by Tan Twan Eng
Hutton & Sons’ building had not been damaged, although Guthrie’s, the Scottish rubber company behind us, had had their roof blown off.
We unlocked the doors and began packing our documents into boxes, destroying any that could assist the Japanese.
“What’s wrong?” my father asked when he sensed my hesitation.
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I replied, hoping he would not see through my lie. In truth I was feeling as though I had been forced to swallow a cocktail of conflicting emotions. I was officially Endo-san’s assistant and, as we tore up reports and files and burned them, I felt I was betraying the Japanese. But by choosing to work for the Japanese, I was also betraying the people of my island. Once again I was caught between two opposing sides, with nowhere to turn. When would I find a sense of my self, integrated, whole, without this constant pulling from all sides, each wanting my complete devotion and loyalty?
“Are you all right?” my father asked again.
“Just thinking of lost days,” I said, throwing a sheaf of burning paper into the flames before my hand was burned.
“Things will never go back to being the way they were,” he said. “We had some wonderful times, didn’t we?”
“We had the best of times,” I replied, unknowingly echoing the similar, regretful words many of the fleeing Europeans would voice. “Where’s Edward?”
“He went with Peter to K.L. They’re destroying all their files as well.”
I went to the window. The destruction of Georgetown was heartbreaking. I watched as desperate people headed for the harbor, still trying to find a berth on an evacuating ship.
My father looked at his watch. “Come on, let’s go to the quay,” he said.
“Whatever for?”
“I want to show you something I hope you’ll never see again,” he said.
We locked the doors of the office and walked to Weld Quay. I held my head high, my eyes staring ahead, forcing myself to ignore the bodies that lay all around us, my breathing shallow. We pushed through the crowd of locals and found the gates to the quay locked and guarded.
“Noel Hutton and his son,” he said to the young British soldier, handing him a piece of paper.
The soldier checked his clipboard and opened the gates. “Where’s your luggage, sir?”
“We won’t be needing any,” my father said.
We entered Swettenham Pier. The harbor had been systematically destroyed by our fleeing soldiers and there were massive piles of rubble everywhere. We could see the remnants of the entire naval fleet of Penang: the tip of a sunken ship’s hull, the charred skeletal frames of those vessels that had not gone to the bottom of the sea—many were still burning, sending clouds of smoke to us whenever the wind shifted. There were also bodies and pieces of wreckage floating on the surface of the sea.
A large crowd was heading toward the pier where an old steamer was tied up. There was desperation in the air, voiced by babies’ howls and women sobbing. Many of the people carried only a single case, looking over their shoulders all the time. I saw their eyes and they could not meet mine. There seemed to be an equal number of civilians and military personnel. Everyone here was European and I felt out of place.
An elderly couple with four bullmastiffs was stopped by a guard who looked no older than William.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but you’re not allowed to bring them aboard,” he said.
The woman turned to her husband. “Darling, we can’t leave them here. We can’t leave them to the bloody Japs.”
“Look here, can’t you just let us board? These dogs are well-trained, they won’t be a nuisance,” the man said.
The guard shook his head and remained firm, despite threats and pleading from the couple. Finally the man whispered to the woman who clutched his arm but nodded. They spoke to their dogs softly, stroking and nuzzling them. Then the man kissed his wife and watched as she walked up the gangplank. When she was gone from view, he reached into his pocket and took out a revolver. He led the dogs through the masses of people to the far end of the pier. He was alone when he returned to the gangplank a few minutes later, his cheeks damp with tears.
“Why did the man at the gate ask you for our luggage?” I asked my father.
“I was given an order by the military to pack up our belongings and travel passes to board one of the last ships to Singapore,” he said. “We were ordered not to tell any of our local staff or friends. The British are leaving the Malayans to the Japs. We are all running away. Just like that. Even Mr. Scott has left. And Henry Cross has sent his sons to Australia.” He stood on the edge of the pier, the hull of the Straits Steamship Company’s SS Pangkor looming over us like a wave about to break. “I can’t believe it. Is this how it will end?”
“Are we going too?” I asked, wondering if he had finally seen my side of things.
He shook his head. “No. Not like this. Never like this. We’ll stay. We’ll keep the flag flying. We’ll keep our family name untainted, and we will not lose face.”
I wondered if a lifetime spent in Penang had made him think like an Oriental.
“This is the last ship. After she leaves, we’ll be on our own,” he said.
The crowd pushed and jostled us as they surged toward the gangplank. I felt melancholic as I watched them board. Very soon there was no one left, no one, except the two of us.
He held my arm as the gangplank was raised. I resisted a sudden urge to run to it and shout to the sailors to let me board, let me escape the mess my life had turned into. The steamer sounded its whistle and a low throbbing vibrated the platform as it pulled out. People lined the deck, looking down on us. There were no colorful streamers, no balloons, no laughter. A young boy held his mother’s hand and raised his arm and waved a farewell. I took a step away from my father, to the very edge of the pier and returned his wave. It was a farewell not only to a place but to a way of life, a time of life, and I thought the little boy knew even then that the days he had grown up in, the days he had played in, lived in, would never again return.
Although my father had refused secret passage to Singapore, many of the Europeans had accepted it. Overnight the large British civil and military population disappeared, leaving their servants and friends feeling betrayed. The sense of abandonment would never heal and the British lost an incalculable amount of face when they left.
The island became ghostly. Many of the locals headed for the jungles and remote villages in the hills, hoping to escape the Japanese soldiers. Those who remained in town walked about in confusion.
The bombs whistled down onto the streets again in the days that followed, blowing up buildings and killing hundreds of people. I was in the office, attempting to destroy more documents, when I heard and felt the explosions. They rocked through the building even though they seemed a mile away. Going to the window, which was opened to catch the breeze despite the smell from the roads, I saw a bank of smoke rising above the British army barracks. Overhead, squadrons of planes circled like birds of prey. People began screaming in the streets. More explosions followed, rattling the windowpanes, sending jagged fractures through them like forks of frozen lightning. For the first time since the war began a sense of real fear overcame me. Soon the raw, pungent smell of smoke drifted to my nostrils and I shut the window, unable to breathe or think.
The phone rang, startling me. It was such an incongruous sound, the ringing. The town was being destroyed and here was my phone pealing away. I stared at it dumbly. Finally I picked it up.
It was Endo-san. “What are you doing in the office?”
“Just tidying up,” I answered weakly.
“Go home. The town is no longer safe. The troops will be coming in soon. Leave now.” He hung up.
The troops were coming in. I had been expecting this but still it seemed not possible. We had an army, well equipped and well trained. Surely they were capable of putting up a fight?
Another explosion shook me. This time it was closer. And then another.
I had to go home. God only knew if they were bombing Batu Ferringhi. I ran out into the street, and almost decided to return to the office and hide.
The road was pocked with craters. Some cars had gone front first into them, their rears sticking up like the sterns of listing ships I had seen at the harbor. Blood was curdling on the tarmac, thick as engine oil. Windows all around had shattered and shards of glass were sprinkled on the torn bodies like crystallized rain.
There was a sound of rushing wind, a flash of singeing light and a section of the building of Empire Trading was ripped away. I was thrown to the ground, where I did an ukemi fall and came up on my feet, the explosion disorienting me, my ears singing like a choir conducted by a madman.
I ran to the shed behind the building where the Punjabi guard usually kept his bicycle. I hoped he had left it there when he had evacuated to the hills. To my relief I found it leaning against the wall. All of his clothes were gone and only his charpoy, the canvas folding bed he slept on, had been left behind.
I got onto the bicycle and pedaled home through roads crowded with trishaws and carts as people fled the town. Everyone had the same idea, to get out and hide in the hills or the distant villages. The sun fell like a whip on my shoulders and my shirt began to stick to my skin. I heard a new concatenation of explosions behind me, rippling the ground and the innermost warrens of our hearts.
I did not see a single army official along the way and I wondered where they had gone, whether they had already deserted us. I picked up a straw hat dropped by a woman, glad to have some protection from the noonday sun, my heart aching as I saw the faces of terror around me.
On the Esplanade I stopped, as did many of us. Out on the channel two Brewster Buffalo airplanes—from the airfield in Butterworth, I guessed—were putting up a fight against the Japanese planes, but they were heavily outnumbered. Tracer spat like flashes of light as the Japanese planes pursued the Buffaloes. One of the Buffaloes burst into flames. As it fell the fire became greedy and, like a flaming mouth, swallowed it from tip to tail. It sank into the sea and we could hear the loud splash and the serpentine hissing as the flames were swallowed in turn.
The remaining Buffalo banked and flew away and I let out a moan along with the hundreds who had been cheering them silently in our hearts. Years afterward I learned that they were all that was left of our air defense: two aged Buffaloes against the Japanese air force.
It was only days later that I discovered the British army had already left, had deserted us when it appeared to them that the string of Japanese victories in the northern states would extend all the way south to Johor. They had left behind a mere handful of junior officers; the rest had sailed to Singapore. That was where the final stand would be made. Not here, not in Penang. No stand would be made here at all.
My father was pacing the veranda when I arrived at Istana. “Thank God you’re all right,” he said. “I tried to telephone you but the line was dead.”
“The streets of the town are no longer safe.” I described to him the aerial battle I had seen and he shook his head in despair.
“Isabel managed to ring me,” he said. “The Hill Station’s been bombed.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The Japanese have a radio station up there.”
“How did you know they have a radio station on The Hill?” he asked, his voice sharp.
“I saw it,” I said.
“Then they must have been aiming for Bel Retiro,” he said, referring to the resident councillor’s official residence on The Hill.
“Have the rest of the servants gone home?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
“I think they’d be safer here, for now. They can join their families once the air raids have stopped,” I said.
He agreed, but when he asked only a handful elected to stay. A few, whom I had known since I was a child, now looked at me with suspicion when I wished them well. My father noticed and said to me when they were gone, “They think you’ve been helping the Japanese.”
“Do you think so too?” I asked.
He kept silent for a while. Then he said, “Yes. Maybe Mr. Endo wanted some information from someone who was familiar with Penang and Malaya. And you provided it.”
I dropped into a chair and placed my hands over my face. I supposed this was a good time to let him know. “I’ll be working for the Japanese government the day they take over,” I said, the words tumbling out despite my resolve to speak slowly, calmly.
My father dipped his head and closed his eyes. His shoulders seemed to collapse in defeat, his disappointment in me twisting like a keris in my heart, severing all my breath and flow of blood. He had remained strong all this time and now I saw I had managed what the Japanese had failed to do—I had punctured his spirit, opening a tear that would make him vulnerable.
“Then that is what Mr. Endo has taught you to be. That is what he made of you. So you have betrayed all of us, all the people of Penang,” he said. And then he left me and I sat there alone to consider what I had done.
Chapter Four
The Japanese troops met with no resistance when they entered the streets of Georgetown. The British soldiers had already evacuated and in their haste had left the airfields and oil supplies intact, like thoughtful gifts for the new owner of a home.
We had been taking turns at night to keep watch over the house. The electricity supply had been cut off all across the island; my father was certain that the looting would be restricted to the shops in town, but we all felt safer keeping watch.
When morning broke I dressed in formal clothes. The smell of dew on the lawns and on the leaves of the trees and the silence on the roads cleared my mind as I cycled into Georgetown.
The streets were quiet; there were no sounds of hawkers firing up their stoves, no rattle of metal shutters as shops were opened. Even the pariah dogs that roamed the streets seemed cowed. The harbor was silent, lacking the daily shouts of coolies and the noise of sea traffic. Those who were brave or foolish enough came out to watch; I joined a group of people by the roadside.
We heard the faint sound of marching feet. As it grew louder the first lines of Japanese soldiers came out from the road leading to the harbor. A cheer erupted from some of those around me, those who believed the country to be finally freed from colonial authority. The Japanese had, after all, promised to return the country to Malay rule. There was a sudden raising of homemade Japanese flags, many with the central circle of red crudely drawn, thrust up like flowers forced into sudden bloom.
After hearing about them for so long, I finally saw them and, like many others, I thought it inconceivable that this group of ill-dressed, uncouth-looking soldiers had defeated the British.
They came in their baggy trousers, high rubber boots, and loose, mud-stained shirts, their heads covered by cloth caps with dirty neck-flaps, their swords hanging limply, knocking against their dented water canteens. They were only permitted to drink once a day while marching and their clothes were practical for the jungle terrain through which they had to travel.
Endo-san had requested that I be present for the formal surrender of the island at the resident councillor’s official home. I left the crowd and made my way to the road leading to the main entrance, as the soldiers marched past the angsana-shaded drive that passed through the gardens where the resident councillor’s wife used to give tea parties in support of her favorite charities. In my mind I could hear teaspoons knocking against delicate china, voices rising and swooping, and merry laughter matching the cadences of the water that sprang from the fountain. Now, only the crackle of the leaves in the wind remained from those times.
I took my place next to Endo-san in the garden outside the main doors of the Residence. It was already a beautiful day and the light of the early morning picked up the beads of water on the lawn, letting them sparkle for a brief moment before burning them into steam.
Only a few members of the resident councillor’s staff had remained. His family had left Penang
with the first wave of evacuees.
“Your father would be ashamed of you,” he said when he saw me take my place next to the Japanese.
“He’s as ashamed of me as he is of the cowardice of the British army, leaving the island completely vulnerable,” I said.
The soldiers halted before Hiroshi and their commanding officer bowed to him. Hiroshi turned to face us and read from a document from General Tomoyuki Yamashita, who was running the war in Asia.
I interpreted the entire proceedings, ignoring the angered looks from the resident councillor and his remaining staff. That was the day I became known as a “running dog,” the term used by the locals to refer to a collaborator. There was actually no need for my presence, since Hiroshi, Endo-san, and the military commander all spoke English well; it was a clever move by the Japanese to present me to the English. A military photographer had us pose and took our picture for the newspapers.
We stood on the lawn as the Union Flag and the Straits Settlements’ dark blue flag were taken down without ceremony. The flag of Japan, a drop of blood on a sheet of pure white, floated gently up to the sky as the military band played the Kimigayo. I did not sing, although Endo-san had long ago taught me the words. And then I watched without expression as the resident councillor and his people were led off to a prisoner-of-war camp. I never found out what happened to them.
There were immediate reprisals by the Japanese against the looters who had scoured Georgetown. They were identified by informants, then arrested and beheaded. Their severed heads were stuck on poles lining the streets. Quite a few had been innocent, singled out by people who held a grudge against them. Our cook, Ah Jin, who had remained with us, came back from the market and I heard her voice frightening the others in the kitchen.