The Heart Radical

by Boyd Anderson

‘Does Pa know Na Na?’

  He grunted and gripped the wheel tightly, both of which were further signs of such a mood change, so I decided not to press the matter. However, even though I had already come to that decision, he continued to answer me.

  ‘You could say we have met,’ he said. And then all the signs of his impatience disappeared. When he turned to me he had a smile on his face. ‘I haven’t spent much time with you lately, have I? What about a treat? What about a picture tonight?’

  Our father had many interesting ideas for a treat. On Sundays he often liked to take us on a walk, and a treat would be when he walked us all the way to the Ping Sum restaurant, which was a very long walk so of course that particular aspect of it was not a treat, unless I was fortunate enough to be lifted up for a ride on his shoulders. The part that was a treat was the dim sum we got to eat, which he always said was the best this side of Hong Kong. Once he took us to the Station Hotel dining room, which was in the railway station, about the biggest and grandest building in all of Ipoh, with rows of tall columns supporting a ceiling so high it was like a white sky, but the treat to be had there was none of that. It was actually the violin player, an old Malay man who sat up the front of the room in bare feet and played beautiful music for the enjoyment of anyone lucky enough to be eating there. He could play Western music, Malay music, Chinese music, and all he had to do was hear a song once and he could play it because he had what my father called ‘an ear’. His name was Cik Din and he had once been Pa’s client in a matter involving a disagreement with a Chettiar, which means an Indian moneylender.

  Chettiars were rotund men in white robes with large shaved heads who were always to be seen carrying a black umbrella, rain or shine. Pa said it was not a good idea to get into a disagreement with a Chettiar, and it wasn’t just because he could handle his umbrella effectively. Cik Din won his disagreement, but the fee he then owed my father was more than what the disagreement had been about in the first place. Pa said that Cik Din was an honourable man and the only payment he wanted was for him to play the ‘Tennessee Waltz’ whenever Pa took our mother to the dining room, all of which I knew because Mei had told me.

  The day that Pa took us all to the Station Hotel dining room for a treat, Cik Din played the ‘Tennessee Waltz’ twice, and I wondered what was wrong with it, because it sounded perfectly fine to me, but it made our mother’s eyes go red.

  And then there were the times when we were going somewhere outstation, such as Cameron Highlands, and Pa would take the long way around to get there, passing through towns and villages we had never seen before. The long march, he called it. Or when we would just be going somewhere close by, just driving up Gopeng Road, and he would turn off into a little lane and wind the car up through some houses right to the edge of the race course. Uncle Raja’s race, he’d tell us, and we would all jump out of the car and eagerly press our noses to the white railing. Uncle Raja owned quite a few horses, and was on the committee of the turf club. Pretty soon they’d come thundering and snorting around the bend and gallop right past us, their jockeys loudly cursing each other in Cantonese and English and Hokkien and Malay, and I could feel the ground trembling under my feet and the hair on the back of my neck stand up, and even if I hadn’t known one of the horses was Uncle Raja’s it would still have been a treat.

  A picture was also most definitely a treat.

  My mother loved her pictures, especially the old Chinese melodramas. My father wasn’t really interested in any kind, although she didn’t seem to have too much difficulty persuading him to take the whole family to see American musicals from time to time. That year we had already seen Annie Get Your Gun, most of which Pa slept through and Ma had to squeeze his hand tight to wake him up when he snored, which was quite typical. They always held hands at the pictures when the lights went out. As many times as I looked at others in the audience, I never saw anyone else do that. A couple of months later we saw Cinderella, which I thought was the best picture I had ever seen, and I noticed that Pa had no trouble staying awake for that, even when they started singing.

  When we got home from his office that evening he told Mei and Li of his plan, that he had decided to take us all to the pictures. Mei, who was just as excited as I at this unexpected treat, said there was only one film to consider seeing, and that was The Day the Earth Stood Still. I had never heard of it. As far as I was concerned, there could not possibly be anything better on offer than the new Abbott and Costello that had just been released. Of course, Li was not interested in either of those, so Pa said we had to make up our minds. We argued for this or that or another, without coming to any form of agreement, until he finally said he had the best idea of all. The mobile film unit was scheduled to be in Papan that night, he said. There would be a good picture to see and it would be a treat to watch it under the stars. And while we were doing that, he could take care of some business there.

  We had never been to one of these mobile picture shows before. They usually travelled around the kampongs and the rural areas, not the big towns like Ipoh. From what we heard, they showed old black and whites, like Tarzan the Ape Man, a favourite in Malaya, although I never could understand why. We had enough wild men in the jungle without one more, and especially one who went about bellowing like an ape. When we were in the car driving out to Papan, it dawned on me that our father had done it again; that he had used his gift for convincing people to see things his way. Because what dawned on me was that this had been his idea for a treat all along.

  It was already dark when we got there. At the end of the road people were gathering around a streetlamp and a white sheet stretched between poles. The first time I had come to Papan it was daytime and that was quite eerie enough, but now, at night and with the streetlamp throwing sinister shadows onto the old walls of deserted houses, it truly was a ghost town. At Dr Thumboo’s house we met her son, Paris, and an older Chinese boy. Mei was in charge, Pa said, as she was the eldest. The five of us were to go and wait for the picture to start. When it was finished we were to return immediately to the house.

  ‘No exploring,’ Dr Thumboo said to the Chinese boy. She then turned to Mei and said, ‘You’ll have to keep your eye on Johnnie.’

  As we made our way up the street the boy walked next to me, with Paris trailing close behind. ‘My name’s Johnnie Ray,’ he said. ‘I’m ten. Older than you.’

  ‘You’re not as old as my sisters,’ I said.

  ‘They’re girls,’ he said. ‘So what, honey? Your jalopy’s an Oldsmobile. If I got me mits on her …’ And then he made a shooshing sound and pointed down the road.

  Nothing about him made any sense. ‘Is that your real name?’ I said.

  ‘Sure is, sugar. Johnnie Ray. Swell, huh?’ And then he did something extraordinary: he dropped onto one knee in front of us, like an over-theatrical marriage proposal from an old American picture, and threw his arms out and serenaded us.

  ‘Iffa your sa-wee-eet heart sends a m-ehe-ssage of goodbyeeeeee …’

  Mei and Li just looked at each other, but I felt all this seemed to require some sort of response. Luckily my father had only that day given me something that I thought would impress a boy like Johnnie Ray.

  ‘My father knows someone who keeps a bear in the house,’ I said. ‘He told me I could say that.’

  Johnnie Ray stared at me but said nothing, and I felt a brief sense of pride in my ability to hold up my side of the contest.

  The crowd was primarily Chinese townfolk supplemented by a small number of Malays from the nearby kampong. Wooden benches were lined up in the street and we all took our seats as a generator clattered into life up the back. A man doused the streetlamp and soon the projector rattled and pictures flickered across the white sheet. This Happy Breed, the picture was called, in colour after all, with Chinese and Malay subtitles that covered half the screen.

  ‘I’ve seen lots of swell movies,’ Johnnie Ray said.

  It soon turned out to be a rather uneventful film, obviously
for grown-ups, with too little action and far too much talking for our liking, which also meant so many lines of subtitles that sometimes it was difficult to see who was even doing all the talking. Most people in the audience were happy enough to watch it – the clothes, the houses, the streets of London were kind of interesting. I thought people probably found it amusing to see that the English who lived in Malaya lived so differently when they were in England.

  Suddenly, in the middle of a scene with an elderly woman blathering away, the picture stopped altogether and it was dark again. ‘Change reel,’ someone said from the back of the audience.

  Two men then stood up in front of the screen, and one lit an oil lamp and held it up next to his face. He informed us all that we would now hear from Ah Fatt, who had once been a CT but had surrendered, and now knew how wrong he had been. He swung the lamp over to illuminate the other man’s face, and we all waited to hear how Ah Fatt knew he was wrong.

  The poor man was blinking and fidgeting and swallowing, and when he finally opened his mouth it was so soft that we could not hear him over the noise of the generator. ‘Louder,’ someone shouted.

  He raised his voice a little to tell us that he was young and foolish before, but now he was older and wiser. ‘Do not support the terrorists,’ he said. ‘Do not give them rice. Do not give them tapioca, or beans, or pineapples, or bananas …’

  He continued on through a long list of foodstuffs we should keep to ourselves, and soon most people lost interest in what he had to say.

  Johnnie Ray was the first to lose interest. ‘You wanna butt?’ he said. He held out a small packet of Rough Rider cigarettes. I shook my head and then he passed it under the noses of Mei and Li, who just ignored him. Paris reached for it, but Johnnie Ray quickly withdrew his hand. ‘Not for you, kid.’ He lit up and blew smoke into the air. ‘You wanna see the lake where the Japs drown people? Just behind these houses. You wanna see, honey?’

  ‘What lake?’ I asked.

  ‘Old tin mine lake. Japs drowned so many that every year we put snakes in the water to swallow their souls and bring them to shore. You wanna see, sugar?’

  ‘You wanna see?’ Paris said.

  ‘Quiet!’ said Mei.

  ‘Okay, sister,’ Johnnie Ray said, blowing smoke at her. ‘Keep your shirt on.’

  The film cranked into life again and we watched another twenty minutes of the happy breed of people who lived in England. When they stopped to change reels again there were no speeches, just chatter in the dark. I looked up at the black sky above and it was that time of night when the clouds had dispersed. The stars gleamed like sparkles from the magic wand of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, and I found myself starting to understand what my father meant when he said this would be a treat.

  ‘We had a dragon in our hills,’ Paris said. ‘He ate lots of children who wandered away.’

  ‘Ain’t it the truth,’ Johnnie Ray said. ‘A monster snake in the hills. He only ate one boy, though. The kid talks big.’

  ‘Lightning killed it,’ Paris said. ‘God struck the dragon down.’

  ‘Nah,’ Johnnie Ray said. ‘English bombers got it. Blew it to bits. We’ll never find tin here now. They carried the pieces out of the jungle and took them away in bullock carts. Ten carts. I saw it.’

  ‘I saw it, too,’ Paris said.

  ‘The kid talks big,’ Johnnie Ray said, patting the younger boy on the shoulder. ‘But he’s okay. His mother got tortured by the Japs. He’s lucky he’s not an orphan.’

  As the picture restarted, the light reflected from the sheet onto Paris’ face, and for a moment I saw him basking in the glow of Johnnie Ray’s approval.

  At the final reel change Paris stood up in front of us and said that not only was his mother tortured by the Japs, but yesterday someone sent her a bullet.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Mei asked.

  ‘A bullet was left outside our door,’ he said. ‘It was wrapped up in paper. I was the first to find it, but Mummy says it was for her.’

  ‘It’s a message from the bandits,’ Johnnie Ray said. ‘They’ve got a bullet with her name on it.’

  ‘That’s right!’ Paris said proudly.

  ‘The kid talks big,’ Mei said, and she and Li giggled as the picture flickered back into life.

  ‘Sit down!’ someone shouted from behind, and Paris slowly did as he was told.

  As soon as the picture finished Mei herded us back to Dr Thumboo’s house, like a shepherd with her flock, and keeping a very close eye on the black sheep, Johnnie Ray.

  ‘You gals wanna see where the stool pigeon was killed?’ he said.

  ‘What’s a stool pigeon?’ I asked.

  ‘A spy,’ Paris said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Johnnie Ray said. ‘You know, a Jap informer. They cut off his head with a blunt knife. Everyone took turns. That’s what happens to stool pigeons.’

  Our father was sitting with Dr Thumboo at the table covered with papers and Pa’s exercise books, and they looked like they had been sitting there for hours. Mei, Li and I sat on the high leather couch while the boys huddled together on the other side of the room, Paris listening intently as Johnnie Ray whispered in his ear. Paris then strode over to the table, pushed aside some of the papers and held up what I thought was a shiny little pen.

  ‘See?’ he said to us. ‘I told you.’

  ‘Paris!’ Dr Thumboo snatched it from his hand and threw it into a drawer. It clattered around noisily as she slammed the drawer shut.

  We heard someone call from outside the front door. ‘Doctor Missy, ah!’

  ‘Come in, Mr Tay,’ Dr Thumboo said without getting up.

  A short Chinese man with brilliantined hair poked his head around the screen. ‘I come for Johnnie, lah.’

  ‘Over here, Pops,’ Johnnie Ray said.

  Dr Thumboo introduced my father to Mr Tay, who thanked her for taking Johnnie to the picture. ‘Sorry have to work,’ he said. ‘No time for anything but work. No wife very hard. You also know … you no husband.’

  Dr Thumboo shuffled her feet and quietly coughed into her hand. ‘Did you enjoy the picture?’ she asked Johnnie Ray.

  ‘It was swell,’ he said.

  ‘Good to enjoy picture,’ Mr Tay said. ‘People so poor in Papan now they sleep when night time come. No oil for lamps, lah.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a pity,’ Dr Thumboo said.

  ‘Now no tin also,’ Mr Tay said. ‘They say tin now only under houses. People try to buy old houses, dig up for tin. Indian people they say. Indian people …’ He shook his head. ‘Bad what they do to Mr Thumboo. His own Indian people. My wife, so bad also, but that time, they Japanese. Your husband, they Indian. Bad, bad …’

  ‘Yes, well …’ Pa said. He collected his papers with one hand, the other wrapped around his bad thumb and doing nothing but hanging there by his side as he stood up. ‘Time for us to go.’

  ‘You hero, Doctor Missy,’ Mr Tay said. ‘You and Toh Kei, lah. No one ever forget.’

  On the way home that night, my father did something most unusual – he talked about the war. And as he was driving and needed both his hands, he talked about it without wrapping his fingers around his bad thumb. Usually I was the only one interested in asking questions, but that night, in the half hour it took to drive home through the roadblocks, Mei and Li asked even more. Perhaps because Mei was now fourteen and had done such a good job looking after everyone at the pictures, Pa seemed to be willing to talk about it. Then again, perhaps it was because he wasn’t talking about his own war, only about the one in Papan.

  He told us that Dr Thumboo was indeed a hero, and so was her husband, who was a schoolteacher. One day during the war, some Indians who were loyal to the Japanese told him he had to join them to fight the English. He refused and was taken away, never to be seen again. Paris never even met his father. He told us that after that, Dr Thumboo helped the men in the jungle who were fighting the Japanese. She treated their wounds and their sicknesses, all in secret in the middle of the
night, there in that room where we had just been. The Japanese found out and came and took her away. They tortured her for months and she would not have lived if the war had not suddenly ended when it did. He told us Johnnie Ray’s mother helped Dr Thumboo in her clinic and the Japanese drowned her in the tin mine lake. Terrible things happened in Papan, he said, but they are very brave people.

  I changed my mind about Johnnie Ray and Paris then, just like in a picture when you begin thinking someone is a particular type of person, but when you see the whole picture you come to understand they are something quite different. The understanding I came to was that they were very brave people, just as my father said.

  Of course, he was right about the pictures. He could have taken us to my picture, or Mei’s, and it would have been a treat. But now that we knew the whole story, what we saw in Papan I thought was even better than Cinderella.

  28

  One of the British officials who visited me in hospital after the war said that I must feel like I have awoken from a nightmare. There were so many ribbons on his chest, so much braid on his cap, I felt obliged to politely agree, but I have to say that I was not actually possessed of any such feeling at the time. My ordeal was no dream, bad or otherwise, and the reality of it has never left me. Indeed, the nightmares are what I have now, when I throw myself out of bed to avoid another blow from Sergeant Sato and find myself shivering in a cold sweat on my bedroom floor; or when I sometimes begin to shudder uncontrollably with my finger hovering over a light switch I cannot bring myself to touch. If those months were a nightmare they would simply leave me. Sergeant Sadist will never leave me.

  No, it was not at all like waking from a nightmare. It was more like arriving in a new land after a journey through the Devil’s Domain. Everything was different after the war. The brutality of the Japanese was replaced by the chaos of the returning British, but it was obvious that our old Malaya was never to return. So many leaders of the community were gone, and so many of those left had lost everything. So many stories of collaboration and revenge had left that community riven. It took the British months to restore order, some would say years. Some would say they never did. New leaders had emerged, especially among the guerrillas who claimed the high moral ground as the only true resistance to the Japanese. Many were communist, and their objective was to bring an end to British colonial rule and establish an independent Malaya. Such was already transpiring in the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina, where armed native forces were resisting the return of their former colonial masters. The British, who had regularly imprisoned such men without trial before the war, and then happily supported them with arms, supplies and training during the war when it suited their purposes, reverted again to rounding up their former allies whenever they were suspected of instigating unrest, even if that unrest was simply organising a trade union to take strike action.