‘Because,’ says Lam, ‘as you know, Suyin, what is there for a young Chinese in Malaya but the jungle, the hellish green mouth of the jungle?’ He moves his arms, which immediately become tree tendrils, twisted and contorted. Poetic he becomes when his anger is with him, the growling repressed pent fury inside the voice, never above it, always smothered with a denying smile. His hands narrowly miss the face of the driver, the white man who makes fun of himself, calling himself ‘red-haired devil’ (because here in Malaya in the mouths of the people every white man is a red-haired devil or a white ant). The driver, impassive, listens, looks at me in the rear mirror, and winks.

The car now climbs the road in front of it; climbs a hill like a shoulder, upon which lean, melting the horizon line, the clouds crowding to the daily rain storm over Malaya. The entire sky heaves and sags with clumsy, paunched bodies of cloud, a ponderous elbow-jostling assembly. The season is dry, hence only a noon-storm, curt and soon over, every day.

Lam says: ‘I want my son to know life, I want him to have an opportunity. Two years in a circus will be wonderful. He might even become an artist, make a lot of money.’ The magic word ‘money’ provokes Lam to prolonged computations.

The car rolls past the Straits, the sequined ever-changing water. Sea comes inland to lap the roots of the rain-trees along the shore. ‘The rain-tree,’ says Lam, ‘is Malaya; in this country of no seasons, the breathing symbol of growth gone mad.’ The trunks are shagged and prurient with one hundred and twenty-seven epiphytes and parasites, tendrils and trailers clinging, tenacious root feet clawing into fleshy bark, until there is not space to put a finger between. Above its devoured trunk the rain-tree raises a delicate-leaved canopy against the sky, its flowers sunwards not seen from the ground. In the water-green light under the green boughs children stand sucking lollipops; Malay Government clerks snore on marble benches, intent Chinese hawkers shake noodles, sliver meat and chicken, spread pepper and ginger and chilli on hot rice cupped on sliced banana leaves; Indian snake-charmers sadly flute their round baskets where invisible snakes sleep. Across the dappled floor of water lies the island of Singapore.

The car stops. We walk to the stone edge curbing the impotent drifting sea at mid-tide. Lam’s outflung hand sweeps across the Straits to reach and point at Singapore.

‘The big city!’ he exclaims softly. ‘You know, that is the way the Japanese must have looked at it, gazed with longing eating up their faces after the long jungle paths, coming down south to Shonan[1] the beautiful. And look! Look! Here is the monument, now a pile of stones, of no character, which they put up at this spot. This is where they crossed the water to capture Singapore, from the back.’