A Different Sky (46 page)

This did not happen and a further day went by. As he lay in his own filth, a bowl of rice and another of water were placed beside him and he had to squirm his way towards it, hands still tied behind his back, and eat like an animal, the bowl rolling over, spilling rice and water on to the ground, leaving him still parched and starving. As the sun rose the following morning he listened to reveille and then the off-key singing of ‘The Red Flag'. Later, when he judged they must have eaten breakfast, he listened for the usual activity but heard nothing. His mind drifted, time had stopped. He could not say how long he
lay there before they came to loosen the rope on his ankles and drag him from the hut.

Stumbling and shivering and disorientated, he no longer cared what they did with him. The sack was over his head again and it was impossible to know which comrades pulled him along. Blind and groping, he was thrust roughly forward and then pushed up against something hard. A rope was wound around him, tying him tightly to the stake. Then the sack was torn off his head and the glare of sunlight blinded him. As his eyes focused he saw he was roped to a tree and facing the parade ground and that the whole camp was silently gathered before him. Wee Jack stood a distance away, dressed in his official uniform and high peaked cap, gold studs glinting, rifle in hand. With his henchmen beside him, Wee Jack began to speak from a prepared text.

‘You have been found guilty of the sin of persistent liberalism. Liberalism is a corrosive that eats away unity, undermines cohesion, causes apathy and creates dissension. It robs the revolutionary ranks of organisation and discipline. For this sin, and the refusal to reconstruct your decadent nature, you have been sentenced to death. The sentence will be carried out immediately. Do you wish to be blindfolded?' Wee Jack spoke coldly.

‘I have done nothing!' Howard shouted, his heart pumping in terror, but the protest became a weak bleat as it left his lips.

He began to shiver, and only the bindings held him steady as he listened to the knock of his chattering teeth. Brokentooth came forward with a blindfold, but Howard angrily gestured him away, fury beating through him. He wondered if he was expected now to recant and beg for mercy? Instead, he straightened up and stared at Wee Jack with whatever challenge he could project. As Wee Jack and the henchmen raised their rifles he shut his eyes, taking a breath, waiting for death to whistle through him. He settled his thoughts on his mother, Mei Lan and Cynthia, but it distressed him to find they evaded him, slipping away even as he tried to hold them down. These were his last moments and yet no meaningful thoughts appeared. Then he heard the cracking retort of the guns.

He felt nothing and wondered for a moment if this was death's way of protecting him from pain. Then, opening his eyes, he saw Wee Jack grinning and guffawing, bent double by the joke, slapping his hand up and down on his knee, while about him the comrades shouted
approval. Tethered still to the tree, Howard listened to the cackles of laughter. After some moments Wee Jack abruptly straightened up, his hilarity died and, turning smartly on his heel, he marched back to the administrative hut. Brokentooth came forward and, with an apologetic smile that showed all his broken teeth, unbound him. A girl appeared with a bowl of warm tea.

Afterwards, Howard was taken back to the same hut, but his hands and feet were no longer tied, nor was the sack pulled over his head. In the evening he was led to the camp where everyone was assembled for dinner. He was given a bowl of rice gruel cooked with the usual assortment of almost inedible leaves, and a piece of salted fish. As the meal finished and the fire still burned, Wee Jack stood up. The comrades gathered around, squatting down on their haunches. Wee Jack began to speak, quoting further rhetoric.

‘
A person with appendicitis is saved when the surgeon removes his appendix. So long as a person who has made mistakes does not hide his sickness for fear of treatment we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade. In treating an ideological or a political malady, one must adopt the approach of “curing the sickness to save the patient”, as the only correct and effective method.
'

Howard began to sob.

‘Shin Syonan in Endau has all the ingredients needed to sustain a settlement but this other place, Bahau, is not a good choice,' Shinozaki told Raj leaning back in his chair and lighting up one of his strong cigarettes. ‘There is not enough water, the soil is clay and it is a hilly place unsuitable for rice planting. Without enough water how will people survive? The Eurasians are mad to go there.'

The Eurasian community had watched the Chinese exodus to the freedom of Shin Syonan with envy. Because of their British connections the Eurasians were especially watched by the
kempetai
and so felt they too deserved a settlement. As Mr Shinozaki prepared to begin a second search for suitable land, the Malay state of Negeri Sembilan unexpectedly offered the area of Bahau for settlement. The Eurasian community jumped to accept the offer, brushing aside Shinozaki's misgivings.

Lionel Pereira was not worried about clay soil or inadequate water,
he was anxious to leave for Bahau with Ava and his children on the first convoy. His brief experience with the
kempetai
had shaken him through and through. On the night Howard had escaped into the jungle he had been taken away and kept some days for the crime of distilling illicit liquor. He had received a few brutal slaps, and listened to the screams of those being tortured. All his stock of toddy and distilling equipment was taken by the
kempetai
but – you have your life, said Ava.

‘Wherever this place Bahau is like, we're going there,' Lionel said, digging into a fish head curry that Ava had made with coconut milk that, like tapioca, was abundantly available. It was a fish from the pond beneath the bog house, but Ava was now past all such discernment. The unending diet of tapioca had worn all of them down and the fish tasted no different from other fish despite its repugnant diet.

‘And you're coming too,' Ava said, turning to Rose and Mavis as they sat together at the table for the evening meal.

‘It must be better than this, whatever it's like. They'll also need nurses, so tell Cynthia to come,' Mavis suggested to Rose, pausing on a mouthful of food as she felt the prick of a fishbone.

Rose watched Mavis pick the bone from her mouth and looked down at her own plate, wondering how she could have eaten a fish fleshed from human waste, but unable to deny her enjoyment. ‘If Howard comes back how will he know we're in Bahau? I will wait here in case he returns,' Rose decided. Christmas was once again almost upon them and she prayed it would bring Howard back to her.

‘Well, we're going before the New Year, that's for sure. We'll begin 1944 in the place,' Lionel announced, leaning back in the chair replete, a splash of fish curry down the front of his worn sleeveless vest.

Some weeks later Lionel and his family departed for Bahau. Cynthia refused the offer to be a nurse in the new settlement, preferring to stay at Joo Chiat Hospital and, like Rose, wait for news of Wilfred and Howard.

‘There's a malaria epidemic in Bahau,' she told Rose disapprovingly.

In spite of her initial enthusiasm, Mavis had also decided to decline the offer, unsure of what she would find and unwilling to be parted from Rose. They settled down to an ordered life with afternoon tea upon the rickety veranda, walks on the beach and less fear about
kempetai
visits now that Lionel was gone. They abandoned their
kapok
pallets on the back balcony and moved into their cousin's bedroom, sleeping together on the double bed. After some weeks a letter arrived from Ava, confirming for Rose the rightness of her decision to stay in Singapore.

‘They did not tell us about the malaria. There have been so many deaths. We have all been down with it and are dosed with quinine. Mr Shinozaki visited here yesterday and told us about Endau, where they do not have much malaria. He says the people there are more enterprising than us Bahau people. Lionel told him Chinese want to die working but we Eurasians like music and singing and enjoying life.
'

R
AJ HAD TAKEN RECENTLY
to wearing a tall crowned panama hat with his white cotton suit. He held this hat awkwardly in his hands as he stood in Little Sparrow's house on East Coast Road. He had been surprised to receive a message from Mei Lan asking to see him. He had heard nothing of her since her release by the
kempetai
in the middle of the previous year.

When Mei Lan at last appeared Raj was shocked at the change in her. He remembered her bright energy, and the direct assessment of her gaze. Now everything in her face was drawn inwards, as if a great weight sucked her into her core. She led him out on to a narrow veranda where there were two basket chairs and a small table. Almost immediately, an old crone appeared with glasses of water and Raj noticed Mei Lan's hands tremble involuntarily as she picked up the tumbler.

‘As soon as they arrested you, Howard went to see Mr Shinozaki and I accompanied him to the YMCA to ask for your release,' Raj explained, describing the unsuccessful interview with the Japanese officer.

‘I have no money to pay this donation; I have tried many ways to raise the amount,' Mei Lan said dully. She had the look of a stray creature about her and the old woman hovered anxiously in the background, darting disapproving looks at him.

‘Other people have raised money by selling their homes. If you even raise part of the amount, they will be satisfied and leave you alone; you can say you will give the rest later,' Raj advised quietly.

‘Where is Howard?' Mei Lan asked abruptly. She had sent Ah Siew to Cousin Lionel's house soon after she returned home, but the old woman had brought back a confused tale that made it clear he was no longer there.

‘Someone told the
kempetai
he had a radio for which, as you know, the penalty is death. He has gone into hiding somewhere, but
I know nothing more. It was many months ago now,' Raj told her. ‘Lots of men are hiding out in the jungle,' he added as an afterthought. Mei Lan fell silent, trying to suppress her concern. She had little trust of Raj, a man whose loyalties if put to the test were clearly with the Japanese, but his connections were useful.

‘Can you find me a buyer for some jewellery?' she asked. Second Grandmother's diamonds, worn for so long in a roll of silk about the old woman's waist, might at last have their use, she thought. The time she had been given to raise the donation money was fast running out. It had taken months to regain some degree of health and Ah Siew had nursed her devotedly. She thought of the boxes of jade and opium and the suitcase of jewellery Lim Hock An had buried in the garden of Bougainvillaea House before the Japanese arrived. Once or twice she had passed her old home, which was now occupied by a civilian Japanese official, and had seen that the garden, although deteriorated, appeared to be undisturbed. One day she vowed to reclaim the place and the precious hoard beneath it.

‘My grandmother died and she left me her diamonds; I can sell those. I need to produce the money soon,' she told him.

She had returned to the East Coast house to find Second Grandmother ill and ravaged by pain, a scrawny and almost unrecognisable bundle of embroidered silks. As Mei Lan had entered her room, Second Grandmother turned her head as she lay on her bed.

‘Bring me the
Schiaparelli
,' she croaked impatiently, as if Mei Lan had not been away. Ah Siew ran for the vial and unscrewed the heavy glass stopper. Second Grandmother had raised a wilting hand to be anointed with the precious nectar, thick and dark as amber in its ancient crystal bottle. At once, the perfume splintered the room with shards of painful memory. Nothing in all the preceding hellish weeks had made Mei Lan break down and cry, but Second Grandmother's
Schiaparelli
cut to the very centre of her.

‘My pipe,' Second Grandmother demanded, her breath rattling like marbles in her throat.

‘There is no more opium, Ancient Mistress,' Ah Siew reminded her and hung her head. During the
kempetai
search on the day Mei Lan was arrested, the opium had been found and taken away by the soldiers. Second Grandmother gave a whimper, and took Mei Lan's hand as she sat down beside her. She gestured weakly to Ah Siew, who pulled
back the bed sheet and gently lifted Second Grandmother's sleeping
sam
to reveal the slack flesh of her body. The rolled silk belt with what remained of her diamonds was still tied about her waist.

‘Take it,' Second Grandmother whispered to Mei Lan, the words barely leaving her throat. Ah Siew untied the belt and placed the soft roll, that still held the warmth of Second Grandmother's body, into Mei Lan's hands. The hard facets of stones could be felt through the silk, and Mei Lan took Second Grandmother's hand. The old woman gave a sigh and closed her eyes and fell into a shallow sleep. As morning broke she awoke with a start, drew a few gasping breaths and died. Mei Lan, who had sat beside her through the night with Bertie and Little Sparrow, dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. Bertie began to howl, but Little Sparrow did not give the customary cries of grief, rising instead with alacrity to begin the funeral arrangements.

‘Diamonds?' Raj lifted his head to meet Mei Lan's emotionless gaze.

‘I want a good price. I know their value, they are of a high quality and carat,' she warned him, her gaze sharpening.

‘Diamonds are good. Many men high up in the military will be interested in diamonds.' Raj nodded encouragingly. He did not add that small pieces of jewellery were easily secreted and transported back home and were much desired by Japanese military men seeking recompense for the hard years of war. He might even be interested himself.

‘I will do what I can,' he said as he stood up. Seeing with discomfort how pompous and unfeeling he must appear to her, he was pricked by sudden shame. Replacing the panama hat on his head, still searching for words that would convey his sympathy, he prepared to leave. She made him feel guilty, as if in some way he had colluded in the events that had destroyed her.