King Rat Read Free Page B

door, hitching the rags of his pants around his hips. God, Grey thought, you can smell him from fifty paces. They’ve just got to issue more soap.
    But he knew that it wasn’t just Masters. It was all of them. If you didn’t bathe six times a day, the sweat hung like a shroud about you. And thinking of shrouds, he thought again about Masters and the mark that he had on him. Perhaps Masters knew it too, so what was the point of washing?
    Grey had seen many men die. The bitterness began to well as he thought about the regiment and the war. Damn your eyes, he almost shouted, twenty-four and still a lieutenant! And the war going on all around - all over the world. Promotions every day of the year. Opportunities. And here I am in this stinking POW camp and still a lieutenant. Oh Christ! If only we hadn’t been transshipped to Singapore in ‘42. If only we’d gone where we were supposed to go - to the Caucasus. If only…
    “Stop it,” he said aloud. “You’re as bad as Masters, you bloody fool!”
    It was normal in the camp to talk aloud to yourself sometimes. Better to speak out, the doctors had always said, than to keep it all choked inside - that way led to insanity. Most days were not so bad. You could stop thinking about your other life, about the guts of it - food, women, home, food, food, women, food. But the nights were the danger time. At night you dreamed. Dreamed about food and women. Your woman. And soon you would enjoy the dreaming more than the waking, and if you were careless you would dream while awake, and the days would run into nights and the night into day. Then there was only death. Smooth. Gentle. It was easy to die. Agony to live. Except for the King. He had no agony.
    Grey was still watching him, trying to hear what he was saying to the man beside him, but he was too far away. Grey tried to place the other man but he could not. He could see from the man’s armband that he was a major. By Japanese order all officers had to wear armbands with rank insignia on their left arms. At all times. Even naked.
    The black rain clouds were building fast now. Sheet lightning flecked the east, but still the sun thrust down. A fetid breeze broomed the dust momentarily, then left it settle.
    Automatically Grey used the bamboo fly-swat. A deft, half unconscious twist of the wrist and another fly fell to the ground, maimed. To kill a fly was careless. Cripple it, then the bastard would suffer and repay in tiny measure your own suffering. Cripple it and it would soundless scream until ants and other flies came to fight over its living flesh.
    But Grey did not take the usual pleasure in watching the torment of the tormentor. He was too intent on the King.
     

Chapter 2
     
    “By George,” the major was saying to the King with forced joviality, “and then there was the time I was in New York, in ‘33. Marvelous time. Such a wonderful country, the States. Did I ever tell you about the trip I made to Albany? I was a subaltern at the time . . .”
    “Yes, sir,” the King said tiredly. “You’ve told me.” He felt he had been polite long enough and he could still feel Grey’s eyes on him. Though he was quite safe and not afraid, he wanted to get out of the sun and out of the range of the eyes. He had a lot to do. And if the major wouldn’t come to the point, what the hell! “Well, if you’ll excuse me, sir. It was nice to talk to you.”
    “Oh, just a minute,” Major Barry said quickly and looked around nervously, conscious of the curious eyes of the men that passed, conscious of their unspoken question - What’s he talking to the King for? “I — er, could I see you privately?”
    The King gauged him thoughtfully. “We’re private here. If you keep your voice down.”
    Major Barry was wet with embarrassment. But he had been trying to bump into the King for days now. And it was too good an opportunity to miss. “But the Provost Marshal’s hut is —“
    “What have the cops to do with talking