The Japanese appeared to be obsessed with their ‘bandits’, more fearful of them than they were of the regular armies of so many great nations already gathering to destroy them. In spite of what Sergeant Sato thought, I did not know how many men were up there in the hills, or how many in other hills in Malaya, but I had the impression it was not actually very many, and yet there was all this fuss. After the war we learned that there were just a few thousand scattered up and down the country. It was the fact that the guerrillas were Chinese that seemed to be the issue. The Japanese hold a particular enmity for the Chinese, and I find the opposite now applies equally.
In any event, I was left to languish, unaware of the fate awaiting me, and, even more worryingly, completely ignorant as to the fate of Paris. In my more optimistic moments, of which I managed to have a few when a new rumour would do the rounds, I was certain that Sato would not be permitted to carry out his threat. It was merely his way of saving face, of punishing me for being a witness to his humiliation, and for not giving him what he demanded of me. I was a woman, and a barbarian to boot, and that must have made the disgrace even more acute. In my darker moments, however, which were far more numerous, I could not avoid sinking into despair at the thought of that beast of a man and what he could do to my baby.
I still had no concept of time. I was told later that I was held in all for six months. By this stage I was the only one left of the original twelve inhabitants of the zoo. The Sign Man, the Bugger, Cheetah had all been taken away, never to return. I wondered why I was still here – the only woman, the only survivor.
At one point (and I know the date according to the Japanese calendar as I have a copy of the official document) I faced a court, in a manner of speaking. The first I knew of it was when they gave me a set of clean clothes one morning and allowed me to bathe under a proper shower. By now I could barely stand, let alone walk, no matter how determined, and I was carried to an army lorry, the uncovered rear tray of which I had to myself with two Malay policemen. It was a short drive, a couple of minutes only, to the courthouse on the other side of the Padang. I was surprised to see the streets lined with people, closely watched by more Japanese soldiers than I had seen since the early days of the occupation. Someone important must be passing through town, I thought.
The two policemen carried me up the steps of the court and into the dock. I had never been inside a courtroom before, and here I was in the dock! The public gallery was filled with people. I thought that the citizens of Ipoh must be starved of entertainment these days if they were prepared to amuse themselves by witnessing my shame in proceedings such as this. All the Japanese court officials were in military uniform. There was a judge behind the bench and two officers at a table before him, one of whom introduced himself to me as my defending counsel, although he said nothing else. The symbolism was stark – whereas in a British court the officials wore wigs, in this charade they carried swords, and no doubt knew how to use them.
The arguments took only a matter of minutes and I had no idea what they were as it was all done in Japanese. The first officer stood up and in a menacing guttural drawl listed what were apparently the charges against me from documents I had not seen, pointing at me dramatically at regular intervals and scowling at the wickedness of it all. My counsel said no more than a few words before the three of them, the two ‘lawyers’ and the ‘judge’, went into a private huddle. The judge nodded and made some declarations, and then I was carried out.
No one spoke to me, not even to ask how I pleaded. My case was open and now shut. As we waited for the truck to return me to my ‘quarters’, I asked my counsel what had just transpired. He said I had received the death penalty. The way he said it he seemed to be surprised that I had to ask. He then looked down his nose at me and said that the judge had been lenient. He said that when I was well enough, I would volunteer to be sent to Burma to serve with the Imperial Japanese Army as a military doctor. ‘Smile,’ he said. ‘I have saved your life.’
The streets around the Padang were again lined with people and soldiers, rifles at the ready. I asked one of the Malay policemen who they were all waiting to see. ‘Engkau, mem,’ he said. You.
It was the first time I knew anything of the notoriety of my situation. I know now it was that notoriety that saved my life. The public show only went so far, however. The clean clothes were taken away and I was given back my old dress. Thank goodness it had been laundered in my absence.
And so I resumed my timeless existence, waiting for the damage that Sato and his henchmen had caused to heal so that I could ‘volunteer’ to heal others of his ilk. My conditions improved. They moved me from the zoo and placed me in my own small cell in another part of the school altogether. The food also improved, if ever so slightly, although the ominous clank of iron cage doors followed me. This time it was at the end of a corridor, perhaps fifty feet or more from my cell, but every time I heard it I shuddered with the possibility of what might come next.
I did not see Sergeant Sadist again, which was surely the best development. No one could tell me about the welfare of my baby. At times I actually hoped I would see the evil one again so I could ask him, but I know he would have taken delight in telling me that he had carried out his threat, even if he had not.
The happiest day of my life started inauspiciously. The morning meal of soup did not arrive at the usual time, and soon I realised something was wrong because I did not see another soul for hours and everything was strangely quiet. It must have been some time in the afternoon when I heard the dreaded clank of the iron door opening. By this time in the war, with events obviously not going well for the Japanese, the guards’ uniforms were faded and worn, but the man whom I suddenly found standing before my cell was in a crisp new one, with high canvas boots and a three-pointed cap. I recognised that cap. I recognised the three red stars at its peak. I recognised the salute he gave me, the same clenched fist I had first seen executed so briskly by his confederate, Minum.
‘Missy, I have come to fetch you,’ he said. ‘My name is Comrade Ah Kow.’
I walked out of that building with just Ah Kow’s shoulder for support, and I walked out in the same dress in which I had walked in.
The first thing I asked him was about my baby. He did not know, but he said he would find out. I had never been a religious person. With a father who was nominally Dutch Reform Church and a mother who clung to Hindu beliefs I always regarded as mere superstitions, it was difficult as a young girl to find any common ground between those widely separate ideas, so I had sought refuge in science. This day, however, could not pass without acknowledgment of my deliverance, and an appeal to whoever or whatever might be listening, for the same for my son. Named after a saint as it was, the school had to have a chapel of some sort. I asked Ah Kow to take me there.
Waiting for me at the front of the school after that was my friend, Bintang, with so many smartly uniformed guerrillas they did indeed look like a regiment. Or perhaps the cavalry in an American cowboy picture, that would be more appropriate, for had they not ridden over the hill to deliver me from evil?
Standing now before Bintang, I was no better than a school-girl doing her best not to swoon before her knight in shining armour. He did not salute. He removed his cap and shook my hand. I have never been so moved by a simple shake of the hand. He must have realised what was now consuming me. He said that my baby was safe in Papan, that the townfolk had been taking care of him, and that I would be with him just in time for his first birthday. Now my legs could no longer support me.
I eventually asked him if it was true about Mrs Tay. Yes, he said, drowned in the old tin mine pool outside the town, together with Ah Ming. I did not even have time to mourn before I saw my other old friend, Shorty, marching a short line of Japanese past us. Bintang said these were the worst of them and that they were to be executed immediately. I could not see Sato among them. Bintang said that most of the Japanese had gone into hiding, but these would be executed the proper way, b
y firing squad. They would not be drowned like dogs.
I saw many bodies that day. How had I survived and all these men had not? I saw the body of Ismail, the Malay policeman who had come for me in the black saloon at Papan. I asked what he could have done. ‘He arrested you,’ I was told.
I saw Major Tomasu with his hands tied behind his back and his shirt ripped open. Shorty offered me his revolver and said that it was my privilege. I thanked Shorty for thinking of me, and then I thanked Major Tomasu for saving the life of my baby. It appears that I must have returned the favour that day as the Major survived it. I understand he is now a successful businessman in Yokohama.
22
SU-LIN
I took a break from Professor Thumboo for a couple of days. The jury in the Tariq case was due to be recalled, which meant a new round of conferences and long hours of preparation, and the pressure was on. The next time I saw him was for a quick lunch in the Temple Gardens – an opportunity for him to perhaps nose around the lanes for traces of the Templars that he apparently found of interest. I sent a pupil out to the Pret a Manger for sandwiches and we shared a bench on a gravel path by the border of roses. The garden was already in its summer spectacle of colour, with geraniums, dahlias and I didn’t know what else. I had ordered a couple of avocado and salad wraps – his being the one without butter or cheese or yoghurt in the dressing, but with plenty of sea salt.
He was admiring the flowers, and could even name most of them, pointing out heleniums and asters and names I could not recall ever hearing before. I told him the story about the roses, the reason why they were red and white.
‘The War of the Roses started right here,’ I said.
It took him aback for a second. The odd habit of fingering the thin gold chain wrapped around his left wrist by his watch, and rubbing a small charm of some sort attached to it, again betrayed his unease.
‘But it’s just another case of junk history,’ I said. ‘The whole thing is merely an invention of Shakespeare.’
‘Of course,’ he said, almost with relief. ‘Henry the Sixth Part One, the Plantagenet rose-plucking scene.’
And then, just to put me in my place, he gazed up to the sky while his brain ticked over a few more revolutions, and proceeded to quote from the play verbatim:
‘And here I prophesy this brawl today, grown to this faction in the Temple Garden, shall send between the red rose and the white, a thousand souls to death and deadly night.’
A lover of Shakespeare? I never would have picked it, and told him so.
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘But only the historical plays. I have no time for the romances, Romeo and Juliet and the like, and certainly not for the tragedies.’
‘The historical plays are the tragedies,’ I said.
‘History is a tortuous pathway from tragedy to comedy and ultimately to farce,’ he said, ‘and there is little room for romance.’ And then he fixed me again with that freshly minted unshifty gaze and said: ‘But it is certainly more romantic in iambic pentameter, don’t you think?’
I expected him to flip his eyebrows or wink, or some such signal to confirm for the dull-witted that he was being droll, but not a bit of it. All he did was sigh and offer that he had once considered writing for the theatre himself. ‘I would fill it with puns,’ he said. Before I had a chance to express genuine wonder, he added, ‘But that would just be a play on words.’
From anyone else, I would have groaned, as we do. But from this fount of surprises, this ostensibly dry well now responding to a little gentle priming, all I could do was chuckle. I looked at my watch. Although I had a conference to get back to, Paris Thumboo was again proving to be an engaging diversion. In spite of the inclination to engage in witty banter, he seemed to be reluctant still to actually offer anything truly of himself, so I primed a little further.
‘I love the summer in England,’ I said, which I am sure must have been repeated countless times on that very bench. I turned my face to the sun and completed the cliché. ‘There is so little of it that it is precious and you learn to appreciate it. My early years were perpetual summer, hot for my first nineteen, and it conditioned me to take it for granted, but not any more.’
Sure enough, he reacted promptly.
‘Winter,’ he said, ‘that is the season for me. That is the opportunity precious to me. My winter visits are far too rare.’
He gazed over the expanse of lawn before us. ‘What I like then is the cosiness of Mrs Carter’s rooms, snug in a blanket while the wind whistles outside and the rain beats on the window. Safe and warm, even though a storm is all around.’ He then fixed me with a sure and certain expression. ‘We yearn most for what we experience least, don’t we.’
‘Or perhaps for what we once had,’ I said.
Two things were now apparent to me: we were opposites, and he had offered me a window into his early years. Those years had been unhealthy for him then, and they appeared to be even more unhealthy now.
‘But growing up means moving on, doesn’t it,’ I said. ‘You have to become what you are.’
‘A lover of Nietzsche,’ he said. ‘I never would have picked it.’
23
PARIS
Before us were acres of lawn scattered with picnicking groups of young lawyers and surrounded by rare and unusual trees flourishing in full sunlight. Such a delightful sanctuary approached by a maze of twisting lanes and gates. Outside the walls were the dirty crowded streets, and here it was silent and clean, like a village in the back-country where people spoke in reverent tones and wore, as Dickens said of another of these secluded quarters, velvet soles on their boots. Was it any wonder I lost my way trying to find the place?
The maze was a metaphor, Su-Lin said. It was a labyrinth, a test. If you don’t know your way, you shouldn’t be here. Just as if you don’t know your Latin, you shouldn’t be here. They are always talking and saying nothing here, she said, because they have nothing to say. Put a stack of papers tied up with pink ribbon before them and you can’t shut them up.
She was anxious, glancing at her watch every few minutes, and I had barely finished my sandwich. If she appreciated Nietzsche, I said, then she would no doubt be partial to a stroll through the garden. All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking, I quoted. She said she was no Nietzsche lover. She thought the ‘become who you are’ saying was Picasso’s.
Picasso was hardly my idea of a deep thinker, I said as we wandered along the path. The crunch of gravel under our feet was amplified by the silence now surrounding us. I said that Nietzsche had something else to say about walking. He said that a casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
That sounds like your mother, not Nietzsche, she said. It was both, I said. She drilled it into me one night when she found me reciting the catechism.
It may not prove anything, Su-Lin said, but it can be a comfort, can’t it? Faith is fear of the unknown. She said that my mother was a brave woman to say what she did virtually on her deathbed.
The dead are at an advantage to us, I said. They know the answer to the great question that puzzles us our whole lives. I also observed that she had obviously not finished reading it.
She asked if that was why I had asked her to read it – fear that it would be lost unless shared, that my mother’s sacrifice would be consigned to oblivion. We were getting to an age ourselves, she said, when fear wrestled with what optimism we had left – if not fear of the unknown afterlife, then fear of losing memory, of losing faculties, fear of an uncertain future even here on earth.
I was tempted to ask her if this was the reason she drank more than most. She was certainly getting more anxious, the watch-checking now almost continuous.
Everything had to be in balance, she said, even hope and despair, courage and fear.
She was sounding like a philosopher after all. Speaking of balance, I said, do you like films?
24
SU-LIN
Our adventure at Sungai S
iput caused me to miss two days of school, which at least meant I also missed two days of Miss Mak’s unwelcome attentions. Ah Mun Cheir had taken good care of my geese while we were away and fortunately there were no more escapes as Kebun had fixed the pen so that no goose could stick a beak anywhere it should not be.
One day soon after we got home, while I was feeding them scraps, I saw Mr Yew emerge from his tent, fastening the flap tightly behind him. He caught me spying over the fence and waved. I pretended I didn’t see him and quickly busied myself sorting the scraps, but still he made his way over to me. He was smiling under a white topee, the cotton-covered helmet the English once wore in Malaya, although certainly not in more recent times. Mr Yew liked to display his Englishness. I knew he was Cantonese, but he never spoke to us in that dialect, not even the odd word. He always spoke in his broken English.
‘Missy fatten goose for Christmas, ah?’ he asked me.
‘They’re my pets,’ I said. My father had told me we would only be keeping Sahm, Ji and Ging until New Year and I hoped that meant Chinese New Year as it fell at least a month later than the English version.
‘Pets good to keep,’ Mr Yew said. ‘Then good to eat, lah.’
To my sisters Mr Yew seemed to be some sort of a figure of fun, an odd fellow whose name could hardly be said without a raised eyebrow or a giggle. I was quite aware of his eccentricities, however there was one thing I knew about Mr Yew that Mei and Li perhaps did not appreciate, and that was that he was a jungle fighter. For me, such a term (one of my own making) conjured up images of brave warriors rather than crackpots, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, Mr Yew must have had some of the warrior in him. Why I thought that was because I knew for certain that Mr Yew was a tin miner.
The Heart Radical Page 17