The Heart Radical

by Boyd Anderson

  Depressed economic conditions added to the problem. The Japanese had allowed the tin mines and rubber plantations to languish and it took years to return them to productivity. The British found it difficult to accept that things were different, that their workers were not their slaves any more, that their authority was no longer mandated. Labour strikes became common. Estate workers on the plantations were urged into protest, which was often cruelly put down by ruthless managers with the help of armed troops. Leaders were arrested and if Chinese, which they almost invariably were, deported. For most of them it would have been the first time they ever set foot in the land of their ancestors.

  Sometimes the name Liew Ek Ching would appear in the Straits Times. While I was still in hospital it was reported that he was a participant in the Victory Parade in London in 1946. The news after that happy time was not so favourable. He rose to a position of prominence in the Communist Party of Malaya, and his activities eventually earned him a spell in prison. His picture, however, was never published during those difficult times.

  I found myself wondering how Bintang had changed now that he was no longer in uniform. I could not say he cut a particularly dashing figure in that rather drab khaki, but his eyes always seemed to make up for any lack of cheer, the way they twinkled merrily beneath the stars on his cap. Now he was a political figure, dressed no doubt in the conventional wardrobe of the man in the street. Could the twinkle survive the new political reality? Could it survive prison? More fundamentally, had he gained weight now that he could enjoy a regular diet, even a prison diet? Had his health, such an issue for all of them previously, improved? Had he ever returned to teaching, or had his duties with his party consumed all his time? It appeared to me from the stories I read in the paper that he must be living in Singapore, which was where the Communist Party had their headquarters. It was also clear to me that Liew Ek Ching had made a lasting impression on me.

  As the situation became more and more tense I found Papan to be an oasis in the trouble and strife. It was a quiet backwater before, the very reason I went there in the first place, and it returned to such a state rather quickly. The unrest in Papan occurred only in the few days following the Japanese surrender, and it was unrest that no one wanted to encourage after that. It had cut out a cancer with a violent act of retribution, and was now united in its guilt. No one mentioned any of it after I returned. ‘Don’t talk about bad things,’ as the Chinese say. All resumed the normal struggle with life, and life in Papan had always been a struggle. I joined them in that. I had little alternative as I was without funds, and releasing those of my father in Europe was proving to be a difficult legal task. Even more than that, however, how could I leave them after they had so generously cared for my baby?

  The delight of my life over these years was to watch little Paris grow into a healthy child. It was Sammy’s idea to name him Paris, which means ‘Generous King’ in one of the Indian languages, but Paris himself was far from impressed. He refused to answer to it, which meant I had to call him ‘Son’ for many years until some of the town’s children teased him about it and he relented. To those children, all Chinese, there was something exotic about Paris.

  In my clinic I dealt with the normal injuries, sicknesses and disabilities that troubled our small community, and every now and then I was invited to a function for a visiting dignitary, each of whom seemed to know who I was and what had happened to me. Once I even attended a function at the Ipoh Club, which I heard later had caused a minor scandal among its members. A local Eurasian, and a woman at that, was unheard of apparently in their hallowed hall.

  Papan returned to its sleepy ways. The most diverting incident occurred when a Malay boy from the nearby kampong went missing. It was believed he had been taken by a large python seen in the area. The Chinese townfolk said it was a sign of future prosperity when a snake came into your territory, and they were reluctant to flush it out. In the end the Royal Air Force dealt with it, dropping bombs on its hiding place and blowing it to pieces. It was so big that those pieces had to be removed in a fleet of bullock carts. Nothing, however, distracted from the growing tension of the political situation for long.

  It all came to a head one day in June 1948. I remember the exact date, of course. How could I forget it after having it burned in my brain by lawyers, investigators, inquisitors and one very pedantic judge? June 16th 1948. One of those lawyers described it as ‘a date that will live in infamy’. It certainly lives in my memory. At the time I had no idea of its significance, let alone its enduring infamy. Two British rubber estate managers were murdered by persons unknown, which is surely a terrible thing, but after the events of the occupation, not especially terrifying. The papers began reporting the event by saying the persons unknown were bandits, which was the Japanese term for the guerrillas, but were soon using the term ‘terrorist’. Although it was common knowledge that they were the same people, I suspected that the authorities were even then trying to avoid admitting that these outlaws were the brave resistance fighters they had so feted just a couple of short years before.

  The alarm quickly gathered pace, and just two days later the papers were full of the news that the government had summarily declared an emergency. The Communist Party was outlawed, its members subject to arrest and deportation, even if born in Malaya. It seemed we were to only have three years of peace, for now we were back at war.

  The communists and their supporters took flight into the hills, dug up their secret stockpiles of weaponry hidden in the jungle since the end of their anti-Japanese days, and reverted to being guerrillas once again. This time they were an anti-British army. I for one did not think it could last long. Unlike the Japanese, the British must surely know where those camps were.

  29

  PARIS

  The film finished before ten pm, and as we left the theatre I was considering my route home – whether to take the tube from Waterloo and change to the District line, or cross the river to Embankment and not have to change all the way to Kew. I had already come down on the side of the longer constitutional over the bridge when Su-Lin changed my mind for me. We could share a taxi, she said. Her place was on the way to Kew and if I didn’t mind dropping her there, it would be most convenient.

  Convenience – hers or mine – was not really the issue for me. That was an expensive cab ride she was suggesting, and as I would be taking it to its terminus, it must also be by way of my pocket. The limited expenses I was allowed hardly ran to such extravagance, but it would be quite impolite to refuse.

  In the taxi she asked me again about the film she said we saw together one night long ago in Papan. I could not remember such a night. She said there was a group of us, including her sisters and Johnnie Ray. I remember Johnnie well. His real name was Johnnie Tay, although he fancied himself as an American singer of the time, among other adolescent delusions that came and went as he endeavoured to stir up life in backwoods Papan. I told her Johnnie was now one of Malaysia’s leading jazz musicians, which clearly impressed her, although I still could not remember the night.

  She said that she found the Ozu film sad. I suggested that it was obvious she had not seen many of Mr Ozu’s films, to which she added Japanese films in general. I said that it seemed to me that sadness, while regarded as a disorder in the Western world and often just one step short of clinical depression, was recognised to be a normal aspect of the human condition in Japan. They consider it ennobling, a necessary stage in one’s development of an appropriate moral compass. In the West the pursuit of happiness is enshrined as an inalienable right, but happiness cannot be a permanent condition in life. Mountains are beautiful, but so are valleys, and each is necessary for the existence of the other, not to say their beauty.

  She said that was an ‘interesting’ view. I asked her if she meant that in the manner of the so-called ‘Chinese curse’. She claimed to have never heard of such a thing. Perhaps another contribution from the Western world, she said.

  Her flat was in Ba
yswater, directly opposite Porchester Square Gardens. She said it was still early and perhaps I would like a late supper. There were many ethnic eateries nearby, she said, and I could take my pick from almost any cuisine in the world. Eating this late was hardly conducive to a restful night, I thought, but avoided saying so. My reluctance must have been obvious, because she suggested a nightcap as an alternative. She already had her money out to pay the driver, so it would have been both impolite and imprudent of me to refuse.

  It was a spacious flat – a maisonette on two polished wooden floors. A dining area was separated from the well-lived-in living room by two fancy white Corinthian columns that appeared to serve no more than a decorative purpose, and the table therein was covered with papers. Among all the legal-looking documents was that of my mother, and Su-Lin caught me looking at it.

  I’m almost up to the trial, she said. I said that my mother did not have much to say about the trial. That was a pity, she said, as she was looking forward to reliving it. It was a most exciting time, she said as she handed me a glass of red wine. She reconsidered for a moment before saying that it was an ‘exhilarating’ time. She wouldn’t be who she was or where she was now if not for the trial.

  A portrait in oils of her father in thick black glasses and judge’s ceremonial full-bottom wig dominated the room. I had the unnerving feeling I was being appraised. I swear as the night progressed, a sterner expression became fixed to that inanimate face.

  She put some jazz music on the stereo, swaying her glass to its rhythm. It seemed to be up to me to initiate the conversation. I looked around the flat for signs of any other life and inquired if she lived alone. For many years, she said, and added that it was healthier that way. I didn’t quite catch the word over the music. Happier? No, healthier, she said, toasting me before taking a mouthful of wine. She said she had only two good friends and both were currently summering in Spain. Or some such place, she said dismissively.

  I seemed to remember she had two sisters. I asked her where they were now and if she was in regular contact. She said there was this new computer thing called ‘Skype’, and they chatted every week. The eldest was Mei, and she called her ‘the matriarch’, now living with an American husband in San Francisco. Second sister Li, ‘the spiritual one’, lived among the gurus, hypnotherapists and red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, although I caught no sense of scorn in her voice. And a brother, I remember, came around the time of the trial. I remember her father bringing him as a baby to our house at one time, proudly showing him off. I remember it so clearly as the baby had a chain with a gold locket around its ankle. I had the same kind of trinket, tucked away in one of my mother’s drawers, and after they had gone that day I asked her if I could see it. She fetched it out and gave it to me. The locket was a tiny padlock that held the ends of the chain together. My mother said it was to protect me from evil. If that was the case, I wondered, why wasn’t I wearing it? She said if I wanted to she could get the chain extended for me. It was some years before I did want to. After she died I found it again among her things. I have been wearing it ever since.

  I asked Su-Lin if she had arrived at any opinions as yet about my mother’s document. She said that she was full of admiration for the way she had resisted the Japanese. She had no idea that the ordeal was so harrowing. No wonder, she said, she was regarded as a hero. I told her that I had little memory myself of her enjoying such acclaim. Most of my recollections were of the later years, when she was a ‘villain’, as she herself acknowledged.

  Su-Lin said that my mother must have been a wise woman. Her resistance was passive, she said, and that was how she survived. Passivity is the yin force, the female force, more enduring than the yang force of direct action. As Taoism teaches, sustained strength results in eventual control, while the other is quickly spent.

  This rang a bell with me – Taoism and the belief in the strength of weakness, all things defined by their opposite. They were the words of Toh Kei.

  In my safe deposit box in Kuala Lumpur, bundled up with my mother’s original document, is a letter. Apart from her testimony, it is the only tangible evidence I have of her relationship with the notorious ‘bandit’. He wrote it from his prison cell in Ipoh on the eve of the last day of the trial, when he was to receive judgment on his life. When I first read that letter I was twelve and it was one more thing I was not yet equipped to understand. It was not written from the heart, as one might expect of such a (perhaps) final communication, it was written from the spirit of the man.

  He had not abandoned his faith, he wrote. The power to endure whatever the future held was in passivity. Just as my mother had endured the darkest of days, so would they both endure what was to come.

  I have always wondered how such beliefs sat with the actions of a terrorist.

  30

  SU-LIN

  The man was a ditherer, of that I was now certain. He dithered over transport, over supper, even over a nightcap. He dithered over eating, drinking, and as for being merry, that was apparently beyond him. During a quiet moment in the taxi we eventually agreed to share, I asked him again about the films. This Happy Breed, I reminded him, was the one from the mobile picture show in Papan. He simply could not recall, although he said he did know of the film. He had nothing to say for it, preferring to wax on about the film we had just seen, the sad one, and the earlier American one that had inspired it. I asked him if that was as sad as the Japanese film. He said that it would make a stone cry. It was obvious to me that any film with the word ‘happy’ in its title, especially one about families, was never going to enter his considerations.

  He could not take his eyes from the portrait of my father. He told me that they had been in touch right up until not long before Pa passed away in the late seventies. That was certainly news to me. There was a private side to my father, of course, being involved as he was in matters of the law, but it now appeared to extend beyond that. I wondered what the context of such an association could be.

  I don’t think he took more than a first sip of the wine. It was a rouge ordinaire, so perhaps he did not approve. He asked me about my situation, my family and so on, but remained ill at ease in spite of my candour. When I was telling him about my brother I am certain he was no longer even listening. Would a Bollywood star with his looks be so shy, I wondered, fidgeting with his blasted little gold chain. Would a Bollywood star be seen in public wearing such an affectation? Should a man of any calling be so unaware of his appearance? Surely he must have realised that his long unkempt hair was beyond being an adornment and now displayed mere laziness, a warning to all that this was a man long accustomed to living alone.

  He was keen to know again what I thought so far of his mother’s paper. I made a comment about her ability to withstand the terrible treatment meted out to her by the Japanese, equating it with some of the teachings of Lao Tzu, and again he seemed to drift away on his own thoughts. So ungrounded, I thought.

  As I was no longer permitted to accompany Uncle Beng Woo on his rounds, my afternoons at the office became mostly a dull routine of sitting at my little table and practising my Chinese. I had still not progressed beyond two hundred words in the Three Character Classic as Mr Ho was not yet well enough to resume lessons at our home, and after the incident at his there was obviously no question of us going there.

  The only time my routine rose above the mundane was when my father allowed me to read the Chinese comic that Mr Ho had given me. He was right about that comic – having the pictures certainly helped me to grasp the general meaning of the words, even if I could not actually read them. When I was having difficulty Pa sometimes took a minute to help me, which was how I came to understand that the ‘Water Margin’ of the title referred to the marshes and mountains on the fringes of the towns and villages in China where people were forced to flee to escape the persecutions of evil officials. They were from all classes of society – peasants, merchants, scholars, even soldiers. They formed themselves into a rebel army to fight the corr
upt dynasty, and my favourite of them all was Li Kui, the Black Whirlwind, a farmhand who rose to become a captain of the rebel guards. Pictures of him showed a warrior standing high on a rock, a mighty axe in each hand. What I particularly liked about him was his loyalty to his cause, and the fact that it gave him such strength he had the force of a whirlwind when it came to a fight against the ‘dark forces’, as they called the evil-doers.

  I was in my father’s office on the afternoon of the Mid Autumn Festival when Uncle Raja came around with a basketful of mooncakes and pomelos for the staff. In Cantonese a pomelo is called loke yow, and as yow also means ‘to have’, a pomelo is regarded as a symbol of good luck, which was something you definitely needed in China when you knew that winter was just around the corner. Uncle Raja, although Indian himself, made it his business to know such things about the Chinese because it was that community that provided the majority of his business.