The Narrow Road to the Deep North

He describes the woman’s blue eyes as “ferocious things,” but there was “no look in them. It was as if she were just drinking him up” (59). There is a large red flower behind one of her ears. She notices that he is looking at the flower. She laughs and tells him that she stole it. When she laughs, “she laughed in a way that made him feel that she had found in him all the things most appealing in the world. It was as if her beauty, her eyes, everything that was charming and wonderful about her, now also existed in him” (60). She asks him questions about the poet, and what he is doing there, and her intensity unsettles him. He wants her to leave, even though she captivates him.

She asks about the book in his hands. He tells her it is a book of poems by the Roman poet Catullus. She asks him to read one of the poems, which he does. For reasons he does not understand, he feels angry as he reads the poem to her. A man comes over to them and turns out to be one of her friends. He tells them that love is nonsense and that the best marriages are based on compatibility. He says that magnetism is more important than love.

Major Nakamura has just finished winning at cards. He has been playing and drinking whiskey with two Australian officers: of one them is Dorrigo. It is the 37th day of the Speedo. Lieutenant Fukuhara translates for Nakamura. Dorrigo says that it would be better for the men to have a day of rest. Nakamura laughs and replies, through the interpreter:

[P]risoners lucky. They redeem honour by dying for the Emperor. This war is cruel. What war is not? But war is human beings. War what we are. War what we do. Railway might kill human beings, but I do not make human beings. I make railway. Progress does not demand freedom (67).

Back in his bed, Dorrigo tries to read a romance novel that he found in the camp, but he is too tired and falls asleep. 

As an old man, Dorrigo dreams of sleeping in the POW camp: “Dream was the most real thing Dorrigo Evans now knew. He had followed knowledge, like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought” (68). He is in bed with Lynette, but thinks of Ella, who is his wife: “He found his marriage a profound solitude” (69). He does not understand why he is married, or why sleeping with several women is seen as a bad thing. He takes a miniature bottle of whiskey from the hotel fridge and notices that there is an electronic sensor beneath the bottle when he lifts it; the hotel will automatically charge him for it. He mourns the new world of technology in which poetry matters less and less. When he leaves, Lynette is crying. She says that it is hard to want something that she cannot have. 

The next week, Dorrigo goes to Melbourne on his 48-hour leave: “He held Ella like a life buoy” (71). He feels guilty even though he had not done anything except talk to the woman in the bookstore for a few minutes. He had not even learned her name. He tells Ella what happened and feels like he is confessing an affair, but he knows that “something had passed between them, and how he wished it hadn’t” (72). Ella spends the two days introducing him to prominent members of Melbourne society, and everyone tells him he is destined for great things.

When he returns to Adelaide, he distracts himself with work and parties. One night, he visits his uncle Keith at a pub called the King of Cornwall. He introduces himself to the bartender. He looks into her eyes: “For a moment there was something in them, then they emptied” (75). She is Keith’s wife. 

Dorrigo tells her to tell Keith that his leave has ended early and that he can’t stay. He recognizes her as the woman from the bookstore. He leaves but cannot stop thinking about her: “He wanted to seize her body. He wanted to never see her again” (78). He goes back to Adelaide and resumes working. He writes love letters to Ella but knows that they are insincere. When his next leave arrives, he calls Keith and says that he would like to come visit them. Keith says that “[his] Amy” (78) will be as excited to see Dorrigo as Keith is. 

After the card game, Nakamura falls asleep, drunk. He dreams that he is trapped in a room, blind, feeling the leg of an elephant. Fukuhara shakes him awake. He says that a colonel of the Ninth Railway Regiment has arrived. Nakamura itches. He believes that ticks so small he can’t see them cover his body. He asks Corporal Tomokawa to inspect his body with a magnifying glass. Tomokawa says he cannot see them, and Nakamura believes he is lying.

Nakamura is from the city, and the forest living is unsuitable for him. He is constantly surprised at how difficult it is to make progress on the railroad and at the increasing loneliness he feels. He is drinking more than usual, and the men are noticing. Cholera arrived in the camp a week earlier, and more POWs are dying than before. He tells his officers to take twenty POWs to go and retrieve a truck that has stalled in the woods. 

Dorrigo meets his Uncle Keith for the first time. Keith is a large man with a small terrier named Miss Beatrice. As they drive to the coast, Keith complains about the guests that visit his hotel. He says they always want too much, and some people think his hotel is a brothel. When they arrive, Keith says he has to leave to tend to his duties as an alderman but is happy that Dorrigo will be there to look after Amy.