by Nigel Barley
“It seemed so stupid, Bonnetchen. Why should I applicate to be Dutch to stay in the Indies? It would be like becoming Greek to stay in Japan. Which reminds me. Kasimura is here, though in a different compound of course. Why are Japanese here?” Some men were playing football, irritatingly close, like louts on a beach. Kasimura would, perhaps, be pleased. Through the gate, a long, dry road stretched away to fade out in a blue haze. Very Van Gogh.
“I don’t suppose they give you any news?” I dropped my voice and polished my glasses to confuse spies. “I’m afraid the Japanese are on their way, six months at best before the war starts. They’ve joined up with the Nazis and overrun the French and the British Asian colonies and now they’re leaning on the government here to let them take over – the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Your friend, H.E. the G.G., has resisted their blandishments and told them that if they want the Indies, they will have to fight for them. We’re pouring millions of tons of concrete into defences at Surabaya. I shouldn’t be telling you this, I suppose. But neither of us ever seemed very much representatives of our nations. If they win, you will be free and you can come and visit me in a camp just like this, maybe the same camp. The Japanese will like Mount Lawu, just like Fuji. If we survive, that is but – look on the bright side – I expect they’d be too busy raping women and killing Chinese to care much about us.”
Walter gulped smoke and stared down the road, seeming not to have heard. He said: “The oddest thing is that little priest, Father Scruple, you remember? The one who turned up at Conrad’s funeral? He’s chaplain here. I think he has designs on my immortal soul but actually I think I am turning him into a pagan. I am working on that Balinese dictionary you once helped me with and we discuss the more religious concepts. Little by little, he is being undermined. He plays an excellent game of chess.”
Scruple? I wondered about Dion. Everyone was getting lost or, rather, they were still there, like the pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope, but with occasional twists so that they formed ever new and more unlikely patterns.
“I brought you stuff from the art circle in Surabaya, paint, paper, canvas, brushes and pencils. Life must be terribly boring here. No dragonflies.” He smiled. I had pictured this so differently, myself showering bounty down on him. He happy, warmly grateful, relaxed. But the spontaneity had been stolen, the goods seized in the guardhouse, quarantined to be unwrapped, searched, probed at the guards’ leisure. It was like getting your Christmas presents on Boxing Day when they no longer counted and it was anyway as if Walter had purged himself of the need for artistic supplies. Perhaps he was painting on the canvas inside his head as I had that time in Denpasar.
“I have learnt a lot from this experience,” Walter confided. “How very little a man requires. Yet we constantly educate ourselves to find the one thing that is wrong, that is lacking. When I get out of here, I shall be less driven, more ready to take life as it comes.”
I gaped. I could not imagine who this rejected Prometheus of Walter’s imagination, might be. If Walter became less driven, he would be comatose.
“I heard a story, once about a young village man who took a rich tourist fishing on the shore. He showed the man what to do and pulled out two fish in quick succession, then wanted to go home to eat them. But the tourist wanted more for his money and, as they sat, he calculated how many fish they might catch in one day and how many months it would take to buy a boat so that they could get out to the reef where the big fish are and how many years it would be before they might have twenty men working for them in boats and dominate all the fishing in the area. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ asked the young man. ‘So that you can be rich,’ replied the tourist, astonished. ‘Then you could retire and go fishing.’ One day I shall do the painting of that.” He settled back and wiggled his buttocks down into the dust. “One day.” As if I were nagging him.
My hand brushed the side of my jacket and detected the curvosity contained within. “Oh yes. I brought you this.” I held out a pingpong ball. “They said at the art circle you kept asking for one.” He shaded his eyes to peer into the sun, then leapt forward, mouth open, eyes wide and seized it with trembling fingers.
“A pingpong ball!”
I felt a stir of interest around us. A couple of men came up immediately and stared at it hungrily. “A ball! Walter has a ball!” A muted murmur rippled out across the compound. Voices were heard asking for confirmation.
“You must understand that for three months we have had a table and almost two bats but no ball. We have tried playing with cactus pith balls and wooden balls that we made ourselves and Kasimura-san managed to produce an origami ball that was almost round from a huge sheet of paper but it was no good. No bounce.” He grasped my legs in genuine thanks. Now there were tears in his eyes. One of the men reached out to touch the orb like a holy relic, pure, clean, virginal. “Pingpong is one of the few pleasures left to me,” Walter said tragically and then laughed at himself. He threw back his head, exhausted. “Bonnetchen, it is amazing for how little men will sell their own souls.”
***
I was wrong about the Japanese. It was not months but weeks before they were on the move but then I was not alone in my mis-estimate. After the attack on the Americans at Pearl Harbour, Imperial forces spread rapidly over east Asia like a wine stain, flooding into Thailand, seeping into Malaya, the Philippines, reaching out delicate tendrils towards the great British bastion of Singapore. H.E. the G.G. was on the radio again, bowing to the inevitable with a declaration of war. Hard times ahead but victory is certain. We shall win because our cause is just. Then the first tentative airraids on unprotected cities, the first landings in Borneo. The cowardly enemy shall be defeated and their perfidy punished. Then Surabaya was bombed and strafed and we came to know what modern warfare might mean with women and children, bloody and dazed, wandering in the ruins. Then, Singapore, last bulwark in the East, fell with a crash that echoed around the world. Apparently, the British had built their impregnable redoubt with the guns pointing the wrong way. We shall fight on and never surrender. The lessons for Surabaya were obvious and perhaps the Japanese would pass through Ngawi and free Walter on their way there. American and Australian forces moved in and then out as a series of landings and set-piece naval battles were lost and the Indonesians began their own attacks, harassing Dutch forces. The Battle of the Java Sea, off the coast at Surabaya, put matters beyond any further doubt. From his camp, secure in the dark hills, perhaps Walter could see the flashes of the offshore guns and the following thuds as the armoured dinosaurs clashed and gored and the Allied fleets were torn apart in a vain attempt to reach the Japanese troop convoys heading for Java. Most went to the bottom, with only a few vessels escaping to Australia. The Japanese invasion fleet sailed on. Now we were alone.
I, of course, was very far from alone, being already under military occupation. The Japanese had landed in Bali the previous month and were settling in nicely for a long stay. H.E. the G.G. could still be heard on the radio, on pain of death if discovered, telling us that the tide would be turned at any moment. At least he was not caught in the mad rush for a plane to Australia, unlike the rest of the leadership, and would be shipped off to comfortless exile in far Japanese Manchuria.
They came, of course, like all invading forces – like the annual pestilence – to Sanur and began by devastating Walter’s akvarioom, perhaps mistaking the empty fishtanks for strategic installations. The Dutch commander in his barracks in Denpasar, learning too late of their arrival, had sent a note to the airfield, ordering his men “not to delay in demolishing it.” The local sergeant, confused by the implied double negative, did nothing as a detachment of paratroops, under the dashing Colonel Horiuchi, descended on the airbase and, finding it undefended, occupied it and adjourned to Manxi’s next door. It was supposed to be very different, of course. A loyal band of 600 local troops, backbone stiffened by white officers such as myself, had been drilled to hold itself in suicidal readiness to repel seaborne
invasion. But at two in the morning, on that particular night, it was pouring with rain and the invasion was not even noticed until dawn, by which time, the men’s only thought was to slough off their uniforms and melt quietly into the ricefields. The Japanese vanguard had already driven, under cover of darkness, into town and the residents awoke to find the rain clearing away nicely and, not one, but two rising suns over their town.
It was Bali’s good fortune to come under naval, rather than army, administration. Here, would be none of the deliberate atrocities favoured by General Imamura on Java as educative measures. There, allied POWs were packed into animal cages and shipped to Surabaya, there to be publicly thrown to the sharks, still caged, by chortling troops. I knew Walter, for the first time in his life, would be actually protected by his passport but I trembled to know him in such a terrible place. Like many others, I was herded into a vast chicken run on the lapangan kota and sat for two days without food and with scant water, as the fallen mighty walked about me and wore themselves out by tutting and huffing and swearing the vengeance that would be theirs, not for the invasion but the indignity. Smit was there, quivering with rage and terror, having been given a good slapping by exuberant troops. I could not decently bask in his suffering as the poor man was beside himself about the unknown fate of his wife. How often the love of others makes us, not strong, but weak and vulnerable. Then, to our general surprise, soldiers came and drove us out and made us work.
It seemed we were to offer public proof of the collapse of white rule and we were set to mend the roads and clear out the drainage ditches in the hot sun and, given no tools, we had to use our bare hands. The slightest hesitation or reluctance was rewarded by a thrashing to unconsciousness with a stout bamboo about the head and shoulders. Sometimes, the guards just hit you anyway because it had been some while since they had hit someone. At such moments, most covered their genitals. I protected my glasses. If they were broken, where would I ever get another pair? The locals goggled at this unlikely sight of our brutalisation but seemed to take no pleasure in it. One brave man I knew vaguely, was moved to compassion and even threw a quarter of a ringgit into the ditch where I was working when the guard’s attention was distracted. The gesture moved me to tears. Occasionally, people would be led away. Some came back, badly knocked about. On the third night, one of these, an engineer, died after coughing blood all day. On the fourth, one of the young airmen was called forward, forced whimpering to his knees and executed before us with a sword, the head lopped off by a strutting officer who worked his shoulder afterwards and looked piqued as though he had strained himself with a tricky golf shot. Whether this was a random lottery, or for some specific reason, we never knew but we were ever-fearful of the guards’ approach and watched them make their daily selection with predictable terror and guilty relief. It had sunk in that we were living in a different world and we struggled to understand its rules but the arbitrariness of violence bore the message that there were no rules any more. And after about week of this, the soldiers came for me. It was almost a relief, like knowing the disease you will finally die of.
The two who took me were very small, haunted – Margaret would have intuited – by some inferiority complex displaced into aggression. They pushed and pulled me quite unnecessarily, drove me with rifle butts, out of the compound and up the steps of the administrative building and into the Escher-provoking hallway. No longer langued and armed gules above the door, just a heap of smashed plaster and a Japanese flag, tacked up over the vacancy, as if implying a purely provisional occupation. There, they paused and the larger of the two kicked me viciously in the back of the knees so that I went down hard. He put his face very close to mine and hissed in Dutch, “White shit!” I felt saliva spray on my skin and wondered whether they had been issued with Dutch phrasebooks to be used in the proper ill-treatment of prisoners. Humiliatingly too, I was aware that he was very young, with beautiful skin and teeth and long, black hair – too long on the neck for a soldier, must be vain about it – devastatingly, muskily handsome. Desire stirred unwillingly. There came the sound of a door opening, shouts, violent slaps, a hand assisting me up from behind so that first thing I saw was my escort hunched and covering genitals with hands – not that that, alas, had been where the slapping had taken place – but in a gesture of submission. I turned, bent and hobbling like an old man, to see an officer with a long cigarette-holder and a broad smile – Kasimura.
“Kasimura-san!”
“Mr Bonnet. Thank you for coming.” He shouted and hissed my escort – now humbled schoolboys – away and walked, with swift light steps, into the office, gesturing gracefully towards a chair, sitting down, himself, behind the desk once throned over by Van Diemen. A delicate teapot and handleless cups stood on a lacquered tray. He poured, proffered, disclosed the contents of a carved cedarwood cigarette box with authority. The hair was still so over-groomed as to resemble an implausible toupee.
“You are, I take it, no longer in the photography business, Kasimura-san.” The cigarettes were “Peace” brand, inaugurated to mark the end of the last war. Since the government had recently forbidden the use of Western names for Japanese brands, these must be old stock. In those days, in Europe, only lavatory paper always had a Japanese brand name. The Japanese were, after all, famous for their paper.
“You are correct, Mr Bonnet. I now have the honour to be head of the Kempeitei in this sector.” He glowed and swelled. We were already learning the basic Japanese necessary for survival. The Kempeitei were the military secret police. Even the Japanese lived in terror of them.
“My congratulations, Kasimura-san.”
He smiled coolly. “It is just one of the changes you southern barbarians will have to get used to. Other races too. Last night, I had the pleasure of visiting my old friend Lee King at his shop – at his former shop. It was a great joy to re-educate him. His business is now under new management. Later today, I shall be interrogating Mr Smit.” My hand shook. Perhaps it was the impact of the first nicotine on my system after so long without.
“Tell me, Mr Bonnet, about your friend Sampih. I understand that he is involved with the nationalist youth, the Pemuda. I should like to talk to him. Where do you suppose I might find him?”
“Sampih? I have no idea. I haven’t seen him for years, not since McPhee left. As you know, he is a dancer. He will be dancing somewhere.”
He pursed thin lips. “I have no intention of harming him. Do not alarm yourself. The nationalist leaders have been very co-operative. There are to be volunteer workers for the Japanese war effort. We may even recruit soldiers here to fight imperialism elsewhere. I have always felt that you were sympathetic to the cause of Indonesian independence, Mr Bonnet. I should think you would wish to help the just struggle of your friends.” He looked at me icily. I changed the subject.
“The football pitches,” I said. “That was clever. A diversion. Paratroops, yes?” He inclined his head graciously. “And Walter. Spies-san. Where is he? Has he been freed?” He frowned.
“I have no information on that. You will appreciate that I have more urgent concerns. I last saw him several months ago. The Dutch were moving all the white prisoners to Sumatra to avoid our advance. Us, they left behind. You should not concern yourself over him. The Dutch surrender in Sumatra was very rapid. As one of our allies, he will certainly have been freed. He will just have to sweat it out.” Walter never sweated. He raised his cup and nodded towards the tea. We sipped. It became a sort of toast. “There is always the possibility that he was transported overseas.”
“Overseas? But why …?”
He cleared his throat. “Towards the end, the Dutch forces behaved very … eccentrically. They had ten times as many men as us when they surrendered. They devoted their efforts to strange ends. One of the last things they did was to ship 200 communist prisoners to Australia. What will they do with them there? They could have left them. We would certainly have taken care of them. It served no military purpose. Me, of course, th
ey should have shot immediately as of high value to the enemy. Instead, I was left behind.” He seized a stack of papers from one side of the desk and bent purposefully over them. It looked like the same file Van Diemen had studied. “But to your own fate. I have spoken of you to our commander, who is a man of considerable learning, a university man, from Kyoto. We Japanese are admirers of art and civilisation. It does no good to see a man such as yourself on the lapangan kota.” I flinched with reflex guilt. “It has been decided that you shall be released along with several other artists for the greater glory of the Japanese nation. Your house, as well as that of Walter-san, has been requisitioned by His Majesty’s Imperial Forces. You will live with the painter Hofker in Abang. Should you not agree, you will be shot. You will not leave Abang, nor will you be permitted to write or enter into correspondence with anyone else until further notice. Should you disobey, you will be shot. In return for this kind mercy you will set your skills at the disposal of Dai Nippon. You will continue to paint and will deliver your paintings to me. Should you fail to satisfy your monthly quota of paintings, you will be shot.”
I was dazed, confused. “Paintings? But what paintings? What must I paint?”
Kasimura rose up behind his desk and inflated his pigeon chest. “Breasts!” he cried, eyes gleaming behind his glasses. There was spittle at the corner of his mouth. “You will paint bare Balinese breasts!”
And so began a curious period of my life when I painted bare breasts in the service of His Imperial Majesty, The Emperor of Japan. I can only assume the paintings were sold to members of the Japanese forces and shipped back to loved ones in Tokyo as the face of the exotic east. Whether Kasimura grew rich on the proceeds, I cannot begin to guess. Abang lay just along the road from my previous studio. Walter’s house was occupied by a gaunt and hagridden agronomist, Dr Nasiputi, charged with introducing strains of sticky rice more pleasing to the Japanese palate and my own house had fallen to two of my chicks of the Pemuda persuasion who produced stirring pro-Japanese posters exhorting young people to become smiling ramusha, volunteer labourers for the occupation. Thousands of them would die of neglect and ill-treatment in the forests and swamps of Burma but that we did not yet know. I wished them well but condemned their abominable use of colour
