by Sandi Tan
The Rat Brigade
THE BLACK ISLE WAS FROG-MARCHED INTO THE FUTURE. Our clocks were set forward two hours, to match Tokyo’s. Even today, I sometimes find myself wondering where my two missing hours went.
Those lost hours, however, were a drop in the proverbial ocean compared to the three years I served as Taro’s “wife.” I spent 1943 and 1944 as his property. I existed solely on his terms. But having read enough testimony from that grisly period, I should not complain. A mock marriage was preferable to death.
As with any other evolving couple, our marital quibbles had shifted from such quotidian concerns as food, clothing, and sex to questions of fate, history, and the future—of which my “husband” held many strong and misguided opinions.
Our war of ideas reached its peak in 1945. Only in hindsight does it seem I’d been mad to even think the man was worth reasoning with. But this was my first real taste of marriage, not counting my engagement to Daniel, and so I did what I thought any sensible wife should try to do—hold my own.
Let me paint a quick picture of our domestic life. Two adults at the dinner table, talking. What passed for conversation between man and wife in the year 1945 went something like this:
“Your people were blind to the oppression!” says the husband. “Isn’t it telling that the finest buildings on the Black Isle are the Supreme Court and Shahbandar Prison?”
“The British also built roads and schools,” the wife retorts. “What has your great nation done for us? I’m not saying that the Brits were gods. But life has only gotten worse since your occupation.”
A year or two earlier, the husband would have slapped her for that remark. Not anymore. It was, in its way, love.
“It depends on one’s definition of progress, doesn’t it?” He collects his thoughts, preparing another lecture. “According to the Western model, perhaps we are failing. But the Japanese ideal of harmony is built on the notion that there is darkness in the world, that the truth is more often than not made up of shadows. The sublime quality of a Japanese home—which you have yet to appreciate—is built on the mystery of shadows. Shifting darkness and shifting light. We thrive in dark places: Our food looks better, our art looks better, and above all, our skin looks better. Westerners, on the other hand, are like children who are afraid of the dark. To them, shadows represent what’s unknown—and perhaps unknowable—and they genuinely fear it. They cannot imagine how one might tame the darkness by contemplating and accepting it.
“That’s why, while the Americans and the British are busy trying to eradicate what they perceive to be shadows in the world, we yellow skins, who have lived amidst the darkness, will rise up. By the end of this century, Japan will topple the West.” Husband shoots wife a withering smile: “By AD 2000. Mark my words.”
By early 1945, Taro trusted me enough to allow me monthly visits to Li. During these furtive reunions in the old opium warehouse, I always brought out my knife and fed my starving brother.
Each month, even as my driver kept to his regimented route, I took in how the city was changing—and how it wasn’t. Instead of seizing upon the building frenzy that had transformed the Isle before their arrival, the Turnipheads brought all construction to a halt. No matter how glowingly Taro spoke of progress, order, and triumph, ruins stayed ruins; looted shops and restaurants remained shuttered and bare, like the pitiful crumbs of Pompeii. They had saved the best buildings for homes and offices: the Balmoral Hotel, the Teutonic Club, even the old St. Anne’s compound.
Wonder World had become a fortified brothel where servicemen went to seek comfort. Reels of barbwire curled atop its red walls to discourage its courtesans from even fantasizing about escape. The higher-ranked Turnipheads frequented what was once known as the Millionaire’s Club in the Flower District of Chinatown, which offered kimono-clad consorts of a more specialized order: girls not just younger and more pliant, but who were trained in serving opium to those so inclined. On the nights Taro failed to come home, I felt pangs of jealous fear knowing he was probably there, possibly auditioning my replacement. Whenever I was driven past the club’s Italianate façade, I would close my eyes and think of wasps.
The rest of the city regressed. The major thoroughfares were clogged with soothsayers, interpreting dreams in Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Malay, Tamil, and in the most enterprising of cases, Japanese. On old Edinburgh Bridge, black-market touts hawked bottles of soy sauce and cans of baked beans, and no one ever came to chase them away as the British once did. The Isle was a shambles.
But no matter what anyone was selling or yelling, whenever a Turniphead soldier approached, everyone was expected to bow low, no matter how young, stupid, and drunk the soldier might be, nor how long he maliciously lingered. Disobedience carried a heavy price. Once, en route to Li, I watched an old woman being assaulted by a soldier who could have passed for her grandson. She lay limp on the pavement as he kicked her head, again and again. A small crowd gathered but nobody dared to help her. On my way home, I saw her body twisted by the side of the road. Nobody had dared to move her either. Her soul stood by her corpse, shaking with rage and swearing in the foulest Cantonese at all who passed.
Still, the occupation’s most unexpected outcome had been the mass confiscation of air conditioners. All across the city, I saw gaping holes and shadowy stains in office buildings where cooling units once sat. No doubt this had been done to break the spirits of those accustomed to chilled rooms, but where those thousands of units disappeared to remained a mystery.
When I arrived to visit Li in February 1945, he was not at his desk. The sight of his empty stool sent my pulse racing. I had been so accustomed to our routine—all routines—that any small variation had the power to derail me. Surprises never meant good news during wartime. Yet I had no choice but to wait for him in his cubicle. When he finally appeared, he wore a look of bewilderment. His khaki uniform was spattered with dark red dots.
“My friend Samy,” he began. “They took his arm…”
“What are you talking about?”
“They cut off his damn arm! We were carrying our fleas to them in the back. One of the rats escaped and bit him on the finger. Usually they don’t care about this kind of thing—I mean, look at me.” He brandished the old puncture marks on his hands. “But for some reason, they grabbed Samy and…they just sawed off his entire arm, with no warning! I saw the whole thing. It was…I don’t know…so quick.”
Li slumped onto his stool, still in a daze. I, too, felt queasy.
“This happened in the back of the hall?”
“Yeah, deep down there, where there’s a whole warren of rooms.”
“And where’s your friend now?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “He fainted from the pain. The worst part is I was so shocked I couldn’t move. So I saw everything. The blood…the muscle, the bone…I was afraid I was going to be next but my legs refused to move. Finally, they just kicked me out of the room and closed the door.”
It sounded at once logical and nightmarishly excessive. They—whoever “they” were—must have feared that the rat carried some kind of infectious disease. But even that could not explain their drastic measures.
I whispered, in Shanghainese, “Who do you mean by they?”
Li’s eyes darted around nervously even though no one was remotely close. He replied in Shanghainese, “The ones in white, of course.”
“Doctors?”
He refused to elaborate. Then he added with a shudder, “It’s cold in those back rooms. Very, very cold.” He took one glance at my left arm and gave me a look of incredible sorrow. “I don’t think I have the stomach to drink today.”
Taro was barely in the door when I began pelting him with questions.
“Who are the men in white? What do they do?”
“Calm down. I won’t entertain a madwoman, let alone a mad wife.”
He undid his laces, removed his boots, and nestled them at the foot of the stairs. After putting on his slipp
ers, he went to pour himself a glass of Armagnac, deliberately moving at a snail’s pace. I waited as he strolled over to the icebox and, with a smile, dropped three cubes into his tumbler. Finally, as he settled into his favorite chair, he gave his drink a little shake and took a long sip.
“By the way, this is supposed to be your job: boots, slippers, drink. I must be the most liberal, most browbeaten husband around. My mother would be ashamed of me.”
“And she should be, seeing that I was meant to be somebody else’s wife.”
A flicker of rage crossed his face. “Now what was it you wanted, Momoko?”
“What do the men in white do, at the warehouse?”
“Which warehouse? You have to be more specific.”
“You know, the one.”
“I told you a long time ago. They’re scientists.”
“In what field, exactly?”
“A sudden interest in the sciences, my Momoko?” He smiled his warden’s smile, one that was supposed to quash me with its effortless contempt.
“Those ‘scientists’ cut off a boy’s entire arm today, right in front of Li.”
“Perhaps I should have you stop seeing him. These visits clearly upset you.”
“That’s not what I meant!” I cried, then forced myself to rein in my outrage. “I’m just curious. I want to know what it is that they do, that’s all.”
“Oh, that’s all, is it?” He finished off the Armagnac and began his long march to refill his glass. “You do realize that I’ve been giving in to you time and again. You ask me to pardon your parasite of a brother, find him a desk job, and I do. You ask to see that little worm, and I let you. And now, what is it, you want me to hand over military secrets in order to satisfy your curiosity? And if I did that, would you perhaps want to tell me how to deploy my men, how to secure my borders, how to shake hands with my own bloody generals? Momoko, does your pride know no bounds?”
I waited for him to construct his drink. This time he left the ice tray out on the dining table to melt—not intentionally but, I guessed, because he was getting annoyed.
“I had a very good day at work today,” he said, sitting down again. “But instead of asking me about my day and bringing me my slippers, like any other normal wife, all you can think about is yourself and your curiosity.”
“You never want to discuss your work. You’ve made that clear.”
“Ah!” He chuckled. “On that count anyway, you’ve been unfailingly obedient.”
“How was your day, my darling?” I forced out a saccharine smile and a genuflection so false even he had to laugh.
“My day, dear wife, was very fine indeed,” he returned in an exaggerated pantomime of husbandhood. “We made a significant victory today. You see, a few days ago, my boys chanced upon a camp of very angry Communists in the jungle. Two hundred, maybe three hundred of them, living in the swamp like rats, very angry rats. There was a series of skirmishes, and this afternoon, my boys brought the surviving fighters down to Shahbandar. All twelve of them—eleven, actually. One died en route and they had to toss him out of the jeep…Oh, as soon as the body landed, a tiger jumped out of the bushes and ripped off his head!”
His hyperbolic glee seemed specially designed to needle me. But even as I knew this, I couldn’t help feeling sickened: Were Issa and Kenneth dead? Ken had always struck me as a man with a greater destiny than this, yet history has a way of subverting destinies, especially the most promising ones.
“You’re very quiet,” Taro said, suddenly more sober. “Are you thinking about another fiancé or brother in that band of rebels? I know some of them were Ignatius Wee’s associates. But these were the naïve friends, the friends with no money or power who went to fight in the mud while Ignatius-san and his cronies sat in air-conditioned mansions eating our steaks and plotting against us. Actually I admire these Communists. They have guts and conviction. Fighting spirit. Of course, this doesn’t mean I won’t be locking them up in Shahbandar and putting them through some fun and games. So is there anything I should know about any of them?”
I shook my head, my eyes burning. Mentioning my friends, were they still alive, would only single them out for worse treatment.
I prepared to go upstairs. No way was I going to display any more emotion for my tormentor’s satisfaction.
“They were quite audacious. The two hundred of them actually thought they could outfight us—with their antiquated Soviet weapons, no less. And while we’re speaking of numbers, I should mention the landmark figure we reached today: one hundred thousand.”
I started up the stairs. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to know.
“Where’s your fabled curiosity now, Momoko? Aren’t you curious one hundred thousand what? Dollars, monkeys, tigers, bananas?”
I was at the top of the stairs when I heard him bellow: “One hundred thousand dead Chinamen.”
It took several months for Taro’s mood to lift again, just in time for Obon, the Japanese festival of the dead. As I’d noted many times before, nothing cheers up the Japs like thoughts of death, save for perhaps the festivities surrounding their Foundation Day, which commemorates the special morning in 660 BC when a wiry little man fell out of the sun and declared himself emperor. Of course, I am distorting their history, but no more than they had distorted mine.
In an odd twist of fate, the night of Obon also happened to be my twenty-third birthday—August 3, 1945. But this wasn’t the only reason I would remember the night forever.
Taro and I ate a light ceremonial dinner of grilled sea bream and miso soup, after which we lingered at the table. He had a shallow sake cup poised on his knuckles, filled to the brim, and none of the liquid rippled or spilled. It was his sixth cup—the point of the demonstration being to prove how steady his nerves were, even under the influence. Finally, he glanced at me.
“Do you want to see that old friend of yours? The prince of Shahbandar—he’s asked for you.”
I leapt to my feet. His words were abundantly clear: Kenneth was still alive.
“Of course I want to see him!”
Taro, in theatrical mode again, winced. “Ah, if only you showed me such interest, Momoko. Oh, how times have cooled us…”
I had to keep him from going off on a tangent. “So, when can I see Kenneth?”
“Kenneth?” He looked startled.
I realized my slip. But the best response now was silence.
“Don’t you mean Daniel, your betrothed? Or has he also fallen by the wayside, like poor me?” He smiled slyly. “But yes. I do have a man at Shahbandar named Kenneth. Kenneth Kee, actually. But I doubt he’s your type—crude, ugly, low-class, swore like a sailor when my boys captured him. They found him in the swamp and perhaps they should have left him there. Your Daniel, on the other hand, has been faultless. Most obedient prisoner we’ve ever had. Says ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ for everything. That’s why they call him the Prince. I thought it only fair that I reward him with a visit from an old friend—that is, if she hasn’t already forsaken him.”
“I haven’t forsaken him.” Dampening the hope of seeing Daniel was, unfortunately, my new worry about Kenneth. As if the hell of Shahbandar weren’t enough, I’d further endangered him by mentioning his name.
“Good, good. Because I promised your Daniel he would see you.” Taro leaned forward to kiss my ear. “And you know how I hate to go back on my word.”
At ten that night, he took me to an Obon celebration with some fellow officers. This was the first time I would be seen by his peers, and I couldn’t tell whether this sudden change in policy reflected a change in his attitude toward me or if the kitchen simply needed an extra pair of hands.
The gathering was held at the beach house, its driveway newly lined with square paper lanterns, creating a catwalk of muted, glowing footlights. I can’t deny it—there was a serene elegance to this backdrop, reminiscent of Hokusai’s woodblock prints. The four tin soldiers who had been stationed there were nowhere to be
found—perhaps their indiscretions had been discovered—and the illuminated house felt like a set readied by a team of spectral stagehands who vanished as soon as the players arrived.
Gazing upon the lovely scene, I was reminded that the Turnipheads were not without a fine aesthetic tradition; it was just that they had a remarkable propensity for subverting grace in the service of evil. As a result, I mistrusted their displays of beauty. What other modern society venerated stones and built shrines for wood sprites while at the same time encouraging—even celebrating—the thirst for human blood?
Of course, entering the house on Taro’s arm, I had no idea that the events of this night would return to debase me in the decades to come; otherwise, I might have found something sinister in the pile of samurai swords parked by the door. But I had become inured to such Turniphead habits and instead continued to make snide private jokes: Surely Taro’s friends were overcompensating for some manly lack?
I had worn my favorite red dress, the one with the silk spaghetti straps, copied from something I’d seen Myrna Loy model in a magazine. It was my birthday, after all. A red silk bow bloomed at my waist; I looked like my own birthday present. If Taro’s ego needed to be stroked in front of his superiors, I would submit to my wifely chore just this once and save myself the regret. The man had promised me Daniel as my reward.
The Turnipheads liked their drink. That fact had already been well established, if not by my eyewitness accounts, then by a long tradition in art, literature, and the annals of civil misconduct. Taro had invited ten colleagues to this drinking party, and they all showed up wearing their olive-green uniforms like a troop of overexcited Brownies. They ranged in age from Taro’s thirty to about sixty, and what united them, beyond the love of sake, was that they all looked more like buttoned-down bank managers than engineers of death. They seemed born to file paperwork behind drab desks and, on weekends, jostle fat babies on their knees. Although I’d expected to meet and greet their “wives,” with whom I could compare spouses and extrapolate rumor from fact, none had been produced.