The Narrow Road to the Deep North

At the hotel, Amy plays a record for Dorrigo and sits on the arm of his chair. They talk about music, and then he says he needs to go. When they stand, Amy presses her face into his neck: “It was not clear to him what this meant or what he should do. He did not dare kiss her” (96). 

In the morning, he wakes to find a note from Amy saying that she is away on hotel business and will not be there to say goodbye. He is relieved that nothing more had happened: “Nothing had happened, and yet everything had changed” (97). As he dresses, he knows that something new has begun for him. 

Back in the army camp, everyone talks about the war. Dorrigo can only think of Amy:

Their dreary conversation, their ignorance of Amy and the passion she had for him and he had for her, was his insurance against his indiscretion. The day their talk turned to him and Amy was the day their private passion would have transformed into public tragedy (98).

His next leave is a six-day furlough. He visits Ella, who now seems “simply dull beyond imagining” (98). He goes to parties and dinners with her but cannot feel any excitement. One evening at a party, a major is making Ella laugh and Dorrigo feels “a strange emotion that was neither jealousy nor gratitude but a strange mingling of both” (99). He realizes that the more he is around people, the lonelier he feels. 

Nakamura talks with Colonel Kota, who tells him that the Railway project is changing and expanding. They must now clear 3,000 cubic meters of rock to be cut and carried away. The deadline for the Railway has also been moved from December to October: “His task was now impossible” (101). Kota also tells him that he must send 100 workers to a different came, 150 kilometers away. They will have to march. Nakamura asks how he is supposed to complete the Railway on schedule with fewer men and without proper tools, to which Kota replies, “Even if most die of exhaustion you are to complete the work” (102). Kota says that the Railway is still a battlefield, just like the front lines. 

Amy goes to the beach for a swim: “She was full of yearning. To leave, to be someone else, somewhere else, to start moving and never stop” (106). She thinks of men she has flirted with—and one that she slept with while Keith was away—but always in a careful way, never wanting to hurt Keith. She remembers walking over to talk to the tall doctor in the bookshop and taking her wedding ring off immediately before approaching him. She still does not know why she held his hand at the nightclub or pressed against him when he tried to leave the room at the hotel. She swims vigorously, trying to distract herself from the constant sense of need.

Kota tells Nakamura of a time when he was in training. An officer was teaching them how to cut the heads off Chinese prisoners. Kota did not hesitate when it was his turn to behead a man: “I was thinking about how easy it was, how bright and beautiful the colors were, and I was stunned it was already over” (110). He says that he had both died and been reborn in that moment. In the weeks after that first killing, he would often take another prisoner, make him dig his own grave, and then behead him as well. Kota says that he only sees people as necks at this point.

They begin talking about the Japanese poet Basho and his book The Narrow Road to the Deep North, which “summed up in one book the genius of the Japanese spirit” (112). They recite haikus for each other, and then Nakamura has to leave. Kota puts an arm around him and says, “In another world, men love” (114). 

Amy borrows Keith’s car and goes to pick up Dorrigo, after lying to Keith about visiting a girlfriend. As they drive together, she is disappointed in herself and how badly she wants him, but she also thinks: “My disgraceful, wicked heart, is braver than the world” (116). She tells Dorrigo that Keith is a good man, but she never feels like he says anything that matters.

They arrive at an empty beach. Amy steps over a barbed wire fence and scratches her thigh. Dorrigo dabs at the blood on her thigh, then kisses her leg. She puts her hand on his head as he watches the small beads of blood ball up again: “Her body was a poem beyond memorizing” (118). He kisses her leg again then gets back to his feet. 

Dorrigo and Amy swim together in the ocean, then rest on a dune. She tells Dorrigo that when she is with Keith, she hates herself because she only wants to be with Dorrigo. As they begin to have sex, something howls nearby. Dorrigo looks up to see that it has a penguin in its mouth. The howl had come from the penguin before it had died. He turns back to Amy and they have sex.