Heaven Has Eyes

by Philip Holden

  You might possibly try to approach the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa to see whether they would accept the document for inclusion in the Pierre Trudeau fonds. I understand that they have a more liberal approach to these matters.

  I would like to once again thank you for your contribution to nation building.

  Yours sincerely

  Chia Lixin (Miss)

  Assistant Archivist

  Archives Reading Room: +65 6332 7909 DID: +65 6718

  3004 Fax: +65 6332 3238

  National Archives of Singapore, 1 Canning Rise, S179868

  We make knowledge come alive, spark imagination and create possibilities.

  PRIVILEGED/CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION MAY BE CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE. IF YOU ARE NOT THE INTENDED RECIPIENT, PLEASE NOTIFY THE SENDER IMMEDIATELY AND DELETE THE MESSAGE.

  • • •

  Does he think I’m invisible? He pushes past me, without as much as a by-your-leave, takes the seat on my right, resting his long arms on the parapet in front of him. He doesn’t even take off his trench coat. He just sits there, thin wet hair plastered on his head, a notepad produced miraculously from the folds of his coat.

  “Professor Laski’s lecture? I’m in the right place?” he asks me.

  “In a minute. He’s not started yet.”

  The lecture theatre is still only half full. No need to have rushed, then. He relaxes, and seems to notice me for the first time.

  “Pierre.”

  He thrusts out a hand. It’s bony, as I expected, of a piece with those deep eye sockets, that Roman nose. His accent isn’t quite properly English.

  “American?”

  He laughs. “No, Canadian. And you?”

  “Harry.”

  “Chinese.” It’s not a question.

  “No, from Malaya, from Singapore.” But I remember, how, on the Britannic, on that long voyage to Liverpool, they fobbed me off onto the Aliens Manifest, a deemed citizen of China, along with the Argentinian doctor, the Italian teacher, and the students from Hong Kong. Only later did they cross my name out, and put me at the bottom of the list of British subjects. I am only Malayan on sufferance, when they want me to be.

  “You’re a student here, in London?”

  “I used to be. Now I’m at Cambridge. I didn’t like having to dash about on the tube or bus from lecture to lecture.”

  “You should have bought a motorbike.”

  Now that he says this, I can smell petrol on him, mixed with the scent of Woodbines. The cuff of his coat, I notice, is finely hemmed in a thin, barely visible thread.

  “You don’t have a pencil?”

  I fumble for one, conscious of the shabbiness of my jacket. He takes it cautiously, as if it might not be quite clean.

  “We must talk more, afterwards,” he says. “I have plans for a tour of the Orient. Your perspective would be very useful.”

  I put my finger to my lips, and point. Laski’s here, at last, doffing his black, shapeless hat, and then hanging up his old blue overcoat. The auditorium is full now. He smooths back his hair from a centre parting, marshals his notes, and then looks up at us over the rims of tiny, wire-rimmed glasses. An insignificant man: you might pass him, without noticing in the street. He is only remarkable when he begins to speak.

  He will talk today, he says, of something dear to the hearts of many of his audience: the end of colonialism. There are students here from India and Pakistan, flushed with the excitement of independence, but also students from nations in waiting: Burma, Ceylon, the Gold Coast, even Malaya. He extends his arms as if to embrace them. He has talked in recent weeks about the programmes of the Labour Government in Britain, of how it will transform society, and yet how much more difficult this process has been than he and others had first thought. Part of this, no doubt, is class interest. Doctors, fearful their incomes may be cut, are resisting the funding of a National Health Service. Yet there is also a larger structural problem. We have nationalised industries, but they still run as if they were private corporations. The old foremen and the managers are still there. Walk out onto the street, to Houghton Street and the Aldwych, into the grey fog of a London day. 1947. Rationing remains in place: people’s faces are pinched in poverty. But walk further, up into Bloomsbury. Look at how the wrought-iron railings have vanished from the gardens; notice the bombed-out sections of the terraces, their retaining walls shored up in timber, grey-green with damp. Signs of the times, gentlemen. There are no barriers now: anyone of us can walk into a viscount’s garden, or a duchess’s drawing room. Pathways to a New Jerusalem.

  Pierre pushes his pad in front of me. Brilliant, he has written, in a spidery hand. I nod, then turn away. I want to listen.

  Laski continues. Names fly through the air: John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Babington Macaulay. And then statistics, too, spat out like bullets. For me the details blur. I can see the structure he is building, but not quite the details, the individual bricks. I look around. Some students are like me, listening open-mouthed. Others, like Pierre to my left, take copious notes, nodding periodically, or scratching their heads. It is warm in here, out of the rain. Smells of chalk, Brylcreem, stale cigarettes and, underneath it all, unwashed humanity.

  He is coming to an end. The War taught us, or should have taught us this. The age of colonialism is over. But as colonies become nations, so the search for real democratic freedoms will become ever more difficult. He looks around, pauses, and waits until the faces of the note-takers turn up again, towards him. Those of us here from colonies and new nations comprise two classes of people. Government scholars, possibly from humble or modest backgrounds, who will go back to employment in the Civil Service. And then rich men’s sons, who will return to oil the cogs of commerce, to help family businesses to reach out into the world. In each case, you must reflect, work to make change. There will be a change of flags, and the managers and foremen will change too, over time. But it will be very easy to carry on within the same basic structures, to become new copies of those who went before. Much more difficult to search out those absent railings, those gaps in the terraces, those pathways to the future.

  Pierre is pointing to a single capitalised word in the margins of his notes.

  LUNCH?

  I nod. He pockets my pencil, and as the lecture ends, we make our way out, down the stairs.

  The queue for the canteen has already started.

  “Not here,” he says, and he tugs at my arm. “I know a place.”

  And so we go outside, into Houghton Street and then into the bustle of the Aldwych, with the columns of Bush House looming over us like a cliff. As we wait to cross, he offers me a Woodbine, lights his cigarette, and then mine, with one of those lighters that American servicemen use, sleek as an aeroplane, nestled like a bird in his hand.

  • • •

  It’s warm and airless in the pub. Pierre chooses the lounge bar, with its lumpy cushions and stained flock wallpaper, and settles us down in a corner table, leaving me to guard his hat, coat, and satchel. A minute later, he’s back from the bar, two glasses in hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “The food doesn’t look very appetising, after Paris.”

  “Nor after Singapore.”

  He shrugs, and then raises his glass to mine.

  “Cheers!”

  I sip. The beer is soapy, bitter and flat: even after a year in England, I still cannot get used to it.

  “The worst thing?” he remarks. “You can’t get fresh oysters.”

  Food, it emerges, is one of the few things on which we can agree. I take another sip.

  “Laski’s lecture,” he says. “What did you think?”

  I try to explain. I left London for the quiet, so that I can focus on reading Law, and spend time with my newly arrived fiancée (at this he raises his eyebrows). But when I come down to London, I still go to see his lectures. I am impressed, of course. I would like to believe.

  “But you don’t? You find some contradictions?”

>   He leans closer, puts his glass down on the table, waves his hands.

  “You’re sceptical? You find the fact that an Englishman is telling colonials how to go about decolonisation laughable?”

  I open my mouth to reply, but he won’t stop.

  “Then again, you might say Laski is a different sort of Englishman. Jewish. He knows what it is to be different. Just as my heritage”—and here he spreads his hands out, perfectly pressed cuffs peeping out of the rich wool of his sweater—“is both English and French. This gives him a way in, that pathway that he spoke of. And, I, like you, have studied Law. This offers us a further way in: the courtroom, maybe, can be that place where the new society will be built.”

  He pauses again. I start to speak, then hesitate, waiting for an interruption that does not come. I continue. I would like to believe. But I think sometimes that human beings are not, as Laski seems to think, naturally good. What I saw in the War, with the Japanese in Singapore, convinced me of that. We retreat, ultimately, into tribal allegiances: we speak fine words, of course, but ultimately self-interest wins out.

  He leans closer. “But surely…”

  Does he remember just now, when we came out of Houghton Street, into the Aldwych? Look up, to the two great statues high up on Bush House, their ridiculous togas just covering the groin. The inscription: “To the Friendship of English-Speaking Peoples.” Does he think this includes me?

  “Neither does it include me.”

  But it’s different for him, I tell him. He can pass as English in this city, if he does not open his mouth. And even if he does, if he is seen as American, he will be taken as a younger brother, the second of those two statues, vigorous, reaching out to help its aged companion hold the torch aloft.

  He smiles. “So the world cannot change?”

  I do not answer, and the buzz of conversation in the pub returns. Pipe smoke, thickly scented, like the interior of a Cambridge tutor’s office.

  He is discomfited, I can see. He changes topics. He has a dream, he tells me, of travelling across Europe and into Asia. On his Harley Davidson, possibly. He traces out a route with his hands. Avignon, Rome, across the Adriatic to the Acropolis, then the Bosphorus, Tehran, Bokhara, Samarkand, Kashgar and the Silk Road to Shanghai, Pearl of the Orient. He wants to see the world. Better go by sea, I tell him. Pass Aden, then Bombay, Colombo, Singapore, Hong Kong. The Beautiful Bay, the Lion City, and the Fragrant Harbour: their names are just as romantic. Yet what he will find there will not be so very different from London, Paris, or Montreal. I have found nothing here, nor in Cambridge, that I had not seen in Singapore.

  I can see I am a disappointment to him. He likes his Orientals as he likes his oysters: raw, not cooked. He finishes his pint, and leans forward to speak again. At the last second, he turns away: he is looking at the clock.

  “Goodness. Is that the time? I have an appointment.”

  He looks towards me, at my half-full glass.

  “Harry, don’t leave now on my account. Stay and finish your drink.”

  He snatches up his coat and hat, and ducks and weaves his way to the door. A last backward glance.

  “See you at Laski’s lectures sometime?”

  I raise my glass in response as the door swings shut.

  I finish my drink. It is not until I gather my things together that I notice the satchel that he has left behind. I hesitate. I would normally not pry, but there is no other way to return it to him. I open it carefully, undoing the strap. Slim pickings. The notepad he was using in class. My pencil, which I now take back. And then a loosely-folded letter, with its envelope missing. I find myself blushing when I read it, but I have the afternoon free, and it does suggest to me a plan:

  Pierre:

  Yours is a strange kind of love. You talk of freedom, but you do not practise it. Sometimes, I think how easy it is, for men especially, to become that very thing that they think they oppose. Love me with respect, or not at all.

  At the Lion House, then, in Regent’s Park Zoo. Half past three, today. Don’t be late.

  Hélène

  • • •

  The zoo is crowded, with chattering schoolchildren in long crocodiles and dour men in grey coats and pork pie hats. The sky is overcast but blank; umbrellas are carried but furled. I look at my watch. I’ve made good time to get here, rumbling up the tube to Camden town, striding briskly up Parkway, his satchel over my shoulder, and then along Prince Albert Road to the canal. I can loiter.

  The first section of the zoo is unremarkable: a few cages of dozy owls, high on their perches, doing their best to ignore hooting noises made by two grubby boys. Some sleek, well-fed pheasants peck repetitively at scattered corn, and give way to an aviary full of miserable, hunched birds, clearly accustomed to warmer climates. Across the footbridge that spans the canal, prospects improve: there are zebras, a giraffe, and a hippopotamus wallowing happily in mud. Outside a larger enclosure, a movie camera has been set up. Two baby elephants await, and two tiny, violently blonde girls are encouraged up onto their backs. One elephant is still; the other turns away, and then proceeds to roll over on the ground. The keepers come with a hose and towels; these are kindly meant, but somehow have the appearance of instruments of torture. The elephant is washed, dried, and readied again. The little girl prepares to mount again and then, quite unexpectedly, bursts into tears.

  The British are organised; you have to give them that. Each animal has its own separate place. Some thought has clearly been given to arrangements: animals that might disturb each other are kept separate, and the order of the cages, one suspects, is also arranged with a visitor’s pleasure in mind. I know from my reading that they work hard behind the scenes to keep the zoo’s inhabitants in their apparent state of nature. The beavers, for instance, try every night to dam up their pond; early in the morning, before the zoo opens, the keepers remove the structure their little guests have made, twig by twig. The orang utan, newly brought from Malaya by a returning colonial official, is not yet on display. I have seen photographs of him nestling into a tweed jacket very similar to mine, splaying fingers towards his minders. For the moment, they seem to want to kill him with kindness.

  I stop at a kiosk and buy a cup of weak tea and a doughnut filled with virulently red jam that squirts out and sticks obstinately to my fingers. A crowd of children has gathered in one of the open spaces, chattering with excitement. I stand on a bench and crane forward to see. The chimpanzee’s tea party is starting, each ape led into the arena by an attentive staff member. These are not the cuddly keepers with lab coats and sweaters you see in the Pathé News reels; they have crisp, dark uniforms, with shiny boots and peaked hats, moving with the determination of soldiers. Some of the chimps, if you look carefully, are anchored to their guardians by thin, slack leashes. They climb up steps to a platform, shamble hesitantly, then sit down round a table, each in his own chair. The children in the crowd cheer hungrily. A keeper brings lunch on a tray: a jug of milk, and plates of food. One chimp is cautious, studiously feeding himself with a correctly held spoon. Another grabs his spoon by its bowl, and shovels: soon he is upending his plate, tipping its contents into his mouth and onto his fur. The children go wild. They point with glee, then turn their heads to their parents in curiosity, wondering why they do not disapprove. After this, the fruit is served, and the boldest chimp crawls on the table, helping himself to the contents of others’ plates. The others eat on, apparently oblivious. Then one takes the jug of cream and upends it into his mouth. Later, their bellies distended, they are brought to the railings. Their guardians hold their hands firmly, and let laughing and screaming children reach out to touch, but they keep those thin leashes loose, waiting, to snap back the collars around their necks.

  I wonder, idly, if those leashes are something more than a sensible precaution. They are almost invisible; a few brushstrokes on a negative, and they would cease to exist. Yet possibly they are a sign of something else, of an order that prevails behind the facades of th
e animal houses, where training involves beatings as well as kindness? I move on.

  At the aquarium, the king penguins stand forlorn without fish, still as statues. Cigarette smoke. A chance remark, in a thick Northern accent: “They might as well be dead, mightn’t they, for all the action we get to see?” Then on to the lion house. I check my watch again: quarter past three. Ideally, he would be here early. I could return the bag to him, and take my leave, without the embarrassment of new introductions.

  The lion house is beautiful. I walk through the gallery at the rear, peering over a parapet through the bars, as you might look over a bank counter, into the lions’ den. Straw, fur, and sweet-scented darkness. Outside, at the front of the house, the enclosures extend into the crowd like fingers, elongated birdcages with slender, barely visible bars. I work my way to the front. Two lionesses prowl, pacing towards me and then retreating into the warmth behind. A further round, and then another. They seem almost ghost-like, caught in a trance, far more impressive than that lazy tiger brought in from Whipsnade, and its fractious, hyperactive cubs. They pace again. And then a keeper pushes a lump of meat, impaled on a long handle, between the bars. There is a growl, a flurry of teeth and claws. The crowd thickens.

  I move away. In one of the other fingers, I find a solitary lion. He does not pace, but stands still, looking out, his mane stroked by a hint of breeze. I move closer. He turns to look at me, and the black pupils in his sandy eyes dilate. He pleads with me. Of course the keepers are right. I cannot trust him: I cannot let him out. At the very best, I might be able to build a cage without bars, one that he might not even realise he was inside.

  The satchel slips on my shoulder, and I snatch at it before it falls into the mud. It’s strange how memory works, how those very things you want to forget stick obstinately in your mind. That sentence from the letter I should not have read:

  Sometimes, I think how easy it is, for men especially, to become that very thing that they think they oppose.

  I look at the lion again, and he stares back without moving. In each other’s eyes, perhaps, we see our respective futures.