Brian Aldiss - A Soldier Erect - or Further Adventures of the Hand-Reared Boy

Kanchapur had its share of broken-down old men (as they seemed then – I suppose they would be in their mid-thirties) who had come through operations with Wingate, or through 6 Brigade’s attack on Akyab earlier in the year. From these men, stories of terror came.

‘You don’t want to listen to them,’ Charley Cox said. ‘Now Mountbatten’s arrived, things are going to be different out here. The British have never been permanently beaten yet. That’s how we won our Empire. Ain’t that right, Dusty?’

Miller, who was the platoon funny man, assumed a blasé officer’s voice to say, ‘You’re bally right, Lance-Corporal Cox. We’ll give these little yellow bath-tubs what for, eh, what?’

‘There’s more men out here now to fight the Japs, you see,’ Charley explained.

The Fourteenth Army – in which the Mendips found themselves – was gathering strength and preparing to knock the Japs right out of Burma. But a feeling of misgiving persisted. The Russians were beating back the Germans on the Eastern Front, the Americans were beating back the Japs in the Pacific, our own Eighth Army were pushing up Italy – Nelson was with them – and the Italians had chucked it in and come in on our side. The war in Europe looked as if it would be over one day. The war in South-East Asia had hardly begun.

Between the route marches, the football games, the evenings in the canteen, were spaces with which the Army could not cope. In those intervals, whispers of combined operations and landings on the hellish Burmese coast worked in us like yeast.

The other ferment I was able to deal with personally.

It happened that, two or three days after the MPs ran me back to barracks, No. 2 Platoon was on riot exercise. As usual, there were rice famines in parts of India, and rioting against the British in some of the big cities, Indore included. Riot exercise was a matter of marching about in Kanchapur, not letting the Wogs into the main street, and so on. We were equipped with pick helves for the purpose.

In the crowd, I saw the quiet young man who had led me to the girl. He was clutching a book under his arm. Either he did not see me or did not recognize me, but I took the sight of him as a guarantee that the girl – possibly his sister – was still available. For the rest of the day I could not stop thinking of her. Oh, she was beautiful! It was so much more than a fuck I wanted! To pour my heart out – my ambitions – my dreams … and to hear the dreams of that exotic creature!

I was determined to have it in before we left Kanchapur. Neither MPs nor Geordie should stop me. That evening, I had a shower, changed into a freshly dhobied suit of jungle greens, and buzzed off down to the bazaar on my own. The sky was purple, with bars of gold at the horizon, and the fruit-bats were stirring in the tallest jacarandas. I headed for where the tonga-wallahs idly waited.

The quiet young man was not on duty yet. Very well, then I would find my own way to my beloved! This time I would make bloody sure the Redcaps did not nab me. I slipped behind the trees and down the side lane, and at once a different awareness overcame me. No longer was I alone and lonely, a mere debased squaddie; my life was the stuff of romance and I walked in exotic and oriental paths to meet my sumptuous love!

There again was that other crowded street, packed with people, filled with delicious smells. Now to find that little back court! And if I didn’t, there must be plenty of adventure in other courts, so – so fecund was life and circumstance here. Fecund! My God, yes, the place was fecund, so fecund it was impossible to understand how everyone did not respond to it! I thought briefly, with contempt, of the constipated little CO with his silly speech about being morally pure. The sod was dead from the balls up!

After only one wrong turning, I found myself standing again in the amazing courtyard, where the twisted tree died against the twisted houses. Which door? Of course, the candle and the flower! The candle burned there within its niche, the blossom was fresh: a white flower lying on its side, without a stem. In an hour, it would be withered.

I knocked on the door. I was almost shitting myself. Perhaps nobody would come. A bolt clanked, the door opened slightly. A grunt within. The door closed again. I stood there. It opened again, again closed. Could they be going to phone the cops? Phone? In this dump!

I had half made up my mind to leave when a chiko emerged from the door. It was the kid who had run on ahead last time I was here.

‘You like lady, Johnny?’

‘Yes – the one I saw the other night!’

‘Police, Johnny. Many trouble, police come, many hit, all cry!’ He went through a pantomime suggesting that the Battle of Bannockburn had been fought on his doorstep.

‘The police didn’t see me coming here, I promise. Where’s the bibi? ’

‘Thirty rupee, Johnny.’ He held out his hand.

‘Thirty rupee – you’re off your fucking head, Johnny! Look, me no pips, no stripes, just BOR, malum ? Poor man!’

‘You rich man! Give thirty rupee, get lady.’ He might not speak English as well as his big brother, but he was a tough little sod in argument. Eventually I knocked him down to ten rupees for a short time. Only when he had the notes in his hand did he let me through the door. When we were inside, he bolted it behind us.

Two oil lights were burning on the floor, beside an old man who sat in a ragged turban nursing a hen. A stick lay beside him. Hen and man regarded me with mistrustful eyes as the boy, with a muttered word, took up one of the lamps and moved to the stairs.

I looked about me. What a ruinous place it was! Bare as a barn! A small door at the foot of the stairs had a grill in it. I peered through the grill. I was staring into the interior of a dim-lit shop. Perhaps it was a tailor’s of sorts, for bundles of fabrics stood on the stairs, impeding our progress. I looked eagerly ahead, tripping up as I climbed.

The boy led me to a door and stopped.

‘Lady in here, Johnny.’

Gently – nervously – I thrust open the door. There was a woman inside, the end of her sari over her head. The lamp, another small wretched thing, stood behind her, so I could only see that she was beckoning me. I grabbed the boy’s light and held it up so that its beams fell on the woman’s face.

‘This isn’t her, you little bastard! Who’s this old bag?’

It was probably his mother. She was aged and wrinkled, her gesture of welcome a grotesque parody of seductiveness. In a fury of disappointment, I began to bellow at them both. They grew alarmed and screamed at each other.

‘Okay, Johnny, I get. You no make shout, police come, many hit, all cry!’ He went through a repeat of the Bannockburn massacre.

‘You’ll fucking cry if you don’t get the girl!’

He came back with her along the landing. She was barefoot. She looked fearfully at me, and my anger went at once. Christ, she was young!

The mere sight of her was enough to wake desire in me. How long had it been! Those liquid eyes again! She looked absolutely terrified – indeed, they all did. The old woman was plucking at my clothes and saying something incomprehensible to me which the boy did his best to translate.

‘She say, you no fuck, she suck.’

‘Look, Johnny, you’ve got the ten rupees, thik-hai? Then piss off, will you, fuck off!’

‘No, no, no fuck off, Johnny. This girl she small hole, you understand? Small hole?’ He showed me with two fingers. ‘She call out, police come, many hit, all cry!’ Bannockburn re-fought.

‘I’m not going to hurt her!’ What sort of place was this? I grabbed the girl by a fragile arm and pulled her into the room. I slammed the door, yelling to everyone to stay outside. Without any further hesitation, the girl undressed. When she was naked, she saluted me with both hands together and motioned to the bed.