As the years of the war continue to float downstream, releasing themselves from memory into history, it becomes increasingly easy to sentimentalise them. The antidote is to recall one marked aspect of war years everywhere: how often one was awakened from deep sleep by someone shouting or someone shaking, or by a combination of the two.
Whoever was shaking me was not shouting. His silence was compensated for by sheer rudimentary vigour; I might have been a coconut palm in the grip of a starving Neanderthal. Groaning, I sat up and was motioned to keep quiet. I did not know where I was or what time it was. Both my watches had stopped. It was still dark, or barely light, and I could not recognise the man who stood over me.
Now that I was awake, he released me, bending to whisper in my ear.
‘Coffee, two minute,’ he perorated, and crept out of the door.
I instantly lay down to sleep again; the swine had the wrong man. Then a perfume caught my senses. I opened one eye. A woman’s head lay close by mine.
With a certain sense of déja vu, I heaved myself up again and this time came more fully awake. Orientation returned. I was on Captain Boyer’s wooden bed. He was there and the woman Raddle was with him. They were both tucked inside the mosquito-net. I was outside the net. They had changed ends, either out of respect for my feelings or because they could not stand the smell of my feet. Gingerly, I climbed off the bed. It was obvious that some well-intentioned Dutchman was going to take me back to my billet in Djalan Sennal Road.
Staggering to the window, scratching and yawning sickly, I stared out at the tropical world beyond. The great light was about to bound into the sky. Terrible things were already mating or feeding in the branches of trees, celebrating the fact in querulous voices. Apart from the bed, the room was unfurnished. (Writing now, I know why: the Japanese had looted the furniture off the Dutch and the British had looted it off the Japanese.) In one corner, under the window, a metal trunk stood on its end. On top of it were a pink china figurine of a woman dancing, a cracked hand-mirror, a lipstick, and a pink comb with some teeth missing. I stared at them for a long time, whilst trying to get my lungs back into operation.
As I used the comb, my mind chugged into action along a branch line. I was looking at all the possessions that Raddle had acquired, or managed to hold on to, in the last four years. Today was Saturday, the day she sailed for the Netherlands and a new start in life. I went to have a good look at the pair of them, Raddle and Boyer, sweating together under the net. They were lying face to face, breathing into each other’s open mouths. Boyer was half-dressed. Raddle had everything off. She looked as defenceless as a rather mountainous old dog.
I thought well of her. Pissed though she was, maddening though Boyer had been, she had gone back to him. Just for the last time.
What a fewking world … Faithfulness, hopefulness, and charitableness, and the greatest of these was faithfulness, if you could possibly manage it.
As I rammed my bush-hat on and tiptoed for the door, a calendar caught my eye. Write Boyer a note. Must speak to him before he flies back to Padang. Well remembered, Stubbs, Marry Margey, get her to hell out of this equatorial hell-hole.
I took the calendar off the wall, got a pencil from my pocket, and scrawled him a few lines, politely thanking him for a pleasant evening, wishing his light o’ love a pleasant voyage on the Van Heutsz, and asking to meet him at the company office at fifteen hundred hours. It was a miracle of composition, all things considered: a microcosm of the world in three sentences.
The calendar showed a view of the centre of Edam, with a canal of that blue generally held in reserve for picture postcards of the Mediterranean. It was designed for 1939, the year the world stopped. I left it on top of the mosquito-net, message downwards, and hoped that Boyer would not be too hungover to read it.
The RAPWI camp lay embalmed in cool dawn air. The trees were absolutely still. On a wooden chair, a garment lay forsaken. The ashes of the barbecue fire were leprous, as if someone had been burning snake skins. The only movement came from a thin smoke, which withered and died among the branches: it rose, not from the barbecue, but from our black car. The vehicle stood where we had left it, grey cumulo-nimbus issuing from its gaping windows.
Just looking at the car made me feel worse. Turning my back on it, I stretched experimentally; I had been lying on my revolver all night, too besotted to move. A dead feeling pervaded me. Not only was I alone and among strangers, I hardly knew myself.
There was a movement at one of the bungalows. A figure appeared on a verandah and beckoned. When the gesture was complete, he still stood there, hand in air. As I moved slowly in his direction, another man came out of the bungalow and stood looking grimly ahead. They waited for me side by side.
They were young and Dutch. It crossed my mind that I had seen one of them before somewhere, but they conformed very much to a pattern, being tall, fair, tanned, dressed in jungle greens, stern, alert. When I reached them, one said, ‘Hello again.’ The other shook my hand and said, ‘Jan de Zwaan.’ He gave me a tin mug of coffee.
Letting slip the moment in which I could appropriately have said something in reply, I was condemned to silence. I drank. Sweet disgusting liquid seeped through all the furry obstructions in my mouth and throat, and coursed down into my stomach. The novel and, on the whole, welcome illusion of being alive overcame me. I let out a sly fart which immediately poisoned the air. The two grim young men did not twitch a muscle. Necessity was at work: I squeezed out a second fart, repressing the guilty smile on my face.
As I finished the coffee and returned the piyala, de Zwaan picked up something from behind him and swung it from one finger. It was a Jap aviator’s leather cap. ‘Okay, we go,’ he said.
He and the other man moved forward, and I fell in beside them. It would be a relief to get back to the billet.
Parked under linden trees was an old battered army truck. At a sign from de Zwaan, the three of us climbed into the cab. When the engine started, I looked out anxiously, expecting everyone to wake in their bungalows and curse us for murdering sleep. Nothing stirred.
Bumping slowly forward, we arrived at the gates. A guard came up smartly to let us out, and followed us with his red-rimmed eyes as we drove through the entrance. Oh yes, I thought, this was where Raddle threw up, bless her, and I looked for the place in the grass. But the dholes and hyenas would have cleaned it up. Besides, the episode belonged to an earlier stretch of history.
We moved down the road at a fair rate. Already day had dawned. This was the brief hour of spring. Natives in wicker hats guided bullock-carts or moved among the fields. Palms dwarfed their grouped figures. Over everything lay a faint mist, with radiance at work behind it. Vague in the distance were Sumatra’s high mountains.
At the next crossroads, a figure was awaiting us, a carbine slung over his shoulder. We stopped. He climbed in beside us, which made for a crowded cab. It was Ernst Sontrop.
De Zwaan, who was driving, turned down a narrow cart-track with palm trees on either side. We roared up to a bullock-cart. De Zwaan hooted madly, and the driver and his wife pulled their creaking contraption over into the ditch to let us by.
Sontrop was talkative. ‘Hendrick Nieuwenhuis and Jan de Zwaan say that they wish they spoke English a little more. But that will not spoil our morning’s enjoyment. We come in this truck in preference to my car because of the rough nature of the ground.’
This hardly needed explanation. We had left the lane and were, as far as I could tell, driving fast over a herd of dead camels. The sun was rising in majesty over the world, the mists evaporating. Close at hand, the genuine jungle gleamed, dense, metallic, inviting.
We hit another track. It led us through a burnt-out village. Green things were pushing up everywhere through blackened remains. A few pigs ran squealing into the bush at our approach. Not a hut was left standing. ‘This was once a Batak kampong or village,’ said Sontrop. ‘Nippon burned it all down to the ground.’
A river lay at the end of the village. We followed another track, which ran beside the river for a while and then led into jungle. We stopped. We jumped out.
Drink plays terrible tricks. Only then did I remember the invitation to shoot crocodiles. They were not driving me back to the billet. They were taking me to piss around shooting crocodiles, of all insane Netherlandish schemes. I began looking round anxiously for cohorts of the Indonesian army about to break cover and shoot us up. Everyone said that the Dutch were mad – now I knew it.
The three of them went on methodically behaving as if they were sane and owned the shooting rights of the entire island. Hendrick Nieuwenhuis methodically coiled rope round his body, Jan de Zwaan broke open a wooden chest and issued Hendrick, me, and himself with carbines.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Bang, bang.’ He grinned.
His sudden change of expression made me realise that both he and Hendrick, if I had them in the right order, were probably a year or two younger than I. He put the Jap aviator’s helmet on his head, buckling it under his chin.
Nieuwenhuis had a parang or native chopping knife. With a few expert lops, he cut branches off nearby trees and arranged them over the truck so that it was concealed from casual view.
‘How long is this expedition going to take?’ I asked Ernst.
‘Just a morning’s fun. We must return in Medan at one o’clock. Then we must make a convoy to drive to Belawan, so that our Dutch people get safely to board the Van Heutsz this afternoon.’
He nodded affirmatively as he mentioned the fabulous ship on which so many destinies depended.
We set off in single file through the jungle.
Green things surrounded us. Tall trees rose everywhere, their trunks unpunctuated by any branch until they erupted into foliage. Their bases were hidden by varied bush. Each growing thing flourished in its set place according to rank, like soldiers in an army, from the humble privates beneath our feet to the lofty generals and field-marshals far overhead. The whole parade formed a gigantic organism of light and shade.
In the high canopy, birds flitted. In the undergrowth, mousy things scuttled. In the space between, against the gigantic bars of the tree trunks, were draped creepers as thick and hairy as my arm. We moved slowly through this rain forest, more marvellous than any cathedral. As in a cathedral, our senses were caught by the paradox of space and enclosure.
The track twisted where it would, and we had to follow it. We were in the jungle for twenty minutes. I had wound the more reliable of my watches, setting it at eight o’clock when we left the truck. At eight-twenty, we emerged by the river again. Here it was wide and still, more like a pool than a stream. The far bank rose steeply, perhaps a hundred yards from where we stood. The pale stems of the forest were reflected in the tall water. Some trees had been felled, their crowns lying in the water. There was nobody about.
Nor was there anyone on our side of the river. All was silent under the sun. I saw no sign of any crocodile, and wondered what it would feel like to shoot one. Now that my system was functioning again, and the last whiskers of Black Tartan Wombat vanquished, I recalled Hendrick’s statement of the previous evening – ‘It’s just like shooting people.’
In the clearing, some way ahead of us, stood a concrete go-down. Near it was a concrete ramp with a jetty which stood out into the dark waters of the river. Ernst Sontrop put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.
An old brown man in a sarong appeared, smoking a cheroot. He gave a single gesture.
‘He’s Iwa,’ said Sontrop. ‘We can trust Iwa. He works as foreman on my father estates since many years.’
We went forward. Each of us shook hands with the old man, who performed the ceremony awkwardly, bowing as he did so. Little was said. We walked towards the jetty. The general air of desolation was emphasised by a small boat which had sunk or had been sunk against the jetty. The river was so shallow by the bank that the superstructure of the boat remained above water. Weeds grew on its roof and deck.
Moored at the jetty was another smaller boat, a worn but still serviceable launch, its peeling grey paint lending it a military air. A muttered consultation with Iwa, then we climbed in. Jan de Zwaan bent over the engine and tugged the starter cord. After a couple of tries, the motor caught, purring silently. Iwa unhitched a rope from an iron peg and we began to move downstream. The native stood on the bank, motionless as he watched us go.
Our situation appeared very exposed. I copied the others in crouching low in the boat. The river wound and we turned with it, Jan steering and keeping us close to the left bank. We passed a riverside village on the opposite bank, where pigs rooted under the houses while naked brown kids splashed and yelled in the shallows. Gradually, the character of our surroundings changed. The jungle gave way to mangrove; the river became more labyrinthine, the banks mere stretches of mud, and the water a dull grey colour.
Hendrick pointed to three crocodiles lying dormant on a nearby bank. I made to lift my carbine, but he restrained me.
‘All the coast is swampy,’ said Sontrop. ‘The tide comes up here, but we have now the low tide. Our Sumatra crocodiles like to swim sometimes in the sea. Before the war, they have been almost extinct, but now they breed more. The Japs give them some human bodies to eat, I think.’
Assuming that this was merely a rather unpleasant pleasantry, I smiled and said, ‘How many are we going to shoot?’
Sontrop held up two fingers.
‘We shoot only two. That’s sufficient. The sound of our shots will make people interested who should not be interested. We pick up the bodies if we can, because of their value, and then we hurry fast back to the go-down and to safety.’ He gave a grunt of laughter.
I asked the obvious question.
‘You shoot one, Horatio, because you are our guest to Sumatra and our honoured friend. Jan also shoots one because this afternoon he must leave on the Van Heutsz. Who knows, he may never get the chance to come back to the tropics. It’s sort of his farewell. Okay?
‘Listen, you shoot just into the eye of the beast – between the eye is no good, because the skull is so thick. You can have one shot only. If you miss, then Hendrick may have a quick shot. If he misses, then I may have a quick shot. But it must be immediate. After, we have to get home fast. You understand? Bandits about …’
‘Bandits’ I liked.
Nothing more needed to be said. As the launch chugged quietly forward, the grandeur of the forest gave way to a meaner growth of mangroves, and the confusions of a mangrove swamp, where birds darted for cover among the exposed roots. Dark water gargled round the base of every tree. Occasionally, we moved past long strips of land covered with flowers. Somewhere not too far ahead was the strait. We were already at its margins; the transition from land to sea was a stealthy one.
Through the mangrove maze we moved. De Zwaan crouched over the wheel, alert in his absurd helmet. He pointed ahead towards a more considerable island emerging among the trees. On it stood a hut with curving eaves, balanced on stilts. Some banana trees grew beside it. As we drew nearer, I saw that there was also a timber wharf or pier, which had collapsed into the water.
The island broke the canopy of mangroves. Sun shone in, lighting the water, bathing the small island. It bathed, too, the bodies of half a dozen crocodiles, which lay basking on the strip of shore like war canoes, ready for launch.
De Zwaan cut the engine.
We drifted forward slowly and silently. Apart from a slight watery accompaniment, we moved to the buzz of a million flies. Sontrop clutched my arm and spoke into my ear.
‘Wait to shoot. I will make a sign. First shot for Jan. Then you, immediately next, understand. Fine beast, the Sumatran crocodile of the estuaries.’
Nodding sternly and pointing, he levelled the muzzle of his gun over the prow. I followed suit, aware of my heart hammering inside my sweaty shirt. It’s just like shooting people. The crocodiles looked more like six turds than six people.
I estimated that de Zwaan would aim for the nearest beast. I marked out the second in line, but was too experienced to aim before necessary; in the tropics, sweat and heat blur a marksman’s sight almost at once.
The croc was perhaps twice the length of a man. It was hard to judge size from where we crouched. Staring at it across a decreasing stretch of water, in which the sunlit banana trees and hut were darkly reflected, I saw its eyes open. My grip on the carbine tightened. The croc’s eyes were yellow like a cat’s, the colour of fresh-fallen jungle leaves.
We were gliding, not directly at the bank, but tangentially, so that – I presumed – we would not be directly in their path if they launched themselves into the water.
Birds hopped about the crocodiles, perching cheekily on their long skulls. The distance between us and them narrowed still further. Flies buzzed. The mud gave off a sickly sweet stench like dying hyacinths.
Jan fired. The surprise of it paralysed me. ‘Now!’ yelled Sontrop. I was immobilised.
The crocs were already on the move. I fired at them at random, twice. Sontrop and Nieuwenhuis both stood up in the boat and blazed away. Full of excitement and some fury at myself, I took careful aim. My sights followed the second reptile as he scuttled down his stretch of shore. I fired, carrying through the movement. I hit him just behind his right eye as he struck the water. He jerked upwards, then disappeared beneath the surface.
A terrible thrashing took place. More than one croc had been hit. The water churned madly, blood and leaves being thrown up parabolically, in the path of lashing tails. On the mudflat, one croc lay unmoving.
The racket of our shooting filled the whole world. Birds and waterfowl rose up everywhere, screaming in protest, wheeling about and breaking free into the upper air beyond the trees, even before the last reverberations of our fire had rattled into the distance.
Jan was standing up calling in excitement, hugging Ernst. Hendrick had the steering wheel. He started the engine, cut it again, and we glided in. The bottom of the launch bumped against mud. We all jumped ashore. I got a boot full of cold black ooze. Ahead stood the hut, utterly deserted. A patch of maize grew by its broken steps. A large crab scuttled away and sank under the water, bubbling.
Putting his carbine to the unmoving croc’s skull, Jan squeezed the trigger. The reptile gave an enormous heave and lay still. I was amazed to find myself so close to the creature. Hendrick unwound his rope and started to secure the beast behind its front legs.
‘Do we tow it?’ I asked.
‘No. Other crocs eat him. Put him in the boat with us.’
As we tied it up, I looked across the black waters behind us, listening to their endless slurp among the mangroves. The surface was still. Silence returned.
With some effort, we heaved the poor bloody thing, broken skull and all, into the boat. It lay belly upwards. We sat on it, and Jan passed round a flask of genever from which we all swigged heartily, grinning at each other in triumph.
Hendrick clapped me on the back. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good fun!’
‘Great,’ I said. I laughed, feeling my heart bound in my chest.
We were wet and filthy. The crocodile was covered with mud, and so was the old grey boat. Jan went over to the engine, starting it as Hendrick and I jumped out and pushed the bow free of the mud-spit. Once we were aboard again, the boat made a wide curve and started back among the mangroves. The island with its derelict hut fell away behind.
Birds were settling down in the tops of the trees, already forgetting the excitement. One bird swooped in low and flew close by the launch, sometimes darting among the arched mangrove roots in its pursuit of us; it was grey above and white below – I caught the reflection of its breast in the water. It homed in on the scent of death and would not be deflected.
In my carcass, triumph burned. I had been initiated into a new mystery of Sumatran life. For a moment, I considered some of the consequences of my act. It was Saturday morning, and Margey would wonder where I was. I had, too, been missing from lines overnight, and was therefore guilty of a chargeable offence. I dismissed these considerations. I could make things right with Margey – she’d be proud of me – and Jhamboo Singh would see that I got into no trouble; after all, I had leverage on him. Thus reassuring myself, I turned my attention to the satisfactions of the present.
The sun broke through on the dark water, the mangroves cleared, the river banks became clearly defined. Soon, all too soon, the go-down and the jetty with the sunken ship showed ahead. We floated in to the jetty. There was no sign of Iwa. Sontrop jumped out and moored the launch.
Silence reigned. Beyond the go-down, jungle grew, surrounding us with a creepy privacy. The superstructure of the sunken river-boat, including the wheelhouse, was above water. Tufts of foliage sprouted on the blistered deck. The wreck added a sense of ruination in which my heart perversely exalted as we dragged the crocodile ashore. The kite-hawk which had followed us alighted on the funnel of the sunken vessel.
Sontrop drew out his parang and started to slice up the belly of the crocodile. Grey matter and red intestine bulged from the widening slit.
‘We must gut it to carry it,’ he said, looking up. ‘Fetch Iwa from the go-down. The old boy has gone to sleep – he will do this work. We must not wait about.’
Slinging my carbine over my shoulder, I walked briskly up to the concrete building. A sliding metal cargo door on one side of the building was open a few inches. I tried to budge it further, but it would not move. The metal almost burnt my flesh. Squeezing through, I found myself in near dark until my vision adjusted. Something slithered away from me, and I was immediately alert for snakes. I once encountered a cobra face-to-face in Padang, and hoped never to repeat the experience.
‘Iwa!’ I realised I had shouted in a whisper. Now I saw better, I moved forward with more confidence. The internal space of the warehouse was empty, except for offices and a WC in one corner, and some wooden crates piled in the centre of the area. The crates looked as if they had been standing there for years. Across one of them I saw an incongruous name stencilled: MANCHESTER.
I crossed to the lavatory, calling Iwa’s name again, and kicked the door open. Inside was a Chinese-style shitter and a wash-basin. Both were clogged with shit, Ancient shit, too old to attract many flies. I turned away and, as I turned, a movement caught my eye.
A soldier of the TRI stood in the doorway, levelling a sten at me.
He was without features, seen as a silhouette in the narrow rectangle of light.
He shouted a command, jerking the snout of his gun for emphasis.
Although I did not understand what he said, the message came across. I could jump into the office behind me, but the flimsy door offered no protection from bullets. The heavy Manchester crates offered better cover. They were too far away. I visualised myself diving for shelter behind them while a stream of bullets tore into my body. The image froze me. The moment for action slipped away.
The extremist took a couple of steps closer and was no longer merely a silhouette. His finger was curled round that well-known crude trigger which is a vital part of a sten. I slid my carbine off my shoulder and let it clatter to the floor.
He planted himself by the crates. He was a slender man with a hawkish face, no older than I. We looked at each other. A tension in his attitude told me he would fire if I did anything except stand still. I stood still.
He shouted another order.
‘I’m English, orang Ingris. No understand. Tida mengerti.’ I pointed to my shoulder flashes, to the div sign of the tiger coming out of the black triangle. ‘Look, Ingris.’
Not that I imagined that he would have any affection for the English as such, but it gave him something to think about. I just didn’t want any member of the Merdeka squad to imagine that I was Dutch.
He made no reply. Sontrop and his pals, I imagined, were still skinning the croc down by the water’s edge. My throat was dry. I did not cry out to warn them.
The extremist kept me covered without moving. Filled with the blood-lust that whites imagined overtook all Malays, or just stupid?
‘Tuan Ingris?’
Thank God. Just stupid. And respectful.
I nodded. ‘Yes, Ingris. London. You speak Ingris?’
He just stood there, pointing the sten inflexibly. And listening.
I listened.
Footsteps were approaching from the direction of the wharf. It must be the Dutchmen. As soon as this bugger took his eyes off me to look round, I would jump him. I still had my revolver, but a quick Commando chop on the correct vertebra, right up under the occipital bone, should do him most good where it was needed most.
An Indonesian officer arrived in the go-down. Slick operation. In, back to wall, Jap machine-pistol aimed at all and sundry. Not a man to muck about.
He took in the situation at once, eyed the carbine on the floor between me and his man, barked an order. The sten man came forward, collected the carbine, backed out of harm’s way with it. I stood where I was.
The officer was solidly built with a heavy piggy face and blue jowls. A scar led down one cheek and puckered the corner of his mouth, giving him a quirky expression. It looked like a fresh scar. He had the red and white shoulder flashes of the TRI, and the two pips of a subedar or first lieutenant. There were rings on two of the fingers of the hand that held the grip of his weapon.
He moved round so as to command the door. In marched Sontrop, de Zwaan, and Nieuwenhuis, clutching the tops of their trousers. Two armed TRI soldiers hustled them in.
When he spotted me, Ernst Sontrop gave a ghastly smile and said, ‘Apologies for this misfortune, Horatio. Bandits generally take Saturday off.’
The lieutenant barked at him to be quiet.
The Netherlanders were made to line up against the rear wall of the warehouse. Their trouser-belts had been removed, so that they had to hold their trousers up. Their carbines and ammunition belts had also gone, and were now draped over the shoulders of their two guards. De Zwaan was still wearing his Jap aviator’s helmet.
I saw that the two guards were excited by their capture. The lieutenant spoke soothingly to them. They looked pretty nasty chaps.
They spent some time making my pals line up properly, caps of boots and foreheads against the wall. I watched for the moment to go for my gun, but the sten remained pointing unwaveringly at my belt buckle. I could only stare helplessly at three sweaty backs and the weapons that covered them.
At last they were arranged according to the lieutenant’s satisfaction. The sten-gunner said something to him, at which he turned the full power of his attention on me. He came forward, standing with legs apart and fists on hips, surveying me. An ugly and aggressive sod. His scar went white when he spoke.
‘You are Ingrish? No from Netherlands?’
I pointed to my shoulder flashes. ‘See these? 26 Div. English. London. Churchill.’
‘Make your gun down on ground. Be very care.’ He pointed to the floor.
Unbuttoning the holster flap, I dropped the revolver at my feet. He motioned me angrily to kick it across to him, which I did. He ignored it.
‘Where are you stay at Medan?’
An unbidden vision of Jackie Tertis swinging a golf club flashed across my mind. I saw the view of his torture house as glimpsed from my window in the billet. I thought of the fate of the Indonesians who had fallen into his hands. The thought occurred to me that it was the Japs who set the fashion for all this cruelty. Now it was going to be my turn. For the first time, I was really afraid, afraid all over and all through. The fear expressed itself as severe chill of skin and internal organs. My bladder and bowels felt as if they were about to slip from their moorings. Nobody could ever want the Tertis treatment.
I felt my lips tremble as I answered, evasively, ‘Off the Serdenweg.’
‘Serdenweg.’ He studied me, keeping his machine-pistol ready. Time inside the go-down had solidified. ‘Show to me your pass.’
I groped in my upper left-hand jacket pocket and produced my battered old brown paybook. When I leaned forward to give it to him, he took it without removing his gaze from my eyes, almost as if he hoped to hypnotise me. Then he looked down at the book, riffling its pages one-handed. I drew breath, looking round in search of help. Nothing there encouraged me. The Dutch stood motionless facing the wall, holding up their trousers. The two TRI soldiers guarded them. My pal with the sten now stood in the doorway, where he had a good view of all of us, as well as keeping an eye on outside. No sound came from there. Inside, bluebottles buzzed endlessly under the asbestos roof.
The lieutenant finished his inspection of my paybook and my photograph. He shut it and handed it back.
As I put it away, he said contemptuously, ‘You good friend all Netherlands men.’
‘We were hunting crocodiles. Not military operation.’
The bastard still looked me over, his eyes bulging.
‘You speak Netherlands language?’
‘No.’
‘What your name?’
‘Horatio Stubbs. Sergeant. As written in paybook.’
‘Where you are borned?’
I named the East Midlands town written in my paybook. He stood there. I was aware that our fates were being decided. Jan de Zwaan started to call something in Malay. He was kicked viciously in the thigh, and fell silent with a grunt.
The officer ran a hand along the line of his jaw. The peel of stubble against his palm was audible. Then he came to a decision.
He pointed to the office door behind me.
‘You go in opis.’
‘Look, I’m going back to England next week. My friends are going back to the Netherlands on the Van Heutsz this afternoon. Okay? Let us go. We are all leaving Sumatra as soon as possible. Then it will be your island. Okay?’
The jaw angle became more pronounced. ‘Now is our island. You go into opis, lekas, chop-chop, like I say.’
As I moved, he moved, kicking my revolver to one side with his boot. It was a good heavy kick. The weapon went scuttling to the far end of the concrete floor.
Unable to think of anything else, I walked over to the office and entered, turning quickly in case the lieutenant shot me in the neck. I backed against a desk and we confronted each other across the intervening space.
He raised the machine-pistol and levelled it at my eyes, glaring at me across the barrel. He came nearer, each step a threat. His mouth became smeared across his face.
‘You wait here and no make move or I shooting you to pieces. Okay?’
I nodded.
The sentence was important to both of us. He repeated it with some relish. ‘You wait here and no make move. I shooting you to pieces.’
‘Yes, understand.’
He shook his head, scowling. ‘Ingris army finish at Medan.’
He moved out and shut the office door. The key turned in the lock. There was a frosted glass panel in the door, covered in dust. I had an impression of his retreating back, then could see nothing. I stood with my thigh against the desk, waiting as ordered, trembling, fuck it.
I could hurl myself through the window and run for the river, but they would be outside and firing before I made it. Besides, anything I did would only make the position of Sontrop and Co. more perilous. The lieutenant had all the power. We were helpless.
A discussion began on the other side of the go-down. It took place in Malayan, but I recognised the tones of Ernst Sontrop’s voice, caught the anger in it. The lieutenant started shouting. I caught the word merdeka repeated several times.
Looking back, I cannot recall that I held anything more than a simple soldier’s viewpoint of the political situation. The Dutch ‘owned’ Sumatra, and the Indonesians who were making trouble were ‘extremists’.
Parallel cases exist in Palestine and Northern Ireland and other countries today, though parallels, like analogies, never prove cases. But in those simple early days after the war, when the shutters of international business had only just gone up, the notion of colonial populations being fit to govern their own countries – or entitled to govern whether fit or not – had barely penetrated. Merdeka could not really mean freedom, since it was a native word – which was why the British troops used it among themselves, with their customary surly cheer, as a comic password.
The Indonesian state has survived for many years. On the whole, it prospers. It is remote from Britain. Our mutual trade is negligible. As for Sumatra itself, little is ever heard of it in Britain. The Times, only a week or two ago, reported an earthquake in West Sumatra without mentioning any names or reporting casualties. It was a four-line filler. Sumatra has sunk beneath the greater abstraction of ‘Indonesia’ and we know and care less about the island than we did a century ago. As a nation, we have largely lost interest in the world.
As I grow older, I regret that what was good and liberal in the British Empire is dead, and that the little, having largely overcome the great, remains obstinately little. Well, it is proper that my generation should regret – we were among the sods who shrugged our shoulders and laughed it all away. Like Steve Kyle, we forgot how to give or take orders.
Three shots rang out. They rattled about the harsh confines of the go-down with petrifying din. As they died, one more shot re-awoke the echoes. Then silence fell, thick and dismaying.
As I crouched down against the desk, arms round my head, a rusty rain of dust fell from the ceiling. I thought of the great silences of the forest, of that awful neutrality.
For an unreckoned time, I sheltered against the desk.
There was no further sound.
Finally, I tiptoed to the window and looked out. My body shook with fear. Through the dusty glass lay a view of wharf and river. The launch we had used for our fool crocodile hunt had gone. The half-sunken boat still lay at its last anchorage. The door to its wheelhouse hung open; that was where the lieutenant and his men had hidden, waiting craftily until we returned.
On the wharfside lay our crocodile. Twenty or more kite-hawks fed on it, tearing shreds from its body and gobbling them down. They jostled and fought for positions in the carcass. The picture was picked out in sharp detail in the blazing sun. Of the TRI there was no sign.
The landscape lay there, impaled by sunlight. In the background, the felled trees and the standing trees reflected in the calm river. In the foreground, the terrible feast.
That magnificent land which has everything – food, cash crops, minerals – that magnificent land of mountains, volcanoes, rivers, jungles – why has it not risen to become one of the most enviable of all countries of the globe. Standing trembling in the office next to the stinking latrine. I seemed to know the answer to the question. The tribes of man became the dominant animal in temperate zones. In the tropics, where man began, his position remains less assured: below Cancer, the fevers of the equator work against him. The heat and its allies make a perpetual war, grinding him down. And some dreadful thing in human nature defeats human nature.
Tears came to my eyes as I stood at the window.
For I was innocent, I whispered. I loved Sumatra. I had been about to leave it against my will, as a soldier must take farewell of his wife. Now, my Dutch friends having been shot down, the guns were being reloaded for my execution. Over and above the fear I felt was an awful depression at the uselessness of everything, the bloody war, the fucking peace.
I stood and listened for them. Only gradually did it dawn on me that the extremists might have gone, that fear of reprisals from the British might have caused them to spare my life. Silence. The buzz of flies nearby; outside, the occasional cries of the scavenger birds.
Sweat burst out upon me. Behind the desk stood a metal waste-paper bin. I picked it up, hurled it through the frosted glass panes of the office door, and ducked under the desk. After a clatter of falling glass, the noise of the bin rolling over concrete. Then silence again.
Making a great effort, I came out from cover, went over to the door, and located the key on its outer side. I unlocked the door and stepped out on to the floor of the go-down.
Ernst Sontrop, Jan de Zwaan, and Hendrick Nieuwenhuis lay huddled together by the far wall. A communal pool of blood spread under their bodies. Jan still wore his old Jap helmet. He lay face upward, his eyes open, looking sternly at the ceiling. His two friends lay face down. I could not see which of the three had needed the extra shot.
Weakness overcame me. I leaned against one of the old Manchester crates, feebly wiping my face. I broke into enormous sobs which rose from the centre of my guts. They came pumping up in reverse peristalsis, disgorging all that had to be suffered.