THE DENSE SHADOW of the jungle broke at last and Howard found himself in the dazzle of sunlight. As the trucks careered along the narrow road a green carpet of rice fields spread out around them. People bending to the paddy straightened and waved. When the rumour that war was over and the Japanese had surrendered reached them in the jungle camp, they had not known whether to believe it; they were again without a radio. It was many weeks before they eventually set out to join the other groups of Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army liberating the country.
Howard held his face to the sun, as if to wash away the green and cloistered years. He had grown so used to the filtered half-light of the rainforest, a dark canopy of branches always above him, that the endless vista of sky filled him with amazement. The breeze on his face, the unrelieved heat on his skin, the brightness of it all was disorientating; he wondered if, after hiding so long within the dark mansion of the jungle, his skin had absorbed its green light. He was weak with illness and lay stretched out in the back of the truck. The thought of freedom was frightening; he remembered how he had once longed to escape the camp. Now, without the cohesion of its organised life about him, the world appeared daunting.
Malaria gripped him so that even now he ached and shivered. Before they left the camp, dysentery had also taken hold of him and he had wondered if, now that the war was finally ended, he was destined to die. Instead, he had been placed on a bamboo stretcher and carried along with the guerrillas, who had orders from the Malayan Communist Party to liberate nearby towns; Howard was too weak to protest. Everywhere, as the Japanese moved out, making way for the returning British troops, the communist guerrillas moved in. Roads were clogged with the retreating Japanese army, sullen faced and with truckloads of equipment, and the loot of furniture, pianos and bicycles, with soldiers seated precariously atop these loads.
‘The Shorties are going,’ Wee Jack laughed, shooting about the feet of Japanese soldiers, making them dance and run.
In village after village the Communist Party’s red flag with hammer and sickle emblem now flew above the Union Jack and the guerrillas’ own Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army pennant. When Wee Jack and his men entered a village, their first task was to establish a rule of terror. Any remaining Japanese police or soldiers were immediately shot. The guerrillas marched up and down the main street flashing guns, demanding enthusiasm from the populace. People’s Committees were put in place, and a village jury tried those who had collaborated with the Japanese. The guilty were carried around in pigs’ cages before being butchered before a cheering crowd. The punishment and dispatch of women who had been the mistresses of the Japanese was greeted with the greatest approval.
Howard was required to see little of this. Racked by illness, he was exhausted by the smallest exertion and Wee Jack finally installed him in the house of an elderly couple, ordering them to care for him.
‘Get yourself better soon. We’re returning to Singapore,’ Wee Jack announced one day. ‘The Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army are being honoured by the British. Our leaders are getting medals.’ Wee Jack gave a bark of laughter, and Howard stared at him in amazement, wondering if this meant he was free at last.
Now, the truck bumped over the trunk road taking them back to Singapore. Howard was weak, but no longer so ill after the medicine, food and kindness shown him by the elderly couple in the last town. The truck was going too fast for safety, throwing them about, the men shouting and laughing. They were one in a convoy of six Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army trucks, and behind followed a further truck with a cargo of weapons. Similar convoys were heading to Singapore from all directions. Sitting beside Howard, Wee Jack wore his official high peaked cap with three gold stars, and a creased and unwashed uniform.
‘It will do for the ceremony, I’m not one of those receiving medals from Mountbatten,’ Wee Jack told Howard. ‘The British want to make a pact with us. If the MPAJA gives up its weapons and disbands, they’ve promised to officially recognise us, to recognise the Malayan Communist Party.’ Wee Jack threw back his head in triumphant laughter. Howard leaned his aching head on the side of the bouncing truck, too weak to argue. He could not share Wee Jack’s buoyancy; all he felt was apprehension at the thought of returning to Singapore. How would he take up his old life again? How would he fit back into society, mix with people like Lionel again? Even his mother now seemed unrelated to him.
At the Padang, a platform had been erected on the steps of City Hall on which sat uniformed British generals, air marshals, admirals and brigadiers, and a lone representative of the Malayan Communist Party. At their centre was Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia, waiting to honour the communist guerrilla fighters. The music stopped as a fleet of open cars drew up carrying the guests of honour, the sixteen leaders of the newly disbanded Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army.
There was cheering as the men climbed out of the cars, wearing olive green uniforms and peaked caps. The band struck up ‘God Save the King’, and as this ended paused discreetly for a moment before beginning ‘The Red Flag’. As the last notes died away, Lord Louis Mountbatten stepped forward to pin medals on each MPAJA leader. Tall Lord Louis bent low to secure the Burma Star upon the smaller Chinese men, but although he smiled gravely as the occasion demanded, shaking the hand of each man, his gestures were interpreted as condescending. As the band played ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, the guerrilla leaders gave a sudden clenched fist salute, their arms thrusting up to the sky. Wee Jack nudged Howard who stood beside him.
‘The British think they’re returning to the old order of things. Instead, they’ll find it’s a different world. If the Japanese could get the British out, then so can we, that’s what we’ve learned from the war: the British are not invincible.’ Wee Jack laughed.
Later, the truck dropped Howard off near Lionel’s house before bumping away over the rutted track and finally disappearing. For a moment he panicked, overwhelmed with loss, suppressing an urge to run after it. Illness had left him debilitated; his head spun and his legs were weak as he turned to walk along the sandy track towards the coconut estate. The familiar landscape appeared surreal, as if he saw it in a dream. Perhaps, he thought, Lionel’s house might no longer be there; he did not know what he was returning to, he did not know if his mother was still alive. In the distance he heard the unchanging rhythm of the sea, and breathed in the familiar comfort of the briny air, edged by the odour of drying sardines. The sun was going down, there was the smoke of cooking fires and shadows settling for the night, just as there had always been, just as he remembered. Soon, he came to the old shack where he had spent so many hours hidden away, where he had taken Mei Lan, and stopped. The hut had collapsed inwards and now lay in a heap of splintered struts and planks and disintegrating attap leaves. He knew he should feel some emotion, but within him his feelings congealed, unyielding. Mei Lan was so distant he could not clearly recall her face; he himself was but a spectre visiting a previous life.
Lionel’s house was not only standing as before, but Lionel was sitting on the steps strumming his guitar. He stood up in amazement at Howard’s sudden appearance, and yelled into the house for Ava. She came running, her children behind her, all now grown and lanky. It was an emotional reunion, and Howard immediately learned his mother had returned to Belvedere. Lionel kept slapping him on the back and Ava insisted he spend the night.
‘It’s dangerous out there. Wait for daylight, then you’ll be all right,’ she advised.
‘She’s right, boy. It’s every man for himself out there – looting and plunder and the law of the street now that the Japanese have gone. Almost as bad as when they were here, in a different sort of way,’ Lionel agreed. Howard sat down on the top step of the veranda, the noisy welcome surging about him was more than he could take. He dropped his head into his hands and tears streamed down his face.
‘Now the British are back, law and order will return, just you wait and see.’ Ava drew her daughters into her arms and they leaned against her biting their nails, regarding Howard curiously as she gave him news of Rose.
‘Your mother and Mavis hurried home to Belvedere as soon as they could. Lionel took them back. It upset them to see what had happened to the place. It’s full of homeless people. Lionel said even though the place belongs to Rose, she had to battle for a few inches to call her own. Cynthia is back at the General Hospital.’
Howard left Lionel’s house in the morning and as he came into town was shocked to see the number of destitute people and the unspeakable filth piled up everywhere. Eventually, he reached Belvedere and as he walked through the gate he thought for a moment he had made a mistake. The garden was a shanty town of squatters’ huts. Ragged, emaciated people passed constantly in and out of the house, while two coolies squatting down to smoke outside the front door looked up at Howard with interest. As he stepped into the vestibule, the dining room opened before him and he saw not the usual sea of red Malacca tiles, but a further squatters’ village. Old sheets, curtains and pieces of tarpaulin were strung up, dividing the great room into many small cubicles. Behind these flimsy walls Howard saw families, sleeping babies and bits of furniture: a box, a mattress, a chair – even the small round tables at which Belvedere’s lodgers had once sat. There was a foul odour. He walked anxiously down the corridor to his old room and found the door open. A crowd of faces turned towards him as he peered in, and he drew back hastily. The door to his mother’s room was firmly shut, but he forced himself to open it. For a moment he stared disbelievingly. His mother sat on a chair by the window sewing while Mavis, sitting on another chair, was reading a book. In the midst of chaos the room appeared almost as before. On the chest of drawers the usual silver-framed photographs were arranged beside a bowl of mangosteen. Rose’s walnut double bed stood in its usual place. The women looked up as he entered. Rose lowered her sewing, frozen in shock; Mavis jumped up and rushed towards him.
They had set up a small spirit stove in a corner and upon it they heated whatever food they could find. They said it was better than queuing to use the gas rings in the kitchen. Some precious tea was unearthed, and boiled up in celebration of Howard’s return. A valuable tin of sardines was also opened to accompany a hard heel of bread, that Mavis told him excitedly had been made with real flour and not tapioca.
‘We came back as soon as we dared after the Japanese left, but Belvedere had already been occupied by squatters.’ Rose held her son’s hand, stroking his fingers, conscious above all that he was beside her. Mavis added a spoonful of condensed milk to the tea and poured it into cracked mugs; she had lost weight and her clothes hung pitifully upon her.
‘We had to fight for this room. Three families were in here, and we bribed them to vacate it with almost everything we had. We have to queue to use our own bathroom and it’s filthy beyond words.’ Rose burst into tears, the shock and relief of seeing Howard opening a floodgate of feeling.
‘Cynthia and Wilfred share the room with us.’ Mavis pointed to a curtained-off section behind which a mattress could be seen. Over tea the women told him how, after the surrender, Wilfred had been repatriated from Burma with other POWs. Wilfred now resembled a walking skeleton, Rose whispered with a shudder.
‘Cynthia knows best how to handle him. She’s working part time now, so that she can nurse him back to health.’ Rose stared at her son in growing concern, her throat constricting with emotion, her eyes filling again with tears. He was gaunt, his eyes sunken and, even though he was standing before her, appeared more absent than present in a way she could not explain. Although she knew nothing of his lost years in the jungle, the imprint of experience was stamped on his face.
Later, at Rose’s direction, Howard went into the garden to find Wilfred sitting by the mangosteen trees. The shed Howard had used for assignations with ugly Nona so long ago still stood but now, he saw, a family lived in it. Wilfred sat unmoving, one thin leg crossed over the other, staring blankly ahead into the gnarled depths of the orchard. As Rose had said, the bones stuck out all over him, the flesh of his face was sucked away, his hair had thinned and some of his teeth were missing. He turned his head as Howard approached, and with a look of amazement stood up to embrace him tearfully.
‘Both of us back from the dead,’ Wilfred said, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand.
For some time they sat in silence and Howard was startled when, unprompted, Wilfred began to speak, staring ahead without emotion. ‘They did terrible things. We were kept in small cages in the sun without water; you could not stand up, you could not lie down. A few days of it and your legs no longer worked. Men dug their own graves and were shot beside them. We watched and then buried them as we were ordered. Even if they were still alive, we still buried them. One man opened his eyes and said, please . . . please. We buried them all.’ His voice sank into silence. Howard wished he knew what to say, what emotion to feel, but everything seemed to happen at a great distance from him; he was distant even to himself.
As the days went by Howard felt a shift within himself. Nothing yet seemed real; the abundance of light still hurt his eyes, the threadbare food his mother and Mavis produced seemed decadent after the fare in the jungle camp. He was by turn irritable and tearful, angry and depressed. He knew he should be glad to be back and yet Belvedere’s ragged population, always milling around him, his mother and Mavis’s effort to resurrect the polite remnants of their old life, their concern at his refusal of a mattress and his preference for sleeping on a bare floor, their constant fussing and worry, flooded him with anger. Cynthia examined him and dosed him, like Wilfred, with precious quinine and vitamin B brought from the General Hospital. Within days he felt physically stronger, but his mind was still dull and confused. Often a sense of panic ran through him; without Wee Jack to guide him, he was lost. He waited, sure the man would contact him, but Wee Jack did not come. Then, he wondered if he should search out the office in Middle Road that he knew the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army now occupied, but he did nothing. He did nothing but lie on the floor of Rose’s room staring at the ceiling, or sit silently on the bench beside Wilfred. Hours passed, days passed in this limbo, and he was happy to float in nothingness, waiting for the lost parts of himself to return, if they ever would.
It was weeks before he finally made his way to Mei Lan, to the house on East Coast Road, propelled more by obligation than emotion, and by Cynthia’s constant urging. She had told him about Mei Lan’s imprisonment and her suffering at the hands of the kempetai. In the end he went to Little Sparrow’s house to please his sister. Again, he knew he should feel some emotion at the things Cynthia told him, but whatever had once tied him and Mei Lan together, he felt sure had loosened. There was little transport about and he walked a distance before finding a rickshaw, feeling weak and dizzy, but pushing himself on. When he reached the house he found a girl of eight or nine playing outside, digging up shoots of tapioca.
‘She’s inside,’ the girl replied to his query and led him up the steps, the muddy tuber still in her hand. Howard followed her, surprised to find himself feeling apprehensive; he wondered suddenly what changes he would find in Mei Lan. As he climbed the steps his head reeled again from the exertion of his journey.
Mei Lan appeared from an inner room, and stood unmoving before him. Unexpectedly, his heart constricted violently and the emotion locked inside him for so long, which he had thought was unreachable, flooded through him again. It was not just the pale frailty of her, her hair cropped brutally close to her head, but the dullness of her eyes that made him feel something was gone from her, just as it was gone from Wilfred. For a moment the sense of separation dropped away and he wanted to take her in his arms. Almost immediately the moment faded and he kept his distance, knowing instinctively that formality was best. The child still stood beside him, staring curiously up at them both.
‘Go and ask Ah Siew to bring some water for the visitor,’ Mei Lan told the child, leading Howard into a small back room where Little Sparrow sat sewing buttons on a dress. The woman withdrew to a basket chair on a narrow veranda, but kept glancing over her shoulder to where they sat, as if to guard against impropriety.
‘She has been good to me,’ Mei Lan told him, looking at Little Sparrow’s back.
‘How long did they keep you?’ he asked almost below his breath, unable to stop the question but dreading to hear her answer. For a moment she was silent, her eyes lowered to her folded hands and he noticed how tightly her thin fingers were clenched.
‘They told me it was sixty-five days. They only let me out to pay Grandfather’s part of the $50 million donation, some of which I managed with that jewellery Second Grandmother always carried upon her. I couldn’t raise the whole amount, but they didn’t bother me again.’ Her voice was toneless and he saw how she trembled.
‘Every day I still expect them to knock on the door,’ she whispered. Her life limped along, the mechanics of it propelling her forward each day, but something essential was absent. In a stream near the East Coast house she has seen the bleached skull of a dog, caught and held by weeds growing near the bank. The skull lifted and moved in the current but could not break free, the dark empty sockets of its eyes staring up at her. That was how she felt, like a heap of pared bones under water, drifting aimlessly back and forth in the swell. There was nothing left to build upon; nothing left to restore. Cynthia had given her some herbal medicine that she said would take the worst dreams away, but even in daylight Mei Lan still lived in Nakamura’s shadow.
Already, Howard knew they would have to relearn each other all over again; the people they had been were vanished. Even though Mei Lan appeared connected to the everyday world, he saw she lived hidden within herself, her memories a coffin from which she could not escape. His own harsh experiences in the past three years gave him some insight into the spectres that must haunt her. Some part of himself, he realised now, must have resisted Wee Jack and the indoctrination of the camp. Something within him had remained inviolable for, compared to all he intuitively sensed about Mei Lan’s ordeal, he saw that slowly he was already struggling free of those jungle years. Thoughts he recognised as his own had begun to flow through him again. Eventually, he would reclaim himself, whereas the pitiless decimation Mei Lan had endured had done its work too well, robbing her of herself.
‘Where did you hide?’ she asked. Even as he told her of his forced residence in the jungle she seemed preoccupied, her thoughts far away so that he felt she only waited for him to fall silent.
‘War Trials have begun,’ Mei Lan told him when he stopped speaking. ‘I have been called as a prosecution witness. The British Government have given me a medal, but for what I do not know. For surviving when others died? They’re really giving it to Grandfather, for standing up to the Japanese and always supporting the British.’ Mei Lan gave a short bitter laugh.
She knew he wanted to reach out, to touch her, to reclaim her, but between them now there was the distance of strangers. She wondered how she could feel so little when before she had felt so much. Nobody knew the details of what had happened to her in those weeks at the YMCA, not even Ah Siew. Locked too deep for retrieval, the words would not spill out at her summons. The old amah had nursed her silently, never enquiring, massaging almond oil into the scars, feeding her ginseng scrounged from goodness knows where. At night the comfort of Ah Siew’s light snoring came to Mei Lan as she slept. The old woman was there when she awoke with nightmares and screams of terror, night after night. Ah Siew boiled up the precious herbs Cynthia had given, an ancient potion for sleep, but even when Mei Lan drowsed, oblivion never pulled her completely into its bottomless void. Each night she must navigate the darkness of her mind, held hostage by unspeakable memories. For many weeks after being released from the YMCA she lived as a ghost in the East Coast Road house, seeing nothing, passing as if invisibly from room to room, from hour to hour. Nakamura stood everywhere, pulling her back into his dark arc as she tried to live again.
‘They have also given me a scholarship to Oxford, to study law. My departure has been delayed so that I can give evidence at the trial; that is what the Governor wants. He himself asked me to be a witness. I will leave for England after the trial. I don’t know how long I’ll be away; two or three years, maybe longer.’ She looked at him suddenly with the direct appraisal he knew from before, assessing his reaction to what she said. He nodded, knowing they had no control over what had happened, nor over what was now being shaped.
‘I will be at the trial, they always allow spectators,’ he promised.
‘I’d rather you did not come,’ she replied, averting her eyes.
Thoughts of the trial pressed heavily upon Mei Lan, but the day finally arrived when she must make her way to the court, to face Nakamura again. It was an effort to dress, and Ah Siew fussed anxiously about her. At last, the old amah left the room, and Mei Lan sat down at the dressing table and picked up the silver-backed brush that had once been her mother’s. As a child she remembered watching it slide through Ei Ling’s lustrous hair; now it was heavy against her own head. With imprisonment she had lost so much hair and weight and her health had been slow to return; the birthmark was even more prominent along the fragile line of her jaw.
The door opened and Greta appeared; a shy child of eight, with plaits of hair pulled up high either side of her head. Greta was Little Sparrow’s youngest child, born many years after the daughter, Ching Ling, who had quickly followed Bertie, and with whom she had lived quietly in the East Coast house. Although still very young, Ching Ling had been married the previous year. The matchmaker had come forward with a suitable groom, the son of a school inspector, and Little Sparrow accepted immediately, relieved to see her eldest daughter securely settled.
Greta was technically Mei Lan’s half-aunt, but it was impossible to think of her in this way. Since Mei Lan’s arrival in the East Coast house the child, constantly usurped in her mother’s affections by Bertie, had turned to Mei Lan for affection, slipping into her bed at night, demanding stories before sleeping and the goodnight kiss her mother so often forgot to give her since the return of her brother.
‘Why can’t Bertie go away now that the war is finished?’ Greta asked, clambering up on to the bed.
‘Your mother had to give him up when he was a baby and now she has got him back it would be difficult for her to do that,’ Mei Lan explained, replacing the silver brush on the dressing table and observing herself in the full-length mirror. Ah Siew had chosen a simple white dress for her to wear, the only good dress in the cupboard. Her arms stuck out of the short sleeves like two thin sticks and the colour did not flatter her paleness. She opened the dressing table drawer to find a pin to keep the neck of the dress together, and pulled out not the tin of safety pins but the wooden case with the compass Howard had given her so long ago.
‘What’s that?’ Greta scrambled off the bed as Mei Lan turned it over in her hands.
‘It’s a compass,’ Mei Lan explained, opening the box and seeing once again the smooth dial of the instrument, its needle steadfast as ever, pointing in the direction of Belvedere.
‘Where did you get it?’ the child asked.
‘Someone gave it to me years ago,’ Mei Lan replied but there was no longer the quickening that would once have gripped her at the thought of Howard. The compass and all that went with it belonged to another life. She remembered Howard’s visit a few days before and felt a great tiredness, and knew she did not have the strength to recover the mercurial emotions she had once known so well.
‘What does a compass do?’ Greta insisted.
‘It points you in the right direction,’ Mei Lan answered dully, staring down at the needle but seeing for herself no clear course ahead.
There was the sound of a car drawing up and Greta rushed across to the window. ‘They’ve come for you,’ she said, pulling excitedly at the curtain.
Mei Lan stood at the window behind the child, hidden by a fold of cloth, looking down on the big black car with a Union Jack pennant, in the road before the house. The driver jumped out and opened a door and a short, thickset Englishman emerged. The sky had darkened over East Coast Road and she saw the first drops of rain spotting the stone gate pillars below. She straightened her collar and made herself turn, and walked slowly towards the door.
On the back seat of the car Mei Lan sat with her hands clasped tightly together, her eyes on the small flag fluttering on the vehicle’s bonnet. John Scott, a personal aide to the Governor, had been ordered to accompany her to court. As they slowed at a crossroads the rain, turning from a light shower into a sudden downpour, spat through the half-opened window, and Mei Lan felt its soft touch on her face.
‘Better close the window or you’ll get drenched before we get to court,’ the Englishman advised.
When Government House was cleared of its decorative Japanese touches and a British Governor was once again settled in the white palace upon a green hill, Mei Lan had been summoned to meet him. The new Governor told her that the British Government was awarding her an MBE for bravery during the war. She had been classed as a ‘battle casualty’, and would therefore be compensated in some way by the colonial power.
‘Your grandfather was an exemplary British subject. His efforts against the Japanese aggression in which he lost his grandson, who fought with Dalforce and the British Army, will not go unappreciated.’ The Governor had smiled. The British Government, he told her, had noted her desire to study law in England and arranged a scholarship. A place had been reserved for her at St Hilda’s, a women’s college in Oxford. As the Governor spoke she had looked over his shoulder through the open windows of Government House to the fiery blossoms of a flame tree. In the car now Mr Scott cleared his throat and attempted polite conversation.
‘You must be nervous. Not very nice to dig up bad memories,’ he sympathised. ‘However, without evidence from people like yourself we cannot convict the monsters, cannot give them their just deserts.’ Monsters. Just deserts. The words ran easily off his tongue. Mei Lan turned her face to the window.
The courtroom was heavily panelled, the warm wood giving off a thick smell of polish. The close, hot atmosphere and the subdued hum of conversation pressed in upon her as they entered the chamber, which was packed with people. Mei Lan took her seat beneath a high ceiling with softly turning fans; Mr Scott sat beside her. The trials had started some weeks before and continued every day. People sat shoulder to shoulder, crushed in together to see the accused, marvelling repeatedly at the brutal capabilities of such insignificant looking men. There was some coughing and settling as the proceedings began, and then a hush as the defendants were called into court. They entered the room, four small unexceptional Japanese men, correct and freshly shaven, filing in quietly one behind the other to sit at a table with their defence counsel. Mei Lan began to tremble and Mr Scott leaned towards her in concern.
‘That is the witness box over there. An officer will escort you to it when your name is called. Until then, I am here beside you,’ he reassured her. The prosecuting counsel, Colonel Sheppard, was already rising to give his opening address.
The last man in the row of accused was Nakamura. At first glance Mei Lan was unsure if it was really he. Drained of authority he appeared shrunken, a small ugly man, insubstantial in every way. Yet, she remembered him as a coiled spring, his eyes always sparking a loathsome energy. Each time she was brought before him, he appeared to fill the room. As she stared at him now her body clenched, her pulse quickened, her mouth became dry. The prosecuting counsel was speaking and Mei Lan tried to listen.
‘. . . it transpires very clearly through the course of this case that the kempetai followed, almost without exception, one of their normal methods of investigation. That is to say, they allotted a particular Warrant Officer or NCO the task of interrogating one particular suspect, and this WO or NCO was supposed to see the case of this particular suspect through to the end from start to finish . . .
‘. . . conditions under which the witnesses were detained were rigorous in the extreme . . .’ She closed her eyes and the bland flow of words ran over her.
Eventually, it was her turn to give evidence and she followed the usher to the witness box. She kept her eyes down; the cold flame was shrinking and expanding inside her until she felt sick and she feared she might vomit before the crowd. Nakamura’s eyes rested on her in the same way they had always done, as if she were an inanimate object. Even at the height of his anger, when he had thrashed her until he was able no longer to bring the cane down with adequate force, when her ribs were broken, when her flesh was a bloody pulp, when he was emotionally cleansed as a man after sex, even then his eyes remained detached.
‘Miss Lim, will you answer the question?’ Colonel Sheppard raised his tone slightly and she looked up, startled.
‘I did not hear. What was the question?’ she asked, making an effort to keep her mind tethered.
‘How often were you taken for interrogation?’
‘Once a day, sometimes not for several days. I don’t remember. It is difficult to say. I lost count of time in prison.’
‘And who conducted the interrogation? Was it always the same man, Captain Nakamura?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered and closed her eyes. What was she doing here? What could she say, what words could she use? There was no language to describe pain.
‘Speak up Miss Lim, so that the court can hear your answer. Can you describe for us the cell in which you were kept.’
‘It was a filthy place, filthy.’
‘Can you describe the cell, Miss Lim?’ Colonel Sheppard repeated patiently.
Why were they forcing her to go back? Why must she return, why must she tell them, why should she not run from the room? She remembered the corpse whose arms had had to be broken to drag him through the door of the cell. Stop! she wanted to scream but Colonel Sheppard continued, tugging words from her, reeling them in from the hiding place where she had kept them for so long.
‘What form did the interrogations take?’
‘Beatings,’ she whispered. ‘And other things.’
‘What other things?’ the Colonel asked gently.
She remembered Nakamura saying, You will not die. And yet so many did.
‘What questions were you asked during interrogation?’ Colonel Sheppard demanded.
‘If I knew any communists; I was always asked for names.’ She remembered the questions hammering upon her and how she had screamed ‘I don’t know’, again and again. All the time Nakamura’s eyes rested impassively on her. Pain was his pleasure, destruction his goal and she had been his unwilling partner, she was linked to him now for ever; his stain was upon her soul.
‘Did the accused rape you?’ She heard the question but the words would not come.
‘Miss Lim?’
Nakamura had tried kindness. He called for coffee and small Japanese cakes but when she repeated that she knew no communists he became angry again, twisting her lips hard between his fingers before returning her to the cell. The next time she was taken to a different room, an office with filing cabinets and a desk that Nakamura sat down behind. As she climbed the stairs to this room with the guard they had passed a window. She looked out at the road below, at cyclists and cars and carts, a woman with a child strapped to her back, and was filled by amazement that such a world continued to revolve in the strong blaze of the sun, oblivious to the dimension she lived in. Even the depth of natural light after the continuous glare of electric bulbs was dazzling, magical. Then she was pushed through the door to face Nakamura; he had been alone.
‘Just tell me what you know and you can go free. I can send you to places much worse than that cell, where you will be used day and night as a woman.’ She sat on a long, hard-backed seat against the wall and he stood before her, hands behind his back, booted legs apart.
He placed a hand upon her bare knee then moved it roughly along her thigh until he found the place he sought, pushing back her skirt, thrusting her over the hard arm of the bench as he pressed himself upon her. He took no notice of her screams as he unbuckled his heavy belt; he was used to such sounds in his ears every day. He was used to a struggling body and pleas for release.
‘Miss Lim.’ Colonel Sheppard sounded a note of impatience.
‘Yes, he raped me.’ She lifted her eyes to look directly at Nakamura.
‘More than once?’ Colonel Sheppard asked.
‘Yes, many times,’ Mei Lan replied, her voice a whisper.
Soon, she returned to her seat and as she sat down such exhaustion overcame her that she felt she might slide into sleep as she sat on the chair. Nothing was real; she was walking through a dream. Other witnesses were called, and so repetitious were the abominable things they said that it all began to sound routine. At last it was over and Colonel Sheppard stood to begin the day’s summing up. She closed her eyes as his voice droned on, describing the dense hedge of evidence erected about the accused men. None of it made sense any more; her mind was like torn linen and her thoughts were full of holes.