Forgotten Life

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Beer, drink … My God! Listen, what is the use? Never mind beer and drink, what will happen to us?’

  ‘You know the answer. It hurts, but you know as well as I. I’ll miss you, but life will go on for you as before, except better. I’m the one who has to face the violent changes.’

  She smacked me lightly on the thigh. ‘Life as before, you say? What do you know? You go back to peaceful Britain. The violence will be here, you understand? Real violence with blood and many, many people dead. Mainly Chinese. The Indonesians are mad murderous fanatics. They hate Chinese people, just like the bloody Nipponese. Oh, I can’t tell you! They wait now, they just wait … Once you are gone, then they start to kill off all foreigners except only Malay people. You think they give back Jean’s plantation in Palembang? No, they keep it for themselves. Us they push in the face, into the sea, to swim for China.’

  I had no answer.

  In the evenings, after dark had descended on the city, our little group, the Merciers, Charlie, and I, would sit outside the old grocery and chat, and I would pass Jean a Dutch cigar. The evenings were peaceful under the arcade, apart from the mosquitoes. A short distance away was the barrack where the Ambonese lived. The Ambonese were Indonesian mercenary troops faithful to the Dutch, good fighting men and good singers too. They had their women with them in barracks, and would sit at the open windows strumming guitars and singing songs which had travelled round the world, such as ‘Aurora’ and ‘La Cucaracha’. Sometimes they played a great Malay favourite, ‘Terang Boelan’. At such moments, I chafed that I could not take Mandy into my arms and carry her fast on to the nearest bed.

  There we would sit, enjoying the cooler air which followed sunset, until the satay man was heard, progressing slowly down the next street, clicking his wooden clickers to announce his wares. When he appeared with his wooden trolley, freighted with steaming soup and the charcoal fire over which these sticks of satay sent out an appetizing smell, we bought our supper from him. It saved cooking. Eating satay in those circumstances seemed to me one of the heights of bliss, the pleasures of Mandy apart.

  Terrible anxieties overcame me. I had no idea what to do. I asked Jean for his opinion of the situation.

  ‘Some days I think maybe I’ll get back to the plantation, non? Then it doesn’t look so good. The overland route to Palembang is closed. The British won’t let me go by sea, though I could pay – the ships are too crowded. A fine idea, non? Doesn’t anyone build ships now the war is supposed to be over? The Swiss office remains closed.’

  ‘If – when we leave, you’ll be part of the Republic of Soekarno’s Indonesia. Doesn’t that scare you a bit?’

  ‘Merdeka!’ he said, ironically. ‘Sure, it scares me, but what can I do? I’m not Dutch, who they hate. I hope they’ll let me and Wang and the ladies go back to work. They’ll want rubber production, and it needs real skilled work to bring a plantation to productivity, non? So we hope always for the best.’

  ‘Why don’t you just give up and go to Singapore where you’ll all be safe?’

  ‘Singapore? You crazy? You heard how crowded it is? Who could live in such a place? I like open air, me. Besides, all my capital investment is in Palembang. I leave here, I lose it, okay?’

  ‘But you’d be safe in Singapore. What about the others?’

  ‘We’ve got nothing, Joe. All we’ve got is here. You might as well suggest going back to la Suisse – in Switzerland.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Switzerland?’

  He dropped his voice. ‘You’re not a child, non? You know what prejudice exists in Europe. Do you think I’d want to take Ginny back there? We’d both be – what’s the word in English? – ostracized. What would she do in la Suisse? I belong in the East with her. It’s my commitment, non?’

  If anything, Jean increased my anxieties, by showing me clearly the nature of the trap that was closing round them, round Ginny and Mandy. I still found it difficult to believe in the violence of the Indonesians. Yet only a few years later, Bertrand Russell, one of the few people in the West who seemed at all disturbed by the situation in Indonesia, said that the Soekarno government had killed as many as ten million Chinese. The government had declared them to be Communists, and so not a finger had been lifted in the West. At that time, the Chinese under Chairman Mao were nobody’s friends.

  The subject was not going to go away. A few days later, Mandy resumed it.

  ‘You like Medan, I think, Joe? Don’t I often hear you say how it’s nice, warmer than England and so on, non?’

  She smiled, with a hint of that sharp tooth. ‘My God, you look so careful … These days, you know you look pretty careful. Listen, I just had this thought. Maybe you don’t go with the rest of the army when they leave Medan. You stay here, draw your pay and get some work in this nice place.’

  ‘On Jean’s plantation, I suppose? I wouldn’t know a rubber tree if it came up and bit me.’

  ‘Oh, you are so comical. Maybe here in a bank, in the big Dutch bank in the Kesawan. You are Englishman – the Indonesians would not harm you.’

  ‘I couldn’t work in a bank. I wouldn’t be any good. I’ve had no training.’ Her suggestion threw me into a panic. I liked Medan: but the thought of being stuck in it on my own in the chaos that would undoubtedly follow as the Indonesians and Dutch fought it out was extremely alarming.

  I fell back on my old line of defence.

  ‘You don’t understand the army.’

  ‘Oh, this damn army! Do they own you lock, stock and barrel, yes? Listen, can’t you speak to your officer? The Polish person. Ask him. Ask him if I can come to Singapore with you. I can pay to come on your troopship. Or go in disguise, who knows?’

  ‘Forget it, my darling. These are all fantasies.’

  But a few days later came the words I had already anticipated, lying awake late into the night.

  ‘Sadly, Joe, you don’t love me any more.’

  Sulkily, ‘You know I do.’

  She threw herself naked on top of me and seized my shoulders. ‘Then why not marry me and get me out of this place? Then I will love you for ever, I swear!’

  A kind of depression seized me. I went and lay on my bed on the roof of the Rex and wallowed in gloom. It was not Mandy who depressed me, but rather the tissue of circumstance in which she and the Merciers were caught. To whom did Sumatra belong? To those who lived here? But some of the Dutch in the RAPWI camp, awaiting a ship to take them to Europe, had farmed here for four generations. Much of the prosperity of Sumatra was owed to Dutch enterprise.

  And Chinese enterprise had also contributed to the prosperity. I thought again of the first days in Padang, when British, Indian, Dutch, Japanese and Indonesian forces had sat armed together in the Chinese café. The memory clung like a parable. There seemed to be a kind of pleasant neutrality in the Chinese temperament, a moderation in general, which made the Chinese ill targets for retribution. Of course, this was long before Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution; but even that bout of madness was over comparatively quickly, to be followed by a prevailing Chinese wish for law and decency.

  Everyone seemed convinced that a bloodbath would follow the withdrawal of British troops. Yet the same was said of India, and the Indians could scarcely wait to see us gone.

  In my naivety, I had imagined that, following the end of the terrible war, everyone would rejoice in peace, and insist that there was no more fighting. Couldn’t laws be passed to that effect? Weren’t fifty-five million dead enough?

  As for dear Mandy, I would have been happy – proud – to marry her. How exciting it would be to set up house somewhere with her and two Chinese children, provided she could get a divorce. I was vague about Chinese divorce. Where would we live? What would my father do if I returned home with a Chinese wife and two kids? The house would fall down …

  I longed to be assimilated by her Chinese-ness, to learn Cantonese, to be in a real Chinese city. Perhaps we could go to Amoy, once the fighting there died down … But how would I g
o about all that?

  The world’s unsatisfactoriness was bad enough; there was also my own unsatisfactoriness to cope with.

  I was twenty years of age. Gloom at that age was a passing thing, just one colour in the dramatic spectrum of emotions. The phone rang.

  It was Army Ciné, to announce that a delivery of films was arriving at the port of Belawan, from Singapore. I recognized the drawling voice of the chain-smoking officer, Captain Morrison. He ordered me to go down in the Jeep to collect it. A convoy would be leaving the city for Belawan the following morning at 1030 hours, and I was to join it.

  ‘Sir.’

  That evening, Charlie and I went round to the Merciers as usual. I told them my news.

  ‘New films, hurrah!’ said Jean. ‘You must give us all free seats, Joe. I want most to see Hollywood Canteen with the Andrews sisters.’

  ‘Bataan,’ said Charlie. ‘I missed it in Calcutta.’

  ‘Oh, Gilda, please,’ said Mandy. ‘It stars Rita Hayworth and I’m just mad about her.’

  ‘Devotion for me,’ I said. ‘It stars Ida Lupino and I’m mad about her. How about you, Ginny?’

  Ginny, still lying on her sofa, said, ‘I think that best would be Brief Encounter – a tragic love story …’

  I gave her a glance. She returned an innocent smile.

  When I said that I was going down to Belawan with a convoy the following morning, there were exclamations of alarm. Several vehicles had been shot up on the coast road.

  ‘The good old SWOBS will see that nothing happens,’ Charlie said. ‘The extremists have only got pluck enough to pick off single vehicles. It’ll be okay.’

  ‘I have the morning off,’ Wang said. ‘Can Mandy and I come along with you, Joe, for the ride?’

  ‘It isn’t exactly safe …’

  ‘Oh, do let us come,’ said Mandy, adding her mite. ‘It would be so lovely to have a sight of the sea.’

  So it was agreed, with concealed reluctance on my part. I much liked the easy-going Wang, but there seemed a good chance that if he discovered how I was carrying on with his wife he might stick a knife into me. I had heard tales about the Chinese.

  It rained the following morning, the downpour sounding thunderous on my flimsy bedroom roof. Shivering, pulling on a shirt, I looked out and saw everywhere leaking roofs and streaming gutters. Poor Medan – for over three years it had had no maintenance, no repair. Under the assaults of a tropical climate, it was falling slowly apart.

  In an hour, the rain was over and the sun shone forth with its usual vigour. In ten minutes, everything was bone dry.

  The convoy for Belawan assembled from the RAPWI camp. Some more lucky Dutch, mainly women, were off to catch the boat home. I was late arriving with Mandy and Wang. Ginny had taken a turn for the worse, and I drove her back to the field hospital.

  She looked so pale. ‘You need a milder climate,’ I said.

  ‘Hong Kong would be nice now,’ she said, ‘with maybe the first typhoon of the season blowing in from the Pacific … Even Lake Toba would do. The air’s fresh by the lake.’

  I kissed her and left. I feared for her. She would be a wonderful sister-in-law.

  The convoy started off only a few minutes late. The South Wales Borderers were there in strength, with Bren carriers leading and tailing the procession of three five-ton lorries, a private car, and several Jeeps, all loaded with civilians. Dispatch riders patrolled the convoy, seeing to it that the vehicles remained close together.

  Once there had been fields and cultivation on either side of the Medan–Belawan road. Now it was wilderness, with the jungle drawing nearer. Several Merdeka flags flew on wayside huts; only the odd kid or dog ran out to greet us as we went by in our cloud of dust. Mandy and Wang were wildly excited by the ride. I had a conviction that we were going to be shot at, but the journey passed without incident, and we arrived safely at Belawan.

  In some respects Belawan was the very opposite to Emmahaaven. The hills sloped jungle-clad down to the water’s edge in Emmahaaven, and there was a deep-water anchorage. The Belawan coastline was more ambiguous, being of shallow descent from land to water, and that margin concealed by low-lying mangrove swamps, through which water and mud trickled. No one could say where Sumatra really began or ended. So shallow was the sea for some miles out that a channel to the docks had to be regularly dredged through treacherous sandbanks. This of course had not been undertaken since the outbreak of war; ships of any draught had in consequence to moor two or three miles out to sea, with shallow-bottomed landing craft to transport passengers or cargoes between shore and ship.

  There, two miles out on the listless flood, the celebrated Van Heutz lay at anchor. It had arrived from Singapore the previous day. Seeing it, the Dutch raised a gallant cheer.

  The military ranged themselves protectively round the lorries as the latter were unloaded. A few buildings and go-downs stood forlornly on the dock, their windows broken or missing. Someone had raised a Union Jack over the RTO’s office for the occasion; it was an encouraging sight, limply though it lay against its mast in the still heat. Leaving Mandy and her husband by the Jeep, I made my way towards, the office through the mêlée of women shrieking as they tugged at their respective bundles of luggage.

  My name was called. I looked round and there was Eedie, a blue scarf tied round her head, carrying an enormous wicker trunk.

  ‘I’m going, Joe, leaving this fucking place at last,’ she said. She put down the trunk and embraced me mightily. She was still an inch taller than I was. I looked into her broad honest face, beaded with sweat, with the tiniest blonde down on her upper lip; all differences between us were forgotten in this moment of reunion and parting. I thanked God that her mad Irishman was not there to see her off.

  ‘Oh, he buggered off last night,’ she said, when I asked about him. ‘He’s on duty today. Now it’s a new life, God be thanked. Three years and seven months in this stinking part of the world – and I only came for a month’s holiday with my uncle. Now – no uncle, youth gone, and just this trunk full of all that I possess in the world, just! Oh, but what’s that? Soon I’ll see snow again, wonderful snow, and pancakes and flowers and Tampax. And no yellow or brown people.’

  She kissed me again vigorously.

  ‘You’ll be going home soon, Joe. Write to me. I give you my address. Maybe you can come and see me in Maastricht. Listen, I know you have a Chinese girl friend now, isn’t it? Take my advice, don’t get too entangled. Just have fun, old boy, okay?’

  ‘I am having fun,’ I said, a little unsteadily. She was writing down her address on a damp piece of paper.

  ‘The Orientals are Orientals – okay in their place, that’s all. Remember what your Kipling said, eh? “East is East and West is West, and never the two shall meet.” He was right, you know.’

  ‘Things are different these days, Eedie.’

  She prepared to hump her trunk again. ‘Okay, I’m a racist. After all the Nips did, anyone would be. I still have nightmares of being raped. When I get back to Holland, I hope never to see another Oriental again.’

  We gave each other a farewell kiss and a hug. Someone was shouting for everyone to get a move on. ‘Whatever you do, take care of your darling self, Eedie.’

  ‘Goodbye, fucking Sumatra!’ she shouted, joining the crowd.

  I stood there rather misty-eyed.

  British and Indian MPs and soldiers were directing the excited crowd. I could see that it would take a while, allowing for the usual army bullshit, before they were all embarked in the landing craft and the craft got away safely towards the distant ship. I went over to the RTO to collect the crate of films. Eedie’s parting words were still very much in my mind.

  When I had signed for it, two sepoys helped me carry the crate back to the Jeep.

  ‘How I wish we were getting on that boat too,’ said Mandy. Wang said nothing. He sat where he was in the back of the vehicle, shading his eyes with his hand, gazing out over the leaden water.

 
8

  The crate of film was dumped in the foyer of the Rex, where two Indian carpenters were working on building a counter and shelves for the beer bar. They were using old wood ripped from a commandeered building down the street, and complaining of its hardness. The whole foyer was strewn with tools and wood.

  I had specifically been given orders by the chain-smoking Captain Morrison not to open the crate on my own account. That was his business. Accordingly, I left it where it was and went to do something else.

  The Rex was pleasant during the day, when it was empty. It had its own smell, an aroma of cigars and cigarette smoke, but also a slightly exotic flavour, lent it by a disinfectant we bought locally with Japanese guilders and used in the lavatories; frangipani, perhaps. I liked it in this peaceful state, with the screen blank – the curtains having long since disappeared, probably appropriated for bedding in the days when the Indonesians ran the place.

  It was enjoyable to wander about the aisles, thinking of all the fantasy lives which had briefly endured here. One of my orderlies had found an old local Indian lady who came every day and patched the worst worn seats in exchange for a few cigarettes. British Players were her preference; Indian Players were not at all to her taste. She was at work now, and I exchanged namastes with her. She was a portly lady, grey-haired and wrapped in a grey sari, who suffered some difficulties with her stomach when she bowed to me. I took those bows as my right, without thought. But no doubt she had done a lot of bowing in her humble life.

  Sometimes, I would take a stroll down the road to see the friendly Rajputana Rifles. They lived in an old temple which had in its courtyard a slimy green swimming pool, full of enormous green frogs. In the pool the Rajputs would disport themselves or do their dhobi. Despite their coaxing invitations, I would never join them. I took tea with them. They brewed up a particularly thick delicious tea, the leaves boiled up in a black dixie together with a pound of sugar and condensed milk. It was like soup. I was thinking of going down there when Captain Zajac arrived.