by Brian Aldiss
He went through the motions as he spoke, laughing and half-choking. Once Tertis had been known as Baby-face; since then, his little pudgy cheeks had grown heavy and foxy red.
‘It’s torture. It should be bloody fucking stopped.’
He gave me a sneering look. ‘Well, just you fucking try to stop it, mate. They deserve it – I’ll give them fucking Merdeka … You’d lick the arses of these fucking murdering blacks. You’re too bloody squeamish to live, you are, Stubbs, you and your bloody arms-deals.’
‘I can remember when you had the decency to be squeamish too, Tertis.’
‘Piss-off! Since then, I’ve fucking come of age. No soap behind my arse, mate. You’ll never know. I swung that fucking golf club to good effect this afternoon, must have broken every stinking rib in that cunt Luat’s black body. plus a few kicks in the goolies for luck. Teach these bastards to shoot us up. Wwrrrrr …’ The noise he made was a compound of derision and vomit, as if he could not bear his own secret feelings.
‘You’re sick, you bastard! I don’t want to hear.’ I got away from him and walked rapidly ahead towards my billet.
‘You’d love it, too, once you fucking well tried it!’ he called out. That flat laugh again. ‘Wrrrrrr … Drown ’em, rape ’em, hole in one!’
Thank God he wasn’t in my billet. I slammed the door behind me and went upstairs. The terrible thing was that I knew the violence in my own nature. I believed in part as he boasted, that I might love it if I tried it.
It was almost getting dark. Up in my room, Ida Lupino’s smile was just a blur. I left the light off so that the windows could remain open without too much wildlife bursting in. I stripped down bollock-naked. From my billet, I could see Tertis’s torture house in the distance, or part of it, at least, glimpsed between other houses. Indonesians were beaten up there regularly. No one said anything. A perverted part of me always wanted to watch. It wasn’t every day you got the chance to see some poor naked sod bashed to death with golf clubs.
In his cups, Jackie Tertis loved to talk about it. Many of the sergeants claimed he was making it all up. That was their defence. I stomped into the shower and leaned against the slate wall. Cold water descended like nutmeg-graters upon my prickly heat.
When I got to the sergeants’ mess for a bite to eat, there was Tertis, boozing and holding forth, his face dark. Charlie Meadows pitched into him, others put their oar in from time to time, but nothing stopped Tertis. He had a long story about a young Malayan girl and two men who had been caught in an ambush the previous evening, one of them the Luat he had mentioned to me earlier. He was very excited and drinking heavily. I tried not to listen as I attacked my soup.
‘We questioned the girl all morning,’ he said. ‘She was guilty all right – confused in her answers. We stripped her off and tied her to the table with her legs open. Wwrrrrr … Fought like a tiger, she did. We tore every strip of clothes off of her and then raped her, all four of us, and then we mashed her tits and head in with golf clubs. Wwrrrrr …’ He coughed and laughed, striking at the air before him.
Johnny Mercer gave his high nervous laugh, then looked down at his plate.
‘You’re a criminal, Tertis, a thug,’ said Ferguson, the Scots colour-sergeant. ‘The GOC ought to know what’s going on at yon Eastermann’s place. I willne drink in the same room wi’ you.’ He set down his glass angrily and got up.
Tertis rose, too. ‘Forget it, Jock. That’s the sort of treatment these people expect – don’t forget they’ve been under Jap rule all these years.’
‘Aye, well, we’re not Japs, thank the living Christ, and your talk turns my stomach, treating the other sex so shameful.’
Tertis began to show flecks of spittle on his lips. ‘You bloody hypocrite, Jock! Wasn’t it you telling us how you’d had a knee-trembler with some bloody Malayan cow in Singapore, up against the fucking walls of the cathedral? Where’s the fucking difference?’
‘All the fucking difference,’ said Ferguson. He turned to Dickie Payne, who as usual sat there saying nothing, sipping on a beer. ‘RSM, how come you tolerate such filth in our mess?’
Dickie made a slurred but expansive gesture. ‘Jackie could be right at that. Murdering buggers.’
‘Ach, that’s no’ the issue,’ said Jock. He marched out of the mess, slamming the door behind him.
‘You’ve got to civilise them somehow,’ said Wally Scubber. It was his sole contribution to the discussion.
In the silence that followed, Charlie Meadows motioned to Tertis. ‘Let’s have no more of this kind of talk. Sit down and keep your trap shut. You talk as if you’d gone over the top.’
‘Don’t bloody lecture me,’ Tertis said. He lurched to the bar, sticking his tumbler out to the mess orderly. While it was being filled with Indian Scotch, he said over his shoulder, ‘You’re all a lot of old women, that’s what. Face facts. Like a pack of fishwives hiding behind your mothers’ aprons waiting for Saturday, believe me. Up your pipe! Them two blokes were in possession of Jap machine-pistols, Luat a captain in the TRI. That’s not bullshit, you know. Well, is it, it’s not bullshit.’
He wandered back towards the table, where we all sat in embarrassed silence.
‘The RSM’S right, they’re murdering bastards. Kill you. They were going to chop us, shoot us. They chop you up with knives, malum, that’s what the Malays do, chop you up. What were we supposed to do? Catch ’em, let ’em go, like it was some fucking kid game? Butterscotch, marbles?’
He paused to stare at us. Dickie muttered, ‘They do chop you up. Run amok, everything.’
The remark triggered Tertis off again.
‘You chicken bastards, look at your fucking faces! “Report me to the GOC,” he said. You think the old general doesn’t know about PEA Force, doesn’t know, doesn’t laugh? He’d have liked to stuff her himself. Wrrrrr … “Here’s a medal for you, Jackie Tertis, boys, Sgt W/s, medal for gallantry, help yourself, kidder, VC, DSO, DSC, DSM, DDT, you name it, thanks of a grateful nation, upholding the old traditions of the regiment, Ypres, Somme, Dunkirk, Kohima, Mandalay, all the shagging rest.”
‘Rape ’em all, kill the fucking lot. Why, even my bastarding father …’ He turned suddenly on Mercer, who was eating silently. ‘You laugh – okay, you think it’s funny? Stuck here, us or them? We’re sitting on a powder-keg, hundreds of thugs like Luat, all Jap weapons, you think that’s funny you’re round the twist, not me.’
Looking down at his plate, Johnny said, ‘The powder-keg will be exploded by your sort of mentality.’
‘Ah, that intellectual crap, Mr Schoolmaster, another one. Helping primitive races, I know, don’t tell me! You forget there’s murder, fucking murder, going on in Sourabaya and Batavia right now. Right, our turn next, our turn for the high jump – women trained to kill and all, stab in the back. You, if you’d seen her, Stubby – you’re always poking some bloody Chink bitch or other – you’d seen her stripped, legs open wide, wwrrrr, all helpless, Christ, don’t tell me, one more bloody savage bint, you’d have fucking jammed it all the shitholing way up same as us. Well, come on now – yeah? Split the bitch in two. Admit it.’
I stared at the so-called beef on the plate before me. ‘Shit in it, for crying out loud, will you? You’re as sick as a dog. I can’t listen to any more or I’ll throw up.’
He shook a fist at me as I pushed my chair back. ‘Fine mates you are! Throw up, then, go on, you fucking pansy, faint, fall over, spew, piss on your frock –’
I left him to it. Mercer barged out of the mess with me. We charged into the open air so fast that we nearly fell over the cesspit, now covered with loose planks.
‘He should be sent home. He needs a trick cyclist.’
‘Remember him in Kanchapur, back in India?’ I said. ‘He was the baby of the platoon.’
‘Fear of death versus death-wish, pulling him apart. The way he drives around on that bike of his … The Indonesians will pick him off one day. One sniper, that’s all it needs. He drove out to Bela
wan on Wednesday, all on his Jack Jones, just for the hell of it. Bloody madman … Coming down the RAPWI? I need a drink and we ought to have a bit of a talk.’
‘Okay. I’d as soon miss the piss-up if Tertis is going to be there. Besides, I need some khana, I’m starving. I’ve been trying to get in touch with Boyer all day. Let’s walk. We’ll cool off.’
‘Let’s do that. I’ll hitch a lift back.’
‘Just let me grab a couple of things I have for Margey.’
He was standing smoking a cigar by the gate, keeping the mosquitoes off, when I returned. He said immediately, as if it was a sentence he had been rehearsing. ‘I think we should let the mutiny issue drop if Jhamboo wants it that way.’
‘Why do you say that? Jhamboo’s only a bloody Wog.’
He laughed; it was his usual meaningless noise. ‘Work it out for yourself, Horry. To use Tertis’s phrase, we’re sitting on a powder-keg here. If the TRI found out what Tertis and that bloody mob was up to, they would attack here with the mess as Target No. 1. We’re way under strength, blokes leaving, no reinforcements coming out from ALFSEA or the Blight. If we raise a stink about mutiny, all of “O” Section would have to be shipped to Changi for trial and imprisonment, leaving us even more vulnerable.’
As I thought that over, I lit one of my cigars.
‘You realise that that sort of argument leads to the collapse of the army and the discipline on which it’s built. It was fucking mutiny, aided and abetted by Corporal Steve Bloody Kyle.’
Johnny looked askance at me.
‘You’re a vindictive bastard at times, mate. What do you care about army discipline? You just have it in for Steve Kyle. He’s not a bad bloke. It wasn’t mutiny. The lads were all stoned on cheap carioca last night – they just felt unable to get up.’
‘Okay, let’s walk …’
Although I saw there was sense in what he said, I would not tell him what Jhamboo had told me; and a sort of delicacy in Johnny made him refrain from asking.
With my package for Margey under my arm, we strolled past the MP post and along the Serdenweg. Bats were wheeling above the lamp-post, making Stuka raids on the insect population in orbit there.
It was a wonderful evening. Blossoming trees overhung the road. Soon this evening and the others like it would be mere ghosts. We walked in silence until Johnny said, ‘This Dutch pusher I’m going out with was telling me that the local branch of the TRI has us all marked – all the British officers and NCOS, a dossier on each of us. Frightening thought, isn’t it?’
‘Better wind up in a dossier than on a slab.’
More silence. But I had to say it some time.
‘Johnny, you know I really am sweet on Margey. That’s why I need to speak to Boyer. Would you think I was fucking puggle if I went ahead and married her?’
At length, he said, ‘There’s a book in our billet you ought to read, by Joseph Conrad. About a white man marrying a native girl.’
‘I read it. But Margey’s not a savage, she’s a Chinese.’
‘Horry, old pal, don’t do it, don’t think about it. Just have a good time while you can. You’d rot, stuck in a place like this.’
‘I meant take her back to the Blight.’
He cast a glance at me.
‘Her face wouldn’t fit, would it. What would your Ma do if you turned up at home with a yellow girl on your arm? I know what mine would do. What would the kids be like?’
‘Well, they’d be bloody smashing. You know how cute Chinese kids are. Besides, Margey isn’t yellow. She’s paler than I am.
He sighed. ‘The longer you’re out here, the whiter they get …’
‘You think she’s just a whore, don’t you?’
‘Let’s put it this way, Horry, old mate. In the long run, it’s just as well you didn’t manage to locate Boyer.’
We got to town, and strolled into the restaurant on the corner of Maggalaan and Bootha Street. The big fat smiling Chinese who ran the place appeared, addressing me as Missa Stubbs. We ordered beers and five eggs and chips each. I planned to take Margey out to eat later, but I was hungry now.
A trader came in from the street and sold us some black market Yankee Chesterfields. We lit up and looked round at the talent. It was an all-male, all-native clientele, except for three women sitting at a table in an area to the back of the shop which was screened off. One of the women I recognised as Margey’s old enemy, Katie Chae.
We were clearing our plates when I found Miss Chae standing beside me.
Miss Chae certainly was dishy. She wore the traditional dress of Chinese women, tunic and trousers. (‘How are you expected to keep your bleeding hands orf them when they goes around in pyjamas all day?’ as my old pal Bamber asked.) They were of a light blue and white striped material. Where Margey was plump, Miss Chae was slender, though the dress nicely revealed the bulge of bum and breasts.
Her face held those thrilling oriental planes which recall works of art. It had nothing of Margey’s kittenish look. Miss Chae’s face was long and elegant, with a look about it – this was my impression – which could be interpreted by a Westerner as either serenely calm and benign or cruel to a marked degree. It was a dark face, with eyes very large and dark. The lips of Miss Chae were finely chiselled, full, and expressive, though it would be necessary to know the lady better to find out what it was they actually expressed.
She said to me, familiarly, ‘Have you god a Briddish cigarette for an ol’ fren’, Horry?’ Although her powers of expression were good, her accent was more currupt than Margey’s, as if she had learnt all her English off a couple of drunken Dutch longshoremen – a none too remote possibility.
I gave her a Chesterfield and struck a match for her. Johnny and I exchanged winks as she lit up, bending over my hand to steady the light, breathing vapour trails through her delicate nostrils. She also managed to rub a tit against my arm.
‘May I siddown wit’ you, Horry? Won’t you innerduce me your fren’?’
‘Oh, Johnny, this is Miss Katie Chae, she’s a friend, and Miss Chae, this is Johnny Mercer, he’s a friend of mine.’ Despite the ‘friend’ business, we had only spoken once because of Margey’s jealousy – but in Medan one saw people around and about.
They exchanged greetings. I could tell Johnny was interested.
‘You are from Lonnon, Johnny?’ Miss Chae asked him, leaning forward.
‘I’m a Cockney but my home’s in Swindon. That’s in Wiltshire.’
‘Too bad.’ She looked at him under her dark lashes and then leaned back in her chair, blowing out smoke like the very picture of relaxation. Turning towards me and pointing the cigarette, she said, as if hardly asking a question at all, ‘Where’s Rosey toni’?’
‘You mean Margey?’
Miss Chae sipped at her cigarette. ‘Some time she Rosey, some time she Margey. Diff’ent trade mark, same goods.’
She flashed beautiful teeth at me, as if unaware of the havoc her remark caused.
Johnny scraped his chair back and stood up, calling for the bill. ‘I better get on up the RAPWI – they’ve got a dance on tonight and all the birds will be booked if I don’t hurry. Why don’t you come too?’
I was still not looking at Miss Chae. ‘See you tomorrow, Johnny.’
‘You’re a big boy now. Just remember the old powder-keg. Night, Miss Chae.’ He tipped the boss of the café and went out into the street.
My companion looked after him with disdain. ‘Your fren’ he like Orang Blanda girl, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, I t’ink. He not wait buy Miss Chae drink. Orang Blanda girl legs very fat. India girls legs very thin. Only China and Malay girl legs very pretty, yes? You buy me drink, Horry?’
‘I must go. Some other evening. I’d love to.’ Saying no played hell with the respiratory system. The effect of having that countenance, with its lustrous eyes, turned upon you, was compelling.
Her conversation was a series of small raids on one’s privacy. ‘You been
Sumatra long time, Horry. When I speak Malay, apa mengerti?’
‘I know that Orang Blanda, means the Dutch.’
‘All people hate Orang Blanda, no want come back. Orang Ingris diff’ent, Ingris men nice, I like. When I say “saya kaseh angkau”, can you un’erstan’ what I say?’
What she was saying was, ‘I love you’; Margey had taught me that. Feeling my cheeks redden, I rose from my chair, smiling down at her. ‘You’re telling me that it’s time I went.’
As I put some money down on the table and left, she called, ‘See you, big boy.’ The quote to end all quotes from all the Hollywood flicks of the thirties.
As I strolled along to Margey’s place, other terrible phrases of Miss Chae’s came back. ‘Some time she Rosey, some time she Margey. Diff’ent trade mark, same goods.’ Misery.
The soldiers from Amboina were sitting on the doorsteps and window sills of their barracks, singing to their girlfriends songs of Pacific beaches, moonlit nights, love for ever, fornications past, fornications to come, and fornications in progress, caressing the taut sinews of their guitars as they did so. Among all the delectable smells of hitherto unknown cuisines lay the insidious pong of drains, but it meant only that some gourmet family had just opened a duryan, that delicious fruit whose stink can anaesthetise an entire street when the wind is right.
Ah, nights of Medan. At least I had sense enough to relish your mixed pleasures at the time …
CHAPTER FIVE
Margey’s humble home was crowded. Several old men and women, their faces brown and wrinkled like apples stored too long, moved silently about the room. The men were dressed in blue suits, the women in black. One by one, they went behind the old screen to pay their respects to Auntie. From Auntie came only an occasional moan; the curative flying lizard had not done its stuff.
In order to accommodate the visitors, the table had been pushed to one side, under the stairs. There sat Fat in his usual posture, a cigarette balanced in his mouth. With him were two men, one of the brown unidentifiable ones, and the scholarly Tiger Balm, spectacles gleaming. He and Fat nodded politely to me. Of Margey there was no sign.