you, for driving me back this morning.’
* * *
Pain started up in my left hand when I returned to my bedroom, throbbing in time to my pulse.
My fury at Aritomo, which had abated during the party, resurfaced. The nerve of the man, making me come all the way from KL only to turn down my offer so quickly and with hardly any serious thought given to it. Bloody Jap. Bloody, bloody Jap!
Opening the bedside drawer, I took out my notebook. It was heavy, thickened by the newspaper clippings I had pasted in it. I turned the pages without really looking at them; I knew their contents by heart. When I had worked as a research assistant in the war crimes trials, I had collected newspaper reports about the trials in Tokyo and other countries the Japanese had occupied. I knew intimately the offences the Japanese officers were charged with, but I still read the clippings regularly, even though I had long ago accepted that there wasn’t a name that I recognised or a familiar face in a photograph. There was never any mention of the camp where I had been imprisoned.
Inserted between the pages at the back of the notebook was a pale blue envelope, the address written in Japanese and English. It was light as a leaf when I held it up. The envelope marked the page where I had recorded the last conversation I had had with a convicted war criminal, a week before I left for Cambridge. I remembered the promise I had made to the man, the promise that I would post his letter for him.
Slowly, the pain in my hand subsided. But it would return. The servants’ voices came faintly from somewhere in the house. One of the peacocks called to its mate. I slotted the envelope back between the pages, closed the notebook and went out to the terrace.
I stood there for a long time, looking towards Yugiri. I stood there until evening submerged the foothills of the valleys and Aritomo’s garden sank away from sight.
Chapter Six
Following the High Commissioner’s murder, Magnus and Frederik went about supervising the workers as they repaired the fence protecting the house. They set up a pair of spotlights along the fence, facing them outwards. Having heard from someone at the Tanah Rata Golf Club about an incident in Ipoh where CTs had lobbed a hand grenade into the dining room of a rubber estate manager’s bungalow as his family was sitting down for lunch, Magnus decided to have the windows covered in a thin wire mesh.
‘Emily said you haven’t seen our clinic,’ Magnus said, while I helped him nail a sheet of wire netting over my bedroom windows. The netting made the room gloomy, and I switched on the light. Two days had passed since Aritomo had turned me down, but I was still resentful about it. ‘Go take a look,’ Magnus went on. ‘Our nurse quit last year – said it was too dangerous to work here. Emily decided to run it herself. She trained as a nurse, you know, before she saw the light and married me.’
I was reluctant to visit the clinic, but I knew I had to, if only to give Emily face. The whitewashed bungalow was a short walk from the workers’ houses. A Tamil man slouching on a chair grinned at me when I entered the waiting room. Emily sat behind a low counter, her lips moving soundlessly as she counted out pills into a bottle. Through an open doorway I saw a room with two beds behind a partition. The bare legs of a woman were sticking out from one of the beds.
‘That’s Letchumi,’ Emily said, glancing at me.
‘Bitten by a snake.’
Emily tilted her head to one side. ‘Oh, yes, it was the night you arrived. She’s doing fine now. Dr Yeoh gave her an injection. Maniam, eh, Maniam! Ambil ubat .’
The coolie in the chair stood up and came to collect the bottle of pills from her. She made him repeat her dosage instructions in Malay before she let him leave. Turning back to me, she pointed at the boxes of medicines stacked in a corner. ‘These came in today. I ordered more, in case the CTs attack us.’ She shook her head.
* * *
Pain started up in my left hand when I returned to my bedroom, throbbing in time to my pulse.
My fury at Aritomo, which had abated during the party, resurfaced. The nerve of the man, making me come all the way from KL only to turn down my offer so quickly and with hardly any serious thought given to it. Bloody Jap. Bloody, bloody Jap!
Opening the bedside drawer, I took out my notebook. It was heavy, thickened by the newspaper clippings I had pasted in it. I turned the pages without really looking at them; I knew their contents by heart. When I had worked as a research assistant in the war crimes trials, I had collected newspaper reports about the trials in Tokyo and other countries the Japanese had occupied. I knew intimately the offences the Japanese officers were charged with, but I still read the clippings regularly, even though I had long ago accepted that there wasn’t a name that I recognised or a familiar face in a photograph. There was never any mention of the camp where I had been imprisoned.
Inserted between the pages at the back of the notebook was a pale blue envelope, the address written in Japanese and English. It was light as a leaf when I held it up. The envelope marked the page where I had recorded the last conversation I had had with a convicted war criminal, a week before I left for Cambridge. I remembered the promise I had made to the man, the promise that I would post his letter for him.
Slowly, the pain in my hand subsided. But it would return. The servants’ voices came faintly from somewhere in the house. One of the peacocks called to its mate. I slotted the envelope back between the pages, closed the notebook and went out to the terrace.
I stood there for a long time, looking towards Yugiri. I stood there until evening submerged the foothills of the valleys and Aritomo’s garden sank away from sight.
Chapter Six
Following the High Commissioner’s murder, Magnus and Frederik went about supervising the workers as they repaired the fence protecting the house. They set up a pair of spotlights along the fence, facing them outwards. Having heard from someone at the Tanah Rata Golf Club about an incident in Ipoh where CTs had lobbed a hand grenade into the dining room of a rubber estate manager’s bungalow as his family was sitting down for lunch, Magnus decided to have the windows covered in a thin wire mesh.
‘Emily said you haven’t seen our clinic,’ Magnus said, while I helped him nail a sheet of wire netting over my bedroom windows. The netting made the room gloomy, and I switched on the light. Two days had passed since Aritomo had turned me down, but I was still resentful about it. ‘Go take a look,’ Magnus went on. ‘Our nurse quit last year – said it was too dangerous to work here. Emily decided to run it herself. She trained as a nurse, you know, before she saw the light and married me.’
I was reluctant to visit the clinic, but I knew I had to, if only to give Emily face. The whitewashed bungalow was a short walk from the workers’ houses. A Tamil man slouching on a chair grinned at me when I entered the waiting room. Emily sat behind a low counter, her lips moving soundlessly as she counted out pills into a bottle. Through an open doorway I saw a room with two beds behind a partition. The bare legs of a woman were sticking out from one of the beds.
‘That’s Letchumi,’ Emily said, glancing at me.
‘Bitten by a snake.’
Emily tilted her head to one side. ‘Oh, yes, it was the night you arrived. She’s doing fine now. Dr Yeoh gave her an injection. Maniam, eh, Maniam! Ambil ubat .’
The coolie in the chair stood up and came to collect the bottle of pills from her. She made him repeat her dosage instructions in Malay before she let him leave. Turning back to me, she pointed at the boxes of medicines stacked in a corner. ‘These came in today. I ordered more, in case the CTs attack us.’ She shook her head.
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