by Tan Twan Eng
There was not even an order to cease digging. Goro gave a hand signal and the guards started shooting. The gunshots exploded like a string of firecrackers set off during the Chinese New Year and the bodies tumbled into the wet, exposed earth. I saw Ah Hock’s body jerk as he was hit and I closed my mind and placed it between Heaven and earth, in that elusive spot that would free me from all this.
I forced myself not to show any emotion, not in front of these people. Goro gave me a grin. “Let us go back. I am all wet, and I am hungry.” He gave an order to the guards to remain behind and fill up the grave.
In the car, the window half down despite Goro’s complaints, I kept hearing the headman’s voice. I saw Ming’s face and I knew I would never have the courage to face her again. But I had to, there was no other choice for me.
A simmering rage spread through me, squeezing my head in a tight vice. I had believed Endo-san. Believed all his lies. From the first moment he had lied to me. All his philosophizing, teaching me to broaden myself, to learn—for what purpose? To satisfy his pride? So what if I had been linked to him in our past lives? Did I have to be entwined with him in this?
Fujihara wanted me punished but Endo-san intervened. “He is still new to this, let him be. You got the people you wanted. Goro was acting beyond his orders.”
Fujihara eyed both of us but remained quiet; Endo-san was, after all, his superior. He put on his hat and walked out. Endo-san came around his desk and put his arm around me. I tried not to flinch. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“You sent me there, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why?”
“You have to get to know the cruelties of war.” He studied me with concern. “You appear ill. Are you feeling all right?”
I ran to the bathroom and bent over the basin, where I proceeded to vomit whatever was left in me. He came in and handed me a towel. I held it and said, “I don’t think I feel up to coming to work tomorrow.”
“Go home then. Come in when you feel better,” he said.
After he left I opened the tap and cleaned the two fingers I had shoved into my throat to induce my vomiting. I had to deceive him, for I knew now what I had to do.
I described what had happened at Kampong Dugong to Towkay Yeap. I told him everything, from the time I had entered the village, to the final moments. He was horrified and a soft wretched sound leaked out from him.
“It is the Japs’ revenge for all the assistance we gave to China during their sweep across the motherland. They are targeting all Chinese, killing them off village by village, town by town.”
“I couldn’t save them,” I said.
“I know Chua. I cannot believe that his son is dead.”
“This is just the beginning. I’ve seen papers. The operations will be widened. Not just here but the whole country. You must do something.”
“I don’t ... I don’t know what to do.” For the first time since I knew him I saw Towkay Yeap at a loss.
And I realized then that there was an emotion worse even than the sharpest fear; it was the dull feeling of hopelessness, the inability to do anything. A lassitude stole over me as though someone had draped a warm shawl over my shoulders. I was so tired that all I wanted was to go to sleep and wake up to find that the war was over or, even better, that all of this had been a nightmare. Towkay Yeap was frightened and lost but I had to go on.
I asked him for a car. “Where are you going? It is already dusk. It is not safe.” He raised his hand, his bony fingers pulled into claws by his increasing frailty, as though he had the power to command me to his orders.
“Please tell my father that I’ll be home late tonight. I still have something to do.”
He understood and his hand dropped back into his lap. “Be careful,” he said.
I drove into a clump of high lalang and the waving, almost head-high wild grass hid the car from view. At this hour, as the sun set, the frogs were calling out to each other, loving the rain that still fell in soft furry lines, the sort of rain that even a kitten would have loved playing in.
I followed the lights of the village. Somewhere a dog barked. The laterite road sloped down, bumpy with rocks. The sea was sulking at the thick cover of clouds. I went past the gates of the village and felt the ghostly silence of a place still stunned by the morning’s events. The doors of the houses were closed, as though to shut out more ill fortune. I heard the wash of waves on the jetty and the creak of boats, like an old man turning over in restless sleep.
I coaxed from memory the location of Ming’s house and made my way there. I wondered if Uncle Lim had been told and if he would already be in the village. Except for a light in one window, the wooden house was dark. I went under the porch and knocked on the slatted door, a soft, apologetic knock. Shadows moved in the light and the door opened. She took a step back when she saw me. I was appalled by the vivid bruises on her face. Had the soldier hit her so many times, so hard?
“I was wrong. They never got to the prison.” I told her what had happened, feeling the guilt that would walk with me all my life.
“I know,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She saw my bewilderment but she shook her head and refused to answer me.
“I must see Chua,” I said. She nodded, and together we walked to the headman’s home. I tried to think of the appropriate words to say, when we were near the village headman’s house. I thought of the pain my father had felt when William died and I knew that there was nothing I could say.
I could only describe what had happened, I thought, knocking on the door. It opened and from the look on Chua’s face, I realized that there was not even a need for me to do that.
“We knew when they were taken away that they would never return,” Chua said, as we sat down in his simple dining area. A high wooden altar faced the front door and a triad of gods looked down on us, the same Taoist trinity of Prosperity, Happiness, and Longevity which I had seen in my grandfather’s home. Chua had lit some joss sticks and the thin white lines of smoke rose high up into the corrugated tin roof. A cream and brown cat with a stubby tail came in, crying. It leaned over and wanted to rub my legs but then stiffened and moved away to a corner.
“I should have known,” I said.
“What could you have done? Could you have prevented it? You, a running dog?”
“Has Uncle Lim been told?”
Chua nodded. “He will arrive tomorrow morning to take Ming back to your home. But now there will be a funeral to see to.” He sighed and I heard the crack in his voice. “Many funerals.”
“Where did my husband die?” Ming asked. She had been crying but now she wiped her eyes. “Can you show us?”
I looked at Chua, and he said, “I would like to see my son too, Ming, but it is not a good idea. We should wait until tomorrow.”
“I’d like to go now. Wait for me here, I’ll go home and get some warm clothes and a lamp.” She closed the door behind her softly and left us sitting before the three gods.
“Is she all right?” I asked.
Chua stared at the closed door. “After you left this morning, that man—the one who had wanted to take Ming as well— returned, together with three soldiers.”
Goro had disappeared as soon as he had reported me to Fujihara. I did not want to be told why he had returned to Kampong Dugong. I knew. And the old headman saw that I knew but said it anyway. “He came and they raped her. And then they told her they had shot my son . . . shot them all.”
“That’s a punishable crime. We must report this. Goro and the others will be disciplined,” I said.
He slammed his fist onto the table, his thick fisherman’s wrist bending the thin plywood. The sound seemed blasphemous in the silence. “You fool!” he shouted. “Do you still see nothing even after what you took part in today?”
I stared silently at my lap while the gods looked down on us from their altar. The cat sniffed the air and then padded out.
We walked in the twilight, Ming and I, together with the villagers who wished to go to the mass grave of their families. I led the darkened procession with only some hurricane lamps to light our way. Anger and sorrow walked with me, joining hands with guilt—the three walls of my prison.
We came to the clearing and I stopped, trying to get my bearings. A circular break in the clouds allowed the crescent moon to cast its weak light on us. The earth looked freshly turned, as though in preparation for planting. In the spectral light the villagers began to weep.
“Where was Ah Hock?” Ming asked.
I led Chua and her to the eastern edge of the field. “He was standing here,” I told her.
She knelt down, and with her bare hands began to dig.
“You can’t do anything now, it’s too dark,” I said, but she went on, lifting out handfuls of earth.
Chua gently pulled her up. “We will come in the morning and perform the proper rites for them. We’ll get the monks to set their souls at peace.”
“I cannot let him lie here alone,” she said.
“He’s not alone. He has his friends here. Everyone he has known since he was a little boy. Come, my daughter,” Chua said and took her hand. He caught my eye. “You cannot go home now. The curfew has begun. I shall prepare a place for you to sleep tonight. I hope the floor won’t be too hard for you.”
I woke some time before dawn, feeling stiff and cold. Chua’s house was silent and a wick in a glass goblet of oil burned on the altar, giving off a warm, liquid golden light like the glow of the Buddha’s heart. I had not slept much, keeping my senses open to the possibility of more soldiers returning. I had also caught the sounds of gentle crying coming from Chua’s bedroom through the night.
I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. Puddles of rainwater glowed like the discarded scales of a dragon. The first touches of the sun could be seen at the furthest line of the horizon, and out to sea little points of light from returning fishing boats seemed uncertain, forming and then wavering. The air was chilled by the rain, which had fallen throughout the night. I stepped onto the wet lane that went past Chua’s home and walked to Ming’s house. The lights were all on and I stood outside, then made up my mind and knocked on the door. There was no reply and, knowing the villagers never locked their doors, I wiped my feet on the mat and pushed the door open.
I stood in the little hall. The floor was covered in linoleum and the furniture was cheap but new. On the altar, all the bowls of oil before the gods had been lit and everything appeared neat and tidy. It was completely different from the night before. Boxes stood by the door to the bedroom, packed with clothes.
I left her house and walked in the direction of the field of bodies and, halfway, I began to run. The laterite was slippery with rain and I fell once, smearing myself with mud. I pushed myself up and ran faster, almost missing the turning into the lane that led to the field. The wind shook the trees and the branches splashed cold drops of water onto me. I came out into the clearing, looking around for her.
The field was empty, smooth except for a mound of earth. I made for it, feeling an unnatural sensation at walking over the bodies beneath me. At the mound I found a hole and inside I found Ming. She had dug up Ah Hock and turned him over, so that his eyes stared through me and beyond to the sky. She lay next to him, her eyes open to the tender rain, her arms around her husband. I could not see her blood, but I smelled it. I went into the hole and grasped her wrists, slippery from her opened veins. She was still breathing, her eyelids flickering once, twice, like a statue that had turned to flesh but was now reverting to stone. I searched in my pockets for a handkerchief to bind her wrists but the cloth blackened immediately. She shook her head. “Stay with me,” she whispered. I held her hand and sat down in the cold mud.
Toward dawn her hand tightened on mine and she moved her mouth. I leaned over her and asked, “What is it?”
“Bury us together.”
I promised her and, breathing in the terrene smells of the opened earth and raw warm blood and the purifying coolness of the rain, I waited for morning to come.
I never saw any butterflies.
When the villagers pulled me out of the hole Ming had dug with her bare hands, they shrank back at the sight of the blood that had soaked through my clothes.
I looked up into Uncle Lim’s eyes and found I could not hold mine against them. He pushed me aside and went to the grave, and I heard his cry, so inhuman, so full of grief and pain. It was a sound only a father could make. Chua stood next to him and the two fathers shook with grief.
I sat on a rock and someone came up to me and offered me a cup of tea. I took it and found my hands were shaking from fatigue.
A group of Taoist monks waited at the edge of the crowd, preparing themselves for the burial rites.
“So soon?” I asked the man who had offered me tea. “Don’t the bodies have to lie for a period of time?”
“They are busy,” the man said. “They have other fields to attend to.” His voice trailed away and I followed it as he turned his head.
My father had come through the crowd. He went past me and embraced Uncle Lim and Chua, gently pulling them away from their children’s grave. I wanted to go to him, but in his face I saw that I had lost him.
Chapter Nine
Towkay Yeap was good as his word, for I continued to get threatening messages and a group of thugs attacked me as I was walking in town. I fought them off but sustained a deep cut across my arm. My father was furious. “You have to stop working for the Japs, damn it! What happens if Isabel or any of us get attacked as well? Do you want them to try to burn the house down again?”
The atmosphere at home was stifling. The relationship between my father and me had deteriorated further after the incident at Kampong Dugong and this was not helped by the continued threats, which I alone knew were harmless.
I could only keep silent as he viewed me with deep contempt. How could I tell him about the arrangement I had made with Towkay Yeap? After seeing the appalling acts of Fujihara and the Kempeitai I wanted my father to know as little as possible about my activities. It was a high-pressure game I had placed myself in—on the one hand I appeared to have betrayed my own people, but on the other I was also betraying the Japanese. There was no one I could confide in, and more than ever I wished Kon were here with me instead of in some wet and impenetrable jungle.
Sometimes I felt as though I no longer had any control over the turns and tangles of my life. What a mess I had made of everything, I thought; what a terrible mess. Where had I gone wrong?
A month after Ming’s death, I received a message from Towkay Yeap, asking to meet me at Tanaka’s old house in Tanjung Tokong. I considered the possibility of it being a trap, set as a retribution for my complicity in the massacre at Ming’s village, and so made my way there an hour earlier, before the sun set. Being early would give me a tactical advantage.
The bungalow was empty, the expanse of the sea making it even more desolate. Evidently Tanaka had carried out his intention to hide away in the Black Water Hills. He had not removed the wind chime though and its little brass rods spun in the wind. The sun’s setting glare set fire to it, seeming to animate it to greater movement, as though it were turning into an instrument that transformed light into music. I blinked as my eyes caught its reflections.
The lawn was overgrown and I lay low in the grass watching the house, trying to sense any activity with my ki energy. I did not hear the rustle behind me but I sensed the stealthy approach of another person. I rose up to meet my assailant only to find it was my friend Kon.
“You’ll never be good enough to sneak up on me,” I said.
“I knew you would come before the appointed time,” he said. He was undernourished, his head shaven bald and only his smile had remained the same. He scratched absently at his scalp, saw my glance and said, “Sorry. Lice. That’s why I had to cut it off.”
“You won’t get into the E & O looking lik
e that,” I said, not hiding my pleasure in seeing him. I still could not believe that it was actually him, in the flesh. “What are you doing here? I thought I was meeting your father.”
“I asked him to arrange this meeting.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Too many things,” he replied. He extended his hand in the direction of Tanaka’s house. “May I offer you some tea?”
There was a figure at the doorway when we took the steps onto the veranda. A young woman came out of the gloom of the house and stepped into a square of light left by the receding sun. Even her shabbiness could not hide her unusual beauty. Her eyes, large and black, lifted her face to greater character. She was not completely Chinese but was of mixed parentage, like myself.
“Su Yen, this is the friend I told you so much about,” Kon said. He introduced us quickly and we went inside, closing the door behind us. It took me a while to accustom myself to the darkness. Still, Kon went around the windows, making sure the curtains met. He lit a candle and we sat down on the floor.
“Su Yen’s a guerrilla from the Malayan Communist Party. Force 136 and the MCP have made a pact to work together against the Japanese,” Kon said.
“I know,” I said. “I’ve read the reports by the Japanese spies.”
Information on Force 136 was sparse, but Japanese intelligence reported that it had been formed by the British just before the war and that the recruits came from all walks of life. Bakers, tinkers, teachers, businessmen, anyone who had any form of expertise that could be exploited, all were sent to a military training base in Singapore to be trained extensively in jungle guerrilla warfare. It was a new form of combat, almost revolutionary. These recruits were later inserted into pockets of resistance in the jungles across Malaya.