King Rat

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 and the second and the third, and all the trucks left Changi, and only once did Peter Marlowe look back.

When he was far away.