Singapore Grip - J. G. Farrell [217]
And what a New Year it had been; Matsushita had insisted on leading the unit on a wide detour through dense jungle and swamp to the west of the road to strike behind the position fortified by the British at Kampar. And so, while in Tokyo hundreds of miles away his family and friends had been exchanging greetings and celebrating with dishes of soba, Kikuchi and his comrades had been plunging through terrifying swamps, often sinking up to the chest in stinking slime which threatened to swallow them up and covered them with leeches fattening visibly on their tender flesh. Instead of listening to the temple bells on New Year’s Eve as they rang out their message: ‘All is vanity and unreality in this world!’ and having a good time, Kikuchi had had to drag himself after Matsushita, his flesh lacerated by thorny vines, hair standing on end as poisonous snakes reared to right and left. And with nothing to chew but dry, uncooked rice and an occasional piece of snake dropped by Matsushita when he had gulped its liver in accordance with the pamphlet ‘Read This Alone and the War Can Be Won’. As a matter of fact, it had been in the course of this particular ordeal that Kikuchi had first begun to wonder whether Matsushita was altogether sane. For, although he had always had a tendency to ramble on about Kikuchi’s uncle, the legendary Bugler, he had now taken to making from time to time a slighting remark about him, hinting that in a contest of bravery and devotion to duty he, Matsushita, would by no means have come off second best to Uncle Kikuchi … and even going so far as to suggest that, although to blow a bugle with one’s dying breath was all very fine in its way, if you were dying anyway you might just as well blow a bugle with it as do anything else. And, as if this were not sufficiently dismaying, there was worse. For Matsushita, as he plunged relentlessly on through swamp and jungle, hacking vigorously with his tasselled sabre, eyes burning, would occasionally pause and chant half aloud, half to himself, a weird song in a language which Kikuchi had never heard before. Often Matsushita would press on so swiftly that he would leave his men behind and they would find him waiting impatiently for them when at last they caught up. One day Kikuchi, hastening after his commander who as usual had got far ahead of the rest of the squad, had come upon him unexpectedly in a sort of clearing. Matsushita had thrown off his uniform for some reason and was standing there stark naked except for the bulging leeches which covered him from head to foot. Moreover, he was surrounded by a little circle of poisonous snakes which had reared up around him as if to listen as he sang to them, conducting himself with his sabre. Kikuchi tried to make out the strange words …
… Hanc sententiam dicamus …
Floreat Sand … ha … haa … liaaaaah!
As this weird and chilling incantation came to an end, Matsushita took the sabre and with a swift, clean swipe beheaded one snake after another. Then he swiftly gathered up the writhing bodies by the tails, stood there for a moment with a fistful of lashing bodies spraying blood over his thighs as if deep in thought, and finally went to sit against the bole of a tree, prising them open one after another with two stubby fingers to search out the liver and pop it in his mouth. An enormous leech, Kikuchi could not help noticing, had battened on the Lieutenant’s private parts. Kikuchi