Dear Addy, ‘It’s been too long since I wrote to you last, but I suppose you recall all too well how days pass in the tropics, how unable you feel to sit down and write letters, so I will not make too many excuses. Anyhow, thanks very much for your last letter. Leiden sounds like a very nice place and I was glad you had got a good office job and were feeling that you could settle down in the cold European climate. Soon you can think of me doing the same sort of thing, somehow or other, and I will write to you next from England.
‘Meanwhile, I have to give you some awful news. I hardly know how to tell you. You will have heard officially, but I must also drop you a line. At least you understand how bad things are out here in Sumatra.’
Still clutching my fountain pen, I began to examine my left foot. I caught sight of it, lying on the carpet, moderately close to my right foot. I rested it on the edge of the chair and picked at the callouses on the side of the big toe. It smelt all right; I had just had a shower and was clad only in a towel, knotted round my waist. There was still a trace of foot rot. Foot rot had followed me all the way from Kohima, almost two years ago: a little bit of Assam carried as indelibly on my body as in my heart.
‘This is Sunday morning here in Medan. Only yesterday morning your brother Ernst took me out on a crocodile shoot with two of his friends.’
Only yesterday, but two weeks would pass before Addy got the letter. Yesterday would gradually sink back into the past like a dead log in a swamp, but Addy was always going to stub her foot on it. My foot was still resting on the chair. Next to it, fat and complacent, slept my prick. The towel had fallen back to reveal it. It took no notice of me. I tried to take no notice of it. But, Christ, it did look a bit red. Could be just natural soreness, only to be expected. Five hundred Players.
I padded over to a drawer in the bookcase and brought out a magnifying glass I had bought in Padang. Under the glass, my knob definitely looked spotty. Beneath the innocuous-seeming surface lay a virulent scarlet rash, just waiting to break out. I inspected carefully round the rim. Nothing definite – but that too was worrying in its way.
Of course she had been with the shagging Japs, and it was well known what terrible diseases they brought with them out of the jungle. When you caught that sort of thing, the MO gave you a pack of K-rations and ordered you to march off into the bush and die.
Despite my unease, the bloody thing was stirring in my hand. What fucking impertinence! As if it had not had enough – more than enough – on the previous day … I tucked it away under the towel where it could not see me, the way old ladies cover the cage when the parrot swears too much.
‘I am sorry to have to tell you that we were ambushed by extremists. Things have got much worse here since you left.’
Worse for the Dutch, better for the British. Worse for just about everyone, except the British, who are pulling out. Presumably it was a gross military error to send us here in the first place. Some sort of mad global strategy involving the lunatics in command: those well-known good guys, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Harry Truman, swathed in a welter of cigar-, pipe- and fag-smoke, had called together such chums as Chiang Kai-Shek and Smuts and de Gaulle, and cooked up a series of instructions for various admirals and generals hanging about in the ante-chamber. Accordingly, with a rattle of sabres, Zhukov, Montgomery, Eisenhower, and MacArthur trotted off with Poland, the Suez Canal, half of Berlin, and all the Pacific in their respective fangs. Lord Louis Mountbatten got lumbered with the NEI. Well done, master-strategists! The Americans had been so busy clobbering British imperialism that they had hardly noticed the way the Soviet Union was sweeping various European states up its left trouser-leg.
You can see with hindsight how the NEI fell a bit beyond any major sphere of interest, leaving aside the simple geographical fact that it lay somewhere to the south of Singapore. The only advantages accruing from the whole farcical operation was that the British, under the splendid General Templer, became experienced enough to cope with Communist infiltrators in Malaya, to kick them out and keep them out; also we acted once-bitten, twice-shy thereafter and refused to get involved in reinstating the French in Indo-China. The good old Americans stepped in to help promptly there. So what if they lost the war: they got lots of publicity.
‘Internationally, things seem to be in a terrible mess as before. Whatever became of Peace? I’m sure you will weep and ask yourself that.’
Poor dear Addy! And everyone else will ask themselves the same question. Alas for Hope! What should have happened in our time is simple. The us should not have been so isolationist in the thirties. Then her diplomats and all the rest of them who proved so bloody unrealistic would have understood that the most feasible plan for world peace lay with the English-speaking world – by which I include people who can nearly speak English, like Indians, Australians, and Norwegians. Then the States would not have hung about on the touch-lines for three years while Britain took such a pasting from the fucking Krauts (who, grant them that, respected the British Empire more than the old Yanks did).
Mind you, it’s possible that the Yanks saw through the British. We’ve fumbled all our chances: the twentieth century hasn’t even begun in England yet – how we came out on top in two world wars, I’ll never understand. You have to admit, we did need the Americans to bale us out.
Right, so the Soviet Union signs that pact with Hitler, thereby showing its true colours, underlining the basic similarity between fascism and communism. So when Hitler starts invading Russia, the Allies cease chivvying him in the West and let him get on with it Bombing Germany stops and, with the aid of the good old Duke of Windsor, and Mrs. Simpson, Hitler agrees in exchange to stop mopping up the Jews so fast.
While this is going on in Europe, similar crafty moves are afoot in the East. The Japs are allowed to march into India. The Wogs are permitted to see how much they fucking well enjoy that; within a year, they are on their knees, begging the British to come back. None of our brave buggers are lost in one single lousy jungle out there, throwing away their lives for sod all. The Japs, who never know when enough’s enough, stream northwards out of the Khyber Pass and start attacking the USSR through Georgia. The USSR strikes back. Jap kamikazi planes strafe Vladivostok. Soviet Air Force bombs Imperial Palace. Jap sub fleet takes Leningrad.
Gradually, the whole war is centred on Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union, right across to the Pacific and including the Japanese Islands. British and Americans sit back peacefully, now and then grabbing odd bits of the globe, such as Borneo, Malta, Africa, the West Indies, Iceland, and Tierra del Fuego. No one mucks about with poor old China. Meanwhile, we’re making a whole mass of A-bombs.
When the Germans, the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Russians, the Kurds, the Japs, and anyone else who gets in the way, are down to a few platoons slugging it out in Yakutsk, or some other dreadful place nobody has heard of, the British and the Yanks plaster the whole damn place with A-bombs. We wipe out every single city, and put the entire area under the plough, from the Rhine right the way east to the Pacific, including Japan. Plant the whole bloody sheebang with oak or pine or whatever suits, with barbed wire all round the perimeter and huge signs saying TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.
Peace-loving people who do not or prefer not to speak English – such as the Basques, the Israelis, and the Welsh – are settled in new homelands in Inner Mongolia. The Arabs – not to put too fine a point on it – get the Gobi. Quiet reigns.
The rest of the world receives free English lessons. When you can speak English as fluently as any inhabitant of Detroit or Liverpool, which isn’t asking much, you get a World Passport – not before. Then all we have to do really is conquer South America, discover a final solution to the Irish problem, and sort things out with the Blacks. In comes an era of world peace such as has not been known before. The Chinese will be encouraged, particularly the women. Chinese restaurants and knocking-shops in every village.
It’s a simple plan, it could work. But what good are such utopian schemes? Supposing you did all that, bastards like Tertis would still float to the top and spoil it all.
‘Ernst and his two pals were shot down in cold blood. I shall be attending the funeral today and will think of you at the graveside.’
Fat lot of good that will do Addy or Ernst. God, I’m such a shit. That sod Hamil should really have done for me too, instead of handing me a chit saying, ‘British, excused Death’. I mishandled that and I’ve mishandled the business with Margey. It’s no good, I’ll just have to go home tomorrow as ordered. As directed by global strategy. Fucking global strategy. It’s just a few bastards at the top. The trouble is, there’s always a constant supply of bastards underneath …
‘There is so much I could say which I can’t write. Perhaps we shall be able to meet some day somewhere in Europe. Ernst was very brave, so you must be brave and try not to grieve too much. I hope there are people to comfort you in Leiden. I send love and kisses to you from poor old broken-down Medan. Yours lovingly.’
It was difficult to imagine Leiden, or any Dutch town. Had I once seen one of those traditional Netherlands paintings, showing chaps and girls skating on ice with folded arms, and windmills and little brick Brueghelesque houses complete with stalls and ox-roasts, labelled ‘Leyden Fair’? I had left England when I was a mere kid. Now I was virtually an old man, and Europe was all a story to me.
The whole world was a story. A sprawling picaresque, telling itself on and on until some sort of contrived happy ending became possible. Last night, when I took Katie Chae for a meal, she had regaled me with episodes from her past life. There was an exotic tale indeed!
Katie had been born the only daughter of a rich Chinese merchant in the Province of Sinkiang. Since I was forced to reveal that I had no idea where Sinkiang was, Katie imperiously summoned a waiter and had paper and pen brought to our table. She drew a map which I have to this day. A big X marks the spot where Katie Chae was born. It is one of the westmost parts of China, almost as far west as Delhi, though thousands of miles north of Delhi. Sinkiang lies north of the Himalayas, north of Tibet, and borders on Afghanistan and some of the grottier bits of the Soviet Union. The sort of remote place that no right-thinking Englishman could ever get straight in his mind.
In the prosperous Chae household, three languages were spoken: the Sinkiang tongue, which was the grand language; the Uighur tongue, which was the language of servants; and the Kazakh tongue, a language used only for boasting and swearing. The Chaes had two homes, a stone house in the mountains for summer, a wooden one for winter in the plains, in the city of Urumchi.
One spring, the young Katie and her mother and her two brothers were being driven to their summer residence. Bandits appeared and captured them. They were taken into the mountains to await ransom. The bandits were fierce Kirghiz tribesmen of nomadic habit and, for three years, Katie was continually on the move with them over the limitless grasslands of Central Asia. This was her formative period. She learned to ride ponies like the wind. On this unending trek, her mother died. The ransom was never paid.
During a drunken fight, the chief bandit suffered a head-wound. The tribe made its way to a desolate region of mudflats which extended further than eye could see. In the distance, snow-capped mountains floated on blue air. Everyone tied planks to their feet to serve as skis while they waded across the dangerous mudflats. They walked over the mud for four days. Bandits and dogs drowned in the clinging stuff.
The survivors arrived at a low island rising above the mud. It was no more than two hundred yards long, and covered with stinking weed.
As the party dragged themselves exhausted on to the eminence, they saw that on its far side lay a sullen river, winding into the distance among shoals. On the island, remarkably, a large wooden house had been built; its windows were shuttered, it was deserted.
Here the bandits remained, week after uncharted week. They pulled fish from the sullen river and hunted crabs and a species of wild cat found on the mudbanks. The chief bandit was going mad from his wound, and filled the house night and day with his cries. One of Katie’s brothers drowned in the river whilst swimming.
The day dawned when a boat was sighted distantly on the waters. The bandits became alarmed. Katie was sent out to signal to the craft. The bandits took cover. The boat pulled in to the island; a handsome white man reefed the sail and climbed out. The bandits sprang from their hiding places and seized him. They flung him in the cellars of the house and tortured him. This torture continued for many weeks.
One moonless night, the bandit chief went raving mad. He broke his bonds, burst through a wooden wall, and fired a musket at all and sundry. He killed Katie’s surviving brother. In the general panic, Katie crept down to the cellar and released the white man. Together, they escaped to his boat and cast off into the darkness. When they had drifted some distance from the house – from which shots and cries came faintly – they ran up the sail. By morning, the old wooden building was almost out of sight.
The man’s name was John. He was an English explorer. He spoke a little Kazakh, and he and Katie conversed in that language. He said that he had escaped from Kazakhstan, where he had been held prisoner by Russians. He was gentle and kindly, and took Katie’s virginity in the bottom of the boat before the sun was an hour above the horizon.
As, during our meal, dish followed dish, so adventure followed adventure. Katie and John were completely lost. At one time, they remained many months in a country where the people were so impoverished that they lived off dried apricots and small birds caught during annual migrations. In another place, John performed simple conjuring tricks which so alarmed the inhabitants that they presented him and Katie Chae with their one means of transport, the ancient village yak, on condition that John left immediately and never returned.
They rode the yak for a period which could have been two years, forging ever eastwards until, one bitter night, the animal died. They passed days beside its carcass, drying strips of its meat, curing the hide to make themselves warmer clothes, and eating the brains and more tender parts. By now, Katie spoke fairly fluent English and could recite those parts of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám which John remembered.
As they were leaving the bones of the yak, they were attacked by two savage brothers, one of whom had had his tongue cut out by Chinese soldiers. Both of them had their way with Katie, who was now possibly fifteen. After that, they proved friendly, promising to escort John and Katie towards the fabulous city of Peking. That haven was still a thousand miles away over impossible territory.
The incidents in the story multiplied richly. There is delight in hearing tales of starvation whilst tucking into great bowls of fried rice, crab, octopus, sea cucumber, and nameless things. Katie and I refilled each other’s glasses with a poisonous wine while I goaded her on with her story. I came to the conclusion that she had invented all of it, just as one of my first loves, Virginia, had invented a more desirable version of her past. Such tactics seemed to me then, and still do, a recipe for misery – except, of course, for the listener, and even he has to have a special taste for such inventions.
Among other highlights in her imaginary career, Katie claimed that she and the mysterious Englishman, John, were captured at a Customs post ruled over by a luxurious customs official called Ha Ha Bum, a name not lightly forgotten. Attracted by Katie’s youth and beauty, Ha Ha Bum made her his favourite concubine. John was imprisoned, and each one of Ha Ha Bum’s fornications was scored upon John’s back with a leather whip.
One day in spring, the customs post was attacked by a party of men from the hills. They claimed they were not bandits but revolutionaries. Their conduct was not easy to distinguish from banditry, since they killed Ha Ha Bum, took John prisoner, set fire to the customs post, and raped Katie, although they read passages from Karl Marx while so doing.
The revolutionaries formed a small communist army. They numbered some two hundred men. They had a stronghold in the hills, together with a very old armoured car which had to be pushed everywhere. Women and children lived among them. The communists were suspicious of all foreigners. After a mock-trial, they decided to execute John as an Imperialist before the entire company; they heard him recite passages from Omar Khayyam, and that was enough. Katie, however, discovered their plans from one of the women, and persuaded the leaders that John could be exchanged for another armoured car, or possibly for petrol, when they reached civilisation. Katie gave birth to a child in this camp. A little girl with fair hair who was put to death after another mock-trial.
‘You must have wept!’ I exclaimed.
Katie Chae laughed. ‘I wanted to weep a lot,’ she said, ‘but the climate was plenty dry.’
A plate full of satie came along. As we tucked in, she continued her saga.
Leaving the hills behind, the ragged army entered a terrible barren area, destitute of grass, destitute even of a single stone. It was a frigid desert of rock, in which some of the revolutionaries went mad from drinking their own urine.
In the middle of a dust storm, they stumbled upon an amazing city, built of white marble and totally uninhabited. The city was constructed in the shape of a great square, with sixty-four buildings to a side. The outermost buildings facing the desert were modest, but each succeeding row of buildings as they progressed towards the centre became larger and more grand.
Finally, in the centre of the four thousand and ninety-six buildings, they came across a gigantic structure where the centremost four buildings merged into one. This structure towered to the heavens. Its ante-chambers were panelled with gold.
The army crouched in the golden ante-chambers and slept until the sandstorm passed. Such were the resonances the buildings set up with the wind currents that by morning the whole city was swept clear of sand. In this way, the city could never be buried.
Katie Chae had been pressed into military service as a nurse. She was tending the sick when scouts came in and reported that this magnificent token of human life in the midst of the death of nature was nothing more nor less than a mortuary. The thousands of houses were but glorified tombs, each enshrining a mummified corpse. The central building enshrined the king of this lost nation. In alarm, the revolutionaries rapidly quitted this megapolis of death and shrine of capitalism. They forged eastward again.
Eventually, they entered the Inner Kingdom through a break in the Great Wall. John had by now been elected a leader of the revolutionaries. His manner became remote and dedicated. Katie went through a form of marriage with one of the other leaders, bearing him two more children, both boys. Somewhere in the north of Shansi, the main body of the army was ambushed in a pass and had to fight. John was slain. Katie was captured and, of course, raped. Some time later, they arrived by boat at a port on the Gulf of Chihli. Katie fell desperately ill. Some Spanish nuns looked after her and with one of them, Maria, Katie had a lesbian affair which aided her convalescence.
In the town, she met a Chinese journalist and fell in love with him – her first real love affair – only to find that he was one of her older brothers, who had long ago left Sinkiang for the cities. The Japanese armies were advancing; she and this brother were the last to escape from the port, both disguised as nuns. Following many travels, they found sanctuary in Sumatra. After a year, the Japanese entered Medan, and there was no further escape. She showed me a photograph of her brother over a last glass of wine. It was the journalist Chae, who called himself Tiger Balm. Perhaps her incredible story was partially true.
We staggered back to her flat, arm in arm. I spent the night with her, lying in her spotless arms, embracing history, geography, as well as a tender female body. She woke me just before dawn, and I made my way grudgingly back to our lines with my revolver ready in my fist.
I owed her fifteen hundred cigarettes.
It was one of those mornings. Sunday. Heat. Guilt. At least I had written to Addy; that was a decent act. Even shits act decently on occasion, since doing good is as tempting as doing harm.
The incipient sores on my prick were nothing to the sores on my conscience. I had spent the night with Margey’s enemy, the hated Katie Chae. Margey would be bound to find out, or Katie would see to it that she found out. The sooner I got away from Medan the better.
That was the other worry. I had to tell Margey properly that marriage was off, had never been on the cards, that I’d been mad. Maybe she already knew – as scores of girls in her position had found out – that necessity rules, despite all protestations of love. Yesterday’s killings had persuaded me – working on my cowardice and my age – that Sumatra was no place for Europeans. Ernst’s and Jan’s fate would be mine if I stayed. Medan was under the curse of change.
So I should steel myself to inform Margey that I was yellow. No, that was the wrong expression in the circumstances. That I was scared. That way, she would keep her self-respect. She would survive.
Bloody Margey, what a pain in the neck she was, making me feel so bad, just because we went to bed together. And separately. All the things I had given her … Guilt, guilt …
If I got rid of her smartly enough today, then maybe I could have another look in at Katie Chae. Christ, what a fantastic gift Katie Chae had! Her gift was no less than the gift of being a poet, musician, or philosopher. While that radiance shone on me, I must bloody well bask in it. Margey could go to hell if it allowed me one more session with Katie Chae, that slender, elegant creature.
Older now and wiser, I can see that there was something in Katie’s make-up which encouraged full response. Everywhere, there are women like that, who instinctively fan the great masculine fire – just as there are women who instinctively quell it.
I fell into an intense erotic daze. Tomorrow, the plane … There were things to be done, if I could exert myself to do them. Somehow or other, I must face Margey this morning; she would be back from Brastagi. Then this afternoon was the funeral of Sontrop, de Zwaan, and Nieuwenhuis, to which I had volunteered to go. After that, Katie Chae.
From the canteen I bought fifteen hundred Players in thirty round tins of fifty each.
Katie, you understand. You want no promises, you utter no promises. You would never regret that I was leaving tomorrow; you are always on good terms with men, and so another man will always come along to treat you well, to worship your gift. You are truly fortunate, Katie – even war only brings you more profit. You don’t piss around with marriage and security arrangements. You’re a priestess of the world’s oldest religion …
Or maybe I should shoot myself.
I took my revolver out and placed it on my little green table next to the envelope addressed to Leiden. My gaze went to it as I dressed, as I sat and put on my boots and puttees. A compact, business-like machine. I weighed it in my hand, pressed the muzzle against my temple, holstered it, and went downstairs into the bright, the burning sunshine.
‘Cushy for some,’ said a deep voice, and Wallace from the orderly room, mess tins dangling at the end of his simian arm, ambled by.
‘That man,’ I shouted in my sergeant’s voice. ‘Get your back up! Walk like a man, not a ruptured fucking dromedary!’
He looked back, grinned, offered me two fingers. One of bloody Corporal Kyle’s men, of course.
The sergeants’ mess was regularly full of walking wounded at breakfast time. I was late. Five bods remained there – Ron Dyer, sitting alone on one side of the table, resting his hairy belly on its edge, and RSM Payne, Jock Ferguson, Scubber, and Charlie Meadows in a desolate huddle at the top end.
‘Watch your vehicles,’ Dyer called as I entered. The others just twitched.
‘Get knotted,’ I responded pleasantly, taking a seat opposite Dyer.
Our dining room was undistinguished, painted in a pale lime green calculated to make anyone entering with a hangover feel ten times worse. Only a year before, Jap officers had lodged here. They had filled the room with grotesquely heavy gothic furniture looted from the Dutch. Eagles, bears, and corpulent rosettes studded this menacing woodwork. There was also a large coloured print of Fujiyama, which Dickie Payne had insisted should not be removed.
The Chinese orderly appeared to tell me that breakfast was all pinnish. I cut him off with a request for coffee. A neglected piece of toast lay on the table. As I scoffed it, I inspected the quartet on my right. Payne had eyes like pissholes in the snow; Jock was no better; Charlie somewhat worse. Wally Scubber looked like a ghost.
‘Ever tried Black Tartan Wombat?’ I asked.
Charlie answered in a frail husk of a voice, conveying as much information as possible in as few words as possible. ‘Malacca Refined Palm Spirit. Death.’
‘You lads never learn.’
Dyer belched. ‘Looking pale yourself, Stubbs. What have you been up to?’
I contemplated one of the eagles, perched stiffly high behind his head. ‘I’ve been wondering whether to shoot myself, if you must know.’
‘Don’t waste the ammunition. We might need it for a better cause. I suppose you realise that the BORS held a party for you last night, only you didn’t show up. Discourtesy. Bad for relationships between NCOS and Other Ranks, wouldn’t you say? Or I suppose you couldn’t care less, like everyone else in this shower.’
‘Fuck the BORS. I’ve no doubt they managed to get blind drunk without me, as on every other Saturday night.’
The orderly brought coffee and poured me a cup. Dyer reluctantly pushed the sugar across and relaxed his inquisitorial act as he lit a cigarette.
‘Ah, first of the day – always the best! Yes, they were really going at it last night. A bacchanalia. Disgusting.’
‘Don’t mention drink,’ Payne whispered, clutching his head. ‘Never again …’
Ron Dyer blew smoke into the air and continued as if he had not heard. ‘Mind you, they had provocation, give them that. The Jap stores delivered them a whole crate of crème de menthe yesterday afternoon. You know crème de menthe? That green muck Windmill Street whores drink in the bar of the Regent Palace.’
‘You’d know more about that than I would.’
The coffee was almost cold. I swigged it with distaste, watching Charlie light a fag with trembling hand and half listening to Dyer. The Jap officers must have indulged in similar conversations, while the same waiters served the same lousy coffee. I had a sad feeling that here I was involved in this sordid affair of drink, spunk, and shoot-ups, and all the while there was another Horatio – a saner, kinder man – who had become lost amid the machinery of alternatives which proliferate in time of war; I wondered if I would ever find him again.
‘But a whole crate. That’s forty-eight bottles! The silly so-and-so’s were going at it like nobody’s business, all clutching pint glasses full of the stuff. How’d you fancy a nice fresh pint of crème de menthe right now, Jock?’
‘Away with ye,’ husked Jock Ferguson, coughing fruitily into a handkerchief.
‘I looked in on them at curfew and they were going full blast. Like savages. Throwing up everywhere. You never saw such a night.’
‘Ah, well, Ron, brutal and licentious soldiery … as Shakespeare has it, “Not once or twice in our fair island story Has the road to ruin proved the path to glory.”’ I thought that was fairly bright for a man in the throes of terminal syphilis, but Dyer ploughed on unmoved, shaking ash into the remains of marmalade on his plate.
‘At two in the morning you could hear their gramophone still going. They debagged Corporal Kyle, so I heard. Raving drunk. Bad soldiering. There will be some thick heads round there this morning.’
I poured myself another cup of coffee. Undrinkable, if truth be told.
‘Good news about that cunt Kyle, anyway.’ I had completely forgotten the BORS’ party. Happy though I was to have missed total immersion in crème de menthe, appearing to snub the Other Ranks was just one more thing to feel bad about. I rose from the table, nodded to the RSM, and clapped Ron Dyer on his bare shoulder as I went by.
‘Cheero, Ron, see you in the bar of the Regent Palace some time. Merdeka!’
Outside the mess, three swart members of the Indian Pioneer Corps were pulling planks and tarpaulins about, trying to repair the cover of the cesspit. Their sluggish movements suggested that they were not optimistic about the outcome.
Medan on a Sunday morning was quieter than usual. All the shops were shut. The Dutch, and such of the local population as had been converted to Protestantism, were at church singing European hymns to a European god. This might be one of the chief cities of the new Indonesian Republic, but it chugged along still under the mores of a Netherlands provincial town. One of my watches said five to ten and the other nearly a quarter to eleven, so I reckoned it must be at least eleven-twenty. When I wound them both vigorously, I was making the loudest noise in the street.
My last days in Sumatra return vividly as I write, although they have been stored away forgotten for years. Yet I cannot remember any part of the way from our lines to the Kesawan, except for the railway crossing – a point of danger. Only an old faded photograph reminds me of what the de Boer club looked like. This must be because, whenever I walked that way, my head was pleasantly filled with thoughts of women; my surroundings scarcely registered. Which suggests a new reason why people recall the days of their childhood so clearly: childhood is the only time of life when one’s brain is not preoccupied with hopes, regrets, recollections, lecherous anticipations, of the other sex …
Naturally, the story of Katie’s adventures was stuffed with lies. All those rape fantasies, for instance. She gloried in sex. I asked her where she acquired her knowledge of the art of love; she replied that it all came from the Spanish nun. That could have been said in order to titillate me. You would never get to the bottom of all the mysteries about Katie Chae.
Tomorrow, my flight to Singapore. There I would have to hang about in Nee Soon Transit Camp until the old Otranto arrived for the voyage home – which could mean a wait of up to a fortnight. Would Katie come over and visit me for that period if I paid her? We could probably get a room in Nee Soon village; there were some quite striking houses where the Arabs sold rugs and pouffes. I had plenty of back-pay. But how many cigarettes would it take?
What a swine I was to even think of such a thing! Above all – first – I must get things straight with Margey.
In the Chinese quarter, the Ambonese were taking over the pavement, strolling and stretching and calling to each other. Big amiable black men sat at the open windows of their billet, tuning guitars or cleaning machine-guns. Christ, Amboina must be some place! Shite-hawks swooped above the street, hoping that the guns would go off. On the corner of Bootha Street, the restaurant was open and doing no business. Two waiters lolled outside, smoking; we exchanged greetings.
I made an effort to quicken my pace.
The signs of mourning were still on Margey’s weather-beaten door. The exotic characters had curled up in the sun like flabby hedgehogs. An overnight rainstorm had caused the red dye of the paper to run down the door, where it resembled the blood of a leukaemia victim. The white flowers had died and were infested with small flies.
A paper casket stood on the table in the middle of the room, surrounded by fresh flowers. It was an emblem of the real coffin, now decently buried: the processes of corruption are fast on the equator – maggots burst out of eyes not closed twenty-four hours since. Several old people, with the wrinkled walnut faces age etches on the Chinese, were shuffling round the room. The Brastagi relations, no doubt.
Inevitably, boring old Fat was there, sitting in one corner smoking watchfully on a bamboo chair tipped back against the wall. He called to me, beckoning with a languid paw.
‘Ha, so, Missa Stuss, you so kine come bag this house ’gain after rong ti’. I no ’spec’ you come bag this house any more ti’ – you go fry bag Ingrant.’ He made plane noises and zoomed his hand around to help convey his meaning. I didn’t think much of the standard of imitation.
All the same, he deflected me enough to try and solve a minor mystery. I asked Fat how it was that Tiger Balm, Katie Chae’s brother, came here when Margey so hated Katie Chae. As far as I could understand his answer, the Tiger Balms of this world were lofty pillars of the local Chinese community, while the Hwan Fat Sians of this world were lowly worms. The Tiger Balms had established the Hwans in accommodation in their hour of need. Money also changed hands – but from whom to whom, and exactly why, or how earned, I could not determine.
Cutting short a rambling socio-economic survey in pidgin, I said, ‘Where’s Margey, Fat? Upstairs?’
‘You priss no worry Margey.’ He jerked his thumb towards the back yard. ‘Margey busy do prenty wor’.’ He spoke feelingly, as if suffering from the same complaint.
Going moodily to the rear, I caught sight of Margey through the glass door. She was in her working pyjamas, bent double over an old bucket. Sunshine hit the wall behind her. As I pushed the door open, I saw that she was doing something vigorous with water – washing a pair of Fat’s winter trousers or drowning a turkey were two possibilities that sprang to mind.
‘Hello, Margey!’ Spoken rather coolly. This could be my last meeting with her, and I wished everything to be dignified and decent.
She looked up from the bucket, smiling and frowning as she straightened. I saw how small she was, how lost she would look on Number One Platform, Kings Cross. Or in the bar of the Regent Palace.
Then she flicked her head, scowled, and went back to the washing/drowning operations, turning her back on me. If anything, this response made me feel worse than the terminal syphilis did.
Entering the yard, I circled her in order to get a look at her face.
‘Missed you yesterday, Margey.’
Furious scrubbing was her answer.
‘You didn’t tell me you were going to Brastagi, Margey.’
Savage scrubbing. The turkey was getting hell.
‘Stop that, Margey, and pay attention. I’ve got a present for you.’ (I had brought along a tin of Euthymol tooth powder, a packet of frizette mixture, a jar of red currant jelly, a box of liquorice allsorts, a comb, and two tins of Portuguese sardines.)
Without ceasing operations, she said, ‘I no want your beastly present. You give to one your other girls.’
This was going to be tricky.
‘Sounds as if you had a bad time in Brastagi. I’m off if you won’t speak to me properly.’
She gave a grunt. Her face was red with anger. Like a little fury, she whirled round, swinging the turkey/trousers above her head. I was trapped in a corner of the yard. As I instituted the first impulses of retreat, Margey struck me with the sopping object squarely across the head and shoulders. Caught off balance, I fell backwards and sprawled in the filthy yard. The bag with the presents broke, scattering goods across the flagstones.
Margey leapt upon me, still beating me with the lethal object and screaming as she did so. Water drops flew up into the air, sparkling as they dropped again.
‘Why I speak you properly, hog-pizzle? What you do deserve I speak you properly? You low thing, I go Brastagi only for family duty. First I watch for you like proper faithful China girl. You no come here yes’erday like you promise. Why you no come here like you promise? Aei-ya, you dirty disease soldier, you no care where Margey am, if I live or dead!’
Protecting my face with my arms, I struggled to my feet. She continued to beat me. By now I was drenched from head to foot, and the turkey hurt.
‘Pack it in, you stupid bitch! I’m soaked! I had to go crocodile-shooting. How did I know you were suddenly going to disappear? Why didn’t you leave me a note – you’re so bloody educated, aren’t you?’
She stopped beating me as she gathered what I had said. We stood staring at each other, panting heavily. Even flecked with suds, she looked immaculate. Dirty water poured from my shoulders. I heard a scuffle behind me; Fat and the Brastagi relations were jostling for a good view of the quarrel. In fury, I grabbed up the jar of red currant jelly, which lay by my foot, and hurled it at Fat’s face. Fortunately, I missed the window. The jar struck the stone wall and broke. Enormous wasps the size of carrots descended on the red chunks of goo as they hit the flagstones.
‘You call it crocodile-shooting now, hey, you man-pig? I know what you get up direct moment my back is turn. You same like all men, no sense only for that stinking thing in your pants.’ She kicked one of the tins of sardines flying. ‘Why you not have more respec’, go and stick that – that hairy bloodsausage – up any dirty disease hole comes along, you foreign monster, pig, shit, pizzle, bumhole!’
She shook her head as she spat the words out. With a scream, she began to larrup me with the drowned object again. I grabbed it and wrenched it from her.
‘Cut out this bloody senseless useless yelling, for Christ’s sake! What the hell are you going on about? I did go crocodile-shooting yesterday, and nearly got myself killed, while you were pissing about in Brastagi.’
Instead of showing any remorse, she jumped at me and grabbed back the drowned thing. There she stood, silent and dramatic, regarding me with haunted eyes, clutching her elbows as I had seen Ida Lupino do. She held the pose long enough to strike terror into my heart, ignoring the wasps which zoomed about us. Then she lifted an accusing finger and began on a new tack, speaking slowly at first.
‘I see, I understand all what you say, Horatio, you shit-sergeant. You go crocodile-shooting yes’erday. And that’s why today in the bazaar Katie Chae wear new blue felt hat with matching silk ribbon, is it?’ On the last words, her voice rose to a blood-curdling scream of triumph; even the onlookers flinched. She knew I was undone.
I was undone. Pointless to try and argue that there was, in fact, no casual connection between the crocodile-shoot and the hat-bestowal. After one or two false starts, during which I was screamed down, I tried the red-herring tactic of explaining that the hat in no way represented payment for services rendered, or at least had not been obtained originally as an object intended for presentation in exchange for services rendered, and indeed had been procured only with extreme reluctance by the accused, who had regarded himself as rooked at the time of the transaction and who, furthermore, had not, in his innocence, anticipated any services whatsoever being offered, never mind rendered; and moreover who, had he had the wit to anticipate the full, generous, delicious and oft-repeated nature of those services, would probably have procured, not one, but half a dozen fucking blue felt hats.
‘Lying diseased dog-swine! Pizzle, shit!’ She waved her fists above her head, stamping her foot at the same time. ‘How you think I feel? I just turn my back only one day, for duty go and fetch honoured relatives to this place of mourning and gloomy reverences, and you – you who say you love me, you swine-liar! – you at once go madly fucking and distributing hats to all biggest whores in Medan!’
‘What are you saying, you bitch? All? All?’
‘Not all but at least biggest – that Katie Chae. How many times I warn you about Katie Chae? Every day I tell you I hate that disease whore, I tell you stay away Katie Chae, no speak her, even. You smile like a puppy-dog, then direct moment my back is turn, bish, you in bed with her and stick that filthy prick of your up her dirty evil hole! Jesus God! Can’t you understand, you fucking deprave Blighty soldier-murder-bastard, I no want touch you any more after you go lie with that whore!’
I pulled the drowned thing from her grasp – it was a garment of some totally inscrutable kind – and flung it into a pile of crap at the back of the yard.
‘Look, for God’s sake, Margey, calm down, will you? And stop calling Katie Chae a whore, too, or I’ll get angry. We met by chance, if you must know, so what we did wasn’t whoring, okay? I’m sorry if you are upset but it wasn’t planned and –’
‘No whoring! No whoring!’ She screamed, shaking her head so that her hair swirled round her neat neck. ‘You say no whoring? What you think that Katie Chae is? How much she charge you, eh, how much?’
‘I’ll bloody belt you in a minute. Don’t talk to me about whoring, Rosey –’
‘Why I no talk? Just why? When I ever make charge to you, Horatio? Maybe you like better deprave girl who charge high price, you scum-sergeant!’
‘You may just have noticed that I’ve come round this morning to see you, not Katie. Bloody good welcome you give me!’
‘I give you some good welcome. I hate her, I hate her!’ She started slapping me with her hands. I caught her thin wrists. The feel of her made me more angry. I lifted her off the ground and swung her to and fro.
‘I don’t know what Katie’s done to you, but just don’t take it out on me. Calm down, or I’ll beat you.’
‘Oh, oh, oh, you kill me!’ Margey struggled furiously in my grip. ‘She take all my men, that’s all why I hate that poxy whore. What she got that’s so good poor Margey don’t have, I like to know? Every time, every time, Katie Chae make poor Margey disgrace. Margey real good girl and be faithful to her Horry, yet this terrible Katie Chae she take him away so easy in one day, just one lousy day, and charge too high price, I bet.’
When I set her down, she covered her face and wailed. Now the self-pity act. Intuitively, I saw what would follow: the cuddles, the kisses, the making up, the unbidden promises to take her with me to Singapore, to England, the offers of marriage. I knew my own weakness in that respect. Bringing up my hand, I gave her a wallop on her shapely little bum.
She let out a marvellous yell of rage. Once started, it sounded as if it would never stop. Heads popped up over the wall and popped down again while Margey was still in no more than mid-yell. She shook her head, letting her dark hair scatter across her face, while she waved her fists at my nose.
‘You dare hit China girl, you smelling rapist dog! Oh, oh, oh, may the gods see this bad hit and pass judgement to cut off your piss-cock, you bastard man! Ged out of here, out, out, out, away, murderer, never speak me once more time again!’
Another scream, decibels flying. I decided that was it. Turning to flee, I struck my head on the lintel of the door. Wasps wheeled about me bearing blood-like gobbets of jelly. The pause gave her time enough to snatch up the bucket of dirty water. With aim and energy born of fury, she flung it. Even as I reeled from contact with the doorway, striking at stars and wasps, I got the works in the nape of my neck. I blundered through the establishment, scattering water over cowering Brastagi relations, barging past Fat, running for safety, yelling for help.