A Different Sky (49 page)

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.

M
R
H
O TURNED HIS
head and from his bed raised a weak hand in greeting. His bony knees were drawn up under the cotton sheet in a mountainous shape. Raj remembered the asthmatic portliness of the man when they had first met on the trolleybus at Kreta Ayer. The effort of welcome set off a new bout of coughing, Mr Ho turned to spit into an enamel bowl then leaned back on his pillows, exhausted. A window beyond the bed looked on to a straggly papaya tree in which Myna birds squawked and quarrelled.

‘Do not talk,' Raj ordered and Mrs Ho, hovering nearby, nodded agreement; she too had shrunk to bird-like proportions and her eyes were opaque and rheumy. Neither of the old people could come to terms with their son Luke's murder in the war time massacre of young Chinese men. A friend of Luke's, who had also been apprehended by the Japanese, had come to the house to tell them. Luke and fifty others had been taken in a lorry to the seventh milestone on Siglap Road. Luke's friend had managed to loose his bindings and made a run for the nearby jungle. From there he had watched Luke gunned down with everyone else by Japanese soldiers.

As Raj pulled up a chair beside the old man's bed, the blood-curdling cries of Ho's grandsons playing in the yard outside floated through the window, but the mouth-watering smell of biscuits no longer filled the air. Since the return of the British the factory had been closed; flour was unavailable to Mr Ho because of his collaboration with the enemy.

‘History repeats itself,' Mr Ho sighed, remembering the buckets of tar and the dead cats on his veranda at the time of the boycott of Japanese goods by the China Relief Fund. He had done well out of the occupation, awarded a licence to bake in bulk for the military. At Mr Yamaguchi's insistence, a Japanese general had sampled a Ho biscuit and liked it. Raj observed Mr Ho's decline with distress, for the old man had been like a father to him.

‘The closure of the factory can only be temporary. Soon you will be allowed to reopen; food is needed, everyone is hungry and Ho Biscuits are known as the best,' Raj tried to comfort Mr Ho. The old man placed a bird-like hand upon Raj's arm, looking anxiously at him from old eyes clouded by cataracts.

‘Now that the British have returned we're in for another round of internments. It's getting to feel like a merry-go-round. All the Japanese civilians here are to be interned once again, just like they were before the surrender. They've already taken Yoshiko along with her parents, Mr and Mrs Yamaguchi, to a camp at Jurong. Yoshiko is still a Japanese citizen, but the boys are Chinese like their father. Because of this they were not interned, and are allowed to remain here with us.' Mr Ho drew a trembling breath before continuing.

‘Once all Japanese civilians are rounded up, they are to be repatriated to Japan. They will send Yoshiko away from her children; already the poor boys are fatherless. Speak to Mr Shinozaki. I believe he is the only Japanese who has not been interned. Perhaps even now he can do something to help us.' Mr Ho began to cough again. Raj thought of Yoshiko, the fullness of her soft upper lip, the creamy skin of her cheeks, the light flowery scent that lifted from her and felt a stab of anxiety.

‘Mr Shinozaki was not interned because so many people pleaded on his behalf after the good things he did for everyone. I hear he is now working with the British Army Field Security Service. I will go to him at once,' Raj reassured the old man.

Mr Ho nodded in relief as Mrs Ho returned to the room, followed by a houseboy carrying a tray with glasses of barley water and tapioca chips. The Myna birds set up a new squabble in the branches of the tree outside the window, and Mr Ho beckoned Raj nearer, speaking above the din of the birds.

‘I want you to take over Ho Biscuits,' he rasped in a shaky voice. Raj straightened up in shock, thinking he might have misheard Mr Ho.

‘I do not have long; we all know that. I have left everything to the boys and Yoshiko. She has helped me run the factory since Luke was killed, and managed it herself since I became sick. After me it will be difficult for her alone. You must take a partnership and help Yoshiko when I'm gone. She will do the day-to-day running of the place but she needs someone like you beside her. There is no one I can trust,
but you are like a son to me. It is all written down in my will.' Mr Ho leaned back on the pillow, exhausted by this long speech. Raj tried to control the emotion that flooded through him at Mr Ho's extraordinary words.

Within a moment Mr Ho, now at peace with himself, fell asleep and began to snore, his mouth open upon toothless gums. Raj left the room and took his leave of Mrs Ho who was supervising the preparation of food in the kitchen. The veranda steps were splintered, a plank near the bottom was missing and to steady himself Raj put a hand on the wooden rail. The old house had come to feel like home and he looked about proprietorially; he had only to step inside the gate to feel a sense of security. When he took over Ho Biscuits, Raj decided, he would immediately repair the broken steps and leaking roof and then renovate the factory sheds; he might import machinery from England. Even as the idea took shape, Raj was ashamed that his mind could run ahead of events so rabidly. Mr Ho's grandsons were still playing in the yard with wooden swords. As soon as they saw Raj they ran to him.