A candle or the sun, p.17
A Candle or the Sun, page 17
“‘No, Sam. Peter Yu is not interested in political power himself.”
Sam’s eyes bulged with disbelief. He leaned forward, swallowed a large amount of whisky and set his chair in motion. After a few minutes he stopped it and said, “Guess there’s somebody the cat’s grabbing the nuts for then?”
“Not that I know of, Sam.”
“Just a shazmaroo of trouble for its own sake?”
“I think Peter Yu feels that once people see defiance is possible, better organised groups will think of coming in.”
“Ah geddit, ah shore do,” said Sam, relaxing. “This cat just starts the patter of drumbeats. When the main rhythm begins, once the show is really on the road, he steps up front, natural leader, like.”
I shook my head. “I think he hopes to leave the country in a few months, Sam, and,” I couldn’t help the catch in my voice, “he’s going to take my Su-May with him.”
Sam laughed, leaned forward, drank some whisky and slapped me on the back. Then, as though this was not assurance enough, he did it again.
“He ain’t goin’ no place but one, Hernie baby. Our A-One, top-secret, fully-modern, electronic, staffed-by-specialists detention-centre. You done Sammy boy one God-almighty favour right now. Till you sprung your sweet little lips apart, the world looked darker than the inside of a nigger’s arse. Now all’s strobe light and flashing signs.” He paused. “But actions must be concerted, directives clearly controlled. And for this piece of action Sam’s yore honeyman, Hernie baby. Now don’t you go a-worrying. We’ll soon have you movin’ in the groove you loove. You and your May-May.”
“Su-May,” I said.
He inclined his head, an apology, and went on. “We gotta get the whole scene going, man. Pick up some of the old hands, grab the odd fellow-traveller, get some of our in-house commie groups to sing new tunes, a bit of persuasion here, a bit of persuasion there and hocus-pocus, what’ve we got: a brand new television spectacular.” Sam giggled and bounced around his chair without having to turn on the mechanism. “We’ll have them yowling at prime time, competing to tell us more.”
“Sam, by persuasion you don’t mean any kind of torture? I can’t stand the thought of Su-May being beaten up…”
“Fisting faces, man, you crazy. Ain’t this modern Singapore? We got electricity, boyyo, and,” he laughed, “refrigeration. I’ll let you into something, Hernie baby,” he shook his head. “Once we stick a cat’s wick into an iceblock it rarely lights up again. And for encores there’s strobe flash lightning, slowburns, ultrasonic disrupters. You name it modern, and we’ve got it. All electronic and fully computerised.”
“But Su-May, Sam—”
“Don’t get your underarms soggy, baby. You’ll get a chance to let her see the light before the main action gets under way.”
“You promise, Sam.”
He poured some whisky into my glass and more into his. “I’ll drink to that, Hernie. And you know, Hernie, what Sammy drinks to stays as straight and firm as an Arab dick in a Filipino arse.”
We drank, me sipping slowly, Sam in large gulps. As we did, Anuita entered the room. She was dressed in jeans and a nondescript T-shirt. Her hair hung in bedraggled clumps and the life had gone out of her mouth. She pulled up a little stool and sat distant from us.
“What news?” she asked bleakly.
Sam ignored her and spoke to me. “We’ve had whispers, Hernie, that this group of yours plans a big razzmatazz for the new year. Mass release of streetpapers. So much shit-paper around, the city’s gonna look like a public latrine in a cholera epidemic. We want to rope in your bambinos on New Year’s Eve, Hern. Their shit-sheets on them, their fingers still sticky, so we can smell whose pants they’ve been into.
“Meanwhile we get the chorus ready.” He looked at Anuita and nodded several times. “Back-up groups with pre-recorded tunes, statements, photographs, media boys ready with all the background jazz. But no whisper of all this, Hern. Not a whiff of a fart. And,” he leaned over and prodded me in the chest, “you are the only sneak of a leak. Geddit, Hernie baby?”
Anuita spoke, her voice very quiet, “Sam means that if for any reason our trap is sprung before we are ready, we’ll know who did it.”
“And,” said Sam smiling contentedly, his eyebrows raised, “we’ll know whose balls we can shove into the juicing machine instead. You run along, man, and don’t wet your underwear as you drive. Just paste a sticker to your head reminding yoreself that New Year’s Eve is D-day.”
Back in my room I returned to working on Cornelius. I had taken the step I had feared thinking about and now the Captain’s story should begin to resolve itself. There was some urgency about things. My father clearly had not long to live and I wanted things sorted out with the Captain before Fred Perera died. Not that there was anything even vaguely similar about their lives. It was not parallels that I sought, nor finding events in one life which, when transposed to another, would become significant. Fred Perera was a platitudinous fool, used to striking poses as a schoolteacher that barely fooled even himself. There was very little in his life that, when it was over, would matter to anyone at all. Cornelius Vandermeer, even if he was a composite creation of Clara and Hernie Perera, born of incestuously mingled fantasies, was made to be larger than other men. I would have to find in Cornelius’s life something of relevance to Fred’s. Heroes have a duty: they have to make the prospect of the Minotaur a little less daunting and to provide us with the thread, however insubstantial, that makes our journey through the maze less meaningless.
Cornelius, however, rejected the role. He lurked in the corners of my room, smiling enigmatically. I couldn’t tell whether he was being evasive or just laughing at me. In desperation I began to wonder if the good Captain had ever been in a position to help me with my problem. After all, he had found himself in the midst of a war about whose rights and wrongs he knew little. In the course of this, youthful impetuosity, as often as plain stupidity, had earned him a reputation for courage. The war over, the Captain, middle aged, was forced to live up to a reputation he could not remember acquiring. No longer did danger cause his muscles to tighten or the blood to rush to his head. Instead it dried his mouth and turned his bowels. What then made Cornelius choose death when escape was still possible? Perhaps his legs, softened by fear, had simply refused to support him any longer and the body’s ultimate subjugation to terror had come to be seen as an act of courage. I looked around for Cornelius but he had moved into the darkest corner of the room. Only his pale grey eyes were visible and they were as revealing as the mist that joins sea to horizon at dusk.
I woke early, after an uneasy night, and decided to go into Benson’s. Ahmad’s coolness had by now become surliness. He pretended not to hear the questions I asked, and when he could not avoid doing so, answered in truncated monosyllables that were barely intelligible. The girls were a little kinder but did their best to indicate that they would be happier if I kept my distance. Nevertheless I believed that sitting at my desk, surrounded by the familiar smells of the furniture department, I had the best chance of unravelling the intricacies of Cornelius Vandermeer’s last moments.
I arrived to find Anuita examining the carpets that were on display. She was wearing a grey suit, which had masculinised shoulders, large enough to conceal even her uncompromising curves. She wore court shoes of patent leather and on her shoulder was slung a handbag of the same material. Her hair was elaborately coiffured into whorls and was held in place by a pair of large clasps. She studied the carpets through a pair of thick-framed spectacles. It was difficult to believe that this was the same girl whose warmth had, but a few nights ago, moved me to such a pitch of desire.
She waved me to her and, noticing my surprise, laughed and said, “Yes, sir, this is the battledress they like us to wear, and Anuita is never the girl to say no.”
“Compared to what I saw in Sam’s place, these carpets are pretty poor.”
She leaned nearer the carpet and, rubbing its pile with her fingertip, said, “I didn’t come to talk about carpets, Hern,” The jokiness had gone from her voice, which had dropped almost to a whisper. “I came to talk about last night.”
“Last night?”
“Hern, sometimes I think you make out to be dumber than you are.” Her eyes narrowed severely behind the spectacles. “Sam’s going to make the most of what you told him.”
“I don’t see what real harm he can do, Anuita. I’ll be the first to agree that the Children of the Book are misguided, perhaps even criminally so. But the most one could do with types like that would be to fine them or impose some minor deterrent sentence.”
“Oh, Hern,” she said. “Do you purposely make yourself stupid to avoid seeing certain things?”
“You are not making yourself very clear, Anuita.”
“Let me spell it out for you then.” She looked over her shoulder to make sure Ahmad and the salesgirls were out of earshot before continuing. “Because of your…” she paused, “assistance, Sam has been able to locate the persons behind this streetpaper thing. He could simply expose them as a gang of loony kids and leave things at that. But that would not be good enough for the men who control us. They demand more than that.”
She shook her head and said, “Did I say ‘they’? I’ll say ‘we’, because I’m as much a part of this whole thing as anyone else. What they … we will show is that this whole effort is part of a massive conspiracy involving several people, including, of course, the Communists.”
I burst out laughing and said, “Anuita, this is some kind of monstrous joke—”
“My dear, dear Hern, there’s nothing funny about any of this.” She slid her hand across the carpet and touched mine lightly. “Sam and his boys have been hard at work all night sorting out the different groups, formulating evidence, and, in the case of people already under detention, extracting more comprehensive confessions. We work very hard, you know.”
“I can’t believe this…”
“Believe it, Hern,” she said, snapping round to face me fully. “In forty-eight hours, by Saturday morning, we will have pulled in all the requisite people, extracted the necessary statements, prepared the documentary and other evidence we need. By mid-morning this will be in the hands of the local newspapers and television people, so that when the arrests are made late on Saturday night the media will be prepared. Sunday-morning editions will carry a story … fully explained.”
“What happens then?” I felt myself shiver slightly as I asked the question and wished that I had not, to achieve the effect of winter, dropped the temperature of the department so much.
“That depends on what exactly they hope to accomplish by the exercise.” Her face was quite impassive and the hand with which she stroked the carpet was steady. “If they,” she smiled, “we wish to implicate large groups of people, even set aside a few confessions for later, then interrogations will be prolonged and intensive.”
“In this case?”
She shook her head. “I’m not too sure. But I suspect that Samson is out to prove he can implicate anybody he wants to. This is something for which he is highly paid. If you look at it from his point of view, this,” she smiled weakly, “is really his big chance.”
“But what in heaven’s name is the object of all this?”
“Object?” She looked genuinely puzzled. “Really, Hern, you continue to surprise me. If you can make a case for there being an ever-present threat to the island’s security, then we have a free hand in using any measures we wish to overcome that threat. The greater the number of people potentially involved, the freer the hand one has in dealing with them.”
“Is there such a threat?”
She threw up her hands. “That depends on from whose point of view you look at things. Right now, Samson can make that threat seem just as large or small as he wishes.”
“What can I do to get Su-May out of this mess?”
“Nothing.” She thought for a bit and added, “For old times’ sake, Sam will probably give you a chance to talk to your lady friend and persuade her to incriminate as many people as she can. On the understanding, of course, that this will encourage the authorities to go easy on her.”
“What if I advised her to leave the country?”
“Between now and Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“Samson would like nothing better. He’d arrest them at the airport. Criminals, caught making getaway. What further proof would he need?” She shook her head. “And if they did somehow manage to get away, Sam would still have you, and I need not emphasise that he would quickly forget any sentimental feelings he has for you. Try to remember that, Hern.” She touched my hand in farewell. “No, there’s nothing you can do. Concede.”
She was offering the only kindness that was possible: despair.
I arrived home to find a note from Sylvie informing me that she was at my parents’ place and would probably be spending the next few days there. This suited me well. I wanted to have the flat to myself, and Cornelius.
It had finally dawned on me why I was unable to write about the Captain’s last days. I had had, for some time, the feeling that the events of my life had been taken out of my control, that a path existed along which I was tracing some pre-ordained course. This was correct. I had allowed circumstances to jostle me along, absolving myself from responsibility. However momentous might be the consequences of my movements, I had not acted but reacted. I was not unlike the tectonic plates floating on the face of our planet, grinding against each other to produce mountains and earthquakes, altering the shapes of continents but unable to do anything about the process that moved them. When I betrayed Su-May and the Children to Sam, I believed I had finally taken back control of my life. This was not true. All I had done was to follow convenience one step further. I now saw that to be genuine, actions must be at variance with convenience, possibly even inimical to survival. It was this understanding that separated the creature of choice from that of chance.
Cornelius kept close to me all the while, smiling, sitting on the edge of my desk as I typed. Often he came round to read what I had written. Mostly he approved, sometimes laughing aloud at some peculiar circumstance of his life which he had failed at the time to find amusing. Only occasionally did he frown and shake his head. I would stop typing and he would indicate the sentence or juxtaposition of words that did not meet with his approval. I argued with him. The life might be his, the words were mine. He would smile and ask me to proceed. I would, but before long found it impossible to continue. Cornelius would laugh, nod towards the heavy blue pencil I used for deletions, and I would begin again.
So we worked for two days.
We both knew that when the story was completed Captain Cornelius Vandermeer would have left my life for ever. The thought saddened us. The Captain, however, dismissed my expression of regret with a little grunt and a shrug of his shoulders. In elucidating his life fully, I was taking control of my own. Losing the Captain was an essential part of the process that would free me from the mutterings of prophets and the formulations of sooth-slayers. I had chosen it to be this way.
Early on Saturday morning the story was finished and I put together the pages of “Dutch Courage”. The dawn chorus was beginning and Cornelius had gone. Near the end he had realised that concern for the well-being of others is the only defence we have against terror and death. The Captain had learnt this from the circumstances of his life; I, by fabricating them. The pages of “Dutch Courage” lay before me, a blueprint for what I had to do. I began reading them to confirm I had got their message right.
Cornelius Vandermeer was afraid. He had been from the moment the lights went out. The houseboy was quick to set up the lamps and candles. These provided an uneasy illumination in which shapes flickered and changed and the line between light and shadow was unclear. But it wasn’t this muddy, intimidating light that worried Cornelius. It was knowing that the generator had broken down three times in a week. That terrified him.
“Ah, yes,” said Father Noonan. “For you, my friend, a reprieve,” he indicated the unfinished chess game on the table between them, “and for me, a chance to sample a wee-bitty more of your excellent whisky.” He laughed throatily and added, “Truly an act of God.”
The priest finished in a gulp the remains of his drink, reached for the half-full bottle and poured himself a generous measure. The sun had been down several hours but the air had yet to cool. Both men were perspiring freely.
Noonan pointed the bottle in Cornelius’s direction and said, “Drink up and have a bitty more yerself. Do you good. Help keep out the cold.” He laughed noisily, slapping his middle.
Cornelius shook his head. He would have liked more whisky but did not want to pick up his glass. Even in the poor light the trembling of his hands would have been obvious. He didn’t want anybody, not even the Father, to know how frightened he was.
Noonan put down the bottle and turned slightly away from Cornelius to peer intently at the chessboard. Suddenly this seemed to occupy his entire attention. He ho-hummed, sighed several times and viewed the chessmen from various angles. He seemed to have lost all interest in his companion. Confident that the priest’s attention was elsewhere, Cornelius seized his glass with both hands, lifted it shakily to his lips and downed it.
The priest, a large man, appeared even larger in the white cassock he wore. He was hunched over the chessboard and his body was twisted away from Cornelius. Without moving or altering the tone of his voice, he said, “There are no demons in the dark, my friend, and even if there were, surely they would hold no terrors for you.” He looked up from the chessboard and grasped Cornelius’s wrist with a large hairy hand. “Talk about what troubles you, man.”
Cornelius would have liked to tell Noonan, rather than have the priest find out for himself. He yearned to talk of how insidiously his fear had begun and grown, of how it had eaten him up bit by bit till none of the old Cornelius seemed to exist any more. The process was a peculiar one. He remembered all the events of his life but the life itself had become alien to the person who now inhabited his body. The young Cornelius, his Dutch father and Javanese mother dead, had left Batavia for Singapore in an unseaworthy Chinese junk. As the vessel bucked and heaved in pitch-black waters, Cornelius remembered being aware of an excitement, pleasurable but not frightening. War broke out shortly after his arrival in Singapore. As Captain Vandermeer of the Singapore Volunteer Corps, he was too busy leading his men to be intimidated by the shock of bombs or the whine of bullets. When the island fell, he remembered his heart pounding, strong and joyous, as he blackened his face and hair and took the dangerous journey north to the jungles of the Malay peninsula. Here, it was rumoured, there might be the beginnings of a resistance. That was the way it had been. Why now this sagging of the heart, this buckling at the knees, this preoccupation with the moment of death?
