by Peter Carey
36
It was almost four in the morning and I laboured on, in my room now, driven by a mixture of opportunism and curiosity while Chubb, showing no signs of fatigue, continued with his tale.
It had been at almost the same late hour, though many years before, of course, that Mulaha’s red Vespa had become irretrievably jammed into a deep drain in Penang and, after doing their best to hide it beneath one of those heavy concrete slabs that dot the landscape of Malaysia, the two dew bugs set off on foot towards the Bukit Zamrud English School. They were very drunk indeed.
Coming into the neighbourhood of the E&O, Mulaha suddenly veered away, stabilising himself against the cyclone fence of St Xavier’s School, where he insisted he’d been dux in 1938.
Come, I’ll show you photos on the walls. See how pale they made me look. Special price, I bet you.
They negotiated the rusty latch, but had less success with the school doors, lighting match after match that fell blazing into the wet grass.
It was then that the dog appeared, barking.
This was one of those curs, Mem. You have seen them in K.L.—suppuration, distended teats, no harm in them really. But the Tamil—wah! Take this, he cried, and thrust his hand into his rumpled trousers. I told myself, he has a pistol too.
Hand still in pocket, Mulaha came directly at the dog, which bared its yellow teeth and backed itself up under the low branches of a poinciana.
Releks, I told him, may have rabies-ah. The Tamil gave me the dead eye and from his pocket removed—no pistol, thanks to God—something else, small and white. Then he made a gesture, like tossing deck quoits. Good form also. The dog skipped back before sneaking up to sniff the object. I thought it was a stone, but the dog swallowed it down, one gulp.
Watch, Tuan, cried Mulaha. He was the Cheshire bloody cat, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. Now, my friend, he said to me, both hands deep and happy in his pockets, kindly to observe what follows.
The dog had changed his attitude. No barking now. Ears cocked, head to one side.
Observe, my friend.
And Mem, the bloody mongrel fell. Like a pigeon from the sky. Good God, man! I said to Mulaha.
Sit, he demanded, not of the dog, but of me, patting a wooden bench where in daylight you can still see the Cantonese amahs waiting to pick up their charges after school.
Is it dead, I asked. I was not approving. Have you killed it?
You are going to live in my house? I am going to rescue your daughter? Then sit.
We sat side by side a while, the poor dog in the shadow not five feet from us.
You have an enemy, Mulaha said finally.
I was confused, somehow thinking he meant the dog.
I mean the bloody hantu who took your baby. McCorkle? Yes or not?
Yes.
Big head on him?
I told you.
Very strong … clever? Seven foot tall you said?
I told you—almost.
And cruel.
Yes.
And what will you do? You must have revenge, Tuan.
Had he killed the dog in revenge? All I could see was that lifeless eye. Mulaha, I said, you are drunk.
No, no, listen. Only our first day. You do not yet understand your luck. No-one better than me for you to have met. I will tell you how to solve your problem.
You told me already. We go to the rickshaws. Then we send the parcel.
That does not solve your problem, man. After that what will you do?
I will mail him the E.S. parcel, so you say.
Yes, yes, he will have to come to the P.O. to pick it up, but what will you do then? When you see the bastard, what will happen?
I shrugged.
You too half-past-six. You listen. I know.
Yes.
Do not worry about the bloody dog.
Very well.
You hear my little war story.
Now?
Yes, bloody now. This is why I am called Dato.
All right.
Do you know what Dato is?
No.
It is like Sir or Lord or O.B.E., that sort of thing.
Which one?
Any one. Don’t worry. I am not Dato really. They gave me a medal instead—Panglima. Means bloody nothing. Do you know how old I was when the Japanese invaded? I will tell you, Christopher—twenty-one. I had two good eyes, not like this now. Both straight ahead, like the headlamps of my father’s Humber. I had a very pretty clever wife, Rasathi, a sweet, juicy, slender-waisted girl, not from Jaffna—born on King Street in Penang. It was a lauoo marriage as they say. You cannot know how rare love marriages were before the war. Her parents never stopped being offended by the darkness of my skin. My mother-in-law was a light-skinned Jaffna Tamil, just like my father, but she was always drawing attention to her complexion, powdering it to make it even lighter. Also they were Hindu and I was what they call a Rice Christian, my Jaffna grandpa having converted in order to get his education. For all these reasons she thought her family above us, although in reality they owned a little spice shop on King Street while my father had a law degree from Oxford. Also we owned the mansion right on Queen Street, two pharmacies, a big rubber estate down in Segari.
The first Japanese bombers came in over George Town at ten in the morning. My beautiful Rasathi and her maid were packing our trunks for Trinity College, Dublin, where I was to study law. Two minutes later my father’s chambers were bombed to dust, his clerk was dead, my steamer tickets shredded to confetti. He ran into the street to find our saviours and protectors, Australians and British, scattering like panicked chickens. Smoke, fire, awful looting all over George Town. They broke into our beautiful house—Chinese gangsters. Axe brand. That’s what they called these goods when they were sold.
My father was a secretive man, always fearful of the worst. He had been collecting bicycles in preparation. Two hours after the bombing he and my younger brother delivered four of these precious machines to my in-laws’ spice shop. He advised them to immediately set off for Segari. It was a hundred and twenty miles to the plantation.
I was not witness to this conversation, but my in-laws soon rushed into the house on Queen Street and we all began to strap jewellery to our bodies and slip banknotes into shoes. Soon we were prepared but my mother-in-law must first go to the Sri Mariamman Temple across the street. Here she spoke with a certain priest, a well-known supporter of the Indian National Army. She returned with a pamphlet for her husband to read.
OUR FRIENDS WHO HAVE BEEN WEEPING UNDER THE WHITE TYRANNY! NOW THE DAY HAS COME WHEN YOU CAN BE FREE! HERE HAS COME YOUR SAVIOUR.
So, she asks, why we go to some cowboy town? No need-ah. These Japanese soldiers like us.
We were still in Penang three days later when our new saviours arrived. By noon the beheadings had begun. Then they were stealing bicycles and watches. Then they were raping women in the five-foot ways on King Street. Suddenly my mother-in-law wished to go to Segari, and a little after three we all set off, in the middle of a rain-storm, my wife with our pretty baby daughter swaddled to her chest.
It was the storm that saved us. By dusk we were at the waterfront without being stopped. We took a motorised sampan across to Butterworth. By ten we had covered the twenty miles to Bukit Tambun, where a client of my father’s, a Mr Han, had a truck company. No more-lah! Japanese had commandeered the vehicles, Mr Han as well. The family weeping. Poor people. They let us sleep in the garage for the night.
My mother-in-law was in very poor shape for this journey. Her skin was chafed raw by her jewels and her lungs bad. We bicycled an hour next day, yet who could bear to listen to her pain? We came to Pantai Baru, a kind of Chinatown, but some Indian traders too. They had built their wooden houses on stilts along the banks of the river leading to the Strait of Malacca. It was a bustling sort of place, with a pharmacy owned by a cousin, and when he said our women might stay on, my father-in-law and I decided to strike out for Segari where we had a Land Rover.
&nb
sp; When I left the next morning I was very proud to see my pretty wife asleep in bed with the baby at her breast.
I felt I was doing a good job of saving my family, but that very day the communists ambushed a patrol of Japanese and killed five of them. Very good, you would think. But nothing could be worse. That night the Japanese arrived in Pantai Baru. They ordered everyone into their wooden houses and then set the village on fire. Anyone who ran from their house was shot. Can’t talk more.
Mulaha spat onto the grass.
Sorry, Tuan.
He stood and walked towards the road. I rose myself but he waved me back onto the bench. I turned my back and looked at the lump of dog lying in the moonlight.
When Mulaha sat down he spoke quietly. No point I tell you more, he said, except for this. I would have revenge, you see. That is the point. I would have my revenge and live to see it. I would kill the bastards and not die myself.
He faced me now. I could see the huge furrow of his brow, the one dead eye. See? He pointed at the dog. You thought I was just a Tamil slave.
I had thought no such thing. I said so.
Then I will tell you this: I am Dato Sri Tunku Poisoner, my friend. I am sent from heaven for you. I am the one that you need.
37
They were burned alive, I told you—aigh, the sea at Pantai Baru, blackened wood, bodies, all awash. It was then my left eye turned sideways, not until. Right eye weeping like a child, the other blind and dry with hate.
I had my father’s Land Rover. They stole it and beat me with bamboo. I walked back north along the jungle paths. I could not spit. No, I wept my water.
My brothers had bicycles—not the sports models the Japanese preferred—these models were too tall for the murderers to reach the pedals. At Bukit Tambun my brothers caught up with me. When I would not return with them to Segari, they made me a black patch for my injured eye, but I tore it off, I would not cover up my hate. It was all that remained of love.
When he crossed at Butterworth, Mulaha learned how low he would have to bow to his conquerors. He did not care, or so he claimed years later, walking along North Beach in the moonlight.
I came back to George Town like a one-eyed worm, he told Christopher Chubb, a corkscrew jigger to burrow through their feet.
Municipal garbage collection was abandoned, so rubbish was piled high in the streets and the air was filled with huge mosquitoes. The house in Queen Street had been looted but he found clean clothes in his father’s press and headed to the E&O. This was where the Japs had billeted their officers, he said. Where else-ah? The drains along Penang Road were covered with a thick black slime.
In Farquhar Street he stood directly in front of that exclusive door. Mulaha, the rickshawallahs whispered, circling him. Mulaha, you must go away, they hissed. Don’t turn that eye on them. They will top you-lah.
But Mulaha means ‘temper,’ Christopher. Have I told you that?
No.
Yes I did. Same nickname as my father. I was in a temper now, believe me. Then the rickshawallahs fell quiet, said Mulaha, and I immediately saw why. The beheader had come. He was already staring at me from the open door of the Eastern and Oriental Hotel, where you and I first met, where they thought I had no right to be, where my beautiful Tamil mother once danced with Mr Sarkis when he balanced Scotch whisky on his head.
A soldier?
This was a captain in the Japanese Army. He had a wild and straggly beard. His hair was long and filthy. Up his left arm were wristwatches, ten of them at least. His sword was not long but his legs were short and the scabbard scraped the pavement as he approached. I bowed, flopping down on the tarmacadam like a dying fish. I heard that sword skittering towards me, worse than fingernails on a blackboard. And then I smelt him, Tuan, and this is how I knew who he was. He stank. He stank like the lowest of the beggars who have ever lived. When I heard the sword drawn from its scabbard, my temper died, I pissed my pants.
Kepara poton, he asked.
He could not speak properly but I understood him. He meant kepala poton. Head cut. Would I like my head cut off.
No, Tuan.
He rested the point of his sword against my outstretched arm and drew a thin line of blood to underline my Rolex. I did not require to be instructed further. I removed the watch and offered it. I dared not look up at him, but it is clear he examined the casing closely for he read out the name and address my father insisted be engraved there. Lose your head, my father had said, if it was not screwed on.
Speak English?
Only a little, Tuan.
This your house, Rolex-san? Queen Street?
Yes, Tuan.
Very well. Chop-chop. We go. Now.
Christopher, there were flies crawling all over him, circling him, a swarm of them swimming inside his pool of stink. Later I heard many stories about him, that he had royal blood, that he had vowed not to wash his body or cut his hair until the war was won, who knows what was true, only that he was a notorious beheader.
Now he was in a rickshaw, his sword resting naked across his lap. He told me run in front of him to lead the way. At Queen Street I opened the door and he took the key and locked me out. I did not know he had taken possession of my home. I imagined he had gone to loot, the bastard. I would skin him alive, I would boil him like a chicken in a pot.
Take it easy please, said Chubb.
No, never. Never releks. Not now. Not ever. I know what these monsters do. I know what must be done. We permitted Tatsuki Suzuki to kill our wives and children.
That was his name?
This man, Christopher, this man who took my family’s house, we permitted him to keep chopping off our neighbours’ heads. Where were the English? Absent. The Australians? Gone. We let him do it. We watched him wipe his sword clean with a sheet of white paper. There was no-one better to kill than this filthy creature who slept in my own bed like a parasite inside my bowel. How to kill him, that was all I thought.
There was an old Chinese woman who lived on Queen Street, Christopher. The Chinese have too many babies, don’t need all those girls. This one had been adopted by Hindus and now she made her living cooking apom, rice flour, coconut, sugar, Hindu breakfast, very nice. She made it in what we call an ottu kada, like a shell on a rock, a rough shack glued onto the wall behind. We never spoke to her before the day my house was taken. But she took me in, Christopher. I slept on the floor beside her in her tiny shed. From there I spied on my own front door, saw the demon come and go, plotted how I would destroy him.
Soon he had a red MG, confiscated from some North Beach baba, isn’t it? On the other side of my front door was a man who had one of those papaya and banana stalls. Sundralingham he was called, a handsome fellow with a black moustache. Well, early one morning he accidentally scraped the MG with his trolley. Poor fellow. He was very frightened and when Captain Suzuki came out my front door Sundralingham immediately confessed what he had done. It was him, no-one else, his fault completely. He was offering his life, Tuan, so no-one else would suffer. I watched Suzuki rest his hand on the hilt of his sword but he did not draw it out.
You want kepara poton?
No, Tuan.
Then you get me musk melon.
What that?
Not monkey fruit. Not this. And he swept half the papayas from Sundralingham’s stand. You get me musk melon. In season now.
Sundralingham knew he was kepara poton, for this request was quite impossible even before the war.
Yes, Tuan. Tomorrow, Tuan.
Next morning he was gone. Ran away or dead, which is it? No-one would lay a finger on his stand. Bananas went black and fell. Papayas rotted and the flies were as thick as on Suzuki. For many, many hours I lay in the ottu kada smelling the sickly smell, thinking how stupid we had been to rely on foreigners to protect us. I now understood that it was Malaya we should have trusted. Our country was worth a million English soldiers. She is like those big poison fish that permit a tribe of little fish to swim within their gills. We ar
e the baby fish, Tuan, safe in a place which is poison to the Japanese. Everywhere you look at nature you will see a secret way the country can destroy these monsters. There is a weapon in a tortoise or a frog or a toad. Death lives in a worm or grasshopper. See that bamboo over there—just there, Christopher. Touch it. It has silky hair like between a woman’s legs, but I can make a poison from it which will leave you mabok like that dog.
I don’t want to poison anyone, said Chubb.
Well, I got to thinking about a musk melon. Anyone could tell you it was impossible, no chance at all. Everything rationed, one guntang of rice for every man, that is all. But also there were large Japanese transports landed at the airport and much corruption, and lastly I knew the Chinese gangster Yeoh Huan Choo, known as Potato. Avery tough negotiator, but I borrowed English pounds and three weeks later was the owner of three perfect musk melons, value three hundred pounds, a fortune, but not too much for something impossible.
The next morning, when Suzuki opened my front door he looked down on Sundralingham’s stall. Everything scrubbed, shining, and three musk melons sitting in a field of silver. His eyes popped out.
Surely, Mulaha, he was suspicious?
Of course. If he had not been suspicious it would’ve been a waste of time. He had stolen my house. I hated him. He had not asked me for musk melon, he had asked Sundralingham, but Sundralingham had run away or perhaps was killed or jailed. In any case Suzuki had three perfect musk melons. He shook his finger at me, as if warning me. I looked into his two black eyes and was afraid.
We will share, he said at last. We eat melon together, Rolex-san.
My hands were trembling. I selected a melon but he chose another, with a tiny green blemish. I picked up the knife, cut it, handed him one half. Then he called out to his ugly sergeant, who ran into my house and came out with two of my mother’s best silver spoons. We ate side by side sitting on low metal stools in Queen Street, the smelly beast with his sword resting in the dirt—an insect with a dragging stinger.
Very good, he said. But I could see that he was unsettled. I will come back tomorrow, Rolex-san. We will eat again.