by Brian Aldiss
‘Well, it wasn’t you, so just shut it up. You want Sumatra back, just because it was yours once before in history.’
‘Oh, piss off, you Dutch bint. Come to bed.’
‘Not with you, you’re bloody drunk. It comes from your fucking ears.’
So a little frostiness intervened. As so often with drunken arguments, I did not mean a word I said, and yet the underlying resentment had to be given voice. The British had no good reason to be in Sumatra to begin with.
6
About a mile from my billet, in a modest side street, stood the cinema called the Deli, after Medan’s main river. It was commandeered for the military, although men could take girl friends, one per man. Performances were always crowded.
The idle Japanese Army had spent its three-year occupation looting and collecting what booty it could. 26 Division was busy forcing it to disgorge. Food, valuables, furniture, and, above all, drink, arrived spasmodically at the sergeants’ mess. They had acquired a vast store of movies, the more appropriate of which were shown in the Deli. Thus did I see many vintage films, many ancient themes.
One evening, while Eedie was avoiding me, I went with another sergeant, Charlie Frost, to a showing of The Great Gabo, a melodrama about a ventriloquist’s dummy which takes over the ventriloquist.
We emerged from the Deli with the crowd, everyone in sombre green uniform, with a defiant variety of headgear and lengths of hair, everyone armed. Our footsteps echoed in the narrow streets as we dispersed. On one corner, respectfully back against the wall, stood a white man in white ducks in company with three Chinese, a man and two women, all dressed European style. As Charlie and I passed them, one of the women asked in a lively voice, and with bright glances at us, ‘Was it a good film?’
Thus I made the acquaintance of Ginny and her sister Mandy, and Jean Mercier and Wang.
The garrison trooped by as we stood talking. When the street was empty, the man asked, ‘Would you care for a drink?’
Soldiers meet only a certain cross-section of any civilian population. Of that cross-section, those most willing to talk to soldiers are crooks, priests, and prostitutes. Charlie and I were highly suspicious of this man with a French accent, but we went along with him and the others. They all lived just round a corner or two, in what had been a grocery shop before the Japanese arrived. The ground floor was arranged with old bamboo chairs and tables. Very little had been done for the decor, beyond the hanging of a few bright Chinese calendars. Our new friends had moved in only four months ago, after the British released them from internment.
There are times in childhood when a boy sees a girl and is overcome by a mysterious yearning, of whose nature he is kept unaware since the time is not yet ripe. A similar yearning overcame me when I sat down on those wicker chairs and found myself conversing with two Chinese ladies. Despite my life-long admiration of all things Chinese, my only intercourse with a Chinese girl had been – how secretly, how boldly! – in Calcutta, with a pretty creature who charged me ten rupees for the pleasure.
Jean was a cheerful and fatherly man, a rubber planter whose plantations lay to the east, outside Palembang. He was French Swiss, and married to Ginny. Mandy was Ginny’s younger sister and married to Wang. Jean and Ginny had a baby boy, Sammi; Mandy and Wang had two little children, Fat and Tek, generally looked after by an inferior aunt.
Jean’s nationality had puzzled the Japanese authorities. If he was French, then he was an enemy alien; if he was Swiss, than he was neutral. How could he be both? By insisting on speaking English rather than his native French, Jean persuaded the Japanese that he really was Swiss, and therefore entitled to a simple internment, rather than imprisonment with the Dutch. The other three of the party were Japan’s hated enemy, Chinese. But no, they also were Swiss, according to Jean’s continued claims. The Japanese were, on occasions, sticklers for what was correct. Besides, Wang, although he spoke little English, was from Hong Kong, and had a British passport. So the four had lived for three years, chafing at their confinement, in a small house in the street where I was now billeted – in which time both couples had had children born to them. The British had released them recently, and established them in this part of Chinatown.
All this emerged, with many other details, over innumerable cups of coffee and innumerable cigars. Ginny’s bold move of talking to us in the street led Charlie and me to think of ourselves as specially chosen to look after these four unfortunates with no home and no immediate prospect of getting back to the rubber plantations where they all worked.
We soon drew closer to the four Merciers, as we called them. I saw more of them, for I was idle. Soon, I was calling on them every day, as well as in the evening, with Charlie. Charlie Frost was a good old Cockney, with a little wife he had rashly married on his embarkation leave, who now pined for him, or not, in a terraced house in Lewisham. We became friends simply by accepting each other, without questions. I cannot say whether that was a working-class ethic or part of the alchemy of wartime. I know that I greatly admired Charlie and his immense solid respectability. His father was in the coal business, I remember.
The Merciers told us stories of Medan under the Japanese, and how public executions had been carried out in the main square. Sometimes the Japanese were correct and polite. At other times, they behaved with inhuman brutality.
Gradually, by unspoken means, Charlie and I were accepted into the little Mercier group. Ginny was twenty-four and Mandy twenty-two. Wang was about the same age, and Jean thirty.
Jean was generally calm, always genial. He and Ginny conversed in English, since she had no French and he no Cantonese. He had no wish to leave Sumatra. He just wished for normal conditions to return, and to work on the plantation with his pretty wife looking after the home. Jean was a tall thin man – we were all thin – always immaculately dressed in white ducks and white shirt.
Wang was lazy and good-natured. He alone did not look half-starved. He liked the current condition of uncertainty, since it meant he did not have to work – although after a while he did get a menial job in a restaurant.
Of the two sisters, Ginny was the more vivacious. Being the older, she was inclined to boss her sister about; yet after all their internment the two remained close friends. Both had attended Hong Kong University, and were well educated. Mandy – whose Chinese name was Wang Lim Hwa – was the prettier, with a sweet kitten-shaped face and deep dark eyes. Ginny was always laughing, and soon hung on my arm and treated me as if she were a youthful aunt of mine. I adored her, though my feelings for her sister were warmer, darker.
They were proud of their English friend. Soon, while Jean went out to haunt offices for news or shifts in policy, Ginny and Mandy were riding round in their friend’s Jeep to do the shopping, or simply for the pleasure of it, their cotton dresses blowing carelessly in the wind. I was certainly proud of them, although there was no kudos to be had from associating with Chinese women, unlike Dutch women; rather the reverse, to be frank. Most of my army colleagues regarded them as ‘natives’.
Jean and Wang trusted me to take care of their wives. Aware of that trust – trust is strong in times of war – I stood and watched as they shopped for tiny slices of cheese or tried on hats, laughing delightfully at each other as they did so. I was adult now, and the sten hanging on my shoulder was there to protect them as well as myself.
After the long months in India and Burma, female company was an oasis in the desert. I soon became aware of the considerable differences between the two sisters. While Ginny, as I have mentioned, touched me openly, swung on my arm in company, laughing, physical contact with Mandy was more secret. At first it was an affair of bare arm accidentally touching bare arm, nothing more. Yet it developed into a strange code, the meaning of which I told myself I could not understand.
They were animated and cheerful young women, happy to be free at last from their semi-captivity, glad to have a stranger’s attention. The shabby grocery store was always a place of laughter and the babble
of tongues – and, almost from the start, shy deer glances from Mandy.
Ginny always wore light Western-style cotton dresses. Mandy wore the same by day. In the evenings, perhaps when Charlie and I took the girls to the cinema, she would put on a yellow or blue silk cheongsam, ankle length, with a slit up to the knee. Then she looked most seductive. A dance hall opened in town, sign of reviving peaceful intent, and we escorted the ladies there. Jean and Wang came along but did not dance; they appeared proud to see us dancing with their wives. And as I held that slender and lively body in my arms, I saw the lecherous glances of other men, as they lumbered round the floor with their large Dutch ladies.
Unlike the Dutch, the Chinese were happy to have the British and Indian troops in Sumatra. Not only did they feel that the British were on their side (a feeling the British in no way reciprocated), but the current impasse suited them. They foresaw a time when the British would leave, when things would be worse for them, under the Dutch, or considerably worse, under the Indonesians – who, as Muslims, were known to be anti-Chinese. This was the time for them to be carefree, and enjoy young male company: someone new, after the secondhand years that had passed. Someone to take them to the Deli Cinema and indulge their girlish fantasies.
So my feelings towards Medan developed. It became the most delightful town I ever knew. In its centre were huge shady trees, overgrown and blowsy. Over everything hung a great quiet, broken only by bullock carts creaking by, the odd military vehicle, occasional outbursts of gunfire. People walked at a leisurely pace. The shops were almost empty. The heat was benevolent.
That is how I prefer to remember Medan, tumbledown after three years of utter neglect – yet was not that tumbledown quality how I now saw the whole world? Tumbledownness was a positive quality, defying the rage to be modern. Tumbledownness pointed towards the past, that mysterious past whose history awaited an historian. So Medan remains in memory, and perhaps that particular Medan remains in my memory alone:
Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away.
as Shelley said of a more renowned city.
The illusion that I had managed to detach myself from the army grew daily. Then the South Wales Borderers went into action, and I was once more the focus of Captain Zajac’s attention.
In an attempt to persuade the Indians of our division to desert, the Indonesians – the extremists – promised any man who went over to their side with his rifle and ammunition a place in a kampong, a woman, and protection.
One of the first to take advantage of the offer was a certain Corporal Bill Jones of the SWB. Not only did he desert with his revolvers: he loaded some Bren guns and a few boxes of ammunition into a Dodge truck and drove it into the Indonesian lines.
It was a coup for the Indonesians, and a disgrace for the South Wales Borderers. Jones lived a high life in the kampong. He was a flamboyant character, and not above shooting some of his old mates if needs must. Mandy, Ginny and I saw him once when we were shopping. He drove into the centre of town in a large black car, with a heavily armed escort before and behind him in two Japanese trucks. He too was shopping.
His name became legendary and his old regiment swore to wipe him out.
News reached headquarters that Jones was currently in a certain section of town held by the extremists. This section had as its headquarters a cinema called the Rex.
For once the British went on the attack. The few armoured vehicles in the area were mustered and the Borderers moved in after dark. They had a personal interest in this operation.
The operation was almost a complete success. The Indonesians were not prepared for a pitched battle. Twelve of them were killed, as against two Borderers. Several houses were set on fire and many more damaged. The Union Jack was raised over the Rex. Jones escaped to fight another day.
Captain Zajac summoned me and we stood before a large-scale map of Medan. ‘Here’s the river. The Rex is only two streets away. There’s a Sikh temple here. This is the extent of the sector we have cleared. The fires have been put out. Today at twelve hundred hours we blow up this bridge over the Deli. You and I are going along to watch proceedings. It’ll cause some inconvenience to the locals, but they can put up with that. It means the area can’t be infiltrated again if we just keep a good contingent of Rajputs in the temple area. The Borderers have guard posts here and here.’
Sappers did a neat job of blowing up the road bridge precisely at twelve hundred hours. Another sector of town could now be safely held. Zajac and I patrolled the streets, which were pleasant and tree-lined by the river, until we came to the Rex. Here the officer paused on the steps.
The exterior was burnt and the glass doors shattered. An Indian corporal stood on guard, rifle at the slope.
‘We’ll soon get this place patched up. Revenge is sweet and so is Claudette Colbert, eh?’ It was a joke.
‘We could use a second cinema, sir.’
‘Precisely. But Army Ciné is down on strength. You appear to be a spare bod, sergeant. So you are now going to be in charge of the Rex, starting very conveniently from now. For the time being, you will be answerable direct to me. That may change eventually. Meantime, you will be receiving a list of your duties. Two Indian orderlies will be attached to you for cleaning duty. Understood?’
‘You mean I’m in charge of this place?’
‘Correct.’
‘Sir.’
Everyday affairs in Medan had been lent a spice of excitement, even a note of sophistication, one might say, by the fringes of violence which edged them. Once Charlie and I had been fired on when returning home from the Merciers just before curfew. But to thrust into a vulnerable area was another matter. However, the novelty of the situation was a compensation. A cinema was mine, a whole kingdom of magic.
When the list of my duties arrived, I found that I was to live in the Rex, making my own accommodation. My previous accommodation was to be quitted by eighteen hundred hours.
This news I conveyed to the Merciers when I went to have lunch with them.
Ginny screamed with laughter. ‘You will be able to play films to yourself all day! Can we come?’
Mercier said, ‘Will you be safe? Blowing up the bridge has not made British troops more popular.’
‘The Rajputs are providing a guard at present. My duties don’t include stopping the building from being blown up.’
I had the afternoon in which to shift my belongings across town. As I went out to the Jeep, sweltering in the sun outside the ex-grocery, Mandy came along too.
‘Could I come with you and see your billet before you leave it? I haven’t seen that part of Medan since we lived there.’
I hesitated. ‘Will Wang mind? Does your sister want to come along too? How about Jean?’
Perhaps only hindsight suggested that I knew something transforming was about to happen, and wished to postpone its arrival.
To all my questions she demurely answered no and climbed into the passenger seat of the Jeep, showing as she did so an enticing display of leg. She sat there, looking ahead, exquisite and neat. Hot and sweating, I climbed into the driver’s seat and started up.
The streets as ever were almost empty, dreaming in sun and shade. The native traffic policeman at the entrance to the Kesawan had nothing to do. When we reached our lines, the MP did not rise from his seat in his guard hut. Recognizing me, he waved me on, accompanying the wave with a wolf whistle.
I stopped by the rear door of my billet as usual, walked beside her among the fragrant shrubs, said nothing.
‘We live for three years only two doors away, you know,’ Mandy said, indicating their old house among the trees. ‘Isn’t that funny coincidence?’
It was all I could do to reply. A strange excitement, a mixture of delight and apprehension, filled me.
Opening the back door, I indicated the stairs. She prece
ded me up them, walking in a leisurely way as if there were nothing at all on her mind.
‘Is like our old house,’ was all she said. ‘Only not so crowded. Twenty-four people have to live in our old house. Terribly noisy, with the babies crying.’
‘Of course.’ I managed to add, ‘Here’s my room,’ and she went in.
Five weeks had passed since I met the Merciers, five weeks on the hazy time scale of the tropics. In that time, I had never been alone with Mandy. Although I had thought voluptuously about her, they were merely thoughts; I swamped them with the knowledge that she was the mother of two infants and that I was in a delicate international position of trust. But when she turned towards me, I could not extinguish the expression on my face, lit with desire.
She smiled, showing those pearly little teeth. When she smiled broadly, one of them was revealed as pointed.
‘Is a nice room for one person. Maybe a little lonely for you, so far away from home.’
She walked across the room and went on to the balcony. I stood where I was. After a minute, she turned and came back to me, still with perfect self-possession.
‘I wanted to tell you that I love you, that’s all.’
We put our arms round each other.
Of course, on my part there was simple need. After two years away from England, the unsatisfactory affair with Eedie, at this point not entirely dead, had only whetted my longing for love. Love was the magic word, the trigger to deliver one to the freedoms of happiness, the magic potion made all the tastier by the knowledge that, in the circumstances, it was almost impossible to find. Had I found it? Well, the omens were good.
As we lay on my bed, Mandy spoke of her dissatisfactions with Wang. He was so indolent. He would not work. He had even enjoyed being interned, since that mainly entailed lying on his bed all day doing nothing. He had wept when they were released, since he thought that meant he would have to work again. He was good for nothing but giving her babies, and she did not want any more babies.