by Jeremy Tiang
“They’re coming for you, Siew Li. Me too, probably. We have to go.”
There was no need to ask who “they” was. So February hadn’t been a lucky escape, just the net starting to close in.
“They came to SATU this morning,” said Lina, a tight smile on her face. Anyone looking from a distance would have seen nothing suspicious, just two women out for a friendly stroll. “Took them all away. The cleaning auntie, Mui, she heard them mention your name. Shame you weren’t there, they said, now they’ll have to pay you a visit at home.”
“We didn’t do anything,” said Siew Li, already knowing this was futile. They hadn’t done anything wrong last time either. No point appealing to the rules. Why hadn’t she learnt that lesson better? Still she was bargaining, clutching at straws. “Can’t Lay Kuan stop them? She’s in the government now, she must be able to—”
“They took her too,” said Lina, her voice almost snapping with frustration. She took a breath, trying to get this out as efficiently as possible. “They took Lay Kuan. She’s inside now. She’s an MP, and still they detained her. Don’t you understand, Siew Li? There isn’t anything they can’t do. They won’t stop till there are none of us left.”
Siew Li’s breath stopped, and the road seemed to sway beneath her, buckling under an enormous weight. She locked her knees so she wouldn’t fall, trying to take in the words. If even Lay Kuan— But no, no time for that. Her skin prickled, and she knew she had to get out. She couldn’t go back to that place.
Lina was pressing money into her hand, giving her instructions. Get to Sembawang Park any way she could, changing buses or rickshaws a few times so no one could trace her route. Wait till dusk, then find a fisherman named Feroz, he’d bring her across. It was the safest route, they’d almost certainly be keeping watch on the causeway.
“Are you coming too?” she gabbled. “How will I find you? Where should I go?”
“Remember this address,” said Lina, repeating it till Siew Li could say it back to her. “That’s one of the safe houses. Wait there, they’ll tell you where to go next. They’ll take care of you.”
“Do you mean the Party?”
Lina’s look was almost pitying. “Who else will help you now?”
“When can we come back?”
A brisk shake of her head. “I have to warn three more people, then I’m going myself. You’ll all get out by different routes. Luckily you weren’t at the office today.”
“I have to—” She took a step distractedly back towards the flat.
Lina grabbed her arm. “You don’t have time. Didn’t you hear me? They’re on the way now. Your sister-in-law will tell them you’ve gone out for a coffee, and they’ll waste time waiting for you.”
“I didn’t say goodbye,” said Siew Li woodenly, not as a protest, just a statement of fact. She tried to remember if she’d kissed the twins this morning. Had she ruffled Janet’s hair just before going? She tried to hang on to it, that last touch.
“Unity,” said Lina, clenching her fist for a moment, then she was gone in a flurry of skirts. Siew Li stared after her for a moment, then walked away as fast as she could, her face turned down in case anyone should spot her. Would they come in uniform, she wondered, or just normal office clothes? Were the others at Special Branch on Robinson Road, or had they gone straight to Outram Prison? She kept putting one foot in front of the other, no destination in mind, glancing out into the road in case a free taxi came along.
For the rest of the day, she kept forgetting to breathe. So many hours to kill. She ended up at the Galaxy Cinema, reasoning that a darkened room was probably the safest place to be. They were screening an English film, and she wasn’t entirely able to follow the plot, but at least there wasn’t much talking. A pretty woman with yellow hair seemed unhappy, despite apparently having lots of money, maybe because she kept getting attacked by birds. Siew Li wasn’t sure what she’d done to make the birds angry, but maybe there wasn’t a reason, who knows how bird brains work.
When she came out, the kacang putih uncle was listening to the news on a little transistor radio. She bought a cone of chickpeas as an excuse to linger, uncertain what she was hoping to hear. The stream of crisp English words flowed past, then Lay Kuan’s name, and some others. Three members of parliament detained. A mopping up exercise, to get all the leftists they’d missed during Coldstore. This one was called Operation Pechah. It took her a minute to summon the meaning of the Malay word. Pechah. Smash. She finished her snack and moved on, quickly. Poor Lay Kuan, she thought. All that effort, and she would never take her seat.
The afternoon slipped past, somehow. She wished they’d had a phone put in, like Jason kept talking about. It would have been nice to hear the children’s voices again. Maybe she could call the shop downstairs, leave a message? But she didn’t know the number by heart, and anyway it was too dangerous. Time was doing strange things. She looked at her watch and two minutes had passed, then suddenly it had been almost an hour. She hoped Jason would be able to take care of the children. He’d know to ask his mother for help, and Mollie. It wouldn’t be easy, and he’d blame her for that, but he was so competent. They would turn out all right.
She wondered if they would remember her.
But she couldn’t think about that now. It surely couldn’t be that long, she thought, not long till this was all over and she could come back to live her life. Just be normal. Hang on to that thought. It was already beginning to tip away, all the things she’d thought would be hers. It never once crossed her mind to try to see Jason before she went—he wouldn’t understand, might try to turn her in. He believed the system was fair. Why hadn’t she seen this, all along? He had never been hers.
By the time she got to Sembawang Park, it felt like this had always been her existence, the unsettled hollow deep in her stomach, the tingling at the edge of all her senses. Jason used to talk about an image in one of his books, a bird flying through the cold, dark sky, suddenly finding an open window into a banquet hall. A burst of warmth and activity, the aroma of rich food, then through another window back out into the empty night.
The park was almost empty, just a few straggling fishermen and one or two couples striving for romance. Her shoes left faint prints on the pale sandy path, and casuarina trees rustled around her. Why hadn’t she done this more often? But of course, she’d always been busy, and as a mother of young children, could never have come here on her own, like this. Maybe these were the moments of true freedom, in between things. She had nothing, just the clothes she was in and a little bit of money. The air smelled of salt and something slimy, an undertone of decomposition. She breathed deep anyway.
Feroz didn’t want to know anything, not even her name. He said a number, which turned out to be most of the cash. After he’d counted the notes solemnly a couple of times, he nodded and thumbed at the boat. She looked around, though it was dark enough now that no one could have made her out, and climbed in. Was this really happening? He pulled a tarpaulin over her, then she heard scraping as he hauled it the last few feet into the water. A sudden uplift, then a rocking stronger than she’d expected, for how calm the sea had been. When she judged they were a safe distance out, she risked poking her head out for a quick look back the way they’d come, too dark now to make out more than a faint wash of orange from the streetlamps, and otherwise just the rolling inky waves. She looked for the other shore, but it was still too far away to see.
3
Nam Teck
After that night, he mainly remembered his mother weeping, while a big man shouted something none of them could understand. Later, he would learn the man’s words: Stop crying, stop that bloody racket or I’ll put a bullet through your heads. All he knew then, aged four, was that his mother was distraught—as they all were, huddled in the dirt of the road, bruised and thirsty, shaking despite the heat of the night.
Later on, there was a lorry, and more weeping as they were dragged into the back. As they drove off, he saw their stilt house b
urning along with the rest of the village. They were dropped off at the next town with nothing at all. Some had to beg the headman for assistance. Nam Teck and his mother were luckier, they could stay with Auntie Poh, who lived alone and had room in her house. She was actually his father’s aunt. He hoped his father would join them, but that never happened.
He’d never been anywhere—there’d only ever been “here”. Now he learnt the place they left was called Batang Kali, although no one talked about it. They would never go back, and to say the name would be to invoke the bad luck of that day, the misfortune that crawled into their lives like ants into untended food. Their new home was safe and dry, and some days he forgot they’d ever lived anywhere else.
A couple of times he asked his mother where Baba was, and although she wouldn’t tell him, she seemed pleased he remembered his father. In truth, he was asking because the other boys in the village had asked him. All he remembered were long brown legs, rough hands cradling him, the sour scorched stench of cigarettes.
When they were alone, Auntie Poh told him Baba was dead, shot by bad people, the government men who always made trouble. His mother would be cross, but Auntie Poh believed he has the right to know. At times like this, even the young couldn’t afford to be innocent.
His mother cried less as time went by, and their life settled into a pattern. She found work nearby, tapping rubber. He watched her go out early every morning, while the sap still ran liquid from the trees, as Auntie Poh gave him his breakfast. He attended the village school. Perhaps the schoolteacher had spoken to the class, but nobody asked where his father was.
A few years later, the bad men came and moved them again. Everyone in their village was given a week to gather their belongings, then taken to a clearing in the jungle. The British man read from a piece of paper and someone translated. He said the name of each family and the number of the plot they’d been given. The land had been allocated on a grid, probably by someone who’d only seen a map. Some lucky people were on level ground, others found themselves on a slope or in a swamp.
They were given a hundred dollars and told to build themselves a house. When Auntie Poh protested there was no man in their family, all the men had been killed, she was told to use the money to hire labour. It wasn’t enough, but the neighbours helped out. Their new home was a little smaller than before, neatly constructed out of wood. They hadn’t been able to find hinges so all the doors slid open along grooves.
In the meantime, the bad men put up a fence around the new village, then another one farther away. These were made of barbed wire, two and a half metres high, topped with three-cornered spikes. There was only one entrance, and anyone going in and out was searched. His mother was no longer allowed to bring any food with her when she went out to work, in case she gave it to the people in the jungle. She was often pale with hunger when she came back from the plantation.
He seldom left the enclosure, and nor did Auntie Poh. It would be too difficult to get a permit to travel, and in any case they had nowhere to go. For the very young and the old, the village was big enough—a field, a school, even a couple of shops. All their food was brought in by the officials, and cooked in big pots in the common kitchen. Everyone brought their bowls and ate together in the square.
His mother and Auntie Poh would end up staying here for the rest of their lives. They’d moved too often, and even after the fences came down they couldn’t bring themselves to go—like birds grown used to the cage, they found the world beyond the village too large and confusing, and were too tired to think of adapting to yet another place. They were glad they’d decided early on to spend the money on a sturdy house, rather than the jerry-rigged structures put up by people who’d thought they’d only be here a year or two.
After a few years in the new village, he announced one night at supper that he was moving to Kuala Lumpur. The city had seemed unimaginably distant as a child, a different universe, but in fact turned out to be only an hour away on the bus. He’d already bought a ticket. Having spent several years of free time tinkering with the few motorcycles in the village, he had the promise of a job for a car mechanic. Just an apprentice, and it wouldn’t pay much, but he was young and could make do.
He’d timed it well, said his mother as she saw him off, trying to smile. The walls had only just come down and he was ready to leave her. She filled his arms with food—buns for the journey, medicinal herbs to reduce heatiness, dried pork—a pitiful selection from the village shops.
Surely you didn’t expect me to stay forever, he said—and, receiving no answer, waved goodbye and stepped aboard the bus.
•
Nam Teck got used to introducing himself to people—in the village there’d been no need, everyone knew everyone else. He learnt to reduce his story to three or four sentences: the new village, the dead father, that was all people needed to know. They could fill the gaps in themselves. No one asked why he’d decided to move to the city. It was clearly the only choice.
Occasionally someone asked, Was your father killed by the Ma Gong, the communists? Their voices hushing on those syllables, because there were ears everywhere. At first he answered, No, it was the British—but this led to odd looks. They suspected his father of being Ma Gong himself, he realised, and started simply saying, He died during the Emergency.
Kuala Lumpur seemed untouched by the last dozen years of chaos. City dwellers vaguely knew it was dangerous in the rural wastelands—but why would they want to go there? There were difficulties over long journeys, and it was a bore that you weren’t allowed to bring food out with you. As if we would feed those people, said one lady scornfully when he asked—but rules were rules, and they recognised the need for them.
On the whole, the soldiers and barbed-wire fenced villages belonged to another world. People trickled into the towns, marked by their clothes and way of speech as having come in from elsewhere, but no one liked to talk about the past. The British had driven out the Communists, and now everyone was safe again.
He had the sort of face that made strangers talk to him: waiting for the bus, sharing a table in a crowded coffee shop. Everyone had a story. “I was a resettlement officer,” said a neat middle-aged man in the square one evening. “We had to help build the barbed wire fences around the new villages. Sorry, you weren’t—”
“I was in Semenyih,” said Nam Teck quietly. “But it’s all right.” It wasn’t really, not yet, but he was desperate not to cause offence.
“Well, we were just doing our job. It was mainly for your protection, you know—you were probably too young to realise.” He was right, Nam Teck had hardly met any of the Ma Gong growing up, although on his few excursions outside he remembered thin, sunburnt men who ruffled his hair, Auntie Poh’s face tight with polite fear as they told him to be good and study hard, then disappeared again into the surrounding trees.
“One day,” continued the man, “I was driving along, near the jungle, when I got a flat. I had no idea how to change it—I’m just a civil servant, my job was to measure the perimeter and order the wire, we didn’t have to work with our hands. I was so scared of the bandits—sorry, the Communists.”
That correction, Nam Teck realised, was in case he knew someone in the jungle—an older brother, a cousin. Plenty of people in the village had family inside, which is why they had to be searched going out—what number of laws, however strict, could stop a mother bringing food out for her son? But Nam Teck knew no one, so could just smile and shrug.
“Well then. Those men with guns, they’d come out and kill you, just for doing your job. We were warned to be careful, but of course the British wouldn’t let us carry arms, only the white men, as if we couldn’t be trusted. They thought any Chinese was capable of turning. It’s ridiculous, I speak good English, but they thought we were all the same.
“I couldn’t have walked into town, it was miles, and I didn’t want to go back through the jungle. Just as I was about to give up hope, two men in a jeep came along, planters—a
Frenchman and a Dutch, very friendly. They helped me to fix the tire with a rubber patch—these planters always have a piece of rubber about their person. We had a good laugh, and I was on my way before sunset. A month later, I read in the paper that both of them had been killed. Shot in their sleep, even before the sun came up.” The man sighed, absorbed in his small piece of the tragedy. “Terrible times. They pay the servants to stay away that morning. They kill the dogs, and then they come for you.”
Nam Teck nodded, and made a sympathetic noise. He was becoming aware of battle lines, fainter now the war had ended but still present. As yet, there was no need for him to choose a side.
•
The garage was run out of a shophouse, with a sparse boneyard of cars next to it. Most of the shophouse was occupied by the owner’s burgeoning family, with a small room off the main staircase where Nam Teck and the other assistant, Seng, slept. There was never quite silence, as one or another of the children seemed to be having a screaming fit at all times—a relay race of shrieks and howls. The rent was cheap, though, and eating with the family meant he could keep almost all of his tiny earnings.
The boss, Mr Chiam, had done quite well out of the Emergency, with a nice sideline in bulletproof cars. Steel plates tacked onto doors, special reinforced glass for clients who couldn’t quite run to a fully-armoured car, but still fancied themselves important enough to be in danger of terrorist attacks. He had in his yard the wreck of a car that survived—there were holes all along the side, and the front was caved in where a grenade had landed on the bonnet. The glass was intact, though. He’d open the doors to show that the bullets never emerged into the interior, and the steel plates were only dented.
“The ang moh should have come to me,” he cackled, speaking of Henry Gurney, killed by the Ma Gong whilst driving up Fraser’s Hill. “His car—no protection, nothing, and he dared to drive through the jungle, with his wife next to him.” Lady Gurney survived the ambush, after Sir Henry walked straight into the snipers’ sights to draw fire away from her. “I wouldn’t do that. What for? Get a new wife.” He laughed again, pinching Mrs Chiam to show he