Chapter 11 Judas; Oro Bay; Blood Film; Bumbu's Faith; Boat Builder

SOLILOQUY-ORO BAY, 1944

THE moment is now, and therefore unimportant. Only in the past was this time important, for then it was the future. In the future this moment will again matter, for then it will be the past, what one was and what one is. Now it is fleeting, and therefore trivial and momentary.

This moment for me is the past and the future, daydreaming, sweating at every pore, dreaming away the dull interlude of the present, living in memory the past and in wishes the future, the day to put away for ever the rifle, the bayonet firmly in its scabbard at last, the dull khaki and faded greens at last discarded, the day when the future will begin.

My pack is my pillow, my boots are off, I have cigarettes, a good book, food, although the bananas are still unripened, and above my head a rickety tent that nevertheless denies entry to the rain. From my valley-rim edging the evergreen forest, I can see the palm-fronds curling upwards towards the omnipotent sun; see the green treeheads against the sky, hear the rustle of the tangled vines in the still heat, and from the valley hear the cool rush and gurgle of the river, cool as autumn in this jungle heat. These sounds are the jungle silence, a gaudy, screeching backcloth to sultry stillness.

A green chameleon is darting along the ridge-pole of my tent, tongue flashing. Two butterflies of lovely blue velvet flutter high over the trees, living gaily their brief and lovely lives, and over the trees away in the distance through a rent in the low-hung clouds are the brooding peaks of the Range, savage and sullen.

I have these things, the book, the cigarettes, the valley, the river and the mountains, and I should be happy. Instead I live in the past and the future, dreaming of when this was not and will be no more.

Coming up through the jungle now, from down in the American camp, I can bear a Negro singing. The silence has been so intense, and then this Negro started singing. It is good to hear him, hear his throaty song. The sound of his singing is coming loud and clear up through the tumbling river gorge to my precarious little tent perched high on the rim of the jungle valley, and it is good to hear it.

Often music comes up through the jungle's stillness, the "Blue Danube", and at Christmas, "Silent Night" and "Noël', more often swing, Arty Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman. It is the only music that I ever hear now, and it is good to hear it.

The Darky is not on a phonograph. He is working down there, and sin6ng as he works. The darkies mostly don't believe in straining themselves, and I am surely not the one to blame them. He has a fine singing voice, and

he is singing "In Eleven More Months and Ten More Days, I'll be out of this Calaboose". Maybe he's right at that. The way the war is now, maybe he's right. In eleven more months and ten more days maybe the future will begin, and that is what I'm waiting for right now.

Perhaps in eleven more months and ten more days all this will be behind me, the future at last before me, and this merely a past memory, what I was once, to be looked back upon, and therefore in that future time of some importance to me. In eleven more months and ten more days ...

Black thunderclouds are gathering now, almost obliterating the dark ridges and jagged peaks of the somnolent Range, and the Negro is no longer singing, and surely now the rain is beating down on that implacable, indifferent wall of barren stone.

It is not yet dark. It is dusk now, and the clouds have spread over the whole valley, and there is a strange yellow light and hushed expectancy in the jungle, and at this moment in the yellow light the jungle is greener with a brighter and unearthly green, and in the distance away around the coast the muffled sound of desultory gunfire, and in the distance the first sullen roll of thunder, and then the lightning. Still the yellow hush until it is unbearable, and ,till in the distance the thunder and the lightning, and then the sudden relief of rain gushing from the grey sodden skies, and then there is only the rain and rain and rain. And then, as suddenly as it came, it goes, and now there is only the mud, and the rain dripping from the trees, and the flood waters cascading madly over the rocks of the little river, and the returning sounds of the jungle.

Then the darkness begins to eddy up out of the valley in dark pools of purple shadow, oozing up over the treetops, and then the world is swimming in darkness, and the darkness washes up over the sky from the east, and now it is night, and there are no clouds now, only stars and a bomber's moon, a lantern's flicker, and the strange night sounds and the crawling things of the jungle, the rats and the spiders and the scorpions.

That is this life, and I am lying here now, my pack at my back, and I am thinking of the past that was before this and the future that is beyond it. I am thinking that this is now, and therefore trivial and unimportant, and I am considering that when this time has passed, it will be what I have become, what I will be in the future, part of me, and therefore of importance to me. I am thinking of this moment, the jungle, day and night, the rain and the sullen menace of the Range, and particularly of the American Negro's song and its hope for the future. Perhaps, as soon as that, less than a year, this fleeting and trivial moment will be the past. Maybe then the future will begin.

In eleven more months

"VX147937"

THE BLOOD FILM

"No!" says Sister, "No, no, no, no, NO! NOT that way, nurse! " I don't need daisy petals to tell whether she loves me, she loves me not. To Sister I am the nth degree of exasperation, the mentally-deficient straw that drops with a bang on the beaten camel's back. I am pigeon-holed in the lower recesses of her opinion between gangrene and bedsores. So you can see we can never really be mates.

But I do TRY to be a good A.A.M.W.S. When I gave the ward quinine instead of paraffin oil, it was merely accidental. And it didn't hurt. Much. And the day the M.O. stepped into the bowl of soap-suds I'd left on the floor, it was more his fault than mine ... though Sister never saw it quite that way. And, really, the six fractures that resulted from my wet floor polish were neither here nor there ... but Sisters seem to get so intense and dramatic about these things. Still I suppose. even Sister has to have a hobby, and blitzing me is as good a hobby as any, and I really don't mind as long as she gets some fun out of it.

And my life in the A.A.M.W.S. would seem rather empty now without that haunting refrain of "No, No, No, nurse!" that runs through my duty hours like the pattern on wall-paper or telegraph-poles along a railway line. Without it, life would lose a certain tang. So you see, the whole arrangement is really quite satisfactory.

But I nearly gave Flo-Nightingale-And-All away when I had to do a blood film. A blood film, I'll have you know, is a drop of blood spread thinly on glass and sent to Pathology so that they can look-see if there is a malaria wog nestling coyly between the red and white corpuscles. Or something like that. And the day came when Sister gave me directions on blood films, and laughing fiendishly, pushed me out in the ward to get my pound of flesh.

With the blood-film tray in my shaking hand I advanced towards the bed. I had already performed some Herculean tasks in the ward such as finding volunteers to do the washing-up (so you think that's easy? Have you ever tried? ), and pulling big bronzed commandos out of bed o' mornings after they have resolutely refused to budge. But the blood film was a horse of a different colour. I had to take a man's blood. An innocent man's blood. Or, if you prefer it, the Blood of an Innocent Man.

What had that man ever done to me, I asked myself passionately, that I should take a wicked big needle and plunge it into his third finger? He had not harmed me or mine. Probably never would. And I had to take his blood like a vampire-woman. I had to go through life with my hands steeped in human gore.

I put the glass slides down on his locker. He turned to me with a brave, wistful smile, a trusting smile such as a guileless spring lamb would flash at the advancing butcher. My hands fell limply by my sides. "I can't do it!" I cried hopelessly.

"Courage, Camille, courage!" he whispered. "Be strong. Be brave. Be resolute. There's some more that comes after that, but I can't remember it."

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"Yes." He sighed deeply. "Yet life was somehow sweet to me."

I was weeping by this time. Tears blinded me. I turned on the windscreen-wiper I always keep for occasions like this, and when I could see again, picked up a swab of cotton-wool.

"You've made your will?"

"Yes."

"Any last messages?"

"Say goodbye to mother for me. To mother, and the horse outside Pop's pie stall. You'll tell them both I died bravely, won't you? "

"I will say you died like the noble gentleman you are. Finger please."

With a gallant gesture he tossed me his hand. Luckily it was attached, or we might never have seen it again, I being somewhat of a butter-fingers. He turned his head away while I reached for the dread needle. Poor man, he did not dare to look. I turned my head away too. I did not dare to look, either. The sight would have sickened me.

Taking a deep, laboured breath, I jabbed. The needle entered my fourth finger at the second joint. I jabbed again. This time I got my thumb. Shuddering, I jabbed once more. ME again. I bear the scars to this day.

Reflecting bitterly that this was something of a mug's game, I decided to look while I jabbed. After my shaking, fear-palsied hand had twice pierced his finger-nail, I finally got a bull's-eye-right in the middle of the finger.

"Did it go in?" I inquired frantically.

He nodded faintly. "Right up to the elbow," he replied.

Blood spouted everywhere. Ablaze with the collector's instinct, I made sixty-five blood films. But did Sister encourage the willing worker? No. It was really rather perverse of her to utter a frenzied scream and claim she had only asked for two. So, consequently, sixty-three perfectly good blood films were wasted. Sixty-three. It just goes to show how much waste goes on in the Army.

Surely she could use them for something else? I inquired, standing there like a murderess, waving my blood-stained hands eloquently.

I'd hate to tell you her reply.

"VFX128258"

BUMBU'S FAITH

IT was more than two years ago, and the native village of Basama, etched from the fetid, stifling jungle, was at peace. There was, perhaps, little to distinguish Basama.

Nestled near the coast north of Salamaua, it knew and shared the life of its neighbours along the Gulf. From the long, lazy palms, the community built homes of a monotonous pattern, which were dotted at random among the trees near the shore. In the swamps, "work" boys, their brilliant black bodies sweating in the sun, cut and sewed the sac-sac for roofing.

Often too, they would load it on the barge at taubada's bidding to be driven up to Labu or across the water to Lae. There was much demand for the coconut, sago and Pandanus palms for the needs of a growing local administration had to be met.

On the beach lay huge trunks that were once trees, now boats in embryo. Others were already seaworthy. Rugged Lakatois with their sturdy guide poles aboard rode serenely on tired waters amid canoes.

In the sea beyond were fish, and fish "belonga boys". Gladly they sought the quarry, armed with spear and knife. An exuberant skill and relentless vigour marked their work. A successful catch was always the signal for rapid, animated talk and swift action.

But there was rest from the building, the weaving, the gardens and the fishing. There was time for quiet moments when the men and women could talk together. When work was done, then came the hour of case. Perhaps it was at such a time that significant intricate carvings were produced. Now it was good to smoke leisurely or to dwell in silence with betel-nut. No doubt many a dance or "sing-sing" echoed weirdly in the eerie jungle. To father it might well be a time for re-union with his "two fella piccaninny" (twins), but that is his secret, for the native guards his privacy closely.

It did seem that Basama was a happy village, if a common one. Yet it held distinction, character, because therein ruled King Bumbu, hereditary chieftain of the Huon Gulf natives between Lae and Salamaua.

Bumbu was no ordinary king, as events showed. Measuring some five feet six inches, he was comical despite a stern, leather face. His every-day dress ranged from a red-banded peak cap displaying a
glittering emblem of the Commonwealth, an Australian shirt no Q.M. would dare issue, a wide faded sash which draped almost to the grass tufts about his ankles. A tribal rig-out was even more vivid, but it would be unwise to try to describe it, for Bumbu's sartorial tastes were entirely unpredictable.

There was another side to his character. He was a family man. As far as it is known, he was blessed with four wives who bore him nine daughters, and two sturdy sons. On each of these Bumbu lavished a fatherly blessing. He could not recall his age but supposed he was very old, believing, like his fellows, that honour was due to the aged.

So Bumbu the colourful chief ruled as was his right. To the neighbouring tribes of Buakup and Aisini he showed friendly intentions. They worked together in harmony though the threat of war rapidly became more evident. With the world in flames, Basama's hope of neutrality gradually but surely diminished. Within the community circle the only real trouble came from Isom, Bumbu's tultul (deputy) who desired the kingship, but Bumbu's prestige was strongly established.

Then in Bumbu's words, "Japan come," shattering the order of their lives.

Quickly the Japs occupied Salamaua and pushed north. The village of Basama stirred uneasily. Soon the drum-signals began to tell the story of the approaching enemy. Against the scientific might of Nippon there was no hope for the village. In haste most of the women, children, and several men gathered scanty belongings and fled to the sanctuary of the hills.

When the conquerors entered, they ravaged the gardens and stole pigs. In the terrified confusion those who resisted were cut down with brutal efficiency. Homes that had sprung from palm trunks were burned and pillaged. The little men were thorough, ruthless. Basama's trial had come.

it was inevitable that the Japs should seek Bumbu, but he might have eluded them to rally his kinsmen had Isom not betrayed him. Quick to exploit his dislike for the chief, the treacherous tultul spoke ill of Bumbu, claiming that be was helping the Australians and urging that he should be shot.

So Bumbu was taken to Salamaua before the commanding officer for questioning. The true drama of the interview may never be faithfully recorded, for Bumbu, indignant and violent with anger, was in no mood for terms, while his victors spoke pidgin with extreme difficulty. At length, however, Japanese intentions became clear. From now on Bumbu must obey the orders of the Jap army. The Australians were already beaten and Japan would rule, so they said. He must tell them where the enemy waited, and it was his duty also to organize his tribe, and help in restoring order. Collaboration was not only expected, but demanded. Failure to co-operate meant death.

As a first act of compliance Bumbu was ordered to replace the badge on his cap by a large red dot, symbol of the Rising Sun. Vigorously he refused. With menacing emphasis he opposed the assumption that the war was finished. That, he claimed, was given him by Australian Government, and he would continue to wear it as he believed in Australia; if Japan won (which he doubted), then perhaps he would change, but until then never.

At this outburst the Japs were furious, but refrained from immediate action having regard for their prisoner's influence in the district. Most promising inducement was ignored. To horrifying threats the stubborn Bumbu showed little reaction. It was clear that he was a most unwilling pupil in the new school of thought. Quite obviously, "persuasion" appeared the best course.

Accordingly, Bumbu was taken to the fringe of the jungle where he was tied to a stake as the first lesson of his re-education in Oriental ideology. For three days and nights he received neither food nor drink, two guards being his only companions. In the township waited one of his daughters, hoping for the opportunity to see her father.

A clear moon roamed across the skies on the fourth night. Nothing but bird-calls and the rasping chirp of the cicada broke a solemn, almost deathly calm. From the town appeared Bumbu's daughter in the presence of a sentry. This was her reward for persistent loyalty. Yet their meeting was not normal. Three shots warned of approaching danger. A series of shrill whistle-blasts followed. Salamaua awoke abruptly from solitude.

As the menacing drone became more audible, thin white light-flashes combed the sky searching a flying target. An ack-ack gun's first feeble protest was followed by others more determined, until a vicious, thundering barrage belching fire and smoke polluted the air. A flare burned in its descent, shedding daylight. Then came heavy thuds of dull, sickening eruptions. Flames sprang up on the bay, and from a shore installation black volumes of smoke billowed into the sky. Broken bodies slumped in slit trenches.

When the raid was over, Japs emerged from cover. Soon they recovered from the stunning blow. Order succeeded chaos. But Bumbu and the girl were missing. In the confusion she had cut his bonds and together they fled the town.

Now began the painful return to Basama. Marauding patrols invested the village. It was almost impossible to move in the territory undetected. Bumbu had a tough job on hand and a host hunting him. He also had keen bush-skill and perfect knowledge of the district. By day the pair concealed themselves and lived in the jungle. In the darkness they trudged along the beaches, taking care that the rolling surf washed away their footprints. The march was long and arduous, but they persevered. Shielded by the night they entered Basama in search of their family.

The months of freedom which followed found Bumbu and the family living among the hills or near the swamplands. Gone were the pigs, the shelter, the gardens. Yet the jungle's food and their own resourcefulness sustained them.

Bumbu's hope in deliverance from his foes never faltered. Daily he watched for the Australians' coming. Whenever possible he contacted his clan, and fired their courage with his own.

The first warning came from a "leaflet" raid. It told in pidgin of "Australia coming". Any natives working for the Japanese would be treated as enemies. Those who denounced the enemy and assisted in the attack would not be harmed. They would be rewarded. Bumbu read and understood.

Early, the fighting was bitter and prolonged Slowly the Japs were blasted from their defences and began to retreat. In the general withdrawal, the crafty Isom tried to follow, but his attempt was frustrated. Bumbu's loyal ones closed his escape and handed him over to their chief.

It was time now for action. At the first sign of a large slouch hat Bumbu and his followers linked up with the Australians. Isom and his history were placed in the hands of the commanding officer, who promised justice for all concerned. Isom today works with a labour gang under strict supervision.

And Bumbu? Well, he rules once more in Basama. For gallantry and high sense of duty he wears the Loyal Service Medal which sways on a cord below his chest.

"NX4779"