The Seed and the Sower by Laurens Van Der Post

Author:Laurens Van Der Post
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-07-27T04:30:00+00:00

6 The Sowing of the Seed

‘THE QUESTIONS PUT in my mind by this disturbing document,’ Lawrence said to me when we were alone again in the afternoon, ‘come so fast that I hardly know where to begin. But the first one is: did Celliers go back to the war? I gather from this account that he felt bound not to overstay his leave. But surely such a – a revelation must have made a difference to him?’

‘It did and it didn’t,’ I told him. ‘In a way he seemed to go on as before.’

‘That surprises me. It suggests a compromise – can you explain it?’ Lawrence looked close to disappointment so I hastened to tell him what I could.

It was not much really. I felt convinced that Celliers had meant to write more about his life but was prevented from doing so for reasons which would soon be clear. I could not say for certain in what state he was on his return from leave because by the time he got back to North Africa, the Japanese had struck in South East Asia and I was on my way to a job in Burma. In fact I had not seen him again until the Kempeitai, the powerful Japanese secret police, had brought him, barely alive, into my prison in Java.

‘Was that the camp under the notorious Yonoi?’ Lawrence asked quickly.

Yes, I told him, it was. One afternoon I’d happened to be standing near the prison gates when the Japanese had pushed Celliers, barely alive, into the prison without ceremony or warning. I had known from the behaviour of the Korean sentries who, to our regret, had replaced the Japanese ones, that something unusual was going on. As Lawrence well knew this was an uncomfortable feeling to have anywhere in prison but never so bad as under the unpredictable Yonoi. I had no idea of course of the reason for it. But I’d been on the alert because I’d discovered that when one had feelings of that sort sometimes doing something quickly and at the right moment could help to ward off disaster.

‘I know. Timing was all important,’ Lawrence agreed with me quickly. ‘But how difficult it was to make some of our chaps see it.’

I went on to tell Lawrence that I’d been standing there at the gates on watch when suddenly they had opened. I’d half expected a company of infantry to come rushing in on one of their prison searches but it had been just a solitary, tall, broad-shouldered figure, which had been pushed in through the doors in a torn jungle-green uniform, with an untidy head of long hair which, after our cropped heads, looked lush to the point of obscenity. He carried an empty shoulder-pack dangling in one hand and a field flash on his hip, while he tried to walk upright without the help of two Kempeitai privates at his side. Even the sentries were surprised. They had seen comings and goings of secret police

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