The Devil's Garden (11 page)

* * * 

Professor Tanakadate's conscience had been troubling him over the matter of Dr Pilchard. He had behaved like an American cowboy—absurdly—waving that gun around that he had found on the grass outside. It was not even loaded. When he had ordered him shipped off to prison, he had lost control and given way to pique, to a momentary anger before barbarian behaviour, without realising the power he now held over other lives. It was as if, in his sleep, he had been connected to some mighty, amplifying machine that converted him into a weather god, turned his least tweak of displeasure into vast thunderstorms that might flash and roar and wash away whole villages. That was not the way a scholar should behave, especially towards a respected colleague. For a vulcanologist, the war had been a profound disappointment. He had hoped that Japanese expansion might bring him his very own volcano, even if only a small one. Just across the sea from here were some of the best, most active volcanoes in the world but they had all been assigned to lesser men, much less senior than himself, while he had been ordered to look after a museum and a dormant botanical garden. It was a situation that burned with injustice. Yet he could see that Pilchard had suffered in Changi and the considerable time that the man had spent there had given him time to appreciate the standard of his work from traces left within the museum. It had been the initial misfortune of Pilchard to remind him of an alcoholic Australian vulcanologist, encountered on Mount Fuji just before the war, in the act of relieving himself, a desecration of both science and culture. Yet the men here, Catchpole, Post and Pilchard were fellow-researchers, bound to him by values and visions that lay beyond narrow nationalism and mere profit. True, they were sloppy, shambling men who, like all Westerners, suffered from an irritating lack of bodily control but their minds were as focused as his own. His anger shamed him. After all, his own side was little better. When he had arrived in Syonanto, he had found the Kempeitei trucks lazily parked all over the lawns of the museum forecourt and the Botanic Gardens, out of town, were criss-crossed with latrine trenches and strewn with discarded military hardware. The overflow from Japanese military headquarters at the Bukit Timah end of the gardens was elbowing arrogantly into horticultural space and the gardeners had already been conscripted as porters of army supplies, while great brass earhorns, acoustic aircraft location devices, ‘war tubas', had been parked all over the grounds. Tanakadate had struck back with classical calligraphy, firm, scholarly brushstrokes, more artistic than was strictly necessary for mere communication, and set up signs invoking—quite illegally—the highest Japanese authorities to declare both museum and gardens a specially protected space out of bounds to all ranks. He had visited the commanders of both neighbour organisations, drunk studiedly deferential tea and let drop his close comradeship with General Yamashita in dewy-eyed accounts of sunlit, boyish romps together, sighingly recalling childhood like a secret conspiracy from which they, as outsiders, were excluded. In this way he had sown doubt and—like everything else in the rich tropical soil—it had thrust down roots and flourished, so that he was now seen as a man with special, and possibly limitless, personal connections, a man not to be crossed lightly and a man whose lawns and fenced boundaries were not to be crossed at all.

He motioned reluctant, disdainful Catchpole over and, together, they shouldered Pilchard up, like in a scene from
Aida,
and into the library where generations had demonstrated its suitability as a place for sleep. He felt surprisingly light to himself. Catchpole's dangling hearing aid bashed Pilchard in the face, unheeded, at every step and cut his lip. Pilchard's only half-formed thought was that it was curious that Dr Post was the one who was
not
deaf.

‘There, there,' comforted Tanakdate vaguely fatherly, settling him in a most uneasy chair and modestly folding down the legs of his shorts as he wiped away blood with a snowy handkerchief, plucked from back pocket. ‘You'll feel better after some food. Give him some tea, Dr, Catchpole.' Catchpole scowled a ‘I'm-not-a-servant-you-know' scowl but fetched, poured, then seized the tin of beans, swallowing eager saliva. There was a big, fat fly swimming in the tea, frothing it up with its death throes.

‘I'll take these. No need for you to carry the can, as it were. There's not much on the market of course, old man, but thanks to my old fishing contacts we've got loads of crabs. Make fantastic soup. Better than these beans. Crabs, for some reason, seem to be doing very well this year. Just wait till you get a mouthful of my crab soup, old man. Put hair on your … Oh! … Oh I say!'

Tanakadate glided gently away to the window, as if defining Pilchard's thin strings of vomit out of existence by not looking. A minor social
faux pas,
he seemed to say, do not speak of it. Instead, he peered down at Pilchard's dirty yellow pass through pince-nez glasses and wrinkled his brow.

‘It says here … Actually, it's not really clear. There is a muddle. It seems to imply … but then another soldier has written that you were definitely to come here
not
next door … Surely, they would never have sent you without an escort if they had meant … A useful ambiguity.' He looked up with sudden decision. ‘I think perhaps we had better send you out to our colony, the Botanic Gardens, as soon as possible. Quieter there. Much more peaceful. Safer from our noisy neighbours.' He glanced out of the window. The grey trucks, with their loads of swaying prisoners, were already reversing out and moving away, crashing gears, engines revving, in a cloud of blue smoke and dust. Silence descended like a blackout curtain.

* * * 

They were back in the same room again in Hill Street. HK felt for the comforting gap in the chair's pearl inlay with his little finger. The whole chair felt somehow even bigger today, himself even smaller. He was pleasantly astonished that his feet still reached to the floor. Even to himself, his voice bore tones of piping adolescence though he was already treading the outer edge of youth. In a couple of years, when people complained about ‘young people', they would not mean him It was something to do with the unfathomable antiquity of Loh Ching and his own ruthless New Year haircut that made his ears stick out, though there were few other signs of the festival. The shops were empty of new clothes, fish and oranges. There were none of the necessary ingredients for the cake his mother made tearfully every year to distribute to relatives. No cheery British Tommies were abroad to shout, ‘I fuck. You enjoy!' at respectable Chinese matrons, in emulation of New Year greetings. The Japanese had even banned the explosions and detonations of firecrackers that were so soothing to local ears. Later, he would go to Lily, who would console him, compliment him on his eager manliness, make everything all right again.

‘Thank you all for coming. I have been asked to communicate to you a message from the Japanese commander.' He coughed nervously and his throat knotted itself and it seemed for a second that it would never relax and let him speak. ‘Please understand that I am simply the channel by which this message is to be communicated by others, a mere conduit.' Loh Ching smiled to himself as if hearing another word. HK paused and picked up a paper from the tabletop so they could actually see he was reading it.

‘The Chinese community of Syonanto is hereby presented with the opportunity of performing a gesture of loyalty towards the Emperor and Dai Nippon to dissociate themselves from treasonable acts supporting the Emperor's enemies in Manchukuo, previously known as Manchuria. As an expression of their gratitude towards their liberators, whose benevolent protection they enjoy, they are invited to make a gift of $50,000,000 towards the costs of their liberation from colonial rule of which they are the joyful beneficiaries. This money to be paid in full within six months of the above date.' There was a collective gasp followed by a high-pitched buzz of outraged conversation. He looked at the angry or incredulous expressions around the table and his whole face seemed to collapse. His voice was empty and flat. ‘Truly, I do not know what to do. I have been to see the General and explained that this is a fantastic sum, way beyond our means. He declares the order to have come straight from Tokyo and that, if we fail to meet it, he will be forced to take harsh measures against us.'

There was a shocked silence. Then, at the far end of the table, Loh Ching coughed softly. All eyes swivelled towards him. His voice was a dry rustle, like wind through rice stalks.

‘This is a serious matter and I am surprised that Mr Fong seems to have learned nothing from the British. What did they do whenever they wished to increase taxation or tighten immigration regulations, or when we asked them to lower import duties? First they would need to consult, appoint a special committee to examine what might be done in the greatest possible detail and draft a report. If the change might be unpopular, it would be necessary to prepare public opinion for the sake of public order, which would take even more time. It might be necessary to implement any such change gradually in stages to prevent hot-headed young men taking to the streets or the undermining of other programmes that were dear to government's heart—let us say—the recruiting of voluntary defence forces. It might well be inevitable that they give some small concession in return, something that cost them very little but meant much to us, the release of our people from jail or some such. With the best will in the world, it might take years to bring such a thing to a satisfactory conclusion without disturbing the smooth administration of our city, for they are asking us to pay for the bullets they shoot us with. The Japanese are a young and hasty people, angry and cruel like immature boys, and therefore much given to shouting and yelling, whereas we are an old civilisation that appreciates peace. They will need our help. We must soothe and calm them, advance when they retreat, retreat only when they advance.' HK flushed to the roots of his hair at such chiding but he smiled and inclined his head, seeing here a chance to spread the blame.

‘As always, Loh Ching sees further than any of us. Perhaps he might therefore take personal charge of this matter where his wisdom and experience might bring great benefit?' Loh Ching smiled back sadly but with hard eyes. He was not about to put himself stupidly between a wild beast and its prey as HK had done.

‘Alas, this is a job for younger men, those who have been educated abroad and understand the ways of the foreign world as I do not. This advancing and retreating, I believe, is nothing but the technique of ballroom dancing of which Mr Fong is held to be such a proud master at the German Club, is it not?' A hiss of contemptuous laughter ran round the table. Blood thundered in HK's ears and he dug his nails deeper into the armrests of his chair of office. ‘Like the Japanese, I am delighted to entrust the resolution of such an important concern entirely to our gifted, young chairman.'

* * * 

The land on which the Botanic Gardens stood was given to the Government by the merchant Whampoa in the 19
^th
century. Although he was a lover of plants and owner of a private garden that was itself a major public attraction, the gesture had not been motivated entirely by philanthropy since he had received, in exchange, a narrow, but much more valuable strip of rock and bitter sand—totally barren—but situated right on the Singapore waterfront. Each morning, the garden emerged afresh from the mists so that to walk across its dew-drenched lawns was to leave a track as in virgin snow. Gently undulant, with a lake that had once housed a crocodile and a jungle that still attracted insolent monkeys, it was, like all botanical gardens, a world in miniature, a dream made flesh, a closed green sphere fenced around with living trees that displayed the apparent benevolence of Nature, a claim to paradise. In contrast to the randomness of primary forest, every plant here actually recalled a human decision, being placed not to reproduce but to pout and pose with a self-knowledge normally only borne by mankind. Each one spoke equally of human passion, of the mystical urge to recreate the primordial Garden of Eden—from which Man had been expelled by a lethal coalition of apple and serpent—and of a scientific obsession with taxonomy and completeness.

The war had brought certain changes of which the casually wandering visitor, still permitted, would probably have been unaware, for the gardens carefully maintained their public face of weeded paths and bordering flowers. In the past there had been conflict between pure botanical and commercial research and between both and the public call for loud carnations and bright bandstands. But behind the scenes, the workers now no longer merely tended the land, they embraced it carnally, lived off it, consumed its yield—fired with chillis and ginger pillaged from the Spice Garden—to supplement their scanty diet. It had become a self-supporting, country estate, plucked from the 18th century. The roof of the Director's house had been repaired with palm-leaves stripped straight from the fragment of preserved jungle. The lake that once teemed with cosseted carp was now regularly fished, not by probing ichthyologists, but by hungry undergardeners with nets of grim efficiency. Even the indolent palms found themselves harnessed to factory production, tapped for sugar and soapy palm wine in the Economic Garden, whose aspirational name became truer by the day. Tapioca, it had been discovered, fermented and distilled, yielded a brandy that revived the dead and almost killed the living and a steady trickle was coaxed from an apparatus housed in a lesser potting shed to raise the morale of administrative staff and soothe the semi-alcoholism of expats. Petrol shortages had led to the acquisition of a breeding pair of goats to munch the lawns smooth while yielding periodic feasts of milk and kid meat. Vegetables and fruits had insinuated themselves beneath the canopy of the protected forest and nested discreetly in amongst the undergrowth as it was surreptitiously de-flowered and, on the trellis where rose and woodbine had once artfully twined, now clambered practical rattan and nourishing long beans. In the early morning chill, despised skills of village and forest—once relegated to the ethnographic section of the museum—were softly taken up again and thumbs that had coolly flipped beer tops and flared lighters now again plaited twine held taut by bare big toes grown stiff in fancy shoes. Around the gardens, little local monopolies established themselves, bringing racial division into the world of culture but breeding solidarity through the need for exchange. Indian toddy-makers warred on Chinese fishermen and both were disdained by Malay farmers but coconuts and little leaf packages of tobacco still circulated in silent and peaceful compromise. But Paradise was sapped by other small flaws. For Europeans, it was the lack of potatoes that grew well enough at first but then abruptly burst and rotted in the steamy heat. For Asians, it was the absence of rice whose special needs precluded discreet cultivation. For both, gritty, tasteless tapioca became a substitute and a penance, the resented starch of life. And Catchpole, like a medieval pope, levied an imperial tithe on it all on threat of denunciation to the Professor, who had already silently noted and winked at all this, as long as the academic work and collections were maintained and gross unfairness avoided. Then, to Catchpole's horror, one morning, Professor Tanakadate had had the workmen set up a big banner blessing all these illegal cultivations as a magnificent ‘Victory Garden' in which the employees demonstrated their loyalty to the Rising Sun and from which other Singaporeans might learn. And so secret tithe became lawful tribute and stalking Catchpole was rudely stripped of his power and income.