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

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СКАЧАТЬ A cross-section of the strange world rolled past us. Tea-venders with urns on their heads, uttering that endless melancholy cry, ‘Chaeeeeee wallow, chaeeeeee wallow!’; the other vendors with their stale buns and withering fruits and fifth-hand copies of Lilliput and Coronet; the three-legged dogs; the ruffians spitting and peeing from squatting positions; the IORs – India Other Ranks – below even us, yet apart from their own breed; the women washing and drinking at a water tank; the monkeys sitting or squabbling on shed roofs; the aimless people, probing into their crutches for wild life as they watched everything fade under dust; the able-bodied kids running level with our accelerating carriages, paws outstretched, still working on squeezing one last baksheesh from us!

      This was years before I heard the term ‘population explosion’.

      The station was tugged away behind us, its people and pungent smells lost. Instead – the maze of Bombay. Its scents! Its temples! Its wicked complacency! Here and there, we caught sight of a face at a window or a family group on a verandah, immobilized by speed. What was it like, what was the essence of life like, in those demented rooms?

      From the nearby compartment of our train came a bellow of laughter. Enoch Ford was yelling at us to see what he had found, his doleful pug face wreathed with smiles. ‘Here, Stubby, dekko this!’ He pointed to an enamel notice affixed inside the sliding door. ‘“This compartment is designed to hold eight Indians” … And there’s bloody twelve of us in here, with all us kit! How do you like that for de-fucking-mocracy?’

      Complaints and laughter greeted his remark. But Enoch was a dyed-in-the-wool Communist (by no means the only one in ‘A’ Company), so his comments were always taken with a pinch of salt. We all commiserated cheerfully with each other on the hells of existence and lit up another round of cigarettes.

      The lavatory at the end of the corridor, for which a queue was already forming, caused more fun. It was simply a cupboard, without ventilation, in the floor of which was set a round hole. Through this hole, some light and air was admitted, and one had a fine view of the flashing sleepers below.

      ‘That’s your one way of escape from the Army, lads – down the plughole!’ Corporal Ernie Dutt told us good-humouredly. Ernie took everything good-humouredly – you felt in his presence that even India was partly unintentional.

      Nameless slimes worked their way down the sides of the bog. Nameless moulds worked their way up. To balance in the squatting position without touching these sides with your hands, while at the same time shitting accurately through the hole, needed flair, given the violent rocking motion of the train. The hole was encrusted with misplaced turds – some of which, when dry enough, rocked their way to freedom unaided.

      We left Bombay. The train forged through open country, picking up speed as though desperately concerned to cover the enormous distances now revealed. Villages were dotted here and there – never were we out of sight of one or more villages, with their attendant cattle. In comparison with the city, everywhere looked prosperous and inviting. There were water-buffaloes, tended by infants; some wallowed up to their nostrils in ponds. The landscape kept whirling and whirling away from us without changing its alien pattern, as if a huge circular panorama were being cranked outside the carriage window. We grew tired of the deception and turned to our own horseplay, spinning out anecdotes about home, consuming many cigarettes, repeating jokes about life aboard the Ironsides, whose hardships were already becoming humorous in retrospect.

      ‘Crikey,’ exclaimed Wally, striking Charlie Cox on the biceps for emphasis. ‘Soon as we get sorted out, I’m going to get myself a black woman! After that boat, I’ve got a lot of dirty water on my chest.’

      ‘You ain’t the only one, cock,’ Charlie said. Charlie was our platoon lance-jack. He was in his thirties and going thin on top, but a good man on the Bren gun, sober, thoughtful, and reliable. Charlie had taken awards at Bisley in his time.

      We spent a pleasant half-hour describing to each other how the dirty water had piled up on our chests. During this conversation, darkness came down over India.

      We knew and cared little of what lay ahead. Somewhere in the future lay the strong likelihood of action against the invading Japanese in Burma, but first we were due for six weeks’ acclimatization course in a mythical place called Kanchapur. We were heading for Kanchapur now; it lay beyond our ken in the onrushing night.

      Our talk petered out in grumbles about hunger. The important thing was where the next meal was coming from. We sat unspeaking in corridor and compartment, hunched as comfortably as possible. One or two of us still smoked mechanically. Warm breezes poured through the open windows, stroking the short hairs of my neck. Charley Meadows and Sergeant Gowland of ‘B’ Company moved slowly down the train, seeing that everyone had their sleeves rolled down against mosquito bites; the battalion was otherwise torpid. As the sergeants reminded us, we had tins of an acid grease to apply to hands and face, in order to keep the mosquitoes away. Despite this, the insects whined about our ears; men began to clout their own faces idly. We considered the possibility of dying of malaria.

      ‘There’s more than one sort of malaria and most of them are deadly,’ Bamber said. ‘Dartmoor’s got one of its own what you can die of.’

      ‘Millions of Wogs dies of malaria every year – a bloke told me on the boat,’ Wally said.

      ‘Get stuffed, man, them Wogs are immune,’ Geordie said. ‘They die of it at birth, like, if they’re going to get it at all.’

      ‘No, they peg out by the hundred every day. This bloke told me.’

      ‘He was pulling your pisser, Wal. Malaria’s no worse than a cold to the Wogs, is it, Bamber?’

      ‘They can pass it on to you or me,’ Bamber said grimly.

      The argument faded into the rattle of our progress. We sat on our kit-bags and dozed.

      Occasionally, I stared past my reflection at the night, through which an occasional lamp sped. Even the odd point of light spelt an exciting mystery. And as for the scents on the breeze – they could not be analysed then, just as they have never been forgotten since.

      As we drew into Indore, where we were to disembark for Kanchapur, the train filled from end to end with the bellow of non-commissioned voices, cursing, complaining, joking, as we struggled into our harness and sorted out our kit and slung our rifles and heaved up our kit-bags and perhaps smoked a last half-fag – and then jerked and staggered and climbed down to the parched concrete of a station in what was, in those days, the Central Provinces of India.

      The lighting was dim except far out on distant sidings. All platforms were crowded with people. Did they live here or did they all take midnight excursions? Heads, shaven or in motley turbans, bobbed all round us, their owners pressing forward in the greatest excitement. Beyond the heads, we gained the impression of a great tumbling city, making itself grimly known by the rattle of trams and hooting of frenzied traffic, and by the glimpses of streets, ramshackle façades, and poor hutches, dissolving into the smokey night. Just the place for a few anti-British riots! Nearer at hand, porters pressed all round us, yelling their weird variant of English. We bellowed back at them, and the NCOs bellowed at us.

      ‘Get fell in! Come on, move! move! Put yer bloody knitting away and move! Hold on to yer rifles and get your gear off the train as quick as you like!’

      Behind the NCOs moved the figures of our officers, among them our platoon-commander, Gor-Blimey, meaty and as usual aloof from what went on round him.

      We got fell in. We became a unit again, a series of platoons formed up along the length СКАЧАТЬ