E. Hoffmann Price's War and Western Action

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “That is proper,” the Political Officer agreed. “So, I send Mr. Hagawa, then your Malay teacher can devote time to farming. Learning Malay writing is of no use, the future speech is Japanese. And Mr. Hagawa is to instruct in Right Thought, he will organize the Junior East Asia League, with parades on Moslem holidays.”

  This last was a redeeming feature. “All holidays?”

  “All. Your Emperor, the Son of Heaven, he loves Mohammed and Allah. You will name him—” Major Okama pointed to the primitive mosque, “in all public prayers.”

  He made a curt bow, a brusque dismissal rather than a courtesy, and went back to the waiting car, leaving Mr. Hagawa standing there with two rattan suitcases and a box of books.

  The pleasant little man smiled to show all his teeth. He sucked in his breath, very politely. “Unexpected pleasure, coming back for duty in your pleasant village, Honorable Mayor. Inspiring scenery, salubrious climate, this is my favorite of all villages viewed as itinerant photographer.”

  “You have no bicycle,” Ahmat remarked, after returning the flowery courtesies. “Difficult traveling from village to city.”

  Mr. Hagawa hissed again. “Having pleasure of all-time residence in honorable town. As soon as you have built me a humble home.”

  With rattan, bamboo, and nipa palm thatch, a house can be built very quickly, so Ahmat at once set some villagers to work. Then, as Mr. Hagawa watched them clearing the site of his future home, Ahmat said to Zeynab, “There is no power save in Allah! He took pictures of us all, and now he comes to spy, to see and to hear.”

  Zeynab proved herself the perfect wife by answering, “There is no evil except Allah has willed it.”

  CHAPTER III

  While it was hard to see old Saoud deposed and forced to the manual labor for which his dignity, his age, and his years of scholarly inactivity had unfitted him, it was worse for Ahmat to hear the metallic jangle of the Japanese language which the boys were learning; but worst of all was to see the Malay boys aping the tricks of Mr. Hagawa. They bowed as he did, they made that absurd intake of breath, they addressed their elders in stilted Japanese honorifics.

  The weeks went by, and not knowing the face and the shape of the next evil, Ahmat sat up at night, long after the village was asleep. He sat in the darkness, and fingered the wavy bladed kris which he had carefully buried under the house, rather than surrender the weapon when, years previous, the Dutch had forbidden a gentleman to carry arms.

  In the gloom, he could just catch the dimmed glint of the damascened blade. It was cool to his fingers, and smooth with the smoothness of steel oiled to protect it against rust.

  The flame-shaped blade was little short of razor sharpness, but he wanted it perfect, for in the end, he would have to redeem his honor, and make his face “white” again.

  For some time as he fingered the steel and felt his hands tingle from the touch, he wondered if slashing Mr. Hagawa would be sufficient.

  A soft stirring in the gloom made him start. Zeynab was beside him. She had moved without making a single creak of the bamboo floor slats.

  “If you go amok,” she said, “I’ll be left with nothing but a dead man’s honor. Stay with me, for better days.”

  “The elders are getting ready to put me out of office,” he whispered, fiercely. “I can feel, I can smell their thoughts. Satan made me a fool, and now I am as a bird without any feathers.”

  “The Japs have done the same things to people who did not go with flags to welcome them,” Zeynab retorted.

  “Being a woman, you have no honor! When a man’s words have become as the chattering of apes, when it is clear that there was no sense in him, what else is there to do?”

  “O Man, live for your people! Can a dead man’s honor help them?”

  She went silently back to her mat in the back room.

  For several nights thereafter, he sat, and without getting the kris. His brooding was not disturbed. But the next time he got the weapon, Zeynab appeared.

  “Woman, what devils, what spirits talk to you?”

  “I just woke up and felt danger. Must it be explained?”

  “Go back, I am thinking!”

  She obeyed without a word. The spell of the ancient steel had been broken, and she knew this, and she was content.

  On another night, she said, “If you kris Mr. Hagawa, you get only the death of the rest of us, is that right for a headman?”

  He didn’t ask how she knew he had been thinking seriously of Mr. Hagawa’s future; he merely retorted, “That pig-lover wears his shoes to the mosque, yet he takes them off, properly, when he goes into his home. He honors his own place, and shows contempt to the house where man talks to Allah.”

  “Is God unable to defend Himself?”

  She did not wait for an answer, and Ahmat laid aside the kris.

  Better let the elders depose him, then he could leave, and being no more a part of the village, he could make his face white again, and without hurting his people.

  This required pondering, and without the intoxicating touch of a blade that had been handed from generation to generation, with the score of its blood drinking, so he settled down one evening to think as Saoud might, with coolness and level head.

  The snarling of a dog startled Ahmat.

  The sudden cessation of the alarm was even more disturbing. A wary and cunning man was approaching. Then Ahmat heard the soft, muted whimper of the dog whose first snarl had been quieted. Ears sharpened, eyes sharpened, he could just distinguished that someone moved along the edge of the hard packed square.

  The stealthy figure became plainer, and a man said, “Ana dakhilak!”

  This was Arabic, the language of the Holy Koran, and the speaker repeated the appeal in Malay: “I am thy protected.” Ahmat’s pride came back, for after all these black-faced months, there was finally someone who begged his protection. He said, “The Guest of Allah is welcome! Blessing and the peace be upon you.”

  “Allah will reward you.”

  Hearing the man’s speech close at hand, suspicion set Ahmat on edge. He struck a match, and then he groaned. “I betake me to Allah for refuge from Satan!”

  His guest, his protected, was a Dutchman.

  The man wore a skull cap, a tattered jacket, a ragged sarong. Instead of being big and ruddy and heavy faced like most Dutchmen, he was short and swarthy; yet clearly he was one of the Sultana’s people, and not any Malay.

  “I bring you a gift,” the man answered, and it was very hard to tell that it was not a Malay who spoke. “And you have given me your protection.”

  This was dangerous, this was deadly; one whisper to Hagawa! Desperation made Ahmat think with a sharpness he had never known before; a gentleman had no use for wits, except in battle or gaming, but this was certainly battle. The village and its people hung on what Ahmat next said and did.

  “You are my protected,” he said blandly. “But no noise, a Jap spy lives in the kampong. I was surprised to see a Dutchman, I thought you were all in prison, or living in guarded houses. And you, when did you become a Moslem?”

  “I testify that there is One God, and that Muhammad is his apostle, and on him be the peace, and on his family, and on his pious companions!”

  Protection given in error to an infidel could be withdrawn by dishonorably stretching a point, and Ahmat was desperate. “You made the testimony, but how do I know you speak it sincerely?”

  “It is written, Hell is for him who calls a true believer infidel.”

  Ahmat was beaten. “Allah does what he will! So hide before there is talk, and I’ll bring you food.”

  For three nights, Ahmat smuggled food to the hidden Dutchman, whose name was Jan van Stappen, and for each minute of the seventy-two hours, he wondered when Zeynab would begin to wonder. He had quit fingering the buried kris, lest that diabolical instinct awakened her out of a
sound sleep and so made it impossible for him to feed van Stappen.

  And feed him he had to. Whenever Ahmat felt rebellion arising within him, pride reminded him that no Moslem could deny hospitality to another True Believer; and that to be sought out as a protector had kept his soul from utterly perishing.

  Mr. Hagawa, bland and smiling as ever, called at the house.

  “I am also Deputy Thought Police, Honorable Mayor. What do you think of Greater East Asia?”

  “Only Allah is Great!”

  Mr. Hagawa let that pass.

  “How is rice shortage being received by your people?”

  “Allah gives as He wills!”

  This certainly was not a seditious utterance, Co-Prosperity was not being blamed for the ration pinch, yet Mr. Hagawa did not like the tone.

  “Restless juveniles speak of man walking by night from village. Honorable Mayor has comment?”

  “If I knew what child dreamed and spoke of his dream, I could answer. Please tell me whose child?”

  Mr. Hagawa made a gesture of futility. “Diverse children spoke among themselves. Who could say which one? So I ask the Honorable Mayor.”

  “I apologize for my stupidity.”

  Mr. Hagawa got up, still smiling. “It is vital that the Honorable Mayor knows what all villagers think. About strangers in the jungle. Un-cooperative evaders of labor.”

  He made his jerky little bow, and set his bow-legs for the plaza.

  Zeynab came to the front. “Is it true that people are hiding in the jungle because they do not want to work on the roads?”

  “Does anyone like forced labor?”

  She smiled, and sweetly. “You can trust me. And if you have fed a fugitive, Allah will reward you.”

  “It is dangerous even to think about such a thing.”

  But that night, Zeynab gave him a bowl of rice and chicken for the fugitive.

  Ahmat used all his stealth and cunning to avoid the water tenders who watched the irrigation. Whoever had chattered could not have realized what was going on, else there would have been nothing for Hagawa to overhear; had there been a disgruntled adult, or a schoolboy won over by the wily Jap, the information would have been more definite. The Jap had only been fishing.

  He left the path, and picked his way among volcanic rocks which made a jumble in a ravine. Finally he came to the grotto in which van Stappen lurked both day and night.

  “Bismillahi!” the Dutchman said, and dipped into the bowl. And when he was through, he exclaimed, “El hamdulilahi!”

  In speech and gesture, he was correct in fine points of observance which most of Ahmat’s people ignored. But there was one point on which Ahmat still depended.

  “Friend, the three days of guest-right are over, and there are others who would be blessed by your presence, we have no further right to detain you.”

  “I have been thinking of that. But I cannot leave.” Van Stappen paused. “For your sake, I would like to, but it is not permitted.”

  “Who forbids?”

  “The government, and my duty.”

  “The Dutch Sultana?” Ahmat queried bitterly.

  “Yes.” Van Stappen spoke softly, evenly, yet there was no mistaking his resolution. “Doubtless this seems wrong to you, since you serve an emperor who is the son of a female god.”

  Ahmat spat. The idea that any man could be of divine descent was the ultimate abomination to a Moslem; and even indirectly admitting the existence of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, a “female God,” was a blasphemy.

  “It is not that!” Ahmat retorted.

  “I didn’t think so. But a Moslem may pretend to infidel belief, as strategy, if he keeps his thought clean. And I am a danger to your people.”

  “Thou hast spoken. So leave, and even if they catch you, they’ll no more than put you in a cage, or put you to work.”

  “No brother, they’ll shoot me.”

  Ahmat had to believe the man. “But they’ll shoot some of us if you’re caught here, under my protection.”

  “Then tell the school teacher where I am. What I have to do must be done, and there is no help for it.”

  “As one Moslem to another, I beg you, go!

  “As one Moslem to another, I would. But my duty is to more than a man.”

  “For the Dutch Sultana! An infidel woman!”

  “Is a piece of paper holy? van Stappen asked quietly.

  “Allah forbid!”

  “Is there holiness in ink?”

  “Filth upon such a thought!”

  “But you wash your hands before you touch paper on which in ink is written That Which Is To Be Read. The Holy and Excellent Koran is paper and ink.”

  “Not so! It is a revelation Allah sent to Muhammad, on whom be the peace!”

  “And so is loyalty sent from Allah. And it is not a woman I serve, any more than it is ink and paper you keep wrapped in a clean scarf!”

  This glib, undersized, swarthy Dutchman knew more than el Islam than Ahmat himself did; he might even outpoint Saoud. Ahmat could not get rid of the man, nor could he turn him over to the Japs. So he sat there, and the sweat slowly trickled down his cheeks, as he said to himself, shaping his resolution:

  “I’ll tell the elders to throw me out of office, then the new mayor can blame me when van Stappen is finally arrested, and my people won’t be held guilty. Maybe Zeynab can think of something.”

  At last he got up and took the bowl. “O Man, stay for another day, and our blood be upon your head, you are taking our lives.”

  “You can save yourself,” the Dutchman calmly retorted, “by turning me in. And the peace upon you!”

  Zeynab was waiting when he returned, and she listened until he had finished telling her what had come upon them.

  “He is a small man, and not red faced?”

  “That is right, and he is sun browned, and his eyes are not blue.”

  “Then it’s easy! Let him come out into the open, a half-caste kinsman from town. And let him work. We need men at work, not squatting in grottos!”

  “Mashallah!” he gasped. “But that Hagawa has pictured us, named us, described us, how long would this last? It could have been done at first, but now it is too late, that father of little doglings will ask why a kinsman was hidden for three days?”

  Zeynab was silent for some moments, and then she said, “Knowledge is with Allah, and wisdom comes with the sunrise.”

  “Inshallah!” he muttered, though without the least conviction that Allah would grant any benefits by dawn.

  CHAPTER IV

  In the morning, the women went to market, Zeynab with them; and all that forenoon, Ahmat heard the maddening jangle of Japanese from the schoolhouse. With a madman lurking in the ravine, and resentment of his people concentrating on the house, he thought again of the kris, the way of honor.

  Mr. Hagawa marched his pupils from the schoolhouse and countermarched them about the square. They sang the new anthem, Greater East Asia. They carried little flags; and the sight infuriated him.

  The teacher halted the column and came to Ahmat’s door. “Honorable Mayor, be pleased to cooperate. We drill for a parade in Kota Raja. I am impersonate reviewing officer, while you march past, commanding the salute to officer and colors.”

  The whole world went somewhat redder than the rising sun on the little flags, but Ahmat somehow did not run amok. “I have no military training,” he said stiffly, “therefore not able to command a parade.”

  Mr. Hagawa smiled. “In which case, be pleased to impersonate high officer and return salute of parade and colors as they pass.”

  Having no out, he had to endure. Round and round they went, grinning and bandy legged Hagawa heading a column of honest Malay brats who had become little Japs. Ahmat was sure their expressions had changed. They seemed to have borrowed that blend of
supercilious blandness, that tinge of apishness; he wondered if they’d all end by needing glasses, and by developing buck teeth and bow-legs. Anything, anything at all was possible to Allah, and Allah seemed no longer to care what happened!

  Then one of the older boys took charge of the procession, and Mr. Hagawa joined Ahmat. “Very nice, brisk, smart,” the Jap observed. “Performance above standard.” He shouted a command. The column halted, and faced him. At the dismissal, the boys bowed, hissed, and recited “respects and thanks to honorable instructor.”

  There were no compliments to the mayor. Not that Ahmat wanted any, but being left out was hard to take.

  Hagawa said, “This evening, when all workmen come from fields, there is more ceremony.”

  “What for?”

  “Distribution of Koran, printed in Nippon, by the Son of Heaven’s permission, who desires to show how he loves Mohammed and Allah.”

  “We have a Koran already. It is three hundred years old.”

  “These are one for everybody. Modern, not old-fashioned hand writing with error. Please assemble subjects before dusk.”

  As he watched the Jap head for the living quarters near the schoolhouse, Ahmat exclaimed, “I take refuge from Satan!”

  If this kept up, he’d be joining the people out in the padi fields. There remained neither respect nor dignity. And from work on the terraces, the next move would be disappearance. If he could only take Hagawa with him!

  Then Ahmat saw two strangers coming. They were haggard, their sarongs were ragged and dirty, their faces sullen and perplexed; they were sure of nothing, and there seemed no hope of their finding certainty.

  The foremost saluted Ahmat, and he returned the peace.

  “We are kinsmen of Nuh and Majid. We come to work in the fields. We are porters in Kota Raja.”

  Neither Majid nor Nuh had any such kinfolk. Nevertheless Ahmat said, “Come, I will show you where they are.”

  He led the strangers from terrace to terrace, and when he found Nuh and Majid he said, in a low voice, “These men are liars, but let them work, accept them as kinsmen.”

  Majid, whose glance had strayed, pointed down into the village. “Wallah, there are others coming.”