King Rat

“Sean walked over and stared up at me, and I couldn’t get it out of my head that somehow this was a girl—he looked like one and acted like one and talked like one and smelled like one. ‘Look, Peter,’ he said, ‘I know it’s difficult for you to understand, but I’ve changed. I’m no longer a man, I’m a woman.’

“‘You’re no more a bloody woman than I am!’ I yelled. But it didn’t seem to touch him at all. He just stood there smiling like a madonna, and then he said, ‘I’m a woman, Peter.’ He touched my arm just the way a girl would, and he said, ‘Please treat me as a woman.’

“Something in my head seemed to snap. I grabbed his arm and ripped the negligee off his shoulders and tore off the padded bra and shoved him in front of the mirror.

“‘You call yourself a woman?’ I shouted. ‘Look at yourself! Where are your bloody breasts?’

“But Sean didn’t look up. He just stood in front of the mirror with his head down and his hair falling over his face. The negligee was hanging off him and he was naked to the waist. I grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head up. ‘Look at yourself, you bloody deviate!’ I yelled. ‘You’re a man, by God, and you always will be.’

“He just stood there saying nothing at all, and finally I realized he was crying. Then Rodrick and Frank Parrish rushed in and shoved me out of the way, and Parrish pulled the negligee around Sean and took him in his arms, and all the time Sean just went on crying.

“Frank kept hugging him and saying, ‘It’s all right, Sean, it’s all right.’ Then he looked at me, and I knew he wanted to kill me. ‘Get out of here, you bloody bastard,’ he said.

“I don’t even know how I got out of there—when I finally came to I was wandering around the camp, and I was beginning to realize that I’d had no right, no right at all, to do what I’d done. It was insane.”

Peter Marlowe’s face was naked with anguish. “I went back to the theater. I had to try to make my peace with Sean. His door was locked but I thought I heard him inside. I knocked and knocked, but he wouldn’t answer and he wouldn’t open the door, so I got angry again and I shoved the door open. I wanted to apologize to his face, not through a door.

“He was lying on the bed. There was a big cut on his left wrist and there was blood all over the place. I put a tourniquet on him and somehow got hold of old Doc Kennedy and Rodrick and Frank. Sean looked like a corpse, and he didn’t make a sound all the time Kennedy was sewing up the scissor slash. When Kennedy finished, Frank said to me, ‘Are you satisfied now, you rotten bastard?’

“I couldn’t say anything. I just stood there hating myself.

“‘Get out and stay out,’ Rodrick said.

“I started off, but then I heard Sean calling me, in a kind of weak, faint whisper. I turned around and saw that he was looking at me not angrily, but as if he pitied me. ‘I’m sorry, Peter,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

“‘Christ, Sean,’ I managed to say. ‘I didn’t mean you any harm.’

“‘I know,’ he said. ‘Please be my friend, Peter.’

“Then he looked at Parrish and Rodrick and said, ‘I wanted to go away, but now,’ and he smiled his wonderful smile, ‘I’m so happy to be home again.’”

Peter Marlowe’s face was drained. The sweat was running down his neck and chest. The King lit a Kooa.

Peter Marlowe half shrugged, helplessly, then got up and walked away, deep in his remorse.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Come on, hurry up,” Peter Marlowe said to the yawning men lined up bleakly outside the hut. It was just after dawn and breakfast was already memory and the deficiency of it served only to increase the men’s irritability. And, too, the long sun-hot day at the airfield was ahead of them. Unless they had the luck.

It was rumored that today one detail was going to the far west side of the airfield where the coconut trees grew. It was rumored that three trees were going to be cut down. And the heart of a coconut tree was not only edible but very nutritious and a great delicacy. It was called “millionaire’s cabbage,” for a whole coconut tree had to die to provide it. Along with the millionaire’s cabbage there would be coconuts as well. More than enough for a thirty-man detail. So officers and enlisted men alike were tense.

The sergeant in charge of the hut came up to Peter Marlowe and saluted. “That’s the lot, sir. Twenty men including me.”

“We’re supposed to have thirty.”

“Well, twenty’s all we have. The rest’re sick or on wood detail. Nothin’ I can do about it.”

“All right. Let’s get up to the gate.”

The sergeant got the men under way and they began streaming loosely along the jail wall to join the rest of the airfield detail near the barricade-gate west. Peter Marlowe beckoned to the sergeant and got the men herded together in the best position—near the end of the line, where they were likelier to be chosen for the tree detail. When the men noticed that their officer had maneuvered them just right they began to pay attention and sorted themselves out quickly.