A Different Sky (41 page)

‘Comrades who are part of the food chains bringing provisions into the camps carry forty, even sixty pounds. Everything has to be carried into the camps.'

Gradually, the gloom began to lessen and Howard saw the sun again, cutting down through the trees in thick wedges of light. They emerged into a furnace of heat and began to climb a hill of tall
lallang
. They were now on a high ridge and either side of them the jungle rolled steeply away in a vista of blue-green slopes. A fast-running stream crashed over the ridge and disappeared into a long waterfall, foaming and pounding into the lush emerald forest a great distance below.

‘Drink only fast-moving water and you're safe.' Brokentooth knelt down, cupping the water in his hands, drinking thirstily. Howard sank gratefully to his knees beside him and buried his head in the fresh rush of water.

At this height it was cooler. Howard stood gazing in awe at the endless green swell of jungle-covered hills without sign of human life or habitation. Below this sunny ridge was the darkness of the forest from which they had just emerged; above was the steep climb to the top of the hill and then down again into the jungle.

‘You can't go home,' Brokentooth laughed, as if reading his thoughts.

Howard nodded wearily, already certain that, without a guide, he would never find his way out of the jungle alive. Ahead was only more desolate jungle, waiting to close behind him. They walked all day, passing through boggy swamps where mist welled up eerily in ghostly apparitions and even the birds were dull in colour. Howard's legs ached and sweat ran from him. As the light faded they came upon an attap-roofed hut.

‘This is one of our places,' Brokentooth announced, putting his bags down on the sleeping bench that ran along one flimsy wall. Howard sat down, grateful to have reached any destination at all. It was then that he saw the black leeches clinging to his legs, fat slugs the size of his thumb, bloated with his blood.

‘It's part of jungle life; they drop upon you from the trees. See, I have them too.' Brokentooth laughed at Howard's horror and lit a cigarette. With the glowing butt he touched each swollen leech, and immediately they shrank and dropped off Howard's legs, leaving a small red mark.

‘You get used to all this,' Brokentooth comforted him as he gathered twigs with which to light a fire.

Soon, he produced a rough meal, unwrapping hard biscuits, opening a can of corned beef and boiling up tea. Mosquitoes kept their distance while the fire smoked, but when it died down and they lay in the hut, the insects swarmed viciously about them. Howard covered himself with his blanket, pulling it over his head, but the whine of mosquitoes still hummed in his ears. His sleep was fitful; his dreams were strange and drowned in a green infinity. Beneath the filthy cloth he was hot and sweaty and the rungs of the bamboo bench pressed uncomfortably into his back. Each time he woke the same wave of panic swept through him. Where was he going, when would he return home? At almost this time the day before, he had been cleaning his saxophone in Cousin Lionel's house.

When at last the next day they came into the guerrilla camp, everyone had just finished eating; no food was left for them. The camp was in a clearing hacked from the encompassing vegetation. A sentry with a machine gun stopped them as they approached. Password, he shouted and Brokentooth shouted back that he did not know the password of the day. After some discussion with a hefty man wearing an Air Raid Precaution helmet who was assisting him, the guard dropped formalities and allowed them to enter the camp.

‘Even known people can be spies; we have to be careful, informers are everywhere. The password changes every day,' Brokentooth explained.

The sight of the guard's familiar ARP helmet in such an incongruous place seemed only to emphasise the distortions Howard faced. The letters ARP stamped on the front filled him with nostalgia and memories of Mr Barber and the long-ago first air raid. Before them rattan huts with attap roofs stood about a rough parade ground on which combatants were drilling, a few young women amongst them.

‘That's a food-carrying party getting ready to leave to bring back provisions.' Brokentooth pointed out a group assembling beneath a tree. ‘We depend upon the carriers for survival. There are about seventy comrades in this camp.'

Brokentooth led the way to a solitary hut at the top of an incline. As they approached, he withdrew a peaked cotton cap from his rucksack and quickly pulled it on. Inside the hut, seated before a rough
table Howard was shocked to see Wee Jack, his head bent in concentration over some papers. Howard halted in confusion: it had never occurred to him that Wee Jack would command a guerrilla camp. Brokentooth entered the hut nervously and stood to attention, giving a clenched fist salute.

‘
Chinli
,' he said, head erect, peaked cap with its three metal stars pulled smartly forward. Wee Jack stood up and returned the salute before turning to Howard and beckoning him into the hut. He was dressed in a worn olive green uniform, and observed Howard's exhausted bewilderment with amusement.

‘Didn't you expect to see me here? So, you've been forced to join us at last.'

At Wee Jack's invitation Howard seated himself on the sleeping bench beside the Commissar's desk. The bench was heaped untidily with papers, boxes of tea, tin mugs, propaganda leaflets, a comb, a box of pencils, a peaked cap and a bayonet. Howard hesitantly cleared a space for himself while at the other end Wee Jack searched for a bottle of Camp coffee that he said was buried beneath the mess. Unscrewing the lid, he poured some of the sticky essence into a dirty tin mug. Then, burrowing again into the mound of belongings, he unearthed a tin of condensed milk in which he punched a hole with an army pocketknife. Adding cold water to the drink, he stirred the liquid with a finger before handing it to Howard. Wee Jack had several suppurating jungle sores on his arms and legs and Howard was in no hurry to take the coffee.

‘We don't think too much about hygiene here,' Wee Jack announced dismissively as he mixed himself a mug of the coffee.

‘Why have you chosen to join our fight against the Japanese?' he asked, extracting a creased printed form from beneath the untidy pile on the bench. Already, Howard realised, the balance between them had changed. Wee Jack was now Commissar of the camp and he, Howard, was a dispensable refugee dependent upon his largesse.

‘I have to fill in this form and you must sign it. We are strict about procedures here. This is a military camp and everything is documented; I represent the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army,' Wee Jack told him proudly holding a pencil poised above the sheet of paper, frowning over his spectacles, his unhealthy colouring apparent even in the gloom of the hut. As Howard seemed lost for words, he sighed resignedly.

‘We'll just say you want to fight the Japanese because you hate all Imperialists and, after they have been defeated, you will continue to fight until the People's Republic of Malaya is established. In the Republic everyone – Chinese, Malay, Indians and all other minority races – will have equal rights and opportunities.' Wee Jack made a sweeping gesture towards the open entrance of the hut where a flag of the new Republic hung limply on a bamboo pole.

‘As soon as it's safe I must return home,' Howard protested.

Wee Jack gave a bark of scornful laughter that turned into a deep, racking cough. After it subsided he spat into a hollowed out coconut shell that stood by his desk. ‘You're safe here, remain as long as you wish, but while you are here you must obey camp rules and work like the others. We're all comrades; we allow no differences.'

‘You can write that I agree with a fight against the Japanese, because I do. I have not thought beyond that,' Howard conceded begrudgingly, as Wee Jack turned his attention again to the form.

‘Then it is time that you began to think,' he replied curtly, not raising his head from the paper. Beyond the hut Howard observed the thick wall of the encroaching jungle and felt his helplessness, the weight of the miles he had trekked to this spot.

There was no option but to adapt to camp life. Howard found himself regretting he had never been a Boy Scout, had never slept in a tent, built a fire or learned to tie knots, for now the life about him depended upon such resourcefulness. He slept in a hut with a dozen other men, allotted a section of the sleeping bench and a portion of shelf for his belongings. Since he had fled in what he stood up in, all he carried were Cynthia's medicine and some food. A ragged towel and a razor for shaving were given to him. Everyone shared the same couple of shaving brushes and bars of soap; teeth were cleaned with the chewed end of a twig. The food was tasteless, a thick gruel of rice and the meat of whatever animal had been caught that day, frog, deer, snake or rat, with tough inedible leaves or grasses thrown in. After a few days Howard shovelled it into his mouth like everyone else, exhausted, disgusted but too hungry to care. Brokentooth stayed near him, offering advice and encouragement; at times he wished the boy would leave him alone but here nobody respected privacy. Privacy was a bourgeois concept that pandered to an individual's ego, Brokentooth said.

Camp routine settled about him. Brokentooth had been allocated the sleeping space next to Howard. All the guerrillas slept fully dressed with weapons on them and spare clothes packed at their side. The Japanese were constantly searching for guerrilla camps and they lived in apprehension of an attack, alert to every crack of a falling branch, every rustle of a passing animal. In the morning a wake-up whistle blew at 5.30 a.m. and within five minutes Howard stumbled out on to the parade ground behind Brokentooth and the other comrades. After exercises, fifteen minutes was allowed for washing and cleaning teeth. He had soon discovered the horror of the latrine, an open pit of excrement seething with maggots over which he must crouch on two narrow planks a foot apart, sometimes in the company of several others; the stench made him retch, to everyone's amusement. Howard knew he was watched, and knew that in the camp they saw him as an outsider, as soft, indulged and decadent, and that they were waiting to deride him, to break him down. The first week or two went quickly as he braced himself and learned their ways, determined to show that, like them, he too could live at subsistence level and not complain. He did not know how long he must stay, but instinctively he knew that if he resisted the experience time would go even more slowly and painfully. The quicker he appeared to fit in, the easier it would be for him; he must adapt to their ways, however difficult that was.

Each morning the flag was raised to a clenched fist salute followed by the singing of ‘The Red Flag'. Howard learned the words and sang with everyone else. There was daily training in sabotage techniques and rigorous drilling. He was relieved to relax in the hours given over to manual labour: cutting down trees, repairing huts, hunting large lizards for dinner in the diffused light of the forest. The sun filtered through the thick canopy in a dank green glow; he was told that eventually everyone's skin absorbed the green hue of the jungle. Time was also given to the winnowing of rice, which contained lime to preserve it and innumerable weevils that, like everyone else, Howard learned to consume. When the last whistle blew he took his place on the bamboo shelf to sleep fitfully, lined up head to foot with the other men on the narrow resting place. The discomfort of the knobbly bamboo rungs, the whine and bites of mosquitoes, the snores of his companions and the night sounds of the jungle were a constant
distress. The proximity of Brokentooth's feet just above his head, and the head of his neighbour just below his own feet, was something he could not get used to.

Yet, in spite of Wee Jack's disapproval, there were ways in which Howard's presence at the camp was helpful. He had a rudimentary knowledge of first aid, had carried medicines into the camp and also knew how to administer them. He was immediately delegated to help in the sick bay. Already he had learned from Cynthia the ailments of the jungle: malaria, beriberi, scabies and other uncomfortable skin diseases. The sick bay was a long hut with the usual sleeping bench running around its walls. Outside a girl was seated on a log washing her ulcerated legs with Chinese tea; this improvised antiseptic was all that was available. In the hut patients were stretched out on the narrow bench, shivering and groaning, and the putrid stench of unwashed bodies and suppurating jungle lesions closed about him. Swallowing his repugnance, Howard examined everyone and saw that without exception all of them had malaria, besides a variety of other afflictions. At the end of the hut a man lay moaning loudly, and Howard was shocked to see an ugly bullet hole dark with dried blood on his calf. Flies swarmed about the wound and the leg was swollen and blue, and Howard wondered if gangrene had already set in. An image of Mei Lan bending to the wounded man in the hideout filled his mind, and a spasm of sorrow ran through him. He wondered if she was held captive still, and wondered also how long it would be before he lay sick here with malaria, septic ulcers or worse. Before that time came, he promised himself, he would find a way to escape.

Cynthia had packed a supply of permanganate of potash and he made up a solution of this to bathe everyone's sores. A sour-faced woman called Pin, who Howard soon realised knew even less about medicine than he, was the designated nurse. She made it clear by an obstinate refusal to help, that she resented Howard's intrusion into her domain. All the women in the camp had cut off their hair, but Pin still kept a long greasy plait and was always scratching a head full of lice.

‘Give quinine injection now,' she told him in broken Malay.

It seemed useless in the circumstances to tell her he had never given an injection before, although he had watched Cynthia many times. Resignedly, he set up a sterilising bath and mixed up the quinine
solution and then, with trepidation, set about injecting the patients. Pin, arms folded over her chest, silently watched his fumbling attempts to find a vein. With the lack of fresh fruit and vegetables, many of the camp inmates inevitably suffered from beriberi and scabies and Howard made a note to speak to Wee Jack about this. Beriberi was easily treated by eating rice bran, which could be obtained from any of the villages supplying the guerrillas with rice. It was rolled into marble-sized balls for convenient chewing, and he had made these for Cynthia in the hospital.