But it was far too hot (it usually is) to think long and meticulously about psychological problems, and so we disputed heatedly and futilely, as usual, about the beginnings of the Emergency, and the rights and wrongs of the jungle guerrillas, and the whole appalling obtuseness of treating half the population of Malaya as dangerous aliens and the other half as pampered puppets; and finally there was no answer, for we were all caught in this green hell, each treading our own circle of misunderstanding and good intentions.

Ah Mei next day was cleaning the mirror embedded in the wall upon which ten thousand red ant cadavers had been left from their migration, carrying the white specks, the seed alive and growing, of future generations. I found the ants tracking across the glass, erupting from the cracked wall behind it, going to some refuge in the wardrobe, and I poured Shelltox and d.d.t. vigorously from the can always standing in a corner. Now Ah Mei cleaned the shrivelled carcases off with a rag, and as usual we spoke of this and that.

‘You had quite a party last night,’ I said. They had sung and laughed till eleven, and the laughter had been particularly
full-throated.

‘Miss Lee was celebrating,’ she replied. Miss Lee had recently completed a tour of the new villages with the cast, made up of ex-terrorists, of an anti-communist play called The Bloody Traitor. ‘And her name is not Lee,’ she added softly. ‘That was her name Inside. Her real name is Chang.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?’

‘She is going to get married,’ said Ah Mei. ‘Wu is going to marry her.’

‘But he already has a wife,’ I objected, rather stupidly, thinking that an ex-communist must perforce be a monogamist. ‘Isn’t that why he came out of the jungle, to see his wife again, and was accused of putting personal feelings and longing for a woman above Party, and so before he could be punished by the Party he surrendered, and led the British troops back into the jungle, captured two of his ex-comrades, and they hanged on his evidence?’

‘Wu has not got one wife, he has three. Miss Chang … Miss Lee wants him to divorce the others and marry her. Wife No. 2 came yesterday to the kitchen but Miss Lee hid from her coming. She may come again today.’

And then suddenly repulsion, nausea; I sat on the bed, not understanding what was happening to me, I could not look at Ah Mei. What had she said? Nothing, and there was a candid smile upon her face.