The atmosphere at home was stifling. The relationship between my father and me had deteriorated further after the incident at Kampong Dugong and this was not helped by the continued threats, which I alone knew were harmless.
I could only keep silent as he viewed me with deep contempt. How could I tell him about the arrangement I had made with Towkay Yeap? After seeing the appalling acts of Fujihara and the Kempeitai I wanted my father to know as little as possible about my activities. It was a high-pressure game I had placed myself in—on the one hand I appeared to have betrayed my own people, but on the other I was also betraying the Japanese. There was no one I could confide in, and more than ever I wished Kon were here with me instead of in some wet and impenetrable jungle.
Sometimes I felt as though I no longer had any control over the turns and tangles of my life. What a mess I had made of everything, I thought; what a terrible mess. Where had I gone wrong?
* * *
A month after Ming’s death, I received a message from Towkay Yeap, asking to meet me at Tanaka’s old house in Tanjung Tokong. I considered the possibility of it being a trap, set as a retribution for my complicity in the massacre at Ming’s village, and so made my way there an hour earlier, before the sun set. Being early would give me a tactical advantage.
The bungalow was empty, the expanse of the sea making it even more desolate. Evidently Tanaka had carried out his intention to hide away in the Black Water Hills. He had not removed the wind chime though and its little brass rods spun in the wind. The sun’s setting glare set fire to it, seeming to animate it to greater movement, as though it were turning into an instrument that transformed light into music. I blinked as my eyes caught its reflections.
The lawn was overgrown and I lay low in the grass watching the house, trying to sense any activity with my
ki
energy. I did not hear the rustle behind me but I sensed the stealthy approach of another person. I rose up to meet my assailant only to find it was my friend Kon.
“You’ll never be good enough to sneak up on me,” I said.
“I knew you would come before the appointed time,” he said. He was undernourished, his head shaven bald and only his smile had remained the same. He scratched absently at his scalp, saw my glance and said, “Sorry. Lice. That’s why I had to cut it off.”
“You won’t get into the E & O looking like that,” I said, not hiding my pleasure in seeing him. I still could not believe that it was actually him, in the flesh. “What are you doing here? I thought I was meeting your father.”
“I asked him to arrange this meeting.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Too many things,” he replied. He extended his hand in the direction of Tanaka’s house. “May I offer you some tea?”
There was a figure at the doorway when we took the steps onto the veranda. A young woman came out of the gloom of the house and stepped into a square of light left by the receding sun. Even her shabbiness could not hide her unusual beauty. Her eyes, large and black, lifted her face to greater character. She was not completely Chinese but was of mixed parentage, like myself.
“Su Yen, this is the friend I told you so much about,” Kon said. He introduced us quickly and we went inside, closing the door behind us. It took me a while to accustom myself to the darkness. Still, Kon went around the windows, making sure the curtains met. He lit a candle and we sat down on the floor.
“Su Yen’s a guerrilla from the Malayan Communist Party. Force 136 and the MCP have made a pact to work together against the Japanese,” Kon said.
“I know,” I said. “I’ve read the reports by the Japanese spies.”
Information on Force 136 was sparse, but Japanese intelligence reported that it had been formed by the British just before the war and that the recruits came from all walks of life. Bakers, tinkers, teachers, businessmen, anyone who had any form of expertise that could be exploited, all were sent to a military training base in Singapore to be trained extensively in jungle guerrilla warfare. It was a new form of combat, almost revolutionary. These recruits were later inserted into pockets of resistance in the jungles across Malaya.
I knew the scant facts and now Kon told me in greater detail. The British government had made a deal with the leaders of the MCP—ammunition would be supplied to them if they worked in tandem with Force 136 to carry out attacks against the Japanese.
War, I suppose, made strange bedfellows of former enemies. The Malayan Communist Party, known by the abbreviation-mad British as the MCP, had been active in the late 1920s, spreading its doctrine among the plantation workers and tin miners. There had been extensive strikes which had been put down brutally by the government. Driven underground, the MCP had taken to the jungle, vowing to take over the country.
Their success rate had been impressive, Kon said. Military bases, prisons, government offices, and the homes of high-ranking officials had been attacked, bombed, or successfully destroyed. Occasionally a village on the outer fringes of smaller towns would supply Force 136 with food and medicine. However, reprisals by the Kempeitai against these villagers were swift and fatal.
“I know that too well,” I said. I told him about Ming’s village, and countless others that I had visited with Goro. “The cleansing campaign, as the Kempeitai call it, is still going on.”
“Do you know where
Tanaka-sensei
has gone to?” Kon asked. “Did he go into the mountains as he had planned?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so.”
“And your
sensei
?”
“He’s second in command of Penang.”
Kon widened his eyes and I decided to tell him everything.
He laughed bitterly when I finished.
“Tanaka-sensei
and I often wondered what he was doing with you. Now we know. All those times you took him around the island ...” He shook his head. “So it’s true that you’re working for them. We heard that you were helping them. But I’d always dismissed it.” The word “Kempeitai” was unspoken but it hung between us like a bad smell.
“Do you think I was wrong to do so?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure you have your reasons.”
I glanced at Su Yen quickly, but decided to ask Kon anyway. “Is it wise, working together with the MCP?”
“As wise as working for the Japanese,” Su Yen said.
“I suppose I deserved that,” I said. “But why are you here? It isn’t safe for you.”
“Five of us have come out of the jungle. We’re all in Penang but we have no idea of each other’s precise whereabouts. We’re to meet in two days’ time at an appointed location to carry out our assignment.”
“And you need my help.”
“We have to destroy the military’s main radar and radio station in the north. You’ve told me before that it’s on The Hill. We need to know exactly where it is.”
I got to my feet and walked to the window, peeping out through the slit in the curtains. It was already dark and the sea was indistinguishable from the land, except for a strip of gleaming foam where the ocean surrendered to the earth, again and again.
“I can’t tell you that,” I said.
“It’s important. We have to blind the Japanese so our ships and planes can come in undetected. They have to drop supplies to us and we have to open a safe lane for the eventual assault.”
“I can’t allow you to bomb the station. Do you know what will happen if you succeed? The retribution against the people of Penang will be horrific. Innocent people will suffer. And the Kempeitai will hunt you down and kill you.”
“That is the price of winning the war,” Kon said. “We have no choice.”
“Of course you have. Forget your assignment.”
“The MCP leaders will kill him if he fails,” Su Yen said.
“Then hide here, in Penang.”
“I can’t,” Kon said gently. “I took on a duty and I have to complete it.”
I squeezed my temples. “Too many people have died already.”
“Do it, Philip. For me,” Kon said. “Tell me where the station is.”
He did not have to mention the debt I owed him for saving my father’s life. So I told him the location of the house on Penang Hill, which I had pointed out to Endo-san and which, in effect, I had recommended to the Imperial Japanese Army.
“You can’t go up by the funicular. The station was damaged by the Japanese bombing and there are now guards watching it,” I warned him.
“How, then?”
“You hike up, through Moon Gate.” I explained to him where that was. “Keep your eyes open for army patrols.”
“That was the way you showed your
sensei,”
he guessed.
I nodded. “I have to go.”
Kon walked me out to the road in the dark. “We shouldn’t meet here again,” he said.
I felt compelled to ask, “What happened in the days before Penang was lost? I went to look for you but your father said you had left.”
He told me. After the day of Ming’s wedding he had made his way to Singapore to meet Edgecumbe at the headquarters of the Special Operations Executive, under which Force 136 operated. He was put through some quick general training, along with police inspectors, planters, miners, schoolteachers, anyone who knew the country and could speak its varied languages.
“It was exactly as Edgecumbe had described. We parachuted into a landing zone in the jungle on the day Kuala Lumpur fell. An earlier team of guerrillas met us. It was a strange group—pale, weak-looking English, surly Chinese communists, and friendly Gurkhas and Temiar aborigines.
“The first few weeks were good and everything was new and exciting; we all thought it was an adventure. But then the monotony set in and we were constantly on the move, always on our guard. Food became scarce and I wondered how a handful of us could make any difference to the war.
“But the worst times were during the monsoon. The rain often fell for weeks without stopping and we had to sit under a leaky, overpatched tent for days and days. And when we were on patrol we would sit huddled beneath our oilskins, or under the giant ferns, in constant misery. I almost gave up. Quite a few went mad.” He paused for a long moment. “They became safety risks and I had to shoot them.
“Things began to improve when Chin Peng, the head of the MCP, ordered us to team up with Yong Kwan. We made our way to his hideout, which has been our base for—what is today’s date?”
I told him and he became silent. He crouched down and scratched at the ground with a stick. “October 1944,” he said, his voice sounding lost. “So I’ve been away for three years.” When he looked up I saw fatigue in his eyes.
“It’ll be over soon,” I said, but the words rang with hollowness.
Yong Kwan had taken an instant dislike to Kon. The Communists had a history of enmity with the triads. “The men in the group realized I was a better tactician and fighter than Yong Kwan. We made so many successful raids and attacks on the Japs that we had to lie low for months. We managed to hit quite a few important targets. And we took food and medicines from the camps we had attacked. I fed my team well. Things became worse when I met Su Yen. We became friends and, because we were young and lonely, we became lovers.”
“Yong Kwan’s woman?”
“Yes.”
“You’re insane. Why is she here with you?”
“She is carrying a child.”
“Yours?”
“We don’t know. But we have to abort it. We don’t know how much longer the war will drag on. She can’t give birth in the jungle.”
“Let her stay here. You can’t make her get rid of her child.”
“I’m not making her do anything. She insisted on it.” He saw the look on my face. “That’s not your worry. I can deal with it myself. I know people in town. Thank you for giving us the information we needed. You and I are even now.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Come with me,” he said. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”
“I don’t know anymore, Kon.”
I did not know when I would see him again, if ever at all. I was torn between wishing him success in his mission and hoping he would not carry it out. In the end I decided not to say anything and bowed to him.
* * *
The radar station was destroyed three days later. It happened at midday and the explosion could be heard and seen from Georgetown. Part of me exulted, and hoped Kon had managed to get away. But I was also fearful. The Japanese responded decisively and indiscriminately and I was called on to read out more names in town and in the outlying villages. I knew the people they dragged out were blameless but there was nothing I could do. I felt angry with Kon because he did not have to live with the consequences.
* * *
A deep fear, so constant now in my life, was like a growth in me. When did I let it enter, steal silently in, and latch on to me? There were days when I could hardly breathe, as though my blood, coagulated by fear, could not flow.