East of India

by East of India (retail) (epub)

  Summoning up a bucketful of courage, she looked over the side of the boat to the bloodstained water. No longer needed as a platform, the body floated away from the side of the boat. She fixed the scene in her mind. That was when she realized whose broad back she had stepped on. Her stomach retched as the truth hit her. She was not just seventeen; she was also a widow.

  Chapter Ten

  Sickened and numb with fear, she allowed herself to be herded with the others into a tiny cabin. In the dim light she saw that two other women already occupied it: one was a pretty Malay with oval eyes and a perfect mouth. The other had blue-black hair and a familiar face.

  ‘Lucy!’

  ‘Nadine!’

  Nadine fought down the terror that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘How did you get here?’ She forced herself to sound confident.

  ‘We were on a Malayan prauw – it was owned by someone who owes loyalty, and money, to my father. Unfortunately he wished to relinquish his debt without settlement but with interest, and so sold me to the Japanese.’

  The door slammed shut as the girls squeezed themselves into what little space there was, Nadine sitting tightly against Lucy’s side.

  ‘Doreen’s still on the beach with the children. I think they’ve left some soldiers there. I hope they’ll be all right.’

  She wrapped her arms around her bent knees, staring at them so Lucy could not see the fear in her eyes.

  ‘I heard the gunshots,’ murmured Lucy.

  ‘Martin’s dead. They shot all the men.’

  Lucy sighed. ‘I think my husband is still alive, but I don’t know where.’

  One of the Malay women who appeared to have understood addressed Nadine. ‘They will not shoot your friends. They have left guards until a prison ship arrives. That is why they shot the soldiers and very fit men so they would not overpower the Japanese soldiers.’

  Nadine jerked her chin, the only sign that she understood.

  ‘And what about us?’ she asked Lucy. ‘They say we are going to work for our food. Is this true?’

  Lucy looked away. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am afraid it is.’

  * * *

  That first night at sea they were fed rice mixed with a small bit of fish, but they ate little, their appetites suppressed not only by a state of fear, but also by nausea as a consequence of the steady drumming of the engines, the rolling of the ship and the stench of fuel.

  The room they were in was unbearably hot. Sweat glistened on their faces, trickled between their breasts and seeped into their clothes.

  Two of the women threw up in a bucket supplied for them in the corner. Nadine tried not to look in their direction.

  The smell was dreadful: vomit, urine, faeces and oil plus the steady increase in stale sweat. The bucket had to be used for everything and the hold they were stowed in was dark and airless, the bulkheads running with condensation.

  The guard who brought the food lingered, his gaze moving slowly over the girls crouched in the small space.

  He made a comment to his colleague as he eyed each girl in turn. Both laughed before closing the door.

  Not one of the girls ate a mouthful of food until the door was firmly shut.

  ‘A charming pair,’ muttered Nadine.

  ‘What did they say?’ asked the Indian girl, her eyes black with fear. ‘Can you tell me in English?’

  Nadine shrugged. ‘I would if I could. The tone of their voices was enough for me.’

  Lucy remained silent, her eyes lowered to her untouched rice.

  Nadine frowned. She could tell from Lucy’s face that she knew what had been said. ‘What is it, Lucy?’

  One of the Australian nurses had also noticed her expression. ‘Well? You look as though you might know some Japanese. What did they say?’

  ‘Lucy isn’t Japanese. She’s half Chinese and half Dutch,’ Nadine remarked defensively.

  ‘No need to get touchy. I only wanted to know what was said, not where she’s from. My name’s Peggy Bennett.’ She offered her hand. Nadine took it. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  Betty rolled her eyes over their dismal surroundings. ‘Raffles Hotel would have suited me better. Yep! A nice cool pink gin would have done the job.’

  ‘And I’m Betty. We’re nurses – or at least, we were nurses.’

  Again a shaking of hands. ‘Nadine Burton.’

  ‘You all alone?’

  Nadine nodded. ‘I am now.’

  Wanting to change the subject, Nadine turned to Lucy. ‘What did the soldiers say?’

  ‘Wait,’ whispered Lucy, her porcelain features frozen with tension. ‘Wait and you will see.’

  The guards returned about an hour later led by the officer, the interpreter trailing respectfully in his wake. One of the guards placed a bowl of water on the floor.

  ‘For washing bodies and food dishes,’ explained the interpreter.

  ‘Which first?’ whispered Nadine. In the past, despite having seen all manner of ablutions carried out in the River Ganges, she would have been appalled at washing dishes and bodies in the same bowl. During the Robinson Crusoe existence of the last few weeks, she’d got used to it.

  She glanced at Lucy, saw that her head was bowed, her flickering eyes fixed on the floor, her glossy hair curtaining her face.

  Major Yamamuchi stepped into the cramped cabin, carrying a bamboo cane topped with a silver handle. He used the tip of this to lift Lucy’s trembling chin. Wisely she kept her eyes lowered.

  He said something in Japanese.

  The interpreter translated, though with a sour look on his face. ‘The major says you are pretty.’

  The major let her chin drop, turned to the other Chinese girls and lifted their chins too.

  The two girls were pleasant-looking, but comparing them with Lucy was like comparing reeds to roses.

  The major said something to the interpreter.

  Nadine tried desperately to understand.

  The interpreter’s eyelids fluttered nervously as though he was loath to repeat what had been said.

  The major snapped an order and departed. She’d heard enough Chinese to know that the two girls had been ordered to follow the interpreter. Reluctantly they rose to their feet, keeping so closely together that they appeared joined at the hip.

  The door closed behind them. Silence reigned, yet Nadine was convinced that every heart was thundering in each frightened breast.

  ‘I suppose we should wash up,’ she said, desperate to occupy herself rather than think.

  Lucy nodded silently, started to rise but sank immediately back onto her haunches, her face buried in her hands.

  ‘Lucy? What is it?’

  Lucy’s hands dropped from her face. She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Not now.’

  The Australian girls were nothing if not persistent.

  ‘So where are we going? What will it be like? Do you know?’

  Lucy answered. ‘I’m not sure. I think Sumatra.’

  Pamela, one of the English girls, looked worried. ‘What do you think is happening to those Chinese girls? Surely they aren’t doing laundry at this time of night. Do Chinese do laundry at this time of night? I know their laundries are very good…’

  Betty interjected. ‘Don’t be so bloody ignorant!’

  Nadine asked the same question but more quietly. ‘And what will this place be like? Will we be expected to beat clothes on stones in the river?’

  ‘I will tell you later,’ whispered Lucy.

  ‘Tell me,’ persisted Nadine. ‘Tell me where they’re taking us.’

  She heard Lucy sigh.

  ‘They call them comfort houses. I heard they had them in Manchuria along with all the other horrors they instigated.’

  ‘Is that a place where geishas entertain?’

  Lucy stifled an anguished cry of laughter. ‘Hardly. Geishas sing, dance, and write and recite poetry.’

  ‘Like nautch girls?’ asked Nadine.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  She went
on to explain. ‘Dancing girls in India. Temple dancers, mostly.’

  A beam of moonlight gilded Lucy’s face with silver. Nadine saw her raised eyebrows. ‘And what would a well-brought-up memsahib know about girls like that?’

  Nadine curbed her tongue. Now was not the time for confessions but she couldn’t help wondering how Zakia, Sureya and even her mother would handle this.

  ‘Nothing – not really. Go on. Tell me more.’

  ‘Why do I get the impression that you know more than you’re letting on?’

  ‘Because you know me so well?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Never mind that now. Tell me more.’

  Lucy sighed heavily before continuing. ‘We are to be ianfu, comfort women, selected women installed in an ianjo, a comfort house to attend to the physical needs of Japanese officers. They are what we would call prostitutes, or better still actors and dancers, to entertain as well as provide… well… you know. It seems we have been purchased by a private contractor who supplies girls for men of a more cultured nature – not for the ordinary soldier. For that alone we have to be grateful.’

  ‘I heard that.’ The voice was Betty’s.

  The other girls had heard too and raised themselves onto their elbows.

  ‘If I had known I would not have agreed to come,’ said an English girl. ‘I must protest. I really must.’

  ‘Who to?’ asked Nadine, feeling as though her brain had turned to jelly.

  ‘Well, I don’t know! All I know is that I’ve changed my mind.’ She hissed at Lucy. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?’

  Nadine sprang to Lucy’s defence. ‘Leave her alone. You made your decision. No one forced you. Besides, Lucy was already on the boat at the time. She couldn’t tell us.’

  ‘But I didn’t want to stay! I might be dead by now! Those back on the beach might all be dead by now!’

  ‘If you’re really keen to go back, you can leap over the side and swim there,’ said Betty.

  ‘As long as you don’t mind sharks,’ said Nadine. ‘Besides, those left back there on the beach were being fed and watered. You don’t do that if you’re about to shoot them. It’s a waste of rice for a start.’

  ‘Damn and double damn,’ said Betty, who appeared to have resigned herself to the fact that there was nothing she could do and now lay flat on her back in the limited space. ‘I could have stayed back there and made myself a little grass skirt if I’d really put my mind to it. Can you imagine how pretty that would have been?’

  ‘Over your salmon-pink thighs? Give us a break, Betty,’ chuckled Peggy.

  ‘I’m tired,’ said Nadine, ‘and I really think we should all conserve our energy.’

  ‘In case of emergency? Do you think we are likely to sink?’ asked the Indian girl.

  ‘No. Just because we’ve got the option to enjoy our sleep. We’ve only left an island and lost a battle. There are a lot of people who have left this world and lost their lives. We have to get through this.’

  ‘Too true, little Miss Wisdom.’ Betty sighed and turned over.

  Silence reigned once more, but only until the return of the Chinese girls.

  Both were flung in by soldiers who laughed before closing the door. The girls huddled close to each other, their faces turned to the wall. They made no sound, but their pain was tangible.

  It was almost daybreak, and the grey light of an early dawn replaced that of the moon.

  Nadine sat up first and saw the huddled figures, bent like twin foetuses against each other.

  Lucy brought the bowl of water in which they’d washed their rice bowls and their bodies. She spoke to the two girls in Cantonese, the language of Hong Kong and Malaya.

  Their faces were bloated. The right eye of one girl was almost closed. Blood ran from the other one’s nose and into her mouth. They were both trembling, their few remaining clothes torn and clutched against their bellies.

  Nadine prised a piece of material from one of the girls and proceeded to bathe her wounds. One of the girls moaned and clutched at her stomach. A trickle of blood ran down the inside of her thigh.

  The others were horrified.

  ‘Will this be our fate too?’ Nadine asked Lucy. ‘I thought our new owner catered for cultured clients, not brutes like this?’

  Lucy did not answer.

  The same thing happened at regular intervals on the journey; the same two girls taken, raped consistently and returned in much the same state.

  They screamed and held on to their colleagues. The guards came armed with staves that they used to beat the women back.

  ‘I can still hear them screaming,’ said Betty whilst rubbing at the bruises left by the staves.

  ‘That’s impossible. We’re surrounded by steel.’

  Nadine fixed her eyes on the central point of the floor. ‘It’s in our heads. It always will be.’

  ‘How long can they last?’ she whispered.

  It was Lucy who the two girls confided in, speaking in subdued voices, their eyes becoming more glazed, more hopeless. In the quiet of the night, Lucy repeated to Nadine what they had told her.

  ‘Besides the major and the interpreter, there are fifty military personnel on this boat, mostly ordinary privates, a sergeant and a corporal. Each pays two yen and is expected to spend no more than five minutes, three for preference. Some take longer and although not everyone spends the same each night, there is always a queue. They told me they were virgins before this.’

  Nadine was stunned to silence.

  Lucy too remained silent, her head bowed. Then she said, ‘They are only thirteen years old.’

  Nadine closed her eyes and remembered Zakia and Sureya, both mothers at thirteen.

  Swallowing did not take away the taste of revulsion. Neither did closing her eyes or placing her hands over her ears form a barrier to what was happening. The sight, the stink, the sound would be with her till the day she died – whenever that might be.

  She looked at Lucy who seemed much thinner than she had been, but then they all were.

  ‘What about us? When will it be our turn?’ she asked softly, fearing the answer, but needing confirmation.

  Lucy sighed.

  ‘The Chinese girls have been bought for the common soldiers’ house. We have been bought for a special house. A lot of these places are run by civilians.’

  ‘But the major – surely he’s an officer. The interpreter too – why have they left us alone?’

  Although it was dark, Nadine sensed that Lucy was smiling.

  ‘The men have told Hang Choi and Chan Moy, the two Chinese girls, that the officers prefer each other. That is why they have been given this mission. It is felt they can be trusted to deliver the women unmolested.’

  The other girls had listened in silence, heads bowed, eyes half-closed. One or two sobbed. Some bit their knuckles. The Indian girl was sick. Once her stomach was emptied, she stared up into Nadine’s face with fear-filled eyes.

  ‘What do we do? What do we do?’ she wailed.

  Although just as scared, Nadine showed outward calm. ‘We survive,’ she said. ‘We survive to live on – no matter what.’

  * * *

  The ship’s engines shuddered to a halt. One of the friendlier guards told them they were not far from Palambang in Sumatra.

  Because they had been shut in the cabin for so long, the strong sunlight blinded them, the heat as thick and heavy as a damp blanket so it was difficult to take in their surroundings.

  Nadine took a deep breath, delighting in the taste of fresh air as opposed to the stink of diesel oil by virtue of their close proximity to the engine room.

  Blinking in the strong sunlight, she surveyed where she was just in case she should ever pass this way again, but the light was blinding. It was so hard to see. They had docked at a quayside, which bustled with brown-skinned people and Japanese soldiers. Junks, sampans and Malayan prauws jostled for space between military shipping and inter-island traders. The common gibbons, tha
t the Malays called siamangs, screeched in the trees surrounding grass-roofed houses, and water buffalo dropped steaming piles of manure between army lorries and men riding bicycles.

  The two Chinese girls were siphoned off to a truck carrying other women and a detachment of soldiers. Their faces were blank as though all trace of hope, along with their very souls, were gone for ever.

  No one waved goodbye, wished good luck or even cried. They were too numb.

  Lucy saw the woman first. Elegantly dressed, she was leaning against the bonnet of an equally elegant car. She wore black gloves, a dark red suit, plus hat and shoes to match. An extraordinary sight in such an out-of-the-way place, she was smoking a cigarette held in an extra-long holder. She looked Oriental, and yet her clothes were distinctly European.

  In the manner of a merchant sizing up bolts of cloth, her gaze flitted over each of them, a sardonic smile fixed on her bright red lips.

  ‘Pinch me,’ said Peggy. ‘Are we in Paris, and have I seen that woman in a magazine?’

  Even at this distance, Nadine imagined she could smell expensive perfume.

  ‘I think that mannequin is our new owner,’ she whispered.

  Major Yamamuchi saluted the woman. She smiled in response and handed over a package.

  Nadine and Lucy exchanged glances. It had to be money!

  ‘She is from French Indo-China,’ said a voice at their side. The interpreter had advanced on them silently. ‘You are to go with her. She is Madame Cherry, your ianu.’

  Nadine bowed and said, ‘I do not know this word, ianu. What does it mean? Can you explain, please?’

  ‘Yes.’ He folded his gloved hands behind his back and cleared his throat. ‘Your owner. She it is you will work for. She it is who keeps the Bamboo Bridge House. You are very fortunate. It is for officers only, but special. Colonies of British Empire are now Japanese. Colonel Yamamuchi wishes to learn more about British women for when he is posted to London. You will be happy. Very much food. Very easy life.’

  As he led them forward, the girls whispered amongst themselves.

  Peggy was beside herself. ‘They haven’t taken Australia, have they? Please say they haven’t taken Australia.’