Love on the Ganges

On the morning of our last day aboard, I again made my way on deck, this time accompanied by my friend, Mark. He had cursed the heat and settled for the relative cool of his coffin-like bunk, devouring one after another of those elongated Special Armed Forces paperback editions supplied so abundantly to all branches of the service. Although most were reprint editions of current best-sellers, there were occasional and surprising editions of classical and contemporary poetry, along with a popular history or science volume now or then. To this day I retain a few in my library as a nostalgic nicety of a long ago time.

On the deck we saw the colonel and the sergeant again. They seemed to resent our intrusion, and moved away to the other side of the bow when we arrived. Like all lovers, they lived in a world of their own that excluded others as mere annoyances.

"Isn’t that a ridiculous pair," Mark muttered, expressing a bit of his own resentment. " Castor and Pollux are at it again. Off in their starry little world as if nobody exists. They don’t even have the courtesy to speak to you."

" How do you know? Why don’t you go over and introduce yourself?"

" I’ve already tried that,"

"When?"

"This morning after breakfast," he said. " I went over and they left before I could say anything. Acted like they didn’t even see me. I didn’t expect anything from Pretty Boy, but the Colonel-- I thought the British were known for their politeness. Damn queers, I guess fairy tales do come true after all."

I laughed at my friend; his pride had been wounded by their aloof behaviour. He was a Harvard man whose intellectual haughtiness had made him appear aloof to his comrades, but whose friendship and wit I found most enjoyable. I had on several occasions defended his sardonic humour against those who criticized him. A favourite target of his was the officer caste, at which he missed few opportunities to aim his jibes. He considered that hierarchy ranker than the Indian caste system, and yet for all his protestations he obeyed the rules as well as any.

The rest of the day we spent in our bunks, trying to avoid the scorching heat of the deck. It was almost as unbearable below until finally, wrapped in my mosquito netting like a cocoon, I escaped into a troubled sleep.

When I finally woke it was dusk, and the gentle rocking of the boat persuaded me we had docked. In a moment of panic I thought I had missed disembarkation, but reason reminded me that my friend, Mark, would not have let that happen. I heard the confusing sound of voices on deck, and scurried up the hatch to find that we had truly docked, in a narrow estuary at the edge of an Indian village. I was just in time to see the departure of the colonel and the sergeant down a precarious gangplank, followed by an ayah who had come aboard to carry their gear. It was with a twinge of sadness that I watched then go, though I knew neither of their names. Perhaps it was merely a matter of that cliché, all the world loves a lover, I thought as I watched then out of sight .

"Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul." With an oracular tone, Mark ambled up beside me at the bow. "There they go. The question is who’s Jonathan and who’s David?"

I smiled at this last jibe of my friend about the departing lovers. I was sure that he too, would remember the unlikely pair who, without a word to us, had occupied so much of our attention on the brief voyage.

The boat weighed anchor and we were soon again on our way up the Ganges. Only the rim of the fiery sun now appeared above the watery horizon, signalling the first shadows of approaching night .

Mark and I lingered a while at the boat’s rail, silently drinking in the beauty of the scene, somehow certain that we would never witness another quite like it. Both of us knew that such a night on the sacred river was the stuff of memories.

"Tomorrow’s the day." Mark said flatly.

"What?" I was roused from my reverie by his words.

"What about tomorrow?"

"That’s when we’ll know where we’re going for sure."

"How do you know?"

"I just know."

"Where do you think it will be?"

" Somewhere in Bengal is my guess." Mark looked at me with a grin. "Tomorrow you’ll see I’m right. I’m psychic."

"Mark, the sadhu," I teased. " I think India’s already getting to you."

"It’s getting to me all right." He slapped at a mosquito buzzing around his face." I’m going down and crawl in my mosquito cocoon."

"As he walked away, I said" I’ll be down later." I was reluctant to leave the enchantment of my last night on the Ganges.

The next day we docked in mid-afternoon at a village with a name that sounded like Dashmali. We were met by a baby-faced lieutenant in a battered carryall. He was full of himself and his newfound authority, and eager to issue orders. "My name is Lieutenant Bass. You men are under my command until we get to Dacca. That’s where you’ll be stationed. You men are medics, " -- he paused as if to get his breath ---" and I’ve dealt with your kind before. Some of you think that makes you something special. Now, I want to make one thing clear. I go by the book. With me, it’s GI all the way. Better to get things clear from the start."

We dutifully crawled into the Carry-all and the lieutenant drove us through the narrow streets of the village. Mark promptly dubbed him Lieutenant’s Ass, and entertained us with comical impressions and parodies of the man as we moved into the heartland of Bengal.

The only thing I knew about Bengal was the poetry of Tagore, and it was my hope -- never to be realized -- of visiting his school at Santineketan while there.

A day later we arrived at the CBI [China, Burma, India] base in Dacca, and we were met by a lanky corporal with the saddest face I’d ever seen. He ambled up to us with a kind of nervous hesitancy. "I’m Corporal Waldrop. I ‘ve been assigned to take you to your quarters." he turned to a gat-toothed Indian who stood by with a grin on his peasant’s face. "This here’s Charlie Gonzales. He’ll help you with your gear."

What an odd name for an Indian, I thought as I watched Charlie hoist our bags into the jeep. Mark and I climbed into the seat beside Waldrop while the rest, along with Charlie, piled in on top of the bags. The way we were packed in, like college students in a telephone booth, seemed to me a perfect example of the ridiculous in pursuit of the impossible.

Corporal Waldrop’s driving was slow to the point of being painful, cautious of every bump in the road. That prompted a surly remark from Sikorsky in the back, accented with hi usual profanity.

"This here’s captain Jaffee’s jeep," Waldrop shot back defensively. " He’s real particular about who drives it, and he’d have my hide if anything happened to it."

So we endured the tedious ride through the meandering roads of the base until we came to the hospital, a sprawling array of barracks-like buildings covered with thatch.

"This is it, men," Waldrop said, bringing the jeep to a cautious stop. "You just as well think of it as home. Here’s where you gonna be for a long time." He motioned to Charlie to unload the bags.

When I picked up my gear, Charlie insisted on carrying it and, hoisting it on to his head, trotted along in front of us. " I show you quarters, Sahib."

We followed Charlie to a barracks not unlike the others only a short distance from the hospital. There we deposited our gear and selected our respective abodes. Although we expected no red-carpet treatment, after our long journey to our final destination it all seemed somehow so flat and unceremonious. A real letdown.

"I get bearer for you, Sahib." Charlie unloaded my gear on to the bed. " Tomorrow I bring bearer to sahib."

Since I wasn’t positive what a bearer was, I merely thanked him as he backed away with that obsequious grin on his face, and then turned to the task of settling in.

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