The Naked Island | Page 2

oneself, naturally: but many others, even one's friends. One
regretted the fact, but one did not bewail it.
But this this death due to lack of food and drugs, both of which were
plentiful this was something against which one could not steel oneself.
A week, I thought, and one'd ead already. A young, sturdy Scot There
must be lots of weeks to go yet before we would be out. A year
probably, I thought. That was if they didn't shoot us as they'd said they
would. Then, more honestly, I added to myself, "four years, more
likely." It didn't bear thinking about

2 INSANITY IN THE FAMILY?
I looked at the Argyll. He was about my age, perhaps a little younger,

perhaps twenty. I reflected that only recently I had taken the activity
and the fleetness of foot and the exuberance of youth entirely for
granted. I reflected that only a fortnight ago I should never have
considered mounting these stairs any other way than two at a time.
Now, one by one, counting idiotically, I had crawled up: andfinallyhad
bogged down altogether at number fourteen.
In the dark, on the stairs, resting my elbows on my knees, my forehead
on my fists, I gave myself over to misery. I found myself retracing in
my mind the sequence of events which had led me, so inevitably, to
this staircase between the punishment cells and the courtyard of Pudu
Gaol, Kuala Lumpur, onetime administration centre of British Malaya.
It was that brass band I blamed most. Day after day, with unremit ting
fervour, it had played martial airs outside the Sydney Recruiting Office
in a jolly attempt to convince young Australians that war was just one
long march by Sousa. Thousands of volunteers (the theory was)
hypnotized by the blare of brass would pour, in a Hamelin- like
procession, into the Australian Imperial Forces.
Once before, months earlier, I had volunteered, only to be told to go
away and get my mother's consent, and finish my university course.
Accordingly, I had obtained my mother's consent and passed my exams,
and become a Bachelor of Arts. This, to my limited intel ligence, did
not appear an excessively helpful contribution to the Empire's war
effort, so, at the beginning of 1941, 1 had returned to the Recruiting
Office, determined this time to enlist and kill many Germans. And
there, outside the small wooden hut (which, in the middle of the
grandeur of Martin Place, and immediately above the gentlemen's
lavatory, was so typical a product of the military mind), stood the
scarlet ranks of a brass band playing martial airs.
Irritated, I stopped short on the corner of Martin Place and Pitt Street. If
I was going to join up, I was going to join up of my own accord. I was
not going to be wafted into the Army on the end of any conductor's
baton, however magnificent his moustache or in numerable his
campaign ribbons. Stubbornly, taking care not to walk in step with the
march that stirred the depths of the city, I strolled away up the hill,

crossed Castlereagh Street, crossed Elizabeth Street, caught the Bondi
tram and went for a swim.
Next day, punctually after my morning lectures, I ran from the
University Chambers, wherein the Law School was housed, down to
the Recruiting Office in Martin Place. And there, once again, the sun
glinting on the silver of epaulettes and the gold of instruments, was the
band! Again I went for a swim. Every day for a week the band was
there and every day for a week, while others joined up and were
consigned to Syria and Darwin and England, I went swimming.
Then at last the band vanished, and in I marched, into the small hut in
the middle of Martin Place, immediately above the gentle men's
lavatory. The same recruiting sergeant greeted me in the same bluff and
congenial manner as he had when first I was interviewed by him a
manner that had all the roguish humour of a commercial traveller and
all the sincerity of a pawnbroker.
"Hullo there, laddy," he said, "going to join our Army?" I nodded.
"How old are you, laddy?" he asked. I said, "Twenty," and he said,
"Tell it to the Marines, laddy, tell it to the Marines. Eighteen years ago
you wouldn't even have been a gleam in your father's eye, now would
you, eh?" Realizing that the sergeant was the possessor of a particularly
hammy wit, I didn't answer. I simply placed on the table before him a
form signed by my mother the form which rendered minors eligible for
enlistment
"Mother's signed this, laddy," he observed astutely, "why not your
father?"
"Died eight years ago," I told him. At this the sergeant appeared
embarrassed