The Heart Radical

by Boyd Anderson

  Later that night I went into my father’s study to look up one of the many words I had heard that day in his dictionary – ‘radical’. It was the second time I had heard it, but this time it was used in a completely different way. The first time was when Mr Ho used it to explain to me how to understand Chinese writing, and this time Mr Davies used it to describe Toh Kei’s mind. How could the same English word be used for two such completely different things? A word in Chinese could have many different meanings, that I knew. Could English perhaps have more in common with Chinese after all?

  I found what Mr Ho meant in the dictionary where it said that radical meant ‘going to the root’, and he had said that the radical was the root of a Chinese word, so I knew he was right about that. But then I saw perhaps Mr Davies was correct as well, because there was a second entry, and it said that radical also meant ‘favouring reform’, and when I looked up that word it meant ‘to make better’.

  Now it all made perfect sense. Toh Kei had a radical mind, one that was constantly considering ways to make things better. Which only left one question – why did Mr Davies think that was such a bad thing?

  42

  DAY FOUR: MORNING

  When we arrived home that afternoon I could tell immediately that something was missing. I went up to my room, looked out my window and, sure enough, Mr Yew’s tent was nowhere to be seen. I could see square patches of mud, but no square tent. I collected some food scraps from the kitchen and went down to investigate.

  While the geese were squabbling over the scraps, I climbed onto the fence where I could afford myself a good view of the entire sweep of Mr Yew’s garden and found that, sure enough, the tent had simply vanished. I could see Kebun working on a patch of fresh mud close to the fence on the far side, spreading it with a changkol to level it out. I could also see something new – a heap of dirty bottles in a far corner, like a jumbled pyramid of glass and mud stacked up next to the buttress root of one of Mr Yew’s great rainforest trees. The mysteries at his place just kept on coming.

  Back in the kitchen, I told Ah Mun Cheir about the missing tent, and she said she already knew about that. She said the workmen came that morning, as usual, but they folded up the tent and took it away in a truck, and the only work that had been carried out since then was by Kebun, who had spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess. I said Mr Yew must have given up looking for tin, and she said I was still talking nonsense. She said he was digging for bottles. Hadn’t I seen the big pile of bottles? Why would he be digging for bottles, I asked. She said Mr Yew was a strange man and Ah Ping Cheir had told her many strange things about him and she was not surprised at anything he would do. I asked her what sort of strange things, and she said he spent months digging up his garden for a pile of empty bottles, and what could be more strange than that?

  I had to agree, but I thought perhaps Mr Yew did not know the bottles would be empty. Perhaps Mr Yew was right about our house; it was bad fung seui for him. It blocked his luck, and so when he found the bottles he was looking for, there was nothing in them. I knew life could play such tricks, but I thought he had already enjoyed a lot of good luck during his. Ah Mun Cheir said he had started as just a shopkeeper, so he had nothing to complain about.

  Our father came home early and told us to pack some things as we would all be staying at Uncle Raja’s house for the night, just in case the thief in white returned. He left with Uncle Raja almost as soon as we got there. He said they had an urgent meeting to attend, but tomorrow would be the last day of the trial, so I knew whoever they were meeting had to be someone important. He did not come back all night. I was aware because I spent a restless night continually waking up as all three of us were sleeping in the same strange bed. Uncle Raja’s driver took us home early the next morning, and Ah Mun Cheir told us that the ghost had not returned after all. I believed her, because knowing her she would have stayed up all night peering out through locked windows with a heavy broom in her hand.

  It had now become one of my rituals to look at my father’s Straits Times every morning to see what they had to say about the trial. During that week I felt like I was part of the biggest thing happening in the whole of Malaya because, apart from the High Commissioner being assassinated, it was the biggest story in the paper every day. It was a strange feeling to look at the paper and find that it was about something I had seen with my own eyes. But that week I would get this daily little shiver as it sank in that what was in the paper those mornings I had actually witnessed.

  Best of all were the Chinese man’s cartoons. That morning he had Toh Kei and Mr Davies pointing at one another: DECLARATION OF WAR. Mr Davies was saying, ‘You started it!’ and Toh Kei was saying, ‘No, you started it!’ Like two bickering little boys down at Ipoh Park.

  The big headline across the top of the front page said, TOH KEI: ‘IT’S A WORLD WAR’. I thought the judge was not going to be pleased to read that over his boiled eggs. I could imagine him saying, ‘I’m going to stop you right there, Mr Newspaper Man.’

  Generally speaking, I was not particularly interested in all the other stories the paper carried as they usually posed far too many unanswerable questions for me. As the Straits Times came from Singapore it included stories from all over Malaya – in fact, from all around the world – and most of it was too much to be concerned about day after day. That was especially the case with what had become a perennial story that year about Korea, where everyone seemed happy to say a war was in progress and not merely an emergency. But that day there was one other headline that caused me to stop and take notice, because it was about something very close to home –

  JAPANESE GOLD RUSH IN IPOH

  Certainly, that was a story to attract even the most glazed of eyes. Under the headline was a blotchy photograph of a house, and even when I read the caption underneath I did not recognise it. ‘Alfred Yew Siew Lam’s house in Gopeng Road.’ I was about to call out to Mei the news that a house in our street was in the paper, and only then did I finally realise whose house it was and just how unusual – and even closer to home than I initially thought – was the story.

  Except for when my father called him Baron Yew, I had never heard Mr Yew called anything but Mr Yew, and I had no idea his other names were Alfred and Siew Lam. I wondered if his wife called him Alfred or Ah Lam. I could not imagine her calling him Darling or Dearest or any of those names I’d heard adults use in the pictures, even if Mr Yew acted like it was people like that he truly appreciated. But I quickly forgot about such incidental considerations when I read further.

  The paper said that Mr Yew had been digging for gold in the grounds of his mansion. But it wasn’t just any gold, it was Japanese buried treasure.

  It said the house had been the residence of Major Yakato Tomasu during the Japanese Time, and he was a ranking officer in the Kempeitai. I had heard about the Kempeitai – everyone in Malaya had heard about the Kempeitai, because they were the people who did terrible things to the Chinese. It was obvious that someone from the paper had spoken to Mr Yew’s maid, Ah Ping Cheir, about all this because the story quoted her saying that the only thing Mr Yew found for all his trouble was ‘a sake bottle’, which I knew to be a bit of an understatement as I had seen for myself just how many bottles there really were. It also said that after the Japanese Time Mr Yew had used one of his tin dredges to dig up a beach at Pantai Remis, and people there said he was digging for gold then because many believed that the Japanese had buried gold there for evacuation by a submarine that never came.

  I couldn’t wait to show the paper to Mei and Li, and for once they were both about as excited as I was. Ah Mun Cheir could not read English, so Mei read the story to her and asked what she knew about it all and if she had perhaps heard what else Ah Ping Cheir had to say. Ah Mun Cheir didn’t seem at all surprised by any of this.

  ‘Ah Ping go away,’ she said. ‘Mr Yew go away. House shut.’

  That appeared to be the end of the matter, as far as Ah Mun Cheir was concern
ed.

  We heard Pa’s car in the driveway and ran out to greet him with the news. His eyes were red and he looked like he had not slept all night. Mei showed him the paper and he read it quickly and made one of his harrumphs.

  ‘Chinese never seek their fortune in their own backyard,’ he said. ‘If Baron Yew hadn’t tried so hard to be something he was not, he would have known.’

  For Toh Kei’s last day in court we were all on hand to give him our support. My father and Uncle Hung Jeuk were downstairs, of course. Uncle Raja was fidgeting and moving in his seat as he had done all week. Dr Thumboo was there with her son, Paris, as well as Mei and Li, and even Uncle Beng Woo was making an appearance. There was one other person on Toh Kei’s side that day, and in the end he was probably the most important of all. As soon as he appeared at the back of the court I knew where my father and Uncle Raja had been all night.

  ‘All right, Mr Tan, let’s have this new witness of yours,’ Judge Pretheroe began. ‘I will say again here what I have already said to you in chambers, that this sort of thing is not the order that I customarily require. Be that as it may, this is a case of murder and one that is being closely followed throughout the land, and indeed beyond. The consequences are extreme, and I will not have it be said that your client was not shown every opportunity here.’

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ Pa said. ‘I call John Larkin.’

  I hadn’t seen him at first, sitting at the back. I had become so accustomed to the same faces down there each day that I did not even notice Mr Larkin until he stood up, by which time you could not avoid noticing him because he was so tall. He didn’t just walk up to the witness stand like everyone else, like they were under the severe gaze of the judge up there behind his big bench and under his old wig. He strode to the front of the court, his footsteps echoing from the wooden floorboards to the high ceiling. He grabbed hold of the Bible, took the oath, said that his name was John Beaufoy Larkin and sat down.

  The eyes that Uncle Hung Jeuk said could see in the dark had a determined look in them. My father thanked him for appearing at short notice and asked him why he had decided to do so, and Mr Larkin said, ‘I heard about some testimony here that I knew to be false. I felt it my duty to set that right.’

  Pa thanked him again and then asked him what his occupation was. ‘I am an officer with the Special Branch of the CID stationed in Kuala Lumpur.’

  ‘What rank do you hold?’

  ‘Deputy Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I imagine such a role affords you a well-informed insight into the current conflict in Malaya. Tell me, how would you describe it?’

  ‘An emergency,’ Mr Larkin said.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘A simple and practical reason. Rubber, tin, everything. Stocks and equipment, the dredges, the rubber trees themselves, are all covered for riot and civil commotion. No insurance company offers cover for civil war.’

  Even I knew what was going to happen next. It happened any time anyone said anything about war, unless it was war against the Japanese, and sure enough Mr Davies was up on his feet and complaining. The judge agreed with him and then said to Mr Larkin, ‘Nevertheless, it is what it is,’ and for once Pa did not labour the point.

  ‘Do you know my client sitting over there?’ he asked. Mr Larkin said that he did. ‘How long have you known him?’

  ‘I first met him in 1943.’

  ‘Where did you first meet him?’

  ‘In a guerrilla camp near Bidor after I was parachuted in to join up with the MPAJA.’

  ‘That would be the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was your mission on that occasion?’

  ‘To prepare for an invasion of Malaya by British forces and to enlist the MPAJA as an ally. To train them, to arm them and to assist them in any way possible.’

  ‘And what form did that assistance take?’

  ‘We had airdrops from SEAC, that is Southeast Asia Command in Ceylon, of weapons, ration packs, gold bars, counterfeit currency. We helped them with training, tactics … anything to support them against the Japanese.’

  ‘Force 136, is that what you were called?’

  ‘That’s what SEAC called us. The guerrillas had another name for us. They called us bread and butter comrades. I’m afraid it took us some time to become accustomed to their diet.’

  ‘You say us. How many were you?’

  ‘Our numbers changed all the time during the last years of the war, and we were scattered among the different MPAJA regiments. Sometimes we were a few, sometimes dozens. We came in and out by parachute and submarine. By the end of the war we were everywhere, making ready for the invasion.’

  ‘That invasion, of course, never took place. Was that through any action on the part of the MPAJA or my client?’

  ‘Not at all. They had established a valuable network of spies all around Perak and it was essential to our plans. Unfortunately, the Japanese managed to smash that network in 1944. Before it could be re-established the surrender came.’

  ‘Now, Deputy Chief Inspector … you say you have known my client for many years. How would you describe him?’

  ‘I heard he has described himself as a warrior and I think that entirely appropriate. When I depended on him I regarded him as Britain’s most trusted warrior in Malaya.’

  I looked at Toh Kei. His expression had not changed, not even after that. The Black Whirlwind, I thought, and my father obviously agreed, because he said, ‘That is extremely high praise. How do you arrive at that opinion? For instance, what level of trust did you, yourself, place in my client?’

  ‘I would trust him with my life. In fact, I owe him my life. I was captured in 1945 by the Japanese. They took me to Kempeitai headquarters in St Michael’s Institution. It was dark when we got there. The Japs didn’t like the dark, you know. Toh Kei and a small force rescued me from right under their noses, before they had a chance to even get me inside the front door. It was the bravest act I have ever seen in war and deserved a medal.’

  I had never heard my father engage in such a long conversation about the war, and I noticed the whole time they talked about it, even when they were talking about the Kempeitai and St Michael’s Institution, his left hand stayed unclenched and out of his pocket, as though nothing was the matter with it any more, as though it was just a normal thumb that was not prone to hiding at the first kindling of all those dark memories. Now he was even holding a sheet of paper in it, as though reading it. But I knew that was not what he was doing. I could see he was waiting until what Mr Larkin said had registered with Judge Pretheroe, and allowing the judge sufficient time to make his note on Toh Kei’s side of his own sheet of paper. The judge, however, was not even moved to pick up his pen. And then my father looked up.

  ‘Is it true that you recommended him for such a medal?’

  ‘Yes. The Military Cross. It was the very least he deserved. Unfortunately, events conspired to prevent it being awarded.’

  ‘And what level of warrior would you suggest he is?’

  ‘In my experience, he received a high level of training in guerrilla warfare and military tactics. In those subjects it might even be said that he received a Sandhurst education. As for his ability as a soldier in the field, I think my answer to your previous question is sufficient.’

  ‘Now, Deputy Chief Inspector. In the Special Branch of the CID you are charged with the investigation of the activities of the Communist Party, is that correct?’

  ‘That is part of our responsibilities, yes.’

  ‘And your own position, as Deputy Chief Inspector, are you aware of past records of Communist Party members such as my client here?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘We have heard in this court that my client was held in prison at one time before the war for his beliefs. Are you aware of that?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘And are you aware of the circumstances of his release?’

  ‘I am. He was rele
ased soon after the Japanese invasion of Malaya to attend training at the army’s Special Training School in Singapore.’

  ‘My lord,’ Mr Davies said, ‘is this relevant?’

  The judge raised his eyebrows. ‘I should think, Mr Davies, that as you introduced the subject of the accused’s record that you should think it so.’ Mr Davies bowed to the judge and sat down.

  ‘This Special Training School,’ Pa said, ‘was it a British concern, the British Army?’

  ‘It was,’ Mr Larkin said. ‘It was set up to train local Chinese volunteers in behind-the-lines guerrilla tactics. Stay behind parties in the event of British surrender or evacuation in Malaya. These men eventually became the nucleus of the MPAJA.’

  ‘So my client was released from prison because he volunteered to fight for the defence of British Malaya, in fact to engage in the most dangerous form of fighting in that defence. Is that correct?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And after the war, Deputy Chief Inspector, are you aware of my client being held in prison subsequent to that first time?’

  ‘I am. He was arrested during a protest at Singapore Harbour. He was held for a time in prison until the situation cooled down, and was then released. I believe this happened on two occasions, actually.’

  ‘And on either occasion were any charges brought against my client?’

  ‘No.’

  Pa turned his head, ever so slightly, and slowly nodded at Mr Davies, who did exactly the same to Pa. ‘Very well, if I can now turn to more specific matters, where were you at eight o’clock on the morning of the sixteenth of June 1948?’

  ‘I was in Kuala Lumpur, at my flat in Somerset Mansions.’

  ‘Were you alone?’

  ‘No. I was with an overnight guest, a guest I had not seen for almost a couple of years. It was a reunion of sorts. We had shared dinner in my flat and had a bit too much to drink. Dom Benedictine, as I recall. As he was from outstation, he stayed the night in my spare room.’