Saturday after Saturday, Mrs. Sangha worried about this invisible war. She would have been happy for Dolly’s company as she listened to the radio, but Dolly, seeing dirty clothing piled up, would make her way downstairs as tactfully as she could and begin her work. Returning home in the taxi one day, she saw an unusual jeep painted with splotches of brown, ocher, and various shades of green. The low, wide jeep with oversize tires would have been an attraction on its own. But the moment the passengers in the taxi saw that the jeep, open at the back, was chock-full of white-skinned men, obviously soldiers, dressed in uniforms colored exactly like the vehicle, conversation came to a sudden halt. The men on the jeep, their helmets pulled low on their heads and their rifles with unsheathed bayonets slung on their shoulders, chatted among themselves and laughed, seemingly unaware of the motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians who had slowed to watch them. Mr. Walter broke the shocked silence, reporting that along his route, he had seen other jeeps transporting soldiers. He had heard that restaurants and bars in town were being frequented by these white soldiers, who dressed to go to these places exactly as they had just witnessed, guns and all.
Remembering Mrs. Sangha’s fears about food shortages, Dolly said aloud, “As long as the sun does shine and rain does fall, as long as it have fish and shrimp in the sea, crab on the beach, coconut, mango, and lime on the tree, rice in Central, cock and hen in the yard, a cow in the area, and provisions in the ground, I can’t see what it have so to worry about. I ent got no oven to bake cake. If flour get hold up, what that have to do with me? I never yet hear of pitch-oil-can sponge cake. You?” It was the most she had ever said in the taxi, the most by far. After she spoke, there was a silence as stunned as when the jeep had been sighted. Then everyone in the taxi, encouraged by her forthrightness and disregard for the symbol of war, started to talk at once. There was a general disdain for the presence of foreign soldiers on their soil, and for the idea that this foreign war was any of their business. The boy was proud of his mother, surprised by that side of her he had never before seen or heard. There was, at the same time, much high-pitched excitement, for they’d had the courage, the proud audacity, to criticize and dismiss what they had seen with their own eyes.
It didn’t matter to Dolly as much as to Mrs. Sangha, who wasn’t able to bake as much as she had in the past, that flour was already being rationed, that you had to stand in a line outside the shop and wait sometimes for a good hour before you could even step foot inside. The sight of jeeps and white-skinned soldiers from time to time never became entirely ordinary but was soon commonplace enough that citizens of Guanagaspar stopped being afraid or too reverential in their presence.
As always, on Saturday night back in his mother’s house, the boy was already looking forward to next week’s visit to the Sanghas’ house. Friday night, come bedtime, sleep was slow to come. He would be so excited that he would be restless in the bed, thinking and planning what games he and his friend might play, what books they would read, what butterflies he hoped to catch, which plants would be blooming in the yard, what clothing and sweet food his mother’s employer would send home with him and his mother. Mrs. Sangha sent less lately than she used to, but he always came home with something, no matter how small.
Lately he listened intently to the night. He knew better than to meddle in big people’s conversation, but he wasn’t deaf to Mrs. Sangha’s noise about the war, or to the contents of the turned-up radio. He would lie staring at the ceiling of the house with his eyes forced wide open, not entirely sure on moonless nights whether they were indeed open. When his mother’s breathing told him that she was asleep, he would feel alone and frightened, as if the burden of protecting his home fell on him and depended on his wakefulness. He was sure he could hear far-off bombs and airplanes. He clutched in a tight knot at his neck the cotton cloth that protected him from mosquitoes and listened hard against the wind in the trees and the crashing of ocean waves. He listened so hard that his eardrums stung and his head throbbed, and that throbbing sound blocked out all others. He would, several times, scrunch his eyes shut, then release them open again, checking that he was able to see in the black room. He expected each time that the red jumble of starlights and pinpoints that blossomed and crowded out his vision would give way to the face of a strange uniformed man or group of men who would speak with him in gruff sounds, snapping words and commands that he would not understand. Although he knew nothing of where Germany or Japan might be, he knew the Germans and the Japanese to be conquerors. He pictured them alighting one by one out of the ocean’s froth, their boats unseen, scrambling up the beach, beating through crocus and guava patch in the darkness of night. The invaders, German and Japanese alike, he imagined as tall skinny white men who looked not unlike the Americans on his island. Rustling trees sounded to him at times like men speaking strange sounds—sounds he was sure were either the German or the Japanese language. He needed to be able to decipher and distinguish wind crawling through trees, and waves exploding in the sea, from German and Japanese invaders. He imagined that he would be the men’s first contact, their first prisoners, Raleigh their first stop on the trek to conquer the island.
The all-night staccato chirping of cicadas and the drone of the sea would measure the night’s slow passing. A dreaming cow, mule, or goat might cry out, startling him and slicing apart the darkness, giving shape briefly to the village. As he lay next to his mother, his mind would eventually slow down, and her deep breathing and slight snoring would grow louder than his thoughts, louder than the sounds of bombs and low-flying airplanes and men speaking in strange languages outside. He would slide into a dreamy state and then under into sleep.
After staying awake for so long, he would not hear his cock or the area cocks crowing as dawn came, and he would resist his mother nudging him awake in the morning. She would stroke his face, push the hair from his forehead, and call his name softly. Sometimes she would resort to saying playfully, “You don’t want to go by your girlfriend today?” and this would surely draw him from his sleep. He would immediately awaken, a smile on his face. “I don’t have a girlfriend. Today is Saturday?”