“Oh yes, of course,” Phil said sarcastically, automatically using his flyswat. “Don’t try to cap such a wonderful story! Wonderful!”
Peter Marlowe knew they would not believe him. So he didn’t say any more. No one would believe him unless he showed the Farm to them…. My God! The Farm! And his stomach turned over.
He put on his new uniform. On the epaulets was his rank—flight lieutenant. On his left breast, his wings. He looked around at his possessions—bed, mosquito net, mattress, blanket, sarong, rag shirt, a ragged pair of shorts, two pairs of clogs, knife, spoon and three aluminum plates. He scooped everything off his bed and carried it outside and set fire to it.
“Hey you … oh excuse me, sir,” the sergeant said. “Fires’re dangerous.” The sergeant was an outsider, but Peter Marlowe wasn’t afraid of outsiders. Not now.
“Beat it,” snapped Peter Marlowe.
“But sir…”
“I said beat it, goddammit!”
“Yes sir.” The sergeant saluted and Peter Marlowe felt very pleased that he wasn’t afraid of outsiders any more. He returned the salute and then wished he hadn’t, for he didn’t have his cap on. So he tried to cover his mistake with “Oh, where the hell’s my cap?” and walked back into the hut feeling the fear of outsiders returning. But he forced it away and swore to himself, by the Lord my God, I’ll never be afraid again. Never.
He found his cap and the concealed can of sardines. He put the can in his pocket and walked down the stairs of the hut and up the road beside the wire. The camp was almost deserted now. The last of the English troops were going today, on the same convoy as his. Going away. Long after all the Aussies had left, and an age after the Yanks. But that was only to be expected. We’re slow but very sure.
He stopped near the American hut. The canvas flap of the overhang waved miserably on a wind of the past. Then Peter Marlowe went inside the hut for the last time.
The hut was not empty. Grey was there, polished and uniformed.
“Come to look a last time at the place of your triumphs?” he asked venomously.
“That’s one way of putting it.” Peter Marlowe rolled a cigarette and replaced the savings in his tobacco box. “And now the war’s over. Now we’re equal, you and me.”
“That’s right.” Grey’s face was stretched, his eyes snake-like. “I hate your guts.”
“Remember Dino?”
“What about him?”
“He was your informer, wasn’t he?”
“I suppose there’s no harm in admitting it now.”
“The King knew all about Dino.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Dino was giving you information on orders. On the King’s orders!” Peter Marlowe laughed.
“You’re a bloody liar!”
“Why should I lie?” Peter Marlowe’s laugh died abruptly. “The time for lying’s over. Finished. But Dino was doing it on orders. Remember how you were always just too late? Always.”
Oh my God, thought Grey. Yes, yes, I can see that now.
Peter Marlowe drew on his cigarette. “The King figured that if you didn’t get real information, you’d really try to get an informer. So he gave you one.”
Suddenly Grey felt very tired. Very tired. A lot of things were hard to understand. Many things, strange things. Then he saw Peter Marlowe and the taunting smile and all his pent-up misery exploded. He slammed across the hut and kicked the King’s bed over and scattered his possessions, then whipped on Peter Marlowe. “Very clever! But I saw the King cut down to size, and I’ll see it happen to you. And your stinking class!”
“Oh?”
“You can bet your bloody life! I’ll fix you somehow, if I have to spend the rest of my life doing it. I’ll beat you in the end. Your luck’s going to run out.”
“Luck’s got nothing to do with it.”
Grey pointed a finger in Peter Marlowe’s face. “You were born lucky. You’ve ended Changi lucky. Why, you’ve even escaped with what precious little soul you ever had!”
“What’re you talking about?” Peter Marlowe shoved the finger away.
“Corruption. Moral corruption. You were saved just in time. A few more months around the King’s evil and you’d have been changed forever. You were beginning to be a great liar and a cheat—like him.”
“He wasn’t evil and he cheated no one. All he did was adapt to circumstances.”
“The world’d be a sorry place if everyone hid behind that excuse. There’s such a thing as morality.”
Peter Marlowe threw his cigarette on the floor and ground it to dust. “Don’t tell me you’d rather be dead with your goddam virtues than alive and know you’ve had to compromise a little.”
“A little?” Grey laughed harshly. “You sold out everything. Honor—integrity—pride—all for a handout from the worst bastard in this stinkhole!”
“When you think about it, the King’s sense of honor was pretty high. But you’re right in one thing. He did change me. He showed me that a man’s a man, irrespective of background. Against everything I’ve been taught. So I was wrong to sneer at you for something you had no hand in, and I’m sorry for that. But I don’t apologize for despising you for the man you are.”
“At least I didn’t sell my soul!” Grey’s uniform was streaked with sweat and he stared malevolently at Peter Marlowe. But inside he was choked with self-hatred. What about Smedly-Taylor? he asked himself. That’s right, I sold out too. I did. But at least I know what I did was wrong. I know it. And I know why I did it. I was ashamed of my birth, and I wanted to belong to the gentry. To your bloody class, Marlowe. In the service. But now I couldn’t care less. “You buggers’ve got the world by the shorts,” he said aloud, “but not for long, by God, not any more. We’re going to get even, people like me. We didn’t fight the war to be spat on. We’re going to get even.”
“Jolly good luck!”
Grey tried to control his breathing. He unclenched his fists with an effort and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. “But you, you’re not worth fighting. You’re dead!”
“The point is we’re both very much alive.”
Grey turned away and walked to the doorway. On the top step he turned back. “Actually, I should thank you and the King for one thing,” he said viciously. “My hatred of you two kept me alive.” Then he strode away and never looked back.
Peter Marlowe gazed out at the camp, then back at the hut and the scattered possessions of the King. He picked up the plate that had served the eggs and noticed that it was already covered with dust. Absently he stood the table upright and put the plate on it, lost in thought. Thoughts of Grey and the King and Samson and Sean and Max and Tex and where was Mac’s wife and was N’ai just a dream and the General and the outsiders and home and Changi.
I wonder, I wonder, he thought helplessly. Is it wrong to adapt? Wrong to survive? What would I have done had I been Grey? What would Grey have done if he’d been me? What is good and what is evil?
And Peter Marlowe knew, tormented, that the only man who could, perhaps, tell him had died in freezing seas on the Murmansk run.
His eyes looked at the things of the past—the table where his arm had rested, the bed where he had recovered, the bench he and the King had shared, the chairs they had laughed in—already ancient and molding.
In the corner was a wad of Japanese dollars. He picked them up and stared at them. Then he let them drop, one by one. As the notes settled, flies clustered on them, swarmed and clustered back once more.
Peter Marlowe stood in the doorway. “Good-by,” he said with finality to all that had belonged to his friend. “Good-by and thanks.”
He walked out of the hut and along the jail wall until he reached the line of trucks that waited patiently at the gate of Changi.
Forsyth was standing beside the last truck, glad beyond gladness that his work was finished. He was exhausted and the mark of Changi was in his eyes. He ordered the convoy to begin.
The first truck moved an
d the second and the third, and all the trucks left Changi, and only once did Peter Marlowe look back.
When he was far away.
When Changi looked like a pearl in an emerald oyster shell, blue-white under a bowl of tropical skies—when Changi stood on a slight rise and around was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to blue-green seas, and the seas to infinity of horizon.
And then, in his turn, he looked back no more.
That night Changi was deserted. By men. But the insects remained.
And the rats.
They were still there. Beneath the hut. And many had died, for they had been forgotten by their captors. But the strongest were still alive.
Adam was tearing at the wire to get at the food outside his cage, fighting the wire as he had been fighting it for as long as he had been within the cage. And his patience was rewarded. The side of the cage ripped apart and he fell on the food and devoured it. And then he rested and with renewed strength he tore at another cage, and in the course of time devoured the flesh within.
Eve joined him and he had his fill of her and she of him and then they foraged in consort. Later the whole side of a trench collapsed, and many cages were opened and the living fed on the dead, and the living-weak became food for the living-strong until the survivors were equally strong. And then they fought among themselves and foraged.
And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The novels of James Clavell’s world-famous Asian Saga (Shogun, Tai-Pan, Gai-Jin, King Rat, Noble House, and Whirlwind) were each critically acclaimed major bestsellers and have been adapted into phenomenally successful award-winning television events and feature films. James Clavell died in 1994.
KING RAT
A Delta Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Dell mass market edition published October 1974
Delacorte Press hardcover edition published February 1983
Delta Trade Paperback edition / June 1999
Delta Trade Paperback reissue / June 2009
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1962 by James Clavell
Introduction copyright © 1999 by Michaela Clavell
Part title calligraphy by Soo Jin Kang
Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48676-9
www.bantamdell.com
v3.0_r2
James Clavell, King Rat
(Series: Asian Saga # 4)
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