‘You’re going to Mae Sot on the Burma border with Thailand,’ Cahill told Bolt three weeks later in his hospital bed, ‘not Kanchanaburi. ‘And congratulations, you’re a doctor.’
Bolt was perplexed.
‘It’s the only way I can get you out of this hellhole alive,’ he said. ‘Everyone who can’t walk from here to the railway with their bags will be left to die. Nip Command orders.’
‘Mae Sot? How?’
‘By truck. The Nips are using Burmese and Thai slaves at Mae Sot for a project, building a bridge or a viaduct, not sure which. You’ll be their medico, if you’re up to it.’
‘You’re telling them I’m a qualified doctor?’
‘Why not? You’re almost a vet. You know all the diseases and drugs needed for the POWs and these workers. I can tell you, no doctors back in Australia would have our expertise in treating tropical diseases. You were outstanding in the cholera camp. You’ve assisted me on plenty of amputations. The Nip officers won’t know you’re not fully qualified. They just want to know you’re an Australian doctor. They don’t trust their own, mainly because none of them understand the tropical diseases and how to treat them.’
Bewildered, but accepting the situation, Bolt asked, ‘What about Red Lead?’
‘She’s half dead, isn’t she? Better leave her here.’
‘No way.’
‘Okay, take her with you. You’ll have your own truck and driver. The Nip officers will look after you like royalty. Well, not quite. But they want you alive for medical protection. They’re all shit-scared of catching something.’
‘How long will I be in Mae Sot?’
‘I’m told about a month for the construction.’
‘And after that?’
‘They’ll pop you on a boat to Singapore and Changi, or maybe Japan. Up to them.’
The truck ride to Mae Sot was about 500 miles and took three days. On the trip, Bolt had bouts of malarial fever, although he kept it quiet from the Japanese by staying mostly in the truck with Red Lead. He was able to handfeed her all the way with meat leftovers, her favourite pumpkin, and water. By day two she was able to stand, fall over, stand again and stretch. On day three he let her out for a pit stop when the three-truck convoy stopped at roadside stalls. Red Lead was very thin and weak, but Bolt could see she was fighting to survive.
Two Japanese officers came to see him. One had an ulcer on his forearm.
‘Piece of cake,’ Bolt told him, thinking of the dinner-plate sized ulcer he had removed at Cholera Hill. The officer looked querulous. ‘I’ll operate in the truck.’
He removed the 2-inch diameter ulcer and bandaged it, asking why the officer had not had it removed on the railway. The officer pretended not to understand. Bolt guessed he didn’t trust his own medicos, or he was just plain scared. The ulcer was ugly and the officer may have feared he would die, not an uncommon feeling on the railway.
Mae Sot is a town on the Moei River at the border between Thailand and Burma. Burmese refugees had been flooding into the area and forming camps in ‘no man’s land’, a wooded area on the river between the two countries, which the Japanese had sealed off with heavily armed checkpoints. The Japanese acknowledged the area’s ancient Thai name—Wang Takhian—meaning ‘water and big trees’.
The Burmese had been running from the Japanese, who were rounding up slaves for their construction work. Yet there was nowhere for the refugees to go. The Thais didn’t want them and, under Japanese direction, had prevented them from moving far into Thailand. They had pushed them back into Wang Takhian and over the river into Burma. Now the Japanese were bribing the Burmese men with pitiful wages into labour work along the river.
Bolt’s lodgings were in an empty shack in Wang Takhian, a mile from the main town area. The village was a small grid with a few beautifully constructed teak houses seemingly out of place in such an impoverished area. It triggered his memory about what he was told when he’d first met Red Lead. Anna, the young waitress at the Hawkesbury River restaurant, said her father had transported teak from Mae Sot via boat from Bangkok to Sydney. Anna had mentioned ‘the cat woman of Mae Sot’, but Bolt couldn’t recall her name.
He was driven to a small bridge being built over the river only about 3 miles from the town centre, in Thailand.
An officer told him he would have a hut there for ‘worker-accidents’. He wasn’t told if there were accidents. They were expected. His hours were 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. with an hour’s break for lunch and he was informed he was on call 24 hours. A driver would take him to and from the construction site. Bolt insisted on taking Red Lead with him. She was at last showing signs of real recovery, four weeks after the python bite.
Three days into his stay, he began to think more of the so-called ‘cat woman of Mae Sot’, who had bred Red Lead. He made inquiries in the main town area but no one in the few shops and stores knew her. Then one evening when he was buying food from the only café, really the front room of a hut on the river, he asked the corpulent owner if she knew anybody with a house full of cats. He used paper to draw a house overrun by cats. The café owner and her sister giggled, frowned, gabbled away in Thai for a minute, and finally pointed to the area in which he was staying. They then drew a rough map, showing a temple on the outskirts of the grid, and a laneway.
‘Her name Usa,’ the owner said. ‘Sam sip maew!’ she added, telling him that the woman had thirty cats.
A week later Bolt had his driver take him and Red Lead to the location and was surprised to realise it was less than half a mile from where he was staying. Bolt asked the Japanese driver to wait and opened the front gate of a two-level home. It was an old-style, traditional, well-built Thai home supported by big, dark-brown teak pillars and topped with a blue-coloured slate roof. The number of cats roaming the small front garden, which featured a small Buddhist shrine with food offerings, indicated he’d come to the correct place. Bolt looked up at the protruding roof gables that ensured tropical rain did not sweep onto the elevated verandah. He slid across a wide, heavy door and entered the compound.
He was about to walk up the steps, when a strikingly pretty woman of about 25 came to the door. She had long black hair, big eyes set well apart and large, sensual lips.
‘Can I help you?’ she said with a wide, yet guarded smile. She was followed by a tsunami of cats of all shapes, sizes and breeds.
‘I’m looking for Usa,’ he said.
‘I am Usa,’ she said with another, even broader smile.
Bolt was tongue-tied. He had expected a totally different vision: an old, large woman in a long dress. Usa wore a shirt of leopard-skin colouring and short fitted pants that showed her thin, shapely legs. She wore no shoes as she gracefully moved down the steps to shake his hand. Ten cats followed and paid very little attention to the new arrival.
Bolt fumbled an explanation of why he was there. She stared at him, taking in every word.
‘I remember that man,’ she said. ‘He did a lot of business with my father and bought four kittens to take to Sydney. He cut teak from forest in Burma and took to Australia.’
‘That’s right! May I say your English is very good.’
Usa laughed gaily.
‘I worked for a doctor and vet—a married couple—in Bangkok. The man was English; his wife French. I picked up the languages from them. They go back to Europe before the war there. Also, my father made me learn English.’
Bolt remembered Red Lead in the truck. He brought her into the front garden and explained about her and how she was recovering from a snakebite.
‘I remember her colour, her … her coat,’ Usa said, cradling the cat. ‘Poor darling!’
Usa invited him upstairs for a cup of tea in the main entrance room. He admired a large portrait of moustachioed King Rama V, in full military outfit, a pith helmet close by.
‘You like him?’ she asked. ‘My favourite king. He abolish slavery in nineteenth century. He stop Thailand from being European colony.’
Bolt was taken aback by the smell of cat urine, but said nothing. Two copper-coloured roof fans at least kept the main entrance room cool, while not dispersing the odour. Usa put Red Lead down. She tried to look steady on her feet as several cats moved around her in loud silence, feline-style. A concerned Bolt retrieved her.
‘She has many brother and sister here,’ Usa laughed. She pointed to a large brown and yellow cat looking majestic sitting on a cushion, perched on a teak chaise longue on the verandah at the entrance. ‘That is mother, Nuarn!’
‘Wow! What a well-fed beauty!’ Bolt said. ‘Will they recognise each other?’
‘Possible. She have twenty kittens, about ten here, all your pussy’s relatives!’
Bolt took Red Lead to her mother and sat them next to each other. The mother cat remained lying and propped against a cushion. She gave her daughter a perfunctory sniff and looked away.
Red Lead seemed overwhelmed. She jumped to the floor, the first time she’d shown such life since the python bite. The other cats milled around. Some brushed against Red Lead. Others would glide past pretending to ignore her but still getting a sense of the newcomer.
Usa took Bolt to the back area, where there was a cattery the size of a granny flat. Cubbyholes of various sizes were built into the walls, which could each house a cat. There were some in them, others were lounging under a revolving roof fan.
There were two cat flaps.
‘They mostly sleep here at night,’ Usa said.
‘You don’t lock them in?’
‘No need. The compound is safe. They can wander around at night if they wish. If they want to climb the walls outside, they are welcome. A few have been adventurous enough to enter the scrub and jungle down to the river. One never came back.’ She laughed. ‘I think that frighten them all!’
‘Some sleep with you?’
‘Not on my bed. On cushions in the room.’
‘Do you feel safe yourself?’
‘Come, I show you,’ she said.
They returned to the upstairs area facing the door and entered a study. She showed him a samurai sword sitting on a wooden stand. Usa took two revolvers from a desk drawer.
‘These are my husband’s,’ she said. ‘He taught me to use them. I have another next to my bed at night.’
Bolt and Usa sat opposite each other at an ornate teak table heavy in appearance but lighter in colour than the other furniture. She asked about his situation. He explained he was a POW, acting as a medico for workers on the nearby bridge.
‘And after that is complete?’
‘Not sure,’ Bolt said, his eyes down. ‘It will either be Changi in Singapore, or Japan. It is up to the Japanese.’
‘I detest them,’ she said, the first flash of anger from her that he had seen. It was another dimension to her stunning appearance, which remained alluring.
‘The military officers would rape me like they do others in the village. But Father is very senior in Thai Government. They don’t want trouble.’
‘Some are bad, some are not.’ He changed the subject, keen to learn a little more about her. ‘Why do you choose this … this wilderness to live?’
‘My husband came from Tak, the province. We both preferred bush life, the isolation.’
They watched Red Lead, who was gaining confidence.
‘She is certainly uplifted by this experience,’ he said.
‘I hope not too much,’ she said. ‘Cats can be promiscuous. I think too much excitement might kill her.’
‘They wouldn’t … they’re siblings!’
‘Cats don’t care!’ Usa said with a dark expression and a flick of her hair. ‘They are incestuous!’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Bolt said, surprised at the information and her directness in conveying it.
The Japanese driver, rifle over his shoulder, rapped on the front door. He tapped his watch.
‘Speedo, speedo!’ he said.
Usa looked as if she would abuse him. Bolt indicated she should say nothing.
‘You can leave Red Lead here, if you wish,’ she said. ‘Don’t take her to the bridge. It’s too hot.’
Bolt hesitated. Red Lead was at ease wandering around.
‘Come back for her tomorrow, say at this time?’
Usa carried Red Lead to the front gate, held her paw and made out as if she was waving goodbye. Bolt felt a pang of guilt. He had been the cat’s carer, but she looked comfortable already in Usa’s home. He thought again of Red Lead’s incredible courage and independence. He felt she would be fine in such wonderful feline company.