by Jeremy Tiang
His muscles had filled out, it was true. Already tall, he’d begun to grow sideways, his shoulders thickening from lifting heavy car tyres. He’d marshalled his thin wages to purchase gaudy printed shirts and tight jeans (“cowboy trousers”, the Chinese called them), having asked Seng to show him the night markets where mysteriously cheap clothes might be bought. His hair was glossy and he kept an orange plastic comb tucked into his back pocket so he always had something to do with his hands.
This year, his mother had prepared more food than ever before. She waved away his protests—they had a fridge now, kept in the backyard and shared with the neighbours. She and Auntie Poh would live off the leftovers for a fortnight, and what a treat it would be not to cook. Besides, it was all his money. That silenced him, for it was true that he’d begun to send small sums when he was able to—he felt guilty it wasn’t more, doubly so when she’d spent what looked like most of it on sea cucumber and dried scallops for him.
He had a whole two days off work, which he spent wandering the village streets with his new louche gait, deliberately scuffed and slouchy. The other young people he saw were, like him, only back for the New Year. Nobody lived here any more. He smoked only when out of his mother’s sight—he wasn’t sure she’d approve, and wanted their time together to be peaceful. She must have smelt it on him, part of the new compendium of scents he’d acquired, but said nothing.
She took him on a walk into the jungle. This would have been a treat a decade ago; now he felt annoyance at the muddy paths and brushing ferns, so unsuitable for city shoes. He sulked a little, he couldn’t help it, as she pointed out wild edible mushrooms, nearly-hidden paths, the small secrets of the jungle she’d gained through working in its embrace almost her whole life.
When they were well out of earshot of the village, she began to tell him things he only half suspected, about how she had brought supplies to the men in the jungle. For all that they were searched, she found ways to hide food and medicine, they all did. “If you were tapping rubber, and a man came up to you and said, Bring me rice tomorrow—well, then, you found a way, or you were dead.” She tucked rice grains into the lining of her shoes, pills into the hollow handles of her tools. “They searched us so thoroughly. Sometimes they even made us take our clothes off.” Those last few words were a rush. She was suddenly embarrassed in front of her handsome son. “But we got through. Those guards. They couldn’t have been as afraid of the British as we were of the Ma Gong.”
He was not as surprised by this as she’d expected, having heard enough stories in the city to know how dangerous the people in the jungle are, the way no one knew exactly how many of them there were, even now, or how many weapons they had—looted off dead Japanese soldiers during the war, it was rumoured. He remembered the rough men and women, and envied them. They were living on their own terms, fighting their own battles.
As they walked back towards the city, she began talking about her own death. This was bad luck, especially during the New Year, and he tried to stop her. “Don’t worry, it won’t be for a while yet,” she ploughed on, sounding like she’d practised this speech. “But when it happens, I want to be buried with your father.”
He couldn’t say anything, he would have choked.
“He’s in Batang Kali. It’s less than an hour from KL. They were all thrown into a shallow grave just outside the town. If you ask around, people will be able to tell you where it is. There must still be people who remember. Twenty-four men shot, just like that, and all our houses burnt. Now the British are going, and we’ll never find out why.”
She brought her face close to his. “He would have been so proud of you. I know he would. If only he’d lived to see this. Bury me with him.”
•
“Kali” means “many times”, banyak kali, and “batang” means “branches”, like tree branches, but also branches in the river. The name of the place comes from the many streams that run through the town, criss-crossing and feeding into the main river, the Sungai Sendat. Thinking of the name recalls the river. Take this branch, or that one, it doesn’t matter, the current is bearing you on in one direction only. Sometimes it’s a matter of chance, the wind blowing this way or that.
This is one branch: soon after his 20th birthday, a new boy arrived at the workshop. Business was expanding, as the city prospered and more people wanted cars. Ah Lam, the new chap, was only slightly younger than Nam Teck. He’d just arrived from China, from Hainan Island, and he and Seng were able to chatter excitedly in Hainanese about the news from home. Ah Lam was now the apprentice, while Nam Teck graduated to full assistant, with slightly more money and a proper set of tools.
Although he was new in town, Ah Lam came with a ready-made circle of friends, acquaintances from the old country. When he invited Seng and Nam Teck along to a cultural evening one of his friends was organising, they went—Seng for the free food, Nam Teck because, despite his new-found confidence, he hadn’t yet acquired the knack of making friends easily.
The event took place in a dingy basement hall off Jalan Kuching. The dim light managed to make the room seem murky rather than atmospheric. Even for the austere times, this was shabby, the walls peeling badly, the furniture moth-eaten and grey. When Nam Teck said something about the strange smell of the room, Ah Lam replied cryptically that these people had their minds on more important things than decorating.
A stage of sorts had been rigged in a corner of the room, packing crates shoved together densely and covered with plywood boards. A red hand-painted banner drooped overhead: “Culture Programme, Art and Music.” The music component consisted of an all-girl choir, rather good, who presented some folk songs to the accompaniment of rudimentary coconut-shell percussion. They were wearing matching satin outfits that looked distinctly home-made. The ramshackle, amateur aspect of the show made Nam Teck feel at home. This was like the evening entertainments they used to get up in the village, on days when there was no travelling film show or medicine man to distract them.
There was a short break during which refreshments were served: over-diluted squash in plastic beakers and curry puffs cut into quarters. There were thirty or so people, most of whom seemed to know each other. Seng was gallantly complimenting a choir member on her singing, and brushed Nam Teck off when he tried to join them. Not having the nerve to invade one of the other bubbles of conversation floating around the room, he spent the rest of the interval nursing his soft drink and trying to look as if he was thinking deep, appreciative thoughts about the music.
The second half was a play. A pigtailed girl skipped onto the stage, which was now a jungle, winsomely addressing her woodland friends. Nam Teck didn’t have a lot of time for stories, finding them childish. Kuala Lumpur was about facts, hard-edged things he was slowly collecting; when he had enough, he imagined, he’d be wise.
The play wound through a number of scenes, placing the heroine in ever greater peril. No sooner did she evade the clutches of a Japanese soldier, when a smooth-talking ang moh tried to drug and seduce her. In the last scene, an upstanding Chinese comrade rescued her, returning her to the bosom of her family—but first, he lectured her for consorting with the enemy. She wept as she acknowledged her mistake. “I forgot myself. I must strengthen my revolutionary zeal!” she cried, transformed, her eyes like stars. “England and Japan do not care for me. I must not forget that I am Chinese, I must not forget what we are fighting for.”
The entire cast came on stage, the choir behind them, singing a revolutionary song. The audience was on its feet, their gaze faraway and dewy. Nam Teck was paralysed. He knew what he’d just seen—these were leftists, with their dangerous talk. The government was hunting down people like them.
He looked around for his friends. Seng had disappeared, and Ah Lam was near the front of the crowd, singing with his arm across his chest. He looked like a hero himself, as if there should be a roaring sea behind him and the wind in his hair.
Part of Nam Teck wanted to leave. It wasn’t safe. If
the police came—and the way they were singing, surely they were audible from the street—everyone in this basement would be taken away and locked up. He wouldn’t be able to explain himself. But then, part of him thought, You wanted adventure, that’s why you came to the city. And it was thrilling, the ideas he’d heard, the thought of a new world full of youthful energy, the past swept away. Without even realising, he’d starting singing too, his face as bright as if he believed.
•
Afterwards, it felt a bit like a party, except everyone was arguing about revolution in a terribly earnest way. Someone wondered if the play was ideologically sound to simply deplore the colonial forces, when surely it would be better to correct their thinking. Someone else was discussing fund-raising, and whether it was too soon after the end of the Emergency to come out into the open again.
Nam Teck found he could join a group and just stand there nodding, and no one minded. He was new, so they wouldn’t expect him to contribute. At the moment, all they were doing was giving him awareness. The ideas would inflame him, they believed, as they themselves were once set alight by this new way of looking at the world.
Almost everyone there was his age or younger. The few older people were treated with great respect, as though it was a great honour they’d turned up. The senior comrades, one girl explained to him, had fought in the war against the colonial oppressors. While the young may imagine they breathed revolution from every pore, the older ones had actually lived it.
He wondered why everyone was so keen to talk to him. Everything they said was incriminatory. If he were to tell anyone, anyone at all—but they were innocents, like children, bursting to share with him and too eager to consider he might feel differently from them. Ah Lam, he thought. Ah Lam hardly knew him, and he’d invited him to this evening of—ideology? Propaganda? He felt carefully around the edges of these new words.
One of the young women was laughing a bit too hard. Was she drunk? But no, there wasn’t any alcohol here. She noticed him staring and beckoned him over. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“It’s my first time,” he said. “I came with—” He pointed vaguely at Ah Lam, at the far side of the room.
“You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
“Neither do you.”
“Singapore.”
“Seminyih.”
“The new village? Is it true there was barbed wire all around you?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“You sound like you don’t care.”
“No, it was terrible, but it’s over. I left.”
She offered him a cigarette. He’d only ever had a couple before, but he took one now, trying to inhale in shallow breaths to prevent an embarrassing coughing fit.
“I hope you’ll come again.”
“I will if you’re here.” Almost as the words left his mouth, he wished he could take them back. The bantering flirtation that had become habitual felt inappropriate here.
She didn’t seem bothered. “I’ll be around a bit longer. I’m going inside soon.”
“Inside?” He knew what she meant, he just couldn’t picture her in the jungle, in uniform.
“The ang moh rounded up your people and put you behind a fence. Don’t you want to fight back? This whole Emergency. It’s an excuse to keep us down.”
“What happened to you?” This felt somehow the right question to ask. She was spilling over with it, this thing she was carrying. He could smell it on her. She was avid, her eyes gleaming. And sure enough, even though they’d just met, she told him. The cement cell they’d held her in. The babies she’d had to leave behind. The fear that made her run.
“I can’t go back,” she said. “They’d pick me up right away. My friends are still in detention, even the MPs. So much for democracy—they were chosen by the people. This proves the government doesn’t care about the people. We have to get rid of them. The only way I can do that is from inside.”
Back in the village, he’d sometimes gone fishing in a jungle pond. There wasn’t usually very much there, but at the right time of the year, the fish were big. Once or twice he caught one, a foot-long solid slab of muscle wriggling frantically in his hands. This was how he felt, talking to her. She was thrashing at the world to survive, and he could only watch helplessly.
“What happened to you?” she now asked. No one in the city had ever wanted to hear, but now he told her the whole thing, everything he remembered about Batang Kali, what they’d done to his mother afterwards.
“I never went back,” he said. “I don’t even know where
he’s buried.”
“Why would you? There’d be nothing there. Burnt houses. Maybe some weeds, but no trees, nothing grows back after you’ve scorched the earth.”
“What should I do?”
“Join us,” she said, simply, and it felt like the answer he’d always been waiting to hear. He took a final pull of his cigarette and slowly stubbed it out, trying to find the right words. “What else are you living for? If you aren’t part of the struggle, how will things ever change?”
“Most days I feel contented.”
“Are you contented, or just numb? What do you want to do with yourself? Slave away to make your Mr Chiam rich, until you have enough money to buy your own shop and enslave others in turn?”
“The struggle has already been going on so long—”
“And it will keep going, comrade. Read what Chairman Mao says about protracted war. It won’t happen so quickly. We’re talking about changing an entire society.”
“Were you always like this?”
She looked away, and he wanted to bite his tongue off. It didn’t matter how she’d been before, this was her now. No point asking about the past. He stopped himself. Don’t talk about her children, and especially don’t mention their father.
“I’m going in,” she said quietly. “It’s the only possible choice. I’ve been going from safe house to safe house for months. What kind of life is that? At least inside, I’ll be free. You have to find where you belong, in life.”
A smiling boy passed by with a tray of sausage rolls. She seized a couple and thrust them both at him. “Eat. You don’t look like they’re feeding you enough.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“She must be a very sensible woman.”
A ghost of something passed between them. Understanding. No, complicity.
She brushed her hair back and tied a scarf around it, preparing to go. “You didn’t ask my name. No, it’s all right, it doesn’t matter. We get new names inside. No point getting to know Siew Li, she’ll be gone soon.”
•
Ah Lam didn’t resign, just disappeared one day. Nam Teck wondered if he’d gone inside, or been picked up by the authorities. No way to find out. He and Seng never talked about that evening, though he sensed his friend wouldn’t be going back. Seng was too certain of what he wanted—a few more years of wild oats, then marriage, children, all those good things. And Nam Teck? What did he want?
He took a long look at Mr Chiam. Was this what it meant, to lead a good life? He was entirely self-reliant. A modest business, a large family. Was that enough? On impulse, he asked. Mr Chiam sighed, “Sure, I suppose. You’re asking the wrong question. You should say: can you live with the choices you’ve made? And you know what, I can, every last one of them. I envy you. What are you, twenty? You still have everything ahead. By the time you get to my age, the course is set. I know what’s going to happen, all of it, right up till I die. Some people would call that a blessing.”
The next weekend, he went back to Seminyih to see his mother. If only he could ask her, but of course that was impossible—too risky to even mention. How would she feel, her son doing the very thing her husband had been mistakenly killed for? Would this be consolation, or betrayal? Which would be the better revenge: to thrive within this system, spiting the people who’d tried to crush you? Or to upend everything, crushing them in turn?
&nbs
p; He gave his mum more money than usual, and said he might not be able to visit for a while. Work was getting busier with Mr Chiam expanding the business (this was true—he was buying the premises next door; not unrelatedly, Mrs Chiam was pregnant again). His mother nodded, resigned. As long as he was doing well, she said. He hugged her goodbye, which he didn’t usually do, and held Auntie Poh’s hand before leaving. On the bus back, his eyes dampened, as if he already knew he wouldn’t see them again, even though his mind didn’t feel made up yet.
Siew Li had shoved some pamphlets into his pocket. He read them over and over, whenever Seng wasn’t around. They were called things like “Stories of the Comrades”, and even if he hadn’t known she’d written some of them (which ones, he wondered—none were credited), he’d still have been riveted. It was thrilling, this glimpse of a different world, in which the things he’d been taught to value were shown to be as hollow as he’d always suspected.
It seemed clear to him that something was brewing. There were reports of race riots in Singapore. Could that happen here? The country, hastily stitched together, was fraying at the seams—the Malays fighting to keep their hereditary privileges, the Chinese laying claim to a bigger slice of the pie. He’d been vaguely aware of all this before, but now he understood how relevant it was to his life, and how by choosing indifference before, he’d allowed himself to remain powerless.
Walking around the city those last few weeks, he looked closely at the faces around him. All hard and blank, no warmth behind any of them. Was that what he looked like, too? If not, how many years would it take? These people had no thoughts in their heads except survival, which meant only chasing after the next bit of money, the next promotion. It had been less than two decades since the end of the war, and already everyone had forgotten what it was like to work together. Without a common enemy, they were turning on each other. What kind of world was this?