smell of burning over a
great distance.