The Empire Trilogy

by J. G. Farrell

  At his bungalow opposite the Mayfair the Major, reclining in a cane chair in his pyjamas, had managed to doze off too, and was dreaming of Ireland twenty years ago and of a woman who might have been his. He woke up and cleared his throat despondently. How sad it all was! But no doubt everything had been for the best. He dozed again. Perhaps in sleep the past could be rearranged and things turn out better.

  On one of the upper floors of Government House Sir Shenton Thomas slept uneasily, his handsome face unstirring, however, on the pillow. His difficulties were not near the surface of his sleeping mind but he was dimly aware of them, nevertheless, fluttering and darting shadows like sparrows in a leafy thicket. He got on well with the Asiatics, so it was not that … They liked and respected him. No, of all his preoccupations the most disturbing was that in these troubled times unless he remained alert he might not be able to prevent the dignity of his office from being eroded. Duff Cooper and the Military watched the powers he held as Governor the way greedy schoolboys might watch a pie cooling on the window-sill. He did not mind for himself, he was not a selfish man, but for the Colonial Service and for his successors. And for the natives, too, lest they should be abused. Beside him the telephone dozed peacefully in its cradle. In a few minutes it would awaken and begin to shriek.

  Not everyone was asleep, however. In the Operations Room at Sime Road a considerable amount of excitement was developing. When Sinclair had come on duty (at one a.m., not midnight as he had told Monty) he had found a discussion taking place between the GSO2 and the Brigadier General Staff as to whether the code-word ‘Black-Out’ should be sent out. The BGS, however, had declared that this was the Governor’s responsibility. Not long afterwards the ‘green line’ telephone had suddenly started to ring. Sinclair, beside himself with excitement, had watched the RAF officer on duty pick it up. It was the aerodrome at Kota Bahru on the north-east coast near the Siamese border. Suspicious shipping had been detected standing off the coast. Pulford, the Air Officer Commanding, had been summoned. GHQ Far East had been contacted and asked to identify these ships because it looked as if they could only be … Sinclair shuddered with the effort of maintaining an impassive appearance as he worked rapidly to assist the GSO2 in the preparation of the Situation Report. He was going to be present at the beginning of war in the Far East, he was certain of it!

  Nor was General Gordon Bennett, the commander of the Australian Imperial Force in Malaya, asleep. As a matter of fact, he was not even in Singapore but hundreds of miles away in Rangoon. He had been obliged to stop there on his way to Malaya from Egypt where he had been visiting the Australian troops in the Middle East. Now, while waiting for an aircraft to convey him to Singapore, he was spending the night at the splendid old Strand Hotel beside the Rangoon River. Instead of sleeping, however, he was sitting in the dark beside the open window of his room, gazing out surreptitiously into the sweltering night towards the window of another room and holding his breath with excitement.

  On account of the heat the window of this room, too, stood open and a light was burning there despite the lateness of the hour. Thanks to the angle of the building Gordon Bennett could see into it across the intervening courtyard. And what could he see in that room but four men who he was pretty certain were Japanese busy poring over maps which he was convinced were maps of Malaya. Japanese spies! What else could they be? He had already telephoned Military Headquarters in Rangoon and told them, guardedly at first, that he had uncovered a nest of spies. Then, since they did not appear very interested, he had had to make it explicit. Jap spies hard at it, spinning their toils practically under his nose! But although the blockheads in charge had told him, soothingly, that they would see about it, he had been watching for hours and they had still done nothing. Meanwhile, he had been staring so long and so fixedly at that nest of spies that he was finding it difficult to keep his eyes focused on them. He ground his teeth in frustration. Why didn’t the police come? This heat was quite unbearable. Every now and then he was obliged to close his aching eyes. So the night wore on, the spies scheming, Gordon Bennett grinding his teeth.

  Back in Singapore the Major had opened his eyes to find himself still in his cane chair with a burned-out cigar between his fingers. He must have dozed off for a moment. What time could it be? Presently he would go across the road to see whether Matthew’s fever was any worse. He yawned. His limbs were stiff. He wondered whether all the claret he had left in Berry Brothers’ cellars was surviving the Blitz. How wasteful and senseless was the destruction of war! He had hoped to have finished with all that in 1918. And the twins! Where were they under the bombing? Safely evacuated now, thank heaven. He had had a letter from Northumberland a couple of days ago. Wearing sensible shoes and lisle stockings, each with her brood of unruly, unnerving children (his god-children). It was just as well, too, since (husbands away at the war) they had taken to dancing with Free Frenchmen. He must write tomorrow, no later, and tell them not to flirt with the farmhands, not that he had much confidence that they would do as they were told. ‘There’ll be a lot to sort out, one way or another, when this one is over.’ More to the point, was his Château Margaux and Château Laffitte surviving? It should be almost ready to drink by the time he got home. He had not meant to stay out in the East so long. And Sarah, where was she under the bombs? Married somewhere, no doubt. Oh well, perhaps it was all for the best in the long run. And Sarah? He dozed again. How sad it all was! Sarah … The Major dozed despondently.

  Not far away, in bedrooms looking out over the placid gleaming skin of the swimming pool Monty and Joan lay on their beds and slept. Joan was visited in her dreams by Matthew, but a slim, handsome, graceful, authoritative Matthew with a thin moustache and without spectacles; together, wealthy, powerful and admired for their good looks, they reigned in contentment over the Straits. As for Monty,’ in his dreams you might expect to find naked women jostling each other for the best position under the eye of his subconsciousness; surprisingly this was not the case. Instead, a young boy with a pure, loving face came to see him. He had known this boy at school, though he had never spoken to him. He had left school suddenly when his father had died and had never returned. Now, though, he at last came back, filling Monty’s sleeping mind with a piercing tenderness; no doubt everyone carries such an image of purity and love without limit, hidden perhaps by the dross of tainted circumstances and the limits of living from one day to the next, but still capable of ringing through one’s dreams like the chime of a bell on a frosty morning. It was this chime which the conscious Monty, fated to toil in sexual salt-mines throughout his waking hours, now faintly heard from an unexpected direction.

  Who else? Walter and his wife sleep side by side, rather touchingly holding hands: it is too hot to get any closer than that. Walter’s bristles lie smooth and sleek against his spine: he is at peace. He sleeps a calm and confident sleep, very black, and when he wakes he will not remember having had any dreams. Only deep down in the foundations of his sleep are there one or two disturbing shapes which slip or slither (the problem of palm-oil for instance crouches blackly in the blackness and watches him with blazing eyes) but nothing that would seriously disturb that towering, restful edifice. But it’s all very well for Walter to sleep peacefully. He is used to the Straits, has spent most of his life here. It is not so easy for the soldiers scattered about the island in clammy tents or snoring barracks. The Indian troops sleep best, the heat is nothing to them, but what about the British and even the Australians? The whirrings and pipings that issue from the jungle close at hand are enough to make a bloke’s hair stand on end, particularly if he has only been in the tropics for a week, and in the army itself for not much longer.

  Somewhere in the dark waters far to the north, a certain Private Kikuchi (a nephew of Bugler Kikuchi who, as every Japanese schoolboy knows, died heroically for the Emperor not long ago in the war in China) waits tensely in the troopship bringing him closer to Kota Bahru and the north-eastern shores of Malaya. He has just finished readi
ng a pamphlet called ‘Read This Alone — And the War Can Be Won’. This work, issued to himself and his comrades on board, explains in simple terms how in the Far East a hundred million Asians have been tyrannized by a mere three hundred thousand whites sucking their blood to maintain themselves in luxury, the natives in misery. Private Kikuchi has read with drumming pulse how it is the Emperor’s will that the races of the East shall combine under Japan’s leadership for peace and independence from white oppression. In addition he has read about numerous other matters: about how to avoid sea-sickness in various ways, by keeping a high morale, by practising the Respiration Method, by use of bicarbonate and Jintan pills, and by willpower. He has learned how to cherish his weapons, what to eat, to treat natives with consideration but caution, remembering that they all suffer from venereal diseases, how to mount machine-guns in the bow of the landing-craft and to plunge without hesitation into the water when ordered. If he discovers a dangerous snake he knows he must kill it and then swallow its liver raw as there is no better tonic for strengthening the body. He knows that when it is very hot he must bind a cloth round his forehead beneath his steel helmet to prevent sweat from running into his eyes. He knows, too, that in the jungle he should avoid highly coloured, strongly scented or very sweet fruit. He must avoid fruit that are unusually beautiful in shape or with beautifully coloured leaves. Nor must he eat mangoes at the same time as drinking goat’s milk or spirits. These and a thousand other useful things he has learned, but now, just for a moment, the motion of the ship gives him a queer sensation. And yet… No! Fixing his mind on Uncle Kikuchi’s glorious example he wills himself to feel normal for the Emperor.

  Now a young Malay fisherman, dozing on the poles and planks of his fishing trap out in the sound off Pulau Ubin, suddenly wakes and hears a faint but steadily increasing drone from the north-east. He has heard aeroplanes before but this time they are coming in a great number. What an ominous noise they make when they fly all together like a flock of birds! But aeroplanes are the business of the white men: their comings and goings are nothing to him. His job is merely to catch fish: he wonders whether the fish in the swirling black water can hear this dreadful pulsing as it swells overhead.

  When the bombs fall, as they will in a few moments, it will not be on the soldiers in their tents or barracks, who might in some measure be prepared to consider them as part of their duties, nor even on black-dreaming Walter whose tremendous commercial struggles over the past decade have at least played some tiny part in building up the pressures whose sudden bursting-out is to be symbolized by a few tons of high explosive released over a sleeping city, but on Chinatown where a few luckless families or individuals, floated this way by fate across the South China Sea, sucked in by the vortex of British capital invested in Malaya, are now to be eclipsed.

  The starlight glints on the silver wings of the Japanese bombers, slipping through the clear skies like fish through a sluice-gate. They make their way in over Changi Point towards the neatly arranged beads and necklaces of streetlights, which agitated and recently awakened authorities are at last and in vain trying to have extinguished. In a dark space between two necklaces of light lies a tenement divided into tiny cubicles, each of which contains a number of huddled figures sleeping on the floor. Many of the cubicles possess neither window nor water supply (it will take high explosive, in the end, to loosen the grip of tuberculosis and malaria on them). In one cubicle, not much bigger than a large wardrobe, an elderly Chinese wharf-coolie lies awake beside a window covered with wirenetting. Beside him, close to his head, is the shrine for the worship of his ancestors with bunches of red and white candles strung together by their wicks. It was here beside him that his wife died and sometimes, in the early hours, she returns to be with him for a little while. But tonight she has not come and so, presently, he slips out of his cubicle and down the stairs, stepping over sleeping forms, to visit the privy outside. As he returns, stepping into the looming shadow of the tenement, there is a white flash and the darkness drains like a liquid out of everything he can see. The building seems to hang over him for a moment and then slowly dissolves, engulfing him. Later, when official estimates are made of this first raid on Singapore (sixty-one killed, one hundred and thirty-three injured), there will be no mention of this old man for the simple reason that he, in common with so many others, has left no trace of ever having existed either in this part of the world or in any other.

  Part Three

  28

  The suburb of Tanglin where Matthew continued to thrash and sweat in the grip of his fever lay some distance from Chinatown and Raffles Place. The noise of bombs exploding over there on the far side of the river was not quite loud enough, therefore, to wake heavy sleepers like Walter and Monty. It was not until morning that they learned the astonishing news: Singapore had been bombed, Malaya had been invaded! Nor was that all, for the Japanese had simultaneously attacked the Americans, too, demolishing their fleet at Pearl Harbor. America was in the war at last. A strange elation took hold of the European community.

  The United States suddenly became popular. The Stars and Stripes sprouted beside the Union Jack in the shop windows along Orchard Road. American citizens who had been ignored or even jeered for their country’s neutrality found themselves welcome everywhere and were bought drinks whenever they showed themselves in the street or Club. Joan even considered revising her opinion of Ehrendorf, despite the tiring scenes which had led up to what she jokingly described to Monty as ‘Ehrendorf’s Farewell’. (‘The lovesick glances he kept ladling over me like tepid soup!’) Perhaps, carried along on the tide of goodwill, if Joan or Monty had happened to bump into Ehrendorf they would at least have bought the blighter a drink. But he did not put in an appearance anywhere. No doubt he was busy with his superiors, putting finishing touches to plans for obliterating the yellow aggressors.

  Later in the morning Walter strolled the few yards from his office on Collyer Quay to have a look at the damage to Robinson’s in Raffles Place. Around the corner barriers had been set up to keep back sightseers, but Walter showed his official pass and was allowed through. Broken glass and silk underwear from Gian Singh’s window in Battery Road still lay on the pavement; part of Guthrie’s had been reduced to a pile of rubble across the road. Walter surveyed with equanimity this devastation of one of his principal rival’s buildings. Nevertheless he offered his sympathy to a Guthrie’s man he saw standing nearby, and feebly tried to prevent himself thinking: ‘It’s an ill wind …’ His blue eyes glittered cheerfully in the sunlight as he watched the cautious efforts being made to search for unexploded bombs and to clear the rubble. Later, however, when he had returned to his office once more, a more sober mood took hold of him and he thought: ‘This is a fine thing to happen in our jubilee year!’ Moreover, this unexpected attack by the Japanese could prove troublesome to Blackett and Webb’s commercial interests.

  Forewarned of centralized buying by the Americans, Walter in a short space of time had committed himself to a great deal of forward business in order to escape the limitations of the new arrangements. He had been obliged to acquire rubber in substantial quantities from other producers as well as from the estates managed by Blackett and Webb in order to fill these contracts. Not that, under the Restriction Scheme, it had been enough to get his hands on the rubber: it had also been necessary to buy the right to sell it. Under Restriction each rubber producer, whether estate or smallholding, had been allotted a share of Malaya’s total exports. Each producer’s share, naturally, was less than his capacity to produce: that was the point of the Scheme. Even with light tapping, heavy replanting and recent high rates of release to the world market, there was still no shortage of rubber (inside Malaya, that is). Rubber was plentiful, the right to sell it was scarce.

  Fortunately, however, export rights could be bought from Asiatic smallholders who, for one reason or another, were not using them to sell their own rubber. Smallholders were issued with coupons which were equivalent to their share of
Malaya’s export rights: these coupons had to accompany any rubber they intended to sell. However, many of the smallholders were illiterate, or simply baffled by the bureaucratic intricacies of the system. Others were swindled out of their coupons by unscrupulous clerks at the Land Offices which issued them or, believing them to be of no value, gave them away to Chinese or Chettyar pimps who lay in wait outside. Some even believed that these perplexing pieces of paper represented a new government tax and therefore willingly surrendered them to entrepreneurs who magnanimously undertook to pay on their behalf in return for some favour. A number of smallholders gave up tapping their trees and simply sold their coupons instead of rubber. Walter, in any event, had found it possible to enlarge the export quota of Blackett and Webb’s estates to cover the considerable stocks of extra rubber he had accumulated. Blackett and Webb’s godowns in Singapore on this first day of the war in the Far East were crammed with rubber destined for America and fit to burst.