The Orientalist and the Ghost Read online

  Every morning hundreds of Chinese tappers queued in the pre-dawn gloom, rattling latex-collecting tins, jouncing babies and leaning impatiently on bicycle handlebars. Though the siren had howled, the east gate was often shut when I arrived, the guards – visible through the police-hut window – eating samosas and drinking sweet tea. The plantation was a two-mile trek away and the tappers had to collect as much rubber as they could before it congealed in the noonday heat. Hurry up, hurry up, it’s five o’clock already! We have to go to work, they’d grumble, glaring at the guards and cursing their ancestors. Good! Here comes the big-nosed devil! they’d say when they saw me. Hey, tell those lazy Malays to hurry up and let us out! Drink tea, drink tea! That’s all they ever do … My predecessor, the late Assistant Resettlement Officer Ah Wing, would not have tolerated such cheek. Ah Wing was a disciplinarian who sent bolshie tappers to the back of the queue. But I would rap on the police-hut door on their behalf, calling the guards away from their dawn banquet of Darjeeling and dahl.

  Check-point duty was managed by four guards, a policeman up in the lookout tower (manning a machine gun that rotated to counter both a jungle attack and a village insurrection) and myself, acting as translator. The tappers were inspected two by two. First we had to check that the face on the identity card corresponded to that of the tapper (to ensure that he or she was a legitimate villager and not some Communist impostor). This was no easy feat, as to the untrained eye the Chinese are a very homogenous race. Also, most of the Chinese squatters, having never been photographed before, were wide-eyed in the snapshots (as if being violently goosed), petrified the camera might steal something of their souls. Once identity had been verified we moved on to the body search. Ponytails were undone and hair combed loose. Torches were shone into ears, mouths, nostrils and belly-buttons. Suspicious bulges were prodded and tappers ordered to disrobe to clear up ambiguities. The men resented us frisking their wives. The women resented laying their squalling babies on the ground so we could check inside their nappies. The cyclists resented dismantling their bicycles to let us peer inside the hollow frames. Even water bottles had to be unscrewed and tasted to check for sugar.

  It was very strict and time-consuming and tedious. The policemen operated on a guilty-until-proven-innocent principle, manhandling the villagers in a way that initially shocked me. Yet as the days wore on, and I learnt more about the villagers’ smuggling techniques, the guards’ draconian measures began to seem appropriate. Any tapper caught violating Emergency Regulation 4C (concerning the movement of provisions into restricted areas) was taken to the police hut for questioning. Once the villagers had been packed off to detention camp I would reread their statements in bewilderment.

  Name: Mr Tan

  Contraband: Antibiotic tablet, inserted in left nostril.

  Statement: I am old and senile. I often misplace things.

  Name: Miss Yok Lan Ong

  Contraband: Encoded message on cigarette paper, rolled and inserted in skirt hem.

  Statement: I do not know how that got there. Someone must have put it in my skirt when it was out on the washing line.

  Name: Miss Tammy Lai

  Contraband: Vial of morphine and syringe, placed in her baby’s nappy.

  Statement: I am a busy mother of five children. I cannot be expected to keep an eye on them all of the time.

  It was very depressing when a villager was sent to detention camp. I doubt many of them were genuine supporters of the Malayan Races Liberation Army. They smuggled because they’d been blackmailed into it by terrorists who stole up on them while they were tapping and pressed knives to their throats. Or because they had fathers and sons among the jungle bandits and they didn’t want them to starve. Far more was smuggled beyond the check-point than we detected. Sergeant Abdullah had a theory that most contraband was smuggled in the lower-body cavities. A woman of child-bearing age could take up to half a katis of rice, he told me, and the men never waddle like that on the journey home.

  The unfortunates at the end of the queue had to wait an hour or two to get beyond the check-point. Every inch the sun edged over the horizon was several ringgit lost. (I won’t make enough to feed my family this week! the last in the queue complained.) I was always relieved to flee the east gate at eight, not least because that was the hour the market gardeners set off for work, presenting the guards with buckets of pig excrement to inspect.

  Every morning I took my second breakfast on the veranda with Charles. It was never the most pleasant of meals, for Charles possessed a dichotomy of character and the morning saw him at his worst.

  In the hours of moonlight Charles was Bacchus, roaring his heart out as Wagner trumpeted from the gramophone. He’d raise his glass of whisky (or gin or rum or crème de menthe) and make magniloquent toasts to the future independence of Malaya, to the victory of the Allied Forces or to the afternoon his Japanese jailers huddled around hand grenades and blew themselves to smithereens. Then he’d get a bit silly and raise a glass to Winston Lau’s spicy laska, or the piebald mongrel trotting by the officers’ hut. In the evening time, assisted by his old friends Johnny Walker and Jack Daniels, Charles was in buoyant spirits.

  But in the cruel morning light he was crapulent and bestial, as if he’d descended a few rungs of the evolutionary ladder. He’d scowl in his rattan chair, his shirt buttoned up incorrectly beneath his red braces, his sparse curls wet from the bathing hut. I’d eat my condensed-milk sandwiches and try to ignore Charles as he took wincing sips of his coffee (twice-brewed to tarry potency), Radio Malaya playing tunes of breezy joie de vivre, in mockery of our grim repast.

  I think it was a misguided sense of duty that made me endure Charles’s gargoylesque turn of mouth and yellow-tinctured skin every morning. The hungover Charles seemed to exist in demonstration of some universal principle concerning the conservation of pleasure: he who inducts the fire of whisky into his veins so the warmth spreads throughout in mimicry of joy shall awaken to a bolt of pain in the skull … I had no sympathy for Charles’s self-inflicted misery. While I’d been up since before daybreak, inspecting trouser waistbands for hidden glucose tablets as part of ‘Operation Starvation’, Charles had been in his bed, snoring those deafening snores of his, infamous throughout the village.

  Once sufficiently caffeinated by his special twice-brewed coffee, Resettlement Officer Dulwich would put on his seersucker suit and we’d go to the office to attend to the administrative business of The Village of Everlasting Peace. First I’d read aloud the incident reports filed by the night patrol; of sniper fire from the hills, or villagers arrested for hurling boots over the perimeter fence for the bandits. Then Charles would dictate letters to the District War Committee and the Malayan Chinese Association, requesting funding for more barbed wire and guards, which I clattered out on the Olivetti. Shielded by our panama hats, we’d tour the village in the mid-morning heat, noting what facilities had fallen into disrepair and areas where the lalang grass had overgrown (providing cover for the Reds to slither up on their bellies and ambush us). I must confess that as we walked among the ramshackle fly-blown shacks, the popularity of Resettlement Officer Dulwich was rather eclipsed by that of his young assistant. Bare-gummed old ladies would cry out honorific greetings to me and mudlark children would fly lovingly at my shins. The neglected Charles seemed undismayed – or simply too hungover to care – and as we strolled would tut-tut and say: ‘Order must be imposed on this mess.’ Though only one tenth of the villagers were literate Charles penned civic-minded messages which I translated into Mandarin and posted about The Village of Everlasting Peace.

  Villagers! Please think of your neighbours. Do not let piglets and children wander into other people’s huts.

  In the interests of hygiene please refrain from urinating in areas other than the latrines. Anyone caught doing so will be put on fence-mending duty for seven days.

  Anyone caught gambling/eating opium/offering or soliciting the services of prostitution will be arrested, and/or have their
rice ration halved.

  The Emergency Information Services sent us posters of Surrendered Enemy Personnel to display as part of the anti-Communist campaign. The posters were designed by a team of government propagandists, who were so-called experts in psychological warfare and the mechanics of the Chinese mind. I recall a poster of one pot-bellied defector named Meng. Beneath his smiling photograph was the government’s rallying cry for mass surrender:

  Sick and tired of seeing loved ones starve and risk their lives fighting a hopeless cause in the jungle? Why not persuade them to turn themselves in? Meng walked out of the jungle three months ago and hasn’t looked back since. See how healthy and well-fed he is! And soon he will be reunited with his wife. We understand that Communists make mistakes and are human too …

  I dare say Meng looked the type to defect from his own mother for a pork dumpling or two, and I had my misgivings as I stapled up that poster. Sure enough, hours later Meng had been rebranded in red ink as an ‘Imperialist Running Dog Traitor’ and had to be retired from public view.

  After tiffin, when the sun was at its zenith and scorched the earth so fiercely even one’s shadow went into hiding, Resettlement Officer Dulwich typed up progress reports, or met with Sergeant Abdullah to discuss village security and drink tea with a splash of brandy (or gin or whisky or Amaretto), leaving me free to muck in where I pleased. On Wednesday afternoons the First Battalion Worcestershire Regiment came to help with the construction of the school building, and I often lent a hand there, whistling and hammering planks with the British Tommies. Or I’d troop in the sunshine with the Malay guards patrolling the perimeter fence. When I’d had enough of the security forces I roamed the market gardens, chatting to the toiling villagers and lending an ear to complaints about the over-strict curfew, poor irrigation and a cantankerous spirit that drifted from hut to hut at night, slapping awake first-born sons.

  My favourite weekday afternoons were on Tuesday and Thursday, for those were the days the Australian Red Cross nurses came. As their armoured van rumbled into the village, ailing market-gardeners would throw down their hoes and spades and hurry to queue by the medical hut. It never failed to put the brighteners on everyone. I don’t see very much of the Aussie nurses Madeleine and Josie these days. I bumped into Maddy in the kitchen of my flat about a month ago, looking heartbreakingly young in a blouse and nurses’ pinafore, a Red Cross cap atop her bouncy curls. She had a scouring pad in one hand and a bottle of Cif cleanser in the other, and was scrubbing month-old frying-pan splatters from around the cooker hob.

  ‘There’s no need for that, Maddy,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes, there is!’ replied my domineering lovely, scrubbing vigorously. ‘If you cleaned up your messes you wouldn’t have this impossible build-up of grease. Scrub-a-dub-dub, Christopher, every day! And did you know there’s a legion of fossilized peas under the fridge? Disgraceful!’

  Then she vanished, leaving the kitchen suffused with a lovely lemony fragrance.

  Due to the infrequency of their spectral visits Madeleine and Josie are the most difficult of my Malaya-era acquaintances to remember. I can only conjure up the creamy essence of them: the warm biscuity perfume of their sun-freckled limbs, the tawny wisps loosened from their efficient nurses’ buns, the rubber-band twang of their Aussie accents. I went to see them in my very first week in The Village of Everlasting Peace, to get ointment for my mosquito bites (I had twenty-seven itchy bumps the size of tuppenny bits). As I pointed out the worst of them, the nurses’ lips twitched with mirth. (Jeez, Maddy! Check out the Pom and his mozzie bites! There, there, now. We’ll put a little calamine on them for you. Hold still and be a big boy!) As Nurse Josie bent over to remove the calamine from the medical case, the hem of her pinafore lifted to show off her plump calves, the freshly laundered cotton hugging her ample behind. A memory flashed in my mind, of Marion Forte-Cannon flaunting herself in a similar manner over the chaise-longue, but sans nurses’ uniform (or any kind of meaningful attire), a radiant you-have-my-consent-to-ravish-me smile tossed over her shoulder. In the later, unhappier stages of our relationship the smile deteriorated into an oh-for-God’ssake-be-a-man-and-ravish-me scowl, but romantic nostalgia inspired me none the less to politely clear my throat and say: ‘You know, you two girls really ought to have someone to translate Cantonese for you. Help you understand the villagers’ symptoms.’

  I nodded to a dour Chinese lady, whom I assumed was waiting to be seen. Nurse Josie also gestured to the old crab-apple.

  ‘Awww … that’s sweet of you, Christopher,’ she said, ‘but we’ve already got the best interpreter in the village, haven’t we, Evangeline?’

  I gave the Chinese lady a puzzled glance, without the faintest intuition she was to be my future beloved and the source of fifty years of mental anguish. Evangeline was no beauty, and certainly not the stuff of erotic daydreams. Cupid’s desire-tipped arrow did not prick my heart.

  In 1951 Evangeline Lim was thirty-eight years old, though the hardships endured during the Occupation had aged her by a decade. Her eyes were wrinkle-shrouded, her nose battered out of shape, and her lips miserly and thin. And as if further to ruin her looks, her hair was cropped like a man’s. Evangeline did possess one exquisite feature, though. Her eyes, I was to discover, were the colour of smoke (a sure sign of misbehaving colonial forefathers) and as one gazed into them the irises gently spiralled and evanesced. On the afternoon we first met, however, her eyes performed none of their magic. They were cold and suspicious and dark as stones.

  ‘How do you do, Evangeline,’ I said. ‘You speak English, do you? Terrific. Perhaps we could translate together.’

  That solemn creature did not smile back. She responded in a queer-rhythmed English; strangled, with none of the usual Malay-accented warmth.

  ‘Thank you, but your assistance is not necessary. I taught English for eight years at Kajang High School, so I am more than proficient. Also I don’t think the villagers will want you here. They are very shy of their diseases, and it is hard enough already for them to come here without some white man staring at them too.’

  It hadn’t occurred to me that the Chinese peasants might be ‘shy of their diseases’. This more than justified my banishment from the medical hut. Ah well, I thought sadly, farewell, lovely nurses! Back to the company of stinky, grunty, khaki-clad men …

  ‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I so wanted to lend a hand …’

  I thought the nurses would agree with Evangeline, but Nurse Maddy, staring determinedly at the loose strip of muslin bandage she was rolling up, said: ‘If Christopher wants to help I don’t see why not. We can ask the villagers if it’s OK. Most won’t mind, I’m sure. And if they do then the Pom can step outside during their examination.’

  Good old Nurse Maddy! I thought. Evangeline went a thunderous shade, but said nothing. Only later was I to discover how proud she was of her role as medical-hut translator, and how she wanted it to remain hers and hers alone.

  And so began the war of the interpreters.

  I embarked upon my career as co-translator a gentleman – politely nodding and smiling when Evangeline saw fit to correct and contradict me. But like most young men I had a lively competitive spirit (it wasn’t my impeccable p’s and q’s that got me promoted to captain of the St Andrews University fencing team!) and my gentlemanly powers could only hold out for so long. The sick villagers became pawns in our quest for one-upmanship; the medical hut, the arena for our grammatical duels and jousts. Together we’d peer at bunions and tonsils swollen to the size of ping-pong balls and listen to descriptions of their physical woes. Then we’d relay what we’d heard to the Red Cross nurses, making sly digs at each other. Our attempts at stealth were laughable. The Red Cross nurses were constantly sighing, eyes lifted to heaven, or exchanging knowing smiles. (To this day I don’t know why they didn’t chuck me out. Perhaps our quarrelling was an amusing diversion.)

  More often than not Evangeline was right to correct me. Your crazy understanding of Cant
onese! she’d hiss. To you a rash is a headache and a pain an itch … Our rivalry sometimes took us beyond the bounds of propriety. I remember the afternoon Old Lady Wu sat, wheezing, in the examination chair, her lungs drowning in bilious fluids. Her voice like a rattlesnake in her throat, Old Lady Wu described the chronic symptoms that forced her to sleep sitting upright and made her every waking moment a fight for breath.

  When she ran out of puff and could no longer speak, I turned to Nurse Josie and confidently said: ‘Old Lady Wu says she coughs up bloody phlegm in the mornings.’

  ‘Old Lady Wu says her phlegm is bloody all the time. Not just in the morning,’ Evangeline objected.

  ‘She said her phlegm is bloodiest in the mornings.’

  ‘No, she did not.’

  ‘Yes, she did. She said her coughing is worse then too.’

  ‘Old Lady Wu says her coughing is terrible all the time. See how she is coughing now.’

  Old Lady Wu was indeed hacking away as though her lungs were at that very moment disintegrating. I frowned at her for conspiring to give my enemy the upper hand.

  ‘You wicked children!’ Old Lady Wu wheezed. ‘I am a dying old woman! Stop quarrelling and tell the Foreign She-Devils I want some medicine for my chest!’

  I ought to have left the medical hut alone. But I’d caught the fever of competition, and to allow Evangeline such a victory was unthinkable. What made our petty spats even more distasteful was that they were played out against a backdrop of poverty and life-threatening illnesses. The urchins that scampered about The Village of Everlasting Peace suffered from rickets and smallpox, their infant tummies a lair of parasitic worms. Chinese squatter women reached old age at thirty-nine with prolapsed wombs, arthritis-stiffened joints and ulcerated legs the gadflies bothered from dawn until dusk. A weeping girl came with a handkerchief bundle containing a dozen teeth that had fallen out, begging the nurses to put them back in her diseased gums. A mother brought us her baby, howling its little head off because his chest, scalded in an accident with a boiling kettle, had had a stinging concoction of mandrake and ginger root massaged on it by a Chinese herbalist (who convinced the mother that fire must be fought with fire, then charged her three ringgit for his stupidity).