by Susan Barker
‘Look, I don’t want to lose my job over this,’ I said. ‘Go back to your hut or I’ll call the guards.’
Evangeline was deaf to my empty threat. ‘Did the way I beat my sister last night disgust you? Did it sicken you?’
‘I was unimpressed, to say the least. And I’m even less impressed by your compromising me – for the third time no less! – by violating Emergency regulations to sneak up here.’
‘I went to the Jesus People today and told them that I cannot cope with Grace any more. I told them of the bad feelings I have towards her. They said they would take her for the night, to give me time alone to read the Bible and find God. The Jesus People say that once I have found Him I will learn to love my duty to Grace. But I have been reading and reading, Christopher …’ she laughed bitterly, ‘and He is nowhere to be found.’
‘Well, you certainly won’t find Him up in this watchtower,’ I said. ‘Though, I dare say, if you continue to sneak about the village after curfew, the guards will pump you full of lead and then you’ll make his acquaintance in Kingdom Come.’
Evangeline was unflinching at the prospect of being gunned down by the Security Forces. Her forehead shimmered in the heat and her eyes blazed like someone in the grip of an idée fixe.
‘They tell me God will cure me of my resentment,’ she said, ‘but it is getting worse and worse. I have to do everything for Grace. Every day I wash and dress and feed her. I cannot leave her unattended for a second, or she will wander into people’s homes and make a mess and steal their food. I have constantly to keep her away from the men who think her body is the property of the masses. Grace will always be a child. She will never grow up and live apart from me. I told the Jesus People that sometimes when I hear her breathing next to me in the night I wish for it to stop. I think how easy it would be to put a pillow over her head. They told me God will save me, God will give me strength, but …’
I bit my tongue. Evangeline was on the verge of tears and experience had taught me a few sympathetic words would be enough to trigger the deluge. Call me coldhearted, but if there’s one thing I can’t abide it’s a weeping woman. From age eleven onwards I’ve had the good sense to recoil from this childish medium of self-expression. Yet all the women I’ve known turn on the sprinklers with shameless abandon – well into old age! After all Evangeline had survived during the war, I was shocked that the mundane burden of caring for her sister threatened to bring her down. The Village of Everlasting Peace was overrun with downtrodden humanity and the Lim sisters were no worse off than anyone else.
‘I appreciate it must be hard taking care of your sister,’ I said, ‘but you really have to pull yourself together, Evangeline. Everyone in this village has a tough life of it. There are women with a tribe of little ’uns to look after and no husband to help them because he’s buggered off into the jungle to join the People Inside.’
I’d hoped to lessen Evangeline’s self-pity by reminding her of the hardships of others. But this only stoked the embers of her rage.
‘What do you know, Christopher? What do you know of our lives! I have seen how tough your life is, you and your fat alcoholic friend gorging yourselves on roast duck and listening to music on your veranda …’
Her arrogance was breathtaking. Who was she to accuse me of leading a life of privilege? Evangeline had violated several Emergency regulations to come and harangue me in the watch tower and yet had the audacity to behave as though she were in the right.
‘Do you honestly think I am living it up here in this village? I work damn hard – for sixteen hours a day or more, mucking in wherever I can. I even live in a wooden hut just like the rest of you.’
‘But you are not like the rest of us. You can walk in and out of the gates when you want. Go wherever you want at any time of day or night. You are so proud of yourself! You think yourself so moral and worthy to be here, to be friendly to the natives, but you are just a tourist.’
‘Really? A tourist? And what kind of holiday destination is The Village of Everlasting Peace? Do you honestly think I have come here for pleasure? To see the sights?’ I was spitting with rage, a baptism of salivary flecks. ‘What do you want me to do? Relinquish my British citizenship and become a bloody rubber tapper?’
‘I want you to make me feel alive again.’
I stifled a nervous laugh, the statement of desire immediately changing the atmosphere from one of conflict to aching uncertainty. Evangeline’s gaze was riveted to mine, her pupils engorged by the stimuli of darkness, challenging me to look away. I felt as gawky as a schoolboy to whom women are a species apart. Self-conscious of everything, from the epiglottal slam as I swallowed, to my bony, oversized wrists dangling at my sides. My breathing was laboured, the thudding valves of my heart loud as galloping hoofs. The chasm between two statues standing apart to the intimacy that Evangeline had insinuated seemed too wide, too perilous, to leap. Though Evangeline had spoken her desire, her body language was that of a fortress dense with invisible thorns. Where was the permissive pout? The seductive quirk of the eyebrow and the coquetry that made the transition to romance a thing of ease?
I had begun to wonder if I had misinterpreted her meaning, when, in a fever of doubt, Evangeline said: ‘What is wrong? Am I too old?’
‘No, no,’ I said, shaking my head.
I closed the distance between us in a stride. Too shy to look Evangeline in the eyes I reached for her hand. I lifted it, cradling it in both of mine. I caressed her palm with my thumb, tracing the fate, life and heart lines, stroking her fingers, each crease of joint, up to the seamstress calluses that sat roughly on her fingertips. I bowed my head, pressed my lips to her palm. Then I kissed her mouth and I still remember the softness of her lips, and my relief that we had begun.
Like you, Christopher, I am aware that the police are often too quick to send villagers to detention camps without sufficient evidence, and I wanted to investigate the background of Evangeline Lim before deciding whether to report the incident. The findings of the investigation are as follows:
The Lim sisters are orphans. During the Occupation their parents were murdered by the Japanese – their throats slit because of rumours that their father, a furniture-shop owner, belonged to a secret society that raised funds for the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army. There is no record of Mr Lim having been a member of any secret society and it is likely the rumours were fabricated by the Kempeitai informers, for reasons unknown.
After the murder of their parents both sisters were forced to work in a comfort house for Japanese soldiers. They were enslaved there for a year or more, but a few months before the end of the war they managed to escape. They fled from Kajang to the jungle, to the Chinese squatter camp of Jing Jang, to live with their maternal grandmother, Old Mother Wu.
When the Japanese surrendered, the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army surged out of the jungle to claim responsibility for the liberation of Malaya. Determined to seize power in the aftermath of the Occupation, the MPAJA went to most small towns and kampongs, where they were greeted by the Chinese with enthusiasm and admiration for enduring the rigours of jungle life and resisting the Japanese. They tore down Japanese flags and replaced them with Communist Party hammer-and-sickle banners. They rounded up villagers of all ethnicities for public meetings and long self-aggrandizing speeches about how they had driven out the Japanese. The dominant theme of the MPAJA meetings was revenge upon those who collaborated with the Japanese, and until the return of the British there was no higher authority to stop them. During a period now known as the Fifteen Days of Terror the MPAJA held numerous ‘People’s Trials’. Those found guilty were killed – mutilated and butchered before the mob. Many went into hiding.
When the MPAJA arrived at Jing Jang, Evangeline was heavily pregnant and the squatter settlement was rife with rumours that the father of the child was a Japanese general, whose mistress Evangeline had been. Of course, the unborn baby was undoubtedly of Japanese origin, but the bastard child of a hundred
soldiers of rank and file, and certainly not the product of a consensual affair. Unfortunately the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army did not take the oppression of the brothel worker into account when they rounded up the Japanese ‘collaborators’ of Jing Jang …
Fragments of the letter echoed in my head as I kissed Evangeline. I embraced her beneath the watchful gaze of dead Japanese soldiers. I held her in spite of them.
I remember the electric hum of beating wings and the trickle of sweat like a blade of grass tickling the nape of my neck. I remember the taste of metallic salts and the shy probing of tongues. I brushed my lips along Evangeline’s cheekbone, kissed the tiny thread of blue that pulsated in her temple. My hands roamed the surface of her, exploring her contours in blind cartography. Oh, she was no voluptuous beauty, my Evangeline, the loose cotton of her dress sheathing a figure that was pitifully lean. I moved my hands from her jutting hips to the knife-handles of her ribs, acquainting myself with every underfed angle. Evangeline’s hands hung limply at her sides, taking none of the liberties with my body that I took with hers. When she met my gaze she was solemn, as if she took the business of seduction very seriously indeed. This unnerved me, and in a clumsy banging of foreheads I moved in to kiss her again.
We went from standing to lying down, from clothed to unclothed. I remember the grey squalor of her bra, covering breasts that were barely there, its sad dinginess as I removed it. Her torso was dissected by silvery lines, shimmering in memory of child-bearing; the striations fine as snail trails, as though an army of molluscs had slithered over her in the night. As I knelt above her, Evangeline kissed my throat, sliding her emollient hands over my chest, the sparse hairs and desire-inflamed patch of skin beneath my collar-bone. Not even then, as my breathing quickened, did the dead soldiers leave us in peace. I laid a path of kisses over her flank of stomach, her hardening nipples, and my tenderness was overshadowed by anger. How many hundreds of Japanese had Evangeline lain beneath? How many had unclothed her as I had? Raped and defiled her? Ghosts. They were now ghosts. Surrendered corpses heaped on funeral pyres, dumped in mass graves, left to rot in deepest jungle. But I could see the invisible crescents of bite marks, whorls of savage fingerprints, the weals where they’d prised her open. I wanted to be gentle, the antithesis of everything she had endured, but my hands were everywhere, clutching her hair, her breasts, pushing her thighs apart. Evangeline flinched and I asked if I was hurting her. She did not speak, but fumbled at the buckle at my waist.
… and put them on trial. They were paraded about before the settlement, their alleged crimes shouted out. The residents of Jing Jang were appointed jury, and the verdict determined by the baying of the mob. Punishment was exacted on the spot and the methods of execution were numerous. Suspected Japanese informers were tied to trees and had their eyes gouged out in front of screaming wives. Guts were spilt with the jab and twist of a bayonet, and those who were persecuted by the Japanese during the Occupation were encouraged to mutilate the corpses. Many had suffered at the hands of the Japanese and the corpses were unrecognizable by the time they had finished.
In the midst of these bloody reprisals the pregnant Evangeline had her wrists and ankles tied together and was hung over a bamboo pole. The MPAJA guerrillas carried her about the settlement as huntsmen carry wild boar out of the jungle, and her crimes were shouted out as she hung and wept, her bound wrists and ankles bearing the weight of her pregnant body. Though the judgement of the mob was harsh the intervention of her grandmother prevented her murder. After Evangeline had suffered an hour or so of humiliation, and had been dropped several times, she was cut free of her bindings. She went into labour soon after, and gave birth to a stillborn baby boy. The squatters of Jing Jang all agreed that the MJAPA had done Evangeline a service by ridding her body of evil.
The return of the British ended the Fifteen Days of Terror and normal life was resumed. In spite of all she had suffered Evangeline did not leave for Kajang or to start a new life elsewhere, but stayed with her sister and grandmother. Over the years her hard work and resilience has earnt her a quiet respect but even after resettlement Evangeline remains stigmatized and an outsider.
After the night of 12 September we kept the Lim sisters under surveillance and they have no affiliations with the Communists. They are left alone by villagers and bandits alike. When the British returned, Old Mother Wu swore that she would avenge the men who had tortured her granddaughter. Her neighbours laughed at the notion of this old lady exacting revenge on the Communist guerrillas, but were silenced when, days later, Evangeline’s torturers’ remains were found in Jing Jang. Shortly before she died, Old Mother Wu made another oath, to protect her granddaughters from beyond the grave. That superstition holds such sway over ruthless bandits is hard to believe, but one must remember that superstition is a powerful force among the Chinese.
I am not going to report last night’s incident, but I write in warning to you. I urge you to keep away from the Lim sisters. I am not superstitious, but they reek of bad luck …
The reek of bad luck. I breathed it in as Evangeline lay beneath me on the rough and splintery floor. I breathed in our ill fate and the condemnation of the stars, infused with the scent of jasmine at her neck. I would die to conjure it up again, that intoxication of the senses. Had I known how short-lived our carnality was to be, how long-enduring the lovelessness to come, I would have savoured every last molecule of her, grown inebriated on her sweet brine. My memory of that night occurs in staccato bursts of heat and eruptions of flesh. The damp hollow at the base of her throat, the shadows cast by her tilted chin. Her teeth glistening, tarnished and chipped. Perspiration stung my eyes and cast her in a diaphanous haze. Though she moved with me, arched her back and dug her callused fingertips in my shoulders, she made no sound other than her breathing. Perhaps I was inattentive. I could not silence my thoughts. The corpses crowded into the watch tower and jeered as my beloved and I writhed together on the floor.
A spike of poison rushed through my veins and I cried out, clasping Evangeline’s shoulders in a throb of rage. I was sweat-drenched, light-headed, as if the watch tower had moved to a mountain top, a thinner altitude. The corpses were gone, though I knew I had not subdued them for long. Blinking, eyes smarting, I gazed upon Evangeline as she lay, mute and trembling, on the rough and splintery floor.
17
I WOKE IN my armchair to a miscellany of aches and pains, my bladder a swollen water balloon on the verge of bursting. The lamp was on and though the mantelpiece clock was tick-tocking loudly, the hands were spinning fast as helicopter blades, and the hour a mystery. I got up out of the chair, stiff neck and aching back reproaching me for not setting up the fold-out bed, and hobbled to the bathroom in my pyjamas (muttering Come alive, damn you! to my cramped foot). I was desperate for a wee, so you can imagine my annoyance when I clicked on the bathroom light and saw Lieutenant Spencer hogging the lavatory, his shorts bunched up around his hairy ankles. The creepy-crawlies of the Malayan jungle had invaded the bathroom too, the floor a wriggling blanket of centipedes, millipedes and flightless cicada. The lieutenant was pallid and shaking. He was hunched like a philosopher deep in thought, forearms resting on his thighs.
‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘Have they been serving that dodgy curry at the officers’ mess again? Or have you been over-indulging your vices with Charles? I need to wee. How long are you going to be exactly?’
The lieutenant’s backside retorted with a splutter, then an explosion. The pneumatic splatter went on for ages, as if he were purging himself of his entire intestinal tract. Poor quivering Spencer slumped against the cistern. A silent moan escaped his lips. I pitied the poor blighter. You’d think the afterlife would spare the deceased such vulgar earthly sufferings. But as far as I can tell, the indignities of life recur with gleeful vehemence. As usual, the lieutenant had that whopping great hole where his guts ought to have been. How strange that a man so thoroughly eviscerated should suffer from a gastrointestinal complaint.
But the spirit world is rife with such illogic.
‘Are you all right there, Lieutenant?’ I asked, superfluously.
‘No, I ain’t,’ said Spencer. ‘I’ve got the cholera. Charles has it an’ all.’
Spencer was as wilted as a dying lily, pores weeping tears of perspiration. What now? I wondered. Thanks to my conscientious hand-washing regime and cast-iron immune system I never caught the cholera. But having assisted the Red Cross when the epidemic hit The Village of Everlasting Peace, I knew the standard treatment: antibiotics; rehydration salts diluted in a cup of boiled water. But I had none of these in my bathroom cabinet, and even if I had, Spencer was a ghost and I doubted he would be able to ingest any of it.
‘Chin up, old chap,’ I said. ‘You’ll live. At least you did at the time. You recovered very quickly, if memory serves correctly. You have bowels of steel.’
‘Oh, fuck off, Goldilocks,’ groaned Spencer.
He hunched over his thighs again, shaking like a space shuttle preparing for take-off. By now the pressure of my bladder was unbearable and warning sirens resounded in my head. How on earth was I going to get Spencer off the porcelain shrine when he was convinced he was dying of cholera and determined not to budge? Ordinarily I’d accept this hierarchy of need without demur, but Spencer was already dead, whereas I was alive and needed to pee in extremis. That decided me. A millipede crunched under my slipper as I stepped towards him.
