The Heart Radical

by Boyd Anderson

  He left and Sergeant Sadist soon returned, now with an assortment of tools of his trade, among them various thicknesses of rope and a number of rotans. He made a show of tying knots into each piece of rope, grunting loudly and giving me the benefit of his evil eye as he did so, and then dropping them into a bucket of water. While they were soaking he tested the rotans on the furniture like a cruel schoolmaster, splitting the ends, and peppered me with a series of quick questions, each of which I was warned to answer promptly and with no more than a yes or a no.

  You are twenty-eight? Yes. You were born in Ipoh? Yes. Your mother was Indian? Yes. Your father was Dutch? Yes. He struck me sharply with the rotan. The Dutch are the enemy, he shouted. You went to medical school in Holland? Yes. He struck me again and shouted the same thing. You went to school in Holland to learn to be a spy? No. Another strike. Why did you move to Papan? I started to tell him about the offer of the house, about my husband’s fate, but I did not get far. He struck me across the face this time and said that I had moved to Papan to be close to my friends, the bandits. What is the name of the leader of the bandits? What is the location of their camp? What strength are they? How are they supplied? How many British are with them?

  He did not wait for answers to any of these questions, striking me each time on the hands and arms that I had managed to raise in front of my face.

  He lifted the ropes from the bucket and tested their weight. He picked the bucket up and threw the water into my face, something I was completely unprepared for, and I took a mouthful that went down the wrong way. As I doubled up into a fit of coughing, he battered my back with the knotted ropes until the chair tipped and I collapsed onto the floor.

  Sato and the jovial one swapped places again. Jolly Roger, I decided to call him. He had my cup of weak tea and supported my head as I drank it. He said if only I could give Sato something then things would go better for me. Why did my husband leave the school? I said it was because he was not good enough at Japanese to teach Nippon-Go, and for the life of me I could not remember the name of the other subject. ‘Roger,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about that.’ He asked me where we kept our radio. I said we did not have one. He asked who did. I said I had no idea, and that the kind of radios he was talking about were illegal. He nodded and smiled. He asked the name of the Britisher I report to. I said I did no such thing. He asked how many British there were in the camp. ‘If you take us to the camp everything will be all right,’ he said. I thought I might answer in a different way to avoid another beating. ‘What camp?’ I said. He smiled and helped me back into the chair and left.

  I began immediately to worry that I had said the wrong thing, that saying ‘what camp’ might have given the impression I knew there were several, but neither Jolly Roger nor Sato returned to press me further that day.

  Again I managed to walk back to the cell under my own steam, although I could see my legs were now black and blue and I wondered how much of this I could take.

  Sergeant Sadist’s questions always started and ended with the same old list. He never tired of asking them, or of beating me when I could not give him the answer he wanted. Jolly Roger, on the other hand, seemed to think I knew all kinds of peculiar things, and sometimes asked quite outlandish questions. Once he asked if I knew who was hoarding all the old British money in Ipoh, even claiming that if I could tell him this and it led to a discovery then I could expect to be not only freed, but treated generously. Another time he asked me if there was ‘treasure’ buried in Papan. And further, where ‘the gold’ was hidden.

  When poor old Bugger did not return one day I convinced myself he had been released. I was fooling myself, of course. I am not aware of anyone else actually being released from that place before the end came. The only slight exception was when I woke up one morning to find a new animal in our cage, only this one appeared keen to converse with me. I told him that it was not permitted to speak, but that did not stop him trying. Eventually he said that he was a guerrilla and that he had once been to my clinic for treatment. I simply said what I always said: I had no idea what he was talking about. He was the only prisoner I saw released, and it occurred later that same day after, I assume, he realised that I was wise to his game.

  They gave me time to recuperate after this, to gather my strength for the next round, I expect. Sato changed his tune when that round came. Before he struck me even once, with his fists or any of the implements he routinely had to hand, he read out to me a list of names, all Chinese, and asked me if I knew any of them. There must have been twenty names and not one did I recognise, although that was not good enough for Sergeant Sadist. He gave me a beating and left me on the floor.

  Jolly Roger came in, helped me back into the chair and offered me a cigarette. I said again that I did not smoke. He took one himself and lit it up, taking a few minutes to enjoy it. While sitting opposite me, calmly blowing smoke rings, he said I had been a brave woman and that women can stand pain better than men because they had to endure childbirth, but even that had its limits. It was like attending a lecture, so casually did he offer this advice, as though he was not talking about me at all, but some anonymous female subject in a textbook.

  He then took the same list of names from his pocket and started to ask me again if I knew them. Every three or four names he stopped, puffed intensely on his cigarette, and then stabbed at my arm with its lighted end. The pain was acute. After he had done this a few times I decided that it was a waste of my depleted resilience not to give in to this meaningless process. What did it matter if I said I knew some of these names? I could say I was mistaken at a later time, or that Chinese names confuse me. It seemed like a relatively harmless concession.

  He read the names again. I agreed I recognised three of them. Even that was not enough. Apparently I had not owned up to the ones he was particularly interested in, because he kept repeating two of the names over and again until I agreed with him that I knew those two as well. I did not, of course. I had no idea who they were at the time, because I did not know the real names of any of the guerrillas I had met. The two he persisted with I now know were Liew Ek Ching and Mak Chin Wah. I knew them only as Bintang and Shorty.

  ‘Aha!’ yelled Jolly Roger. ‘You know the leaders of the bandits! Tomorrow you will tell us all about them.’

  It was days, however, before they took me back to the science lab. They must have been planning just what they were going to do with me now that they had made their breakthrough. Sato had assistants on hand for this. I was about to discover the ‘limit’ to which Jolly Roger had referred.

  There was a plank of wood laid over two school desks. They strapped me to it, wrapping ropes around my chest, stomach and legs. They pinched my nose and inserted a funnel into my mouth, and proceeded to pour what felt like gallons of water into it. I thought I was drowning. I was panicking without control, convulsing against my tethers and gasping somewhere between life and death. My stomach, my lungs, my entire body felt like it was about to burst before they stopped. As I spluttered and fought for breath, they lowered me flat on the floor. Sato then stepped onto my stomach and began bouncing until water was spurting from my mouth and nose like a fountain.

  I pretended to faint. I was not far from the genuine state anyway. They slapped my face to revive me, but I continued my act. Finally they carried me back to the cell.

  The number of prisoners changed as new ones arrived and old ones disappeared regularly. However I was the only woman in that cell for the entire period of my incarceration. Using the sign language I attempted to learn what others might be there for, and also what tortures they had received so I knew what to expect. Few were prepared to talk about anything other than the rumours that seemed to come from an inexhaustible supply. The war was going well for the Japanese and we would never be freed, or it was going bad and they would kill us all quickly. The British were coming, the Americans were coming, no one was coming. I was told the worst torture was the electric one. I soon found that particular rum
our to be true.

  Again I was strapped to the plank, kicking and screaming as they tied me down, but I did not know then that even worse than the water was coming. They ran leads from a power plug in the wall and attached them to my toes and my breasts. I cannot remember much beyond the initial excruciating sensations. First, the feeling of total rigidity, as though my flesh was suddenly cast in iron, and then the sledgehammers fighting to burst free from somewhere deep inside me. I passed out quickly, I think. This time I did not need to pretend. When I recovered consciousness my face was covered with tears, mucus and spittle.

  ‘We know the bandits are your friends, we know you helped them,’ Sergeant Sadist said. ‘Say yes now or there will be more.’

  I did not think I could take another burst of their infernal electricity. I said yes, I had helped them, but only because they threatened to harm my baby if I refused.

  Jolly Roger, who had been absent during these most extreme measures, entered the room. ‘So now we finally hear the truth,’ he said triumphantly. ‘It will be easier for you now.’

  That night I could not walk back to the cell.

  I awoke the next day with my friends, the birds, twittering their message of survival. As dreadful as I felt, I had to respond. I managed to whistle – feebly, woundedly. I have survived, I was saying. I have survived. One of the guards bellowed at me to stop. I knew he would not come in here. They never came in here. To come in here meant to crawl, and he would not stoop to that. I laughed at him. He snarled and bared his teeth. Yes, the animals are on the outside of the cage, I thought. He spat at me, but could not reach.

  There was a rumour that Germany had surrendered. If it were true, it would be the first good news I had heard since the day of my arrest. Was there some hope at last? How long could Japan hold out against the full force of all the allies? Surely, mercifully, it was just a matter of time. That same night, however, as I lay there clinging to that tiny fragment of hope, a baby’s cry was carried into our cell on the wind, so faint that perhaps no one else heard it, but no one else behind those grim walls was a mother.

  More days of agony followed: You have a radio. No I do not. How you know Germany surrender? I do not know, I could not know, I am trapped here in hell. I thought Sato was becoming deranged.

  He said that I had helped a wounded man. He said that helping a wounded bandit meant death. If he expected me to admit it after telling me that, then I was certain he was deranged. I said I only helped them with medicine, when they were sick. I had to or they would have harmed my baby. ‘Liar!’ he said. ‘We have caught the man. He has confessed.’ I knew that was not true. I was certain that Bintang, even if they had caught him, would confess to nothing.

  All of a sudden there was a big commotion outside somewhere. It was dark, well into the night, and gunfire echoed around the buildings lining the Padang. There was much shouting and scrambling of heavy boots in the corridors. Sato went to the door and must have been told something, because he quickly slammed it shut and latched it. The firing lasted only a few minutes, but the confusion continued for much longer. Sato stood pressed against the back wall with a pistol drawn, waving it at the door as though he expected an enemy to come bursting through any minute. When the disturbance had passed I was taken back to the cell without further questioning.

  The rumour quickly spread that there had been a daring attack by the guerrillas on the Governor, although the Japanese scoffed at the suggestion. I did not learn what had transpired until after the war. It seems that the Japanese had captured a British soldier in the jungle near Chemor, a commando leader who was with the guerrillas. They were bringing him in to be interrogated at St Michael’s when a group of the guerrillas enacted one of the boldest engagements of the entire war, attacking the convoy right in front of their own headquarters, and spiriting the commando away into the hills. I had occasion to hear this story many times after the war as I met the commando himself, and I came to know well the guerrilla who led the raid.

  At the time, however, I was in the dark. Quite literally, I was in the dark. More rumours went around that the battle on the Padang was an early British action, a prelude to a full invasion, that they had parachuted men right into the middle of the Japs, killed as many as they could find, and made their escape. The British were coming back!

  Such illusions were soon shattered. Sato seemed to get even more unpleasant now. I had seen him twitching away nervously at the back of the room during the raid, and he knew I had seen him. He lashed at me with rotans, rods, leather straps and demanded to know the name of the Britisher I reported to. ‘You are spy!’ he bellowed. ‘You already confess you know them. You confess you help them. You are spy!’ I said I was no spy. I only helped them because they threatened to harm my baby. ‘How long you know Britisher Larkin?’ he demanded. I knew no Britisher Larkin and told him so. ‘You know bandit leader so you know Larkin.’ I repeated that I did not know anything, I only helped them because they threatened my baby. ‘So, you more afraid of bandits than Japanese Army?’ he said. ‘I do not believe. I show you who you should be more afraid.’

  He left me for a moment. I heard the baby crying again, louder this time, carried on the wind from a house somewhere nearby. That was what I thought. I learned otherwise when Sato returned.

  He had a bundle with him, held roughly against his chest. If I did not know what it was at first, I soon realised when the crying began anew, now right there in the room with me. He thrust the bundle at me to see. My baby! My Paris! He was safe!

  That was far from the truth, though. How could he possibly be safe in this place? How could he ever be safe in that devil’s hands?

  Sato placed Paris on the floor a few feet in front of me. I was tied hands and feet to the chair, unable to move, writhing and screaming at the top of my lungs. So much screaming had I done in this room, but never as piercing as this, I am sure. Sato took out his pistol, pointed it at Paris, and shouted his questions at me – What is the name of the leader of the bandits? What is the location of their camp? What strength are they? How are they supplied? How long you know Larkin?

  Between my screams, Sato’s shouts and my baby’s bawling, the uproar in the room must have caused another commotion in the corridors of the school building. All of a sudden the door was flung open and standing there was Major Tomasu. He barked an order at Sato, who jumped immediately to attention. Tomasu marched over to him and slapped his face before giving him a dressing down in Japanese. He then turned on his heel and left.

  Sato was now seething with rage. Twice I had seen him humiliated. He glared at me and passed on the slap that he had just himself received. He picked up my baby and held him to me, inches in front of my face.

  ‘You say goodbye now,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow your baby he die.’

  19

  PARIS

  She left me with the car at my disposal along Fleet Street, at an arched carriageway below an old Tudor house, and instructed the driver to take me wherever I needed to go. She must have noticed me craning my neck at the building because she offered that it was the gateway to the Inner Temple. I had long been meaning to investigate this secretive little enclave in the middle of London, and commented to her that it had all once been the home of the Knights Templar. She said that was appropriate as it was still a home for crusaders and funny rituals and offered me a guided tour one day, but not today. She had a long night ahead of her in chambers. She put her head back to the window and asked if I fancied breakfast in the morning. I had already planned my morning session at Kew, but now I found myself curiously unconcerned about that. We agreed to meet at nine am. Nothing too uncivilised, she said.

  It was another Fleet Street address, which hardly filled me with optimism, but this one had a grinning Mr Punch above the door to greet me, which set me at ease. It was also another heavily timbered place, although with plenty of windows and mirrors and more happy Punches scattered around to brighten the morning. We had a booth to ourselves with a print of a Turner sh
ipwreck on the wall. You can always learn from the old masters, Su-Lin said. I suppose it was the kind of thing one says to break the ice of a new morning, but quite what she meant I was unsure. My face must have given me away, for she offered that Lord Denning was the master from whom she found most to learn, as Herodotus must be for me.

  Herodotus? I had hardly considered him since my college days, but did not have the heart to confess that to her, so convinced did she seem.

  The place was not at all busy. She said it was too late for the office set and too early for the St Paul’s tourist crowd, and we ordered breakfast. She must have been intrigued by my order, which was nothing particularly untoward, because she told me this story about the traditional Inner Temple breakfast – bread and beer, apparently – and then asked if I would like champagne. The orange juice was out of a bottle, she said, and if I was going to have something out of a bottle then it may as well be champagne, as at least that was not overloaded with supplementary sugar. Alcohol has no calories if you drink it before midday, she said with a grin. I surprised even myself by agreeing to a glass.

  I asked if this was another of her regular haunts. She said it was a friendly place, unlike the V, and she preferred to avoid hostilities in the morning. Confrontations are better when you have time to work up to them, she said, and it was appropriate that I should think of the V as a ‘haunt’, because it was full of ghosts. The ghost of Rumpole of the Bailey for a start, she said, as word had it that it was the model for Pommeroy’s. The ‘Grub Street hacks’ got many of their more sensational headlines at the V, evidently, and Su-Lin had enjoyed the game, often setting off a spark that spread through the bar like wildfire and then gleefully watching the unseemly dash for the single available telephone. Mobile phones ruined the sport for everyone, she said.

  I asked her about her role in the Tariq case, as there appeared to be so many lawyers in attendance, lined up in rows up the front of the courtroom. She said she was not a silk and that carried some disadvantages, not least being remuneration, but it allowed her certain freedoms of expression as well. Less to lose when you are not a silk, she said with yet another grin. I asked why she was not a silk, being of an age when, I assumed, if it was going to happen at all then it would have happened some time ago. She raised her eyebrows at me and chortled, sipping her champagne before replying.