The Captain and the Enemy Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the form of orangeade, but even when I drank that I would shut my eyes to hide the colour.)
    ‘Where did you get them?’ she asked.
    ‘No difficulty,’ he said – as now he would probably have used the phrase ‘no problem’.
    Is it only with today’s eyes that I seemed to see at that moment a certain shiftiness in his? Memory cheats. All I am sure, or half sure, is that he told me, ‘Time for bed, Jim.’
    ‘Does he have to be Jim?’
    ‘Any name you want, dear. You choose.’
    I’m sure at least that I remember correctly the one word ‘dear’ which was not in common use either at school or in my aunt’s house, or even, I was to find out later, between the two of them.
    I went to bed on the sofa in my pants after ruffling the orange pyjamas to disguise the fact.
    (2)
    I woke next morning to a strange woman’s voice calling out the name ‘Jim’. I had no idea where I was. I felt under the sofa for the familiar chamberpot, but it wasn’t to be found, only a saucepan on the carpet, and in amazement I looked to each side of me expecting to see the wooden divisions which in the school dormitory separated one bed from another, but they were gone. For the first time for years I found myself quite alone – no voices, no heavy breathing, no farts. Only the woman’s voice calling from below ‘Jim’. Who was ‘Jim’? Then I saw the pyjamas on the floor and reluctantly put them on.
    As I went down the stairs towards the basement the strange events of the day before came trooping back to mind – I couldn’t make sense of them, though I was quite happy because at least I was not back at school, but I felt entirely lost in this new world. I think, perhaps, that, at the age I was then, a boy doesn’t give as much importance to happiness as to knowing who he really is. I had been an Amalekite – certainly not a happy Amalekite – but what was of greater importance to me than happiness, I had known my exact position in life. I knew who my enemies were and I knew how to avoid the worst at their hands. But now … I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and it wasn’t a woman but a pale worried girl, perhaps not much more than twice my age, who confronted me. She said, ‘Do you like your egg hard-boiled or soft-boiled?’
    I said, ‘Soft,’ and I added, ‘Who’s Jim?’
    ‘Don’t you remember?’ she asked me. ‘The Captain said I was to call you Jim. Do you mind the name?’
    ‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘I’d much rather be Jim than …’
    ‘Than what?’
    ‘I’d rather be Jim,’ I repeated cagily, for there is a strange importance about names. You can’t trust them until you have tried them out. Why should I have been ashamed of Victor and why had I so easily consented to be Jim?
    ‘Where is the Captain?’ I asked, only to change the subject.
    ‘Off somewhere,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t know where,’ and she led me into the kitchen and began to boil the water for my egg.
    I asked her, ‘Does he live here?’
    ‘When he’s here,’ she said, ‘yes, he sort of lives here.’ Perhaps the answer had seemed a bit enigmatic even to herself, for she added, ‘When you get to know the Captain better, you’ll know that it’s no good asking him questions. What he wants you to know, he’ll tell you.’
    ‘I don’t much like these pyjamas,’ I said.
    ‘They are a bit on the small side.’
    ‘I don’t mean that. I mean the colour – and the oranges.’
    ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘I suppose they came first to hand.’
    ‘Perhaps we could change them?’
    ‘We aren’t millionaires,’ she replied indignantly, and then, ‘The Captain’s a very kind man. Remember that.’
    ‘It’s funny. He has the same name as me.’
    ‘What? Jim?’
    ‘No, my real name.’ I added reluctantly, ‘Victor,’ and watched closely to see if she smiled, but she didn’t. She said, ‘Oh, I suppose he borrowed it,’ and she busied herself with my egg.
    ‘Does he borrow a lot of names?’
    ‘When