The Orientalist and the Ghost (26 page)

When the Japanese surrendered, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army surged out of the jungle to claim responsibility for the liberation of Malaya. Determined to seize power in the aftermath of the Occupation, the MPAJA went to most small towns and kampongs, where they were greeted by the Chinese with enthusiasm and
admiration
for enduring the rigours of jungle life and resisting the Japanese. They tore down Japanese flags and replaced them with Communist Party hammer-and-sickle banners. They rounded up villagers of all ethnicities for public meetings and long self-aggrandizing speeches about how they had driven out the Japanese. The dominant theme of the MPAJA meetings was revenge upon those who collaborated with the Japanese, and until the return of the British there was no higher authority to stop them. During a period now known as the Fifteen Days of Terror the MPAJA held numerous ‘People’s Trials’. Those found guilty were killed – mutilated and butchered before the mob. Many went into hiding
.

When the MPAJA arrived at Jing Jang, Evangeline was heavily pregnant and the squatter settlement was rife with rumours that the father of the child was a Japanese general, whose mistress Evangeline had been. Of course, the unborn baby was undoubtedly of Japanese origin, but the bastard child of a hundred soldiers of rank and file, and certainly not the product of a consensual affair. Unfortunately the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army did not take the oppression of the brothel worker into account when they rounded up the Japanese ‘collaborators’ of Jing Jang …

Fragments of the letter echoed in my head as I kissed Evangeline. I embraced her beneath the watchful gaze of dead Japanese soldiers. I held her in spite of them.

I remember the electric hum of beating wings and the trickle of sweat like a blade of grass tickling the
nape
of my neck. I remember the taste of metallic salts and the shy probing of tongues. I brushed my lips along Evangeline’s cheekbone, kissed the tiny thread of blue that pulsated in her temple. My hands roamed the surface of her, exploring her contours in blind cartography. Oh, she was no voluptuous beauty, my Evangeline, the loose cotton of her dress sheathing a figure that was pitifully lean. I moved my hands from her jutting hips to the knife-handles of her ribs, acquainting myself with every underfed angle. Evangeline’s hands hung limply at her sides, taking none of the liberties with my body that I took with hers. When she met my gaze she was solemn, as if she took the business of seduction very seriously indeed. This unnerved me, and in a clumsy banging of foreheads I moved in to kiss her again.

We went from standing to lying down, from clothed to unclothed. I remember the grey squalor of her bra, covering breasts that were barely there, its sad dinginess as I removed it. Her torso was dissected by silvery lines, shimmering in memory of child-bearing; the striations fine as snail trails, as though an army of molluscs had slithered over her in the night. As I knelt above her, Evangeline kissed my throat, sliding her emollient hands over my chest, the sparse hairs and desire-inflamed patch of skin beneath my collar-bone. Not even then, as my breathing quickened, did the dead soldiers leave us in peace. I laid a path of kisses over her flank of stomach, her hardening nipples, and my tenderness was overshadowed by anger. How many
hundreds
of Japanese had Evangeline lain beneath? How many had unclothed her as I had? Raped and defiled her? Ghosts. They were now ghosts. Surrendered corpses heaped on funeral pyres, dumped in mass graves, left to rot in deepest jungle. But I could see the invisible crescents of bite marks, whorls of savage fingerprints, the weals where they’d prised her open. I wanted to be gentle, the antithesis of everything she had endured, but my hands were everywhere, clutching her hair, her breasts, pushing her thighs apart. Evangeline flinched and I asked if I was hurting her. She did not speak, but fumbled at the buckle at my waist.

… and put them on trial. They were paraded about before the settlement, their alleged crimes shouted out. The residents of Jing Jang were appointed jury, and the verdict determined by the baying of the mob. Punishment was exacted on the spot and the methods of execution were numerous. Suspected Japanese informers were tied to trees and had their eyes gouged out in front of screaming wives. Guts were spilt with the jab and twist of a bayonet, and those who were persecuted by the Japanese during the Occupation were encouraged to mutilate the corpses. Many had suffered at the hands of the Japanese and the corpses were unrecognizable by the time they had finished
.

In the midst of these bloody reprisals the pregnant Evangeline had her wrists and ankles tied together and was hung over a bamboo pole. The MPAJA guerrillas carried
her
about the settlement as huntsmen carry wild boar out of the jungle, and her crimes were shouted out as she hung and wept, her bound wrists and ankles bearing the weight of her pregnant body. Though the judgement of the mob was harsh the intervention of her grandmother prevented her murder. After Evangeline had suffered an hour or so of humiliation, and had been dropped several times, she was cut free of her bindings. She went into labour soon after, and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy. The squatters of Jing Jang all agreed that the MJAPA had done Evangeline a service by ridding her body of evil
.

The return of the British ended the Fifteen Days of Terror and normal life was resumed. In spite of all she had suffered Evangeline did not leave for Kajang or to start a new life elsewhere, but stayed with her sister and grandmother. Over the years her hard work and resilience has earnt her a quiet respect but even after resettlement Evangeline remains stigmatized and an outsider
.

After the night of 12 September we kept the Lim sisters under surveillance and they have no affiliations with the Communists. They are left alone by villagers and bandits alike. When the British returned, Old Mother Wu swore that she would avenge the men who had tortured her granddaughter. Her neighbours laughed at the notion of this old lady exacting revenge on the Communist guerrillas, but were silenced when, days later, Evangeline’s torturers’ remains were found in Jing Jang. Shortly before she died, Old Mother Wu made another oath, to protect her granddaughters from beyond the grave. That superstition holds such sway over ruthless bandits is hard to believe, but one
must
remember that superstition is a powerful force among the Chinese
.

I am not going to report last night’s incident, but I write in warning to you. I urge you to keep away from the Lim sisters. I am not superstitious, but they reek of bad luck …

The
reek of bad luck
. I breathed it in as Evangeline lay beneath me on the rough and splintery floor. I breathed in our ill fate and the condemnation of the stars, infused with the scent of jasmine at her neck. I would die to conjure it up again, that intoxication of the senses. Had I known how short-lived our carnality was to be, how long-enduring the lovelessness to come, I would have savoured every last molecule of her, grown inebriated on her sweet brine. My memory of that night occurs in staccato bursts of heat and eruptions of flesh. The damp hollow at the base of her throat, the shadows cast by her tilted chin. Her teeth glistening, tarnished and chipped. Perspiration stung my eyes and cast her in a diaphanous haze. Though she moved with me, arched her back and dug her callused fingertips in my shoulders, she made no sound other than her breathing. Perhaps I was inattentive. I could not silence my thoughts. The corpses crowded into the watch tower and jeered as my beloved and I writhed together on the floor.

A spike of poison rushed through my veins and I cried out, clasping Evangeline’s shoulders in a throb of rage. I was sweat-drenched, light-headed, as if the watch tower had moved to a mountain top, a thinner altitude.
The
corpses were gone, though I knew I had not subdued them for long. Blinking, eyes smarting, I gazed upon Evangeline as she lay, mute and trembling, on the rough and splintery floor.

17

I WOKE IN
my armchair to a miscellany of aches and pains, my bladder a swollen water balloon on the verge of bursting. The lamp was on and though the mantelpiece clock was tick-tocking loudly, the hands were spinning fast as helicopter blades, and the hour a mystery. I got up out of the chair, stiff neck and aching back reproaching me for not setting up the fold-out bed, and hobbled to the bathroom in my pyjamas (muttering
Come alive, damn you!
to my cramped foot). I was desperate for a wee, so you can imagine my annoyance when I clicked on the bathroom light and saw Lieutenant Spencer hogging the lavatory, his shorts bunched up around his hairy ankles. The creepy-crawlies of the Malayan jungle had invaded the bathroom too, the floor a wriggling blanket of centipedes, millipedes and flightless cicada. The lieutenant was pallid and shaking. He was hunched like
a
philosopher deep in thought, forearms resting on his thighs.

‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘Have they been serving that dodgy curry at the officers’ mess again? Or have you been over-indulging your vices with Charles? I need to wee. How long are you going to be exactly?’

The lieutenant’s backside retorted with a splutter, then an explosion. The pneumatic splatter went on for ages, as if he were purging himself of his entire intestinal tract. Poor quivering Spencer slumped against the cistern. A silent moan escaped his lips. I pitied the poor blighter. You’d think the afterlife would spare the deceased such vulgar earthly sufferings. But as far as I can tell, the indignities of life recur with gleeful vehemence. As usual, the lieutenant had that whopping great hole where his guts ought to have been. How strange that a man so thoroughly eviscerated should suffer from a gastrointestinal complaint. But the spirit world is rife with such illogic.

‘Are you all right there, Lieutenant?’ I asked, superfluously.

‘No, I ain’t,’ said Spencer. ‘I’ve got the cholera. Charles has it an’ all.’

Spencer was as wilted as a dying lily, pores weeping tears of perspiration.
What now?
I wondered. Thanks to my conscientious hand-washing regime and cast-iron immune system I never caught the cholera. But having assisted the Red Cross when the epidemic hit The Village of Everlasting Peace, I knew the standard treatment: antibiotics; rehydration salts diluted in a cup of
boiled
water. But I had none of these in my bathroom cabinet, and even if I had, Spencer was a ghost and I doubted he would be able to ingest any of it.

‘Chin up, old chap,’ I said. ‘You’ll live. At least you did at the time. You recovered very quickly, if memory serves correctly. You have bowels of steel.’

‘Oh, fuck off, Goldilocks,’ groaned Spencer.

He hunched over his thighs again, shaking like a space shuttle preparing for take-off. By now the pressure of my bladder was unbearable and warning sirens resounded in my head. How on earth was I going to get Spencer off the porcelain shrine when he was convinced he was dying of cholera and determined not to budge? Ordinarily I’d accept this hierarchy of need without demur, but Spencer was already dead, whereas I was alive and needed to pee
in extremis
. That decided me. A millipede crunched under my slipper as I stepped towards him.

‘Um, Spencer, would you mind scooting off the lavatory for a moment or two? My bladder has been misbehaving of late, and I’m afraid there might be an accident if I don’t empty the damn thing …’

From the lieutenant’s nether regions came the flatus eruption of indifference. I’d half a mind to go over there and relieve myself on top of him! (After all, whatever non-corporeal substance the lieutenant was made of would be no obstruction to the tinkling of my watering spout.) But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even after the savagery I’d encountered in the Malayan jungle, I was an incurable gentleman. I would not, could not,
piss
on old Percival when he had Asiatic cholera. I reluctantly sized up the washbasin before making one last appeal.

‘C’mon, Spencer old boy, it won’t take a minute. Then the lavatory’s all yours for the rest of the night.’

It appeared this was one last appeal too far. The policeman’s head reared up, pale and serpent-like, his eyes red-rimmed and Satanic.

‘Look ’ere, you posh tosspot. If it weren’t for me, tigers would ’ave eaten you and orang-utans would ’ave ’ad your eyes out. So bugger off and let a dying man ’ave a shit in peace!’

Sighing, I pulled the light cord, leaving in the dark the man who’d saved my life and the wriggling wall-to-wall infestation of myriapods and annelids. My foot tingling with pins and needles, I tottered back to the living room and set up the cumbersome fold-out bed. I lay down and pulled the blankets up to my chest, determined to ignore the angst of my bladder. But I nodded off to dreams cataclysmic with tidal waves and biblical floods, and in the morning woke to cold damp sheets, my need to urinate taken care of itself.

Falling in love changed the relationship of my senses to the world. Love abstracted me from the here and now – the there and then. I’d eat a three-course meal without tasting a single bite, type out a letter to the District War Committee, as dictated by Charles, and not register a word of what was said. I became accident prone, bashing my shins and promenading into doors, mottling
my
skin with navy bruises; stars and tweety-birds circled my concussed bonce. Eros heightened my compassion for others, made my heart an organ of unspeakable tenderness, my ribcage useless armour. I saw beauty in the hoary faces of old women, and the destiny of children, busy gambling with bottle tops, to grow up and fall in love and beget children who’d do the same. I sympathized with my enemies and every glower that came my way. Love makes humanitarians of us all. And it also makes us smug fools. And there were none more smug and foolish than I.