The Last Supper (17 page)

“Trotskyites?”

“Yes, the Burmese can hardly wait to have at each other again. You see, these chaps are White Flag—Stalinists. There are other bands of them, also fighting the Japanese during this
temporary truce, composed of Red Flag chappies—Trotskyites.”

“What about the Chinese?”

“Stalinists too. They’re just lending a hand.”

“There’s a Communist civil war going on in this godforsaken place?”

“Oh, yes. Jolly important to the world struggle for social justice, this bit of bush.”

The White Flag camp was located in a village that lay at the head of a high valley framed by crags. Here Wolkowicz and the Englishman lived, in the ruins of a bell-shaped pagoda with a huge
pipal tree in the dooryard. Between cannibal feasts, the guerrillas went to English classes conducted by the Englishman and gathered flowers for him; he was cataloging the flora of the region. On
the roof of the pagoda, hundreds of tiny wind-bells tinkled in the night. The bamboo, which grew to a height of sixty feet, burst into flower while Wolkowicz was in the village, smearing color over
the steep mountainsides.

“The bamboo only blooms every forty years or so,” said the Englishman, “so no one in this camp is likely to see this again.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Wolkowicz asked.

“I’m a student of Asiatic trivia. Fascinated by flora and fauna.”

A Burmese doctor treated Wolkowicz’s ruined mouth with sulfa and surgery. The camp abounded with pretty young Burmese women, and one of them moved into Wolkowicz’s bed. The
Englishman, who spoke fluent Chinese in several dialects as well as Kachin, did not report Wolkowicz’s rescue to his headquarters for a long time.

“I enjoy the company, it’s rather nice to jaw in our native tongue,” he said. “Sooner or later, of course, we’ll have to reveal your presence to headquarters.
We’ll say you had amnesia and babbled in Russian for ages before crying, ‘I remember! I’m a Yank!’ Meantime, since you’re such a handy sort of chap with guns, you can
lead the odd sortie, if you don’t mind.”

Wolkowicz, using a Sten gun instead of a BAR, killed many more Japanese. Twice he saw wild elephants in the forest. Once a tiger came into a Japanese outpost after a fight, ignoring the fires
and the noisy victory celebration, and fed on a headless body, like a dog lying under the table at a drunken banquet. Wolkowicz’s wounds healed. There were no mirrors in the camp in which he
might have seen his sunken mouth.

“It is wonderful, that,” the Burmese girl giggled, stroking his quivering penis with hands dipped in sandalwood oil.

Finally, an Anglo-American army penetrated to the Shweli River, and Wolkowicz, dressed in British shorts and a turban that had been wound by his Burmese girl, walked into an encampment of
Merrill’s Marauders and identified himself as a member of the Outfit.

“What the fuck is the Outfit?” asked the major in charge.

— 6 —

In Ceylon, Wadsworth Jessup, impeccably turned out in a khaki uniform that still smelled of the hot iron, smiled at Wolkowicz. He had come into his room at six in the morning to
wake him. Wolkowicz sat up in bed; the sheets were as thick as sailcloth. Waddy had lifted the mosquito netting and stuck his head inside. He was wearing Air Force sunglasses. Brilliant sunshine
fell through the windows onto a polished teak floor; through the window Wolkowicz could see a man in knickerbockers swinging a golf club. He heard the head of the club hit the ball.

“Barnabas,”
said Waddy Jessup. “It
is
you. Thank God.”

Beaming with good fellowship, Waddy took off his aviator’s sunglasses for a moment so that he could look directly into Wolkowicz’s eyes.

“Thank God for what?” Wolkowicz asked.

“For your deliverance.”

Waddy had abandoned his British accent and spoke again in his normal prep school drawl. He wore a major’s gold oak leaves on his collar and a row of ribbons, surmounted by his paratrooper
badge, over his shirt pocket. Among his decorations was the ribbon of the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest medal for bravery awarded by the United States Army.

“I mean, my God, Barney,” Waddy continued, “when that elephant stampeded away with me, leaving you to the mercy of the Jap, I really thought I’d seen the last of
you.”

Wolkowicz looked Waddy up and down. “I’ll bet you did, you little cocksucker,” he said.

Waddy tilted his head in puzzlement, as if Wolkowicz had cracked a joke that he didn’t quite understand. There was a knock at the door. A Ceylonese servant, all in white, scuttled in,
balancing a huge silver tray on his head.

“Ah, breakfast,” Waddy said. “Sit ye down, Barney, sit ye down. They do a much better breakfast here than what we used to get in Burma.”

They were in a hotel in Nuwara Eliya, the highest and most beautiful place in Ceylon. Before the war, the British had used it as a hill station, a place to go in the hot season. Now it was
headquarters for the Outfit, and for British special operations, in the China-Burma-India Theater.

The servant plucked silver domes off plates of food and poured steaming coffee into china cups. He stood back, one bare foot on top of the other, in case he was needed.

“That’s all right,” Waddy said. “You can go away now.”

The servant left. Wolkowicz, wearing nothing but his wrinkled khaki drawers, got out of bed and sat down at the table. Waddy was energetically spreading marmalade onto a piece of toast.

“Cream? Sugar?” Waddy asked. “Is this room all right?”

Wolkowicz, arriving in the dark the night before, after a flight from the battlefield, had not appreciated the splendor of the Grand Hotel. He looked out the window again. He could see crimson
rhododendron bushes, hundreds of them, all in bloom. A silvery lake lay in the middle distance, the reflection of cypresses and pines shimmering on its placid surface. Wolkowicz drank an entire cup
of coffee in three swallows. Waddy poured him another cup, then watched in satisfaction as Wolkowicz demolished the rest of the breakfast, porridge and eggs and sausage and bacon and a grilled
tomato. As Wolkowicz mopped up the yolk with bread, Waddy urged more of everything on him: he hadn’t touched his own food.

While Wolkowicz ate, Waddy told him the story of his own miraculous escape from Burma, eyes dancing as if no one on earth besides the two of them could understand what a delicious joke their
firefight with the Japanese had been. The bolting elephant had carried Waddy straight to the nearest trail, and there he had encountered what was left of Force Jessup. The Kachins had whisked him
back to their base, fighting their way through Japanese positions. Waddy had been delirious as a result of his wounds and unable to fight himself. He had just managed to get the radio working in
order to call headquarters and report Wolkowicz’s death and his own disabling wounds. The Kachins had cleared a runway in the jungle, a DC-3 had made a daring landing, and Waddy had been
flown out to Ceylon.

Wolkowicz eyed Waddy’s ribbons.

“Is that what you got the D.S.C. for?” he asked.

“I myself think it’s excessive,” Waddy said. “But they insisted. They’ve made me acting C.O., too, so the world’s your oyster in Nuwara Eliya, my dear
Barnabas. Golly, it’s good to see you back from the dead!” He filled their coffee cups again. “Now, tell me your story.”

Waddy sat back expectantly and lit a British cigarette with a Dunhill lighter. Wolkowicz remained silent. Waddy peered across the table at him. “Is it true you hitched up with the
Brits?” he asked. “There’re rumors that you had amnesia and still killed half the Jap Army.”

Wolkowicz had been staring fixedly at Waddy the whole time he ate the two complete breakfasts, his greenish eyes dull with contempt, but he had not uttered a sound except for the peculiar
sucking noises that resulted from the techniques he had invented in order to eat without teeth: he soaked his toast in coffee, mashed his sausage with his fork, swallowed his fried eggs as if they
were oysters. Finally, wiping his greasy lips with an egg-stained napkin, he spoke. “I’m not going to tell you a fucking thing,” he said.

“You’re not?”

Waddy held the cigarette in the center of his mouth, puffing rapidly as he continued to give Wolkowicz a look filled with cheery comradeship. His voice trembled slightly and he kept his hands
out of sight beneath the table; Wolkowicz supposed that they were trembling, too.

“Look,” Waddy said in a bluff tone of voice, his cigarette bobbing up and down as he spoke, “you know
I
don’t care what you’ve been up to. But you’ve
been missing for six months, Barnabas. Headquarters wonders where you’ve been. They want to hang a medal on you. You and I have to put something on paper, send in a report.”

Wolkowicz stood up, hairy and broad, and opened his toothless mouth in a black grin. “Waddy,’ he said, “just get the fuck out of here. I’m going to turn in a report, all
right. But it won’t be to you.”

Boyish animation, Waddy’s habitual expression, drained out of his face. He blushed under his tan, and then he looked deep into Wolkowicz’s eyes, like a schoolboy trying to conceal
his sullen resentment of punishment from a headmaster who had seen through his lies.

“Out,” Wolkowicz repeated.

Waddy put on his sunglasses. Wolkowicz reached across the table, removed the cigarette from Waddy’s lips, seized him by the hair, and ground out the burning end on the lens. Sparks fell on
Waddy’s perfectly laundered shirt, burning little holes in it.

— 7 —

At midnight, carrying a sheaf of papers in his hand, Wolkowicz stalked through the long corridors of the vast old Victorian hotel to Waddy Jessup’s room. The door was
unlocked. Wolkowicz opened it and stepped inside.

Waddy, dressed in a fitted silk dressing gown, stood by the window with a glass in his hand. He was all alone. A half-empty bottle of Glenlivet Scotch stood on a baize table. The Baby Nambu
pistol lay on the green cloth beside the bottle. Waddy did not greet Wolkowicz, but turned and walked back to the table and poured him a drink. Waddy’s hand was still unsteady. He spilled
whisky on the tabletop, creating a spreading dark stain in the felt. The whisky was colorless in the glass. Waddy drank it off.

“I’ve brought you a couple of things to read,” Wolkowicz said. “Are you up to it?”

“Of course.”

Waddy put down his empty glass with a thump and accepted a handwritten document from Wolkowicz. It was a detailed description, ten pages long, of the action in the jungle. Slumped in a chair,
turning the pages, Waddy struggled to understand what he was reading. The style was dry and factual. Wolkowicz’s handwriting was strange: line after line of perfect Palmer Method
penmanship.

Waddy paused to pour himself another drink. His hands quivered. Scotch splashed over the rim of the glass. Wolkowicz reached across the table and gently removed the tumbler from Waddy’s
fingers. When he had finished reading, Waddy picked up his glass again and drained it. His hand was quite steady now.

“Is that what you think happened?” Waddy said. His look of friendliness had given way to an expression of sullen resentment.

“There was a witness.”

“A witness?”

Wolkowicz handed Waddy the other paper. It was written in a flowing British hand, as handsome in its way as Wolkowicz’s. Within the sentences, words were joined together like a parade of
elephants by a sweeping stroke of the pen that tied the last letter of one word to the first letter of the next. Each letter was perfectly formed: the
y
s were particularly fine. Waddy,
though he realized that he was reading his death warrant, giggled. It was uncanny that any two grown men should write in this inhumanly perfect way. And it appeared that they had met in the Burmese
jungle. What were the odds on
that!

Waddy, intending to laugh aloud at this absurdity, instead uttered a sob. The paper he held in his hands was a narrative account of Wolkowicz’s workmanlike bravery, and of Waddy’s
shameful cowardice, during the attack by the Japanese. It was signed by some British captain: Wolkowicz’s “witness.” Neither of these champion penmen had an ounce of pity for
Waddy; neither had room in their dry sentences to mention the simple truth that Waddy had been driven mad by the Japanese, by the jungle, by the war, by the strain of living through what he had
thought was the hour of his own death. His insanity was temporary. It was understandable. There was no guilt involved. It had happened to others; Waddy wasn’t the only one.

“This Brit is willing to say that he watched the whole thing from hiding?” Waddy said in an unsteady voice.

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“Why didn’t he attack, then? Why didn’t he come to our aid?”

“You can ask him that at your court-martial, Waddy.”

Waddy fell silent. His breathing was very loud, almost a snore, as a result of the alcohol he had drunk. He worked his tongue as if it were coated with some ill-tasting substance. He was unable
to talk. His eyes, red-rimmed and watery, stared with a faraway expression at the Baby Nambu.

“Just leave me alone with that,” Waddy said dolefully, nodding at the pistol. “Is that what you want?”

Wolkowicz picked up the ridiculous little weapon, removed the clip, and ejected the round from the chamber. He then slid it into his trousers pocket. Waddy, spilling Scotch down the front of his
iridescent blue robe, struggled to speak. At last, sound issued from his mouth.

“. . . Sorry,” he said.

Tears slid down Waddy’s smooth-shaven cheeks. Wolkowicz picked him up, surprised again by how little his angular body weighed, and threw him onto his bed.

At eleven the following morning, Wolkowicz found Waddy on the practice green, putting, his narrow body hunched over the club, his face frozen in concentration.

There was no sign, in the bright early sunlight, that Wadsworth Jessup had ever had a drink. Attired in faultless starched khakis, decorations glowing on his breast, he flashed his eager smile
and clapped Wolkowicz on the shoulder.

“Great news, Barnabas,” Waddy said. “We’ve won in Burma.”

He beamed at his subordinate, a confident man certain of admiration. He was behaving as if he had never read the reports Wolkowicz had given him the night before.