RAJ HAD TAKEN RECENTLY to wearing a tall crowned panama hat with his white cotton suit. He held this hat awkwardly in his hands as he stood in Little Sparrow’s house on East Coast Road. He had been surprised to receive a message from Mei Lan asking to see him. He had heard nothing of her since her release by the kempetai in the middle of the previous year.
When Mei Lan at last appeared Raj was shocked at the change in her. He remembered her bright energy, and the direct assessment of her gaze. Now everything in her face was drawn inwards, as if a great weight sucked her into her core. She led him out on to a narrow veranda where there were two basket chairs and a small table. Almost immediately, an old crone appeared with glasses of water and Raj noticed Mei Lan’s hands tremble involuntarily as she picked up the tumbler.
‘As soon as they arrested you, Howard went to see Mr Shinozaki and I accompanied him to the YMCA to ask for your release,’ Raj explained, describing the unsuccessful interview with the Japanese officer.
‘I have no money to pay this donation; I have tried many ways to raise the amount,’ Mei Lan said dully. She had the look of a stray creature about her and the old woman hovered anxiously in the background, darting disapproving looks at him.
‘Other people have raised money by selling their homes. If you even raise part of the amount, they will be satisfied and leave you alone; you can say you will give the rest later,’ Raj advised quietly.
‘Where is Howard?’ Mei Lan asked abruptly. She had sent Ah Siew to Cousin Lionel’s house soon after she returned home, but the old woman had brought back a confused tale that made it clear he was no longer there.
‘Someone told the kempetai he had a radio for which, as you know, the penalty is death. He has gone into hiding somewhere, but I know nothing more. It was many months ago now,’ Raj told her. ‘Lots of men are hiding out in the jungle,’ he added as an afterthought. Mei Lan fell silent, trying to suppress her concern. She had little trust of Raj, a man whose loyalties if put to the test were clearly with the Japanese, but his connections were useful.
‘Can you find me a buyer for some jewellery?’ she asked. Second Grandmother’s diamonds, worn for so long in a roll of silk about the old woman’s waist, might at last have their use, she thought. The time she had been given to raise the donation money was fast running out. It had taken months to regain some degree of health and Ah Siew had nursed her devotedly. She thought of the boxes of jade and opium and the suitcase of jewellery Lim Hock An had buried in the garden of Bougainvillaea House before the Japanese arrived. Once or twice she had passed her old home, which was now occupied by a civilian Japanese official, and had seen that the garden, although deteriorated, appeared to be undisturbed. One day she vowed to reclaim the place and the precious hoard beneath it.
‘My grandmother died and she left me her diamonds; I can sell those. I need to produce the money soon,’ she told him.
She had returned to the East Coast house to find Second Grandmother ill and ravaged by pain, a scrawny and almost unrecognisable bundle of embroidered silks. As Mei Lan had entered her room, Second Grandmother turned her head as she lay on her bed.
‘Bring me the Schiaparelli,’ she croaked impatiently, as if Mei Lan had not been away. Ah Siew ran for the vial and unscrewed the heavy glass stopper. Second Grandmother had raised a wilting hand to be anointed with the precious nectar, thick and dark as amber in its ancient crystal bottle. At once, the perfume splintered the room with shards of painful memory. Nothing in all the preceding hellish weeks had made Mei Lan break down and cry, but Second Grandmother’s Schiaparelli cut to the very centre of her.
‘My pipe,’ Second Grandmother demanded, her breath rattling like marbles in her throat.
‘There is no more opium, Ancient Mistress,’ Ah Siew reminded her and hung her head. During the kempetai search on the day Mei Lan was arrested, the opium had been found and taken away by the soldiers. Second Grandmother gave a whimper, and took Mei Lan’s hand as she sat down beside her. She gestured weakly to Ah Siew, who pulled back the bed sheet and gently lifted Second Grandmother’s sleeping sam to reveal the slack flesh of her body. The rolled silk belt with what remained of her diamonds was still tied about her waist.
‘Take it,’ Second Grandmother whispered to Mei Lan, the words barely leaving her throat. Ah Siew untied the belt and placed the soft roll, that still held the warmth of Second Grandmother’s body, into Mei Lan’s hands. The hard facets of stones could be felt through the silk, and Mei Lan took Second Grandmother’s hand. The old woman gave a sigh and closed her eyes and fell into a shallow sleep. As morning broke she awoke with a start, drew a few gasping breaths and died. Mei Lan, who had sat beside her through the night with Bertie and Little Sparrow, dropped her head into her hands and sobbed. Bertie began to howl, but Little Sparrow did not give the customary cries of grief, rising instead with alacrity to begin the funeral arrangements.
‘Diamonds?’ Raj lifted his head to meet Mei Lan’s emotionless gaze.
‘I want a good price. I know their value, they are of a high quality and carat,’ she warned him, her gaze sharpening.
‘Diamonds are good. Many men high up in the military will be interested in diamonds.’ Raj nodded encouragingly. He did not add that small pieces of jewellery were easily secreted and transported back home and were much desired by Japanese military men seeking recompense for the hard years of war. He might even be interested himself.
‘I will do what I can,’ he said as he stood up. Seeing with discomfort how pompous and unfeeling he must appear to her, he was pricked by sudden shame. Replacing the panama hat on his head, still searching for words that would convey his sympathy, he prepared to leave. She made him feel guilty, as if in some way he had colluded in the events that had destroyed her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a low voice and could find no other words with which to journey to her dark world. She nodded absently, but before he reached the door he heard her speak and turned to her again. She still stood on the veranda, looking out at the sun caught in the leaves of a coral tree.
‘In the cell there was a tiny barred window high up; I could watch the sky and the clouds pass by. Once I heard a golden oriole sing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, stiff with embarrassment, wanting to run from the room and the discomfort she made him feel. The words were a whisper, barely reaching his lips as he turned to hurry away.
Once he had gone she sat down to absorb the news about Howard, her face filled with the emotion she had refused to show Raj. Ah Siew shuffled forward, attentive and anxious.
‘Go quickly to the Joo Chiat Hospital, to Cynthia, ask her for news of Howard, ask her to come,’ Mei Lan said. Pulling some notepaper from the drawer of a desk, she wrote a quick note to Cynthia, something she had not found herself able to do before.
Please come. I do not yet have the strength to go out. Ah Siew looks after me, she wrote, forming the words with difficulty.
Wilfred found that any small cut turned septic and ate deep into his flesh. No one had shoes and the hard labour, the scratches from clearing bushes and trees, the knocks from breaking stones, were a continual aggravation to the suppurating lesions they all had on their bodies. Once or twice Wilfred had sat with his legs in the river and let the small fish there nibble at the sores to clean them, but this was a painful process. Then a novel treatment was found. Cement dust, if packed into an open sore, would bind with the pus and mucus there to dry into a hard protective scab. Eventually, these heavy scabs fell off and revealed new skin beneath. Every day they dug graves for those who died. No one prayed any more.
Cholera came. They were warned that when monsoon rain swelled the river, dead animals, decayed rubbish and the contents of village cesspits upstream would be carried down to them and cholera would come; it came every year without fail.
The Japanese held white squares of cloth over their faces for protection but, within hours of the first case being reported, the rotted, leaking tent set up as an isolation ward was full. The monsoon rolled down, drenching dying men who writhed in agonising spasms. Vomit and diarrhoea covered the ground in pools of slime. Few men could survive, and the growing pile of bodies must be buried quickly. Mass graves were dug and bodies were unceremoniously thrown in, layered one on another up to the top. There needed to be six feet of earth above the bodies, or maggots would crawl to the surface from rotting corpses and immediately metamorphose into cholera-carrying blowflies. All the time they dug it rained; their feet were ankle deep in mud. They were warned not to touch their mouths with their fingers, mess tins and spoons must be dipped in boiling water before a meal; no fly must be allowed to settle on food. As flies congregated in a metallic black swarm on any morsel, this was a difficult order to fulfil. There was also no way to shift a corpse except by grasping it with bare hands and Wilfred dreaded falling into the toxic mud or that it would splash on to his mouth; there was no way to protect themselves against contamination. Each day he wrapped himself around the same silent mantra, the words repeating and reverberating through him. I will not die. I will not die.