King Rat

“Then there was more questioning. And that was when I met Colonel Imata for the first time. Angus was in my arms and we had been taken from the big room, where we lived and ate and slept and—I suppose—died, into a smaller room in the school buildings. It was small, but it was clean, and a little like paradise. The Colonel was sitting behind a huge desk and standing beside him was a young Japanese officer whose name was Saito. The Colonel was a big man, tall for a Japanese, with iron gray hair, close cropped, and a firm well-lined face. It was a kind face I thought. Saito said that this was Colonel Imata and the Colonel wanted to ask me some questions and to sit down. They gave me a cigarette and the Colonel looked at me. Then he asked about Angus for the child was not too well at that time and fretful. He seemed gentle and helpful so I asked for medicines and fresh milk. I could not feed my child for my milk had dried up and another of the mothers was feeding him, but only when her own child was replete and then, there was not much milk left for my son. Saito translated this to the Colonel who said he would see what could be done. Then he began questioning me. When he was finished questioning there was a bottle of fresh milk and a cake of soap and a pack of cigarettes. Saito said that they were gifts from the Colonel and that tomorrow I was to return.

“Every day for a week the Colonel, through Saito, questioned me. About our life, about our plantation, about my life in England, until I thought I would go mad. Over and over the same things. But I always tried to be nice and cooperative and tell them what they wanted to know, for every day there was a bottle of milk and a little food or chocolate. Then on the eighth day, Colonel Imata asked me to be his woman. He asked me, he didn’t tell me.

“‘The Colonel says, Madam,’ Saito interpreted sibilantly, ‘that you please him. There is no need for you to stay locked up in the schoolhouse with other prisoners. The Colonel has a beautiful house and he will look after you. And, the Colonel has said, you may bring your son.’

“‘I can’t,’ I said and I said it carefully for I did not wish to offend him. ‘I am married. A married woman cannot do what the Colonel asks.’

“Saito translated this and the Colonel sighed and got up. He bowed gravely and sadly and I was taken back to the big room. There was no milk that day or food or anything.

“For a week nothing happened. We had almost no food, and we all had dysentery in varying degrees. Then Saito came and said, ‘You are to go with me!’

“‘Where?’ I asked him for I was frightened at his curtness and unusual hardness.

“‘You will soon find out,’ he said.

“I was terrified. But there was nothing I could do so I started to follow him with Angus in my arms.

“‘You are to leave the child!’

“‘No. I’ll never leave him. You’ll have to kill me if you want me to leave him here. I’ll never leave him,’” I cried at him. And I was really crying.

“Eventually, though he was angry, he allowed me to carry Angus. We went in a car to the Oasthaven hospital. Angus was dirty, and smelled. But then, that was not surprising for we had no soap and little water and my poor baby was only six months old and had dysentery. He cried all the time and that made the young Saito angrier.

“Then we were taken into the hospital. Suddenly we were in a ward and the beds were crowded with Japanese patients. Saito snapped a command and they all lined up at the foot of their beds and took off their clothes. I had never seen VD before. I had only read about it. But these patients all had the disease. It was like a nightmare, standing in the ward watching them, feeling their eyes on me and feeling their lust. Almost feeling them touch me, all these men with sores all over them. I think I would have fainted if I hadn’t had Angus in my arms.

“After an eternity Saito led me outside into the air.

“‘All whites are enemies of the Asiatics,’ he said. ‘It would be easy to give you to those men. They have need of women, as much as normal men. More so the doctors tell me. It’s a symptom of the disease,’ he added with frightening coolness.

“I said that there was such a thing as civilization and that I hadn’t done anything to anyone and that, surely, the Japanese wouldn’t do such a terrible thing to us. To me.

“‘White Imperialists, particularly English, are enemies and should be stamped out,’ he snapped. ‘You are all offal left over to be used in any way.’

“Then we got back into the car and he took me to the outside of a wire enclosure where civilians, the Dutch civilians, were kept. The women and the children. The scarecrows and nakedness and potbellied infants, potbellied with pellagra and diseased.

“When I woke up from my faint, I was back in the car and Angus was whimpering in my lap. The officer gave me something to drink and ordered the car back to our schoolhouse.