A Rude Awakening

‘Excuse me if I say so, but you do not keep the peace so very well, sir. In Sourabaya, your troops fight pitched battles with the extremists. You bomb towns, kill innocent people. You also use the defeated Nipponese to help. Why are you allowed to ally yourself with a defeated and disgraced enemy in that way? It brings unpopularity.’

‘The real wars are over, in case you’ve forgotten. We had Hitler to fight as well, you know. Now we want to pack up and go home. We’re short of men, owing to the demob programme, so we – well, the trouble is that the local population encourages the extremists. You have to inflict peace on them.’ I laughed.

Silence reigned, inside and out.

He smoked his cigarette concentratedly and made a comment in Chinese to Fat. To me he said, ‘You see, sir, what you have to say about the situation is not at all exact. You must face one fact, that the old world of the nineteen-thirties is totally shattered. None of us can go back to those times. Demons are loose.’

He paused as if considering what to say, tapping impatiently with long fingers on the table. ‘Myself, I am a wanderer on the earth’s face, but let me give the example of the family who employs me, who owns the New South China Times. They remain here in Sumatra under Dutch rule since five generations. They come from Swatow, a fine port you should visit if ever you would. They are Overseas Chinese, not mere refugees like Fat Sian and I. But who can say what will happen to them before the end of 1946? How can they go back to China, where civil war rages? Sumatra is their place, they understand everything about it …

‘We sit here, you and I, and talk in this poor building. It once housed a spare – what do you say? – an auxiliary printing press of the firm’s. The press was stolen, the mechanic who guarded it is killed. Many unlawful things happen …’

‘Look, the curfew –’

He sighed. ‘I see you do not care to learn. Please give me another cigarette. I mean no harm, I even admire the British in a way. But I wish you understand my meaning. You hear the shooting, you enjoy certain pleasures with Su Chi. You think you are in old Medan.

‘Let me tell you, sir, that you are not. You are in a new place, and the hairs on your head should be standing upright in alarm.’ He laughed with sudden ferocity. ‘You are in a snake’s den. You are in a town of the new Indonesian Republic! You appear not to understand that. Do you know that Dr Soekarno declared the Netherlands East Indies dead and gone in 1945? We now remain in a militant new republic, with its own flag, under which certainly no colonialists will be allowed. They will kill off all white foreigners, ten to one.’

It irritated me to be lectured at. Swigging the beer, I said, dismissively, ‘Well, it’s their bloody country, after all.’

He laughed, and again made a rapid remark in Chinese to Fat, who blinked expertly. ‘My godfather, is that the British point of view, sir, the famous British sense of justice? Murder is okay on home ground, is that what you say? If so, why don’t you clear off, every one of you? Or if you do not clear off, why don’t you send more troops, Indians if necessary, and crush this whole damned Soekarno Merdeka movement once for all? Do one thing or the other, for god’s sake!’

‘Look here, it’s a difficult –’

‘Restore real peace, get business picking up again, introduce a proper legal currency, open up trade with outside world. Then if local discontent dies, support for Dr Soekarno dies.’

‘It’s a difficult political situation for the British. You know the name of Jinnah?’

Tiger Balm leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head, smiling.

‘You refer to Mr Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League Party of the Indian Central Assembly? Naturally, I am tolerably familiar with the name.’

‘Then you may be tolerably familiar with his noises about the wrongs of the British using Indian troops in a foreign country. If our troops took Jinnah seriously, we’d have a mutiny on our bloody hands. I can’t think why they don’t lock Jinnah up.’ I laughed.

He laughed too, without humour. ‘As you say, your hands are already bloody. You have already locked Jinnah up, and Jawarhalal Nehru, and Ghandi – and it did no bit of good. Your gaols were not oppressive enough. As a result, the days of the British in India are numbered.’

‘That’s all the more reason why we shouldn’t fight for the Dutch in the NEI.’

Tiger Balm got up and walked about, smoking, on the other side of the table. He wore light grey trousers of a local cut, and made a dapper figure. Looking up at the rafters above his head, he said, ‘You will leave a bloodbath here when you quit.’

At this juncture, there was an admonitory cry from behind the screen. Fat wagged his head a few times to check that it was still there and said, in his imitation English, ‘Missa Stuss, Auntie, she say she ha’ bad head, prease you no tor’ so row’, she want go slee’.’

Ignoring him, I banged my fist on the table and told Tiger Balm, ‘If there is a bloodbath when we leave, it won’t be any fault of the British, so stick that in your next editorial!

‘Some Indian was trying to tell me the other day that there would be a bloodbath in India, when the British left there. Okay, then why is everyone so keen to kick us out if they are going to massacre each other when we’ve gone?’

The question appeared to me unanswerable enough to pass for rhetorical, but Tiger Balm merely said, ‘The reasons of course lie in colonialist history. Whatever the price, people want their freedom, as the British in 1940.’

Fat put a finger to his lips, ‘Prease, be mo’ quiet. D’ink a mo’ bee’.’

‘I’m going to bed. And I presume Mr Tiger Balm is going home after curfew.’ I got up and followed the latter round the room. ‘So tell me, whose side are you on? Do you want British or Dutch rule? Or do you want Soekarno and Co. to take over? It isn’t your country any more than it is mine.’

He sighed and helped himself to a cigarette from his pack on the table.

‘History is not that simple, Mr Stubbs, sir. Ask your little “Margey” what she thinks of the British. She could hardly tell you. We Chinese respect and slightly admire the British, although we do not believe that the Far East is your part of the world – any more than we regard Europe as our part. Since you have been beaten so easily by the Nipponese in Malaya and you surrendered so weakly in Singapore and elsewhere, we think it is time you finished your adventures in the East. You have lost face and now you must go home. The lion, let’s say, has its tail between its legs.’

At this I felt myself getting extremely angry. I sat down at the table and lit up another cigarette, wondering whether to hit him.

‘You’ve been reading the China Times too much, chum. You forget how the Chinese got mopped up by the Japs, left, right, and centre. Besides, the Japs caught the British unprepared – the Fourteenth Army really massacred them in Burma – I was there. We’ve evened up the score okay now. So do you want British rule or not?’

He leaned against the wall, unmoved by my anger, considering his answer. ‘There’s no question of British rule here, sir. The British contingent leaves in the late summer – as the Dutch certainly understand, even if you don’t. You have failed in your mission. You have made a mess of it. You were too nice. You cared too much for political justice and conserved too much ammunition. That’s fatal. And of course the Dutch cannot hold down the whole republican movement without British and American support.

‘So the new state of Indonesia will come soon into full being, and the red-and-white flags fly everywhere. As you say, it is their country. You quote Jinnah, but you do not understand the meaning of what you quote. Jinnah is a Muslim. Indonesian Republic will be officially a Muslim state. That is one reason why Chinese people fear a bloodbath: Chinese may be Christian, just a few of them, but we are never Muslim. Buddhists never become Muslim, I don’t know why. When you and the Dutch quit, then, in the sacred name of religion, Indonesians may be tempted to kill many thousands of Chinese to get their hands on their property. Who can Chinese people turn to then for protection? Nobody. Nobody.’ He let the word hang in the air before looking pointedly at Margey, who waited silently in the background, and saying. ‘That, sir, is why many Chinese people try many ways to leave Sumatra. And why you are at least moderately welcome on these premises. Our next lot of visitors may have less friendly intentions.’

With these words, he bowed soberly, stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and walked out of the door into the night.

Fat and I sat where we were, saying nothing. Margey, too, remained where she was. Auntie sighed behind her screen.

Addressing the remark to Margey, I said heavily, ‘Let’s hope that things don’t turn out as badly as he supposes. Tell Fat that he ought to take you to Singapore as soon as possible.’

Fat had understood. He made a negative gesture. ‘Prenty too much men Sin’apore. Twice so many men, three year. No job. No house. No food. No live. Better we stay here, maybe trouble go ’way.’

He reached out for another apple.

I took Margey’s hand. ‘Let’s get upstairs to bed.’

Without another word, we crept upstairs, past the sleepers on the upper floor, into our familiar attic. We undressed in silence, fearful of waking Daisy and her sleeping babe.

CHAPTER THREE (#ucfcf5b00-a0d5-51e6-b008-63fedeb4a3e9)

Spring – an English spring – visited Sumatra for one hour after dawn every day. Even my fellow sergeants, when they got up that early, had been known to scratch their hairy arses and exclaim with pleasure at the morning. Cool breezes wafted through our billets, birds called, and a decent mist lay over the land. The insect population still slumbered.

In that hour, the sun steered close to the horizon, losing itself among shaggy palms. The air was loaded with rosy hues and steaming bars of shadow. Ox-carts moving towards the fields proceeded with a ruminative rhythm. The natives in their sarongs, the women going to the well with bronze pots on their heads, walked slowly, as if in a dream among the trees. Later they would appear more bent, as the load of sunlight became too great.

Nipping back from Margey’s at this good hour, I cut down one of the Out of Bounds roads that bordered a kampong. The thatched bamboo huts, set beside a stream amid tall palms, looked too idyllic to be anything but fodder for some fucking travel poster. Hens clucked among the huts; there were tethered white goats, cats sitting staring at the water, and an old man, bent double, brushing a path with meticulous care, as if each grain of dust were familiar to him. It was hard to believe that anyone wanted to shoot me at this hour.

Too soon, the scene would be different. The sun would be roused from its pleasant lethargy and zoom to the zenith of the sky, showering fire as it went. The fog would vanish; the day would buzz like a saw; every squaddy alive would break out in a muck sweat; monkeys would start to pass out in the trees.

Climbing down into a ditch, I dodged between strands of barbed wire and climbed through a hole in the tall mesh perimeter. The hole had been made by ill-intentioned BORS taking short cuts to town. My way to the sergeants’ quarters lay through the Other Ranks’ lines.

Some BORS were slouching between houses, across their neglected gardens. They looked like apes with towels about their shoulders as they made their way to the wash-ups. As I rounded one of their billets, I came face to face with Johnny Mercer, the day’s Duty Sergeant. An unhappy corporal trailed behind Johnny, explaining something to him at great length.

‘Merdeka,’ I said by way of salute. He responded, but looked no happier than the corporal.

‘Stubby, we can’t get these shagging Other Ranks out of their billets. What do you think we ought to do?’

I looked at my watches. They seemed agreed that it was approximately seven-thirty.

‘Bit early, isn’t it? What’s the drill?’